The Viewing

The Viewing
They propped him up in the casket like a display,
the suit he never wore in life buttoned the wrong way,
the tie a color he would have refused, the hands
folded around a rosary he never used, the bands

of the wedding ring still on the finger, shining clean,
and the face they made for him is the face of a machine
that was designed to look like someone everybody knew
but the viewing shows a stranger, and the stranger is not true.

The skin is wrong. The color is a shade
that no living person ever displayed,
a peachy-pink applied with a sponge by someone
who has never met the man beneath the sun

of the fluorescent chapel where the organ plays
a melody that means nothing in the haze
of the viewing line that shuffles past the box,
and everyone says he looks good, which mocks

the reality of what the embalming did.

I kissed his forehead.
It was cold.
It was hard.
It was not him.
It was a doll made of chemicals
wearing his suit.