The Purge

The Purge

The body purges at the orifices first,
the fluids seeking exit from the biological worst
of the decomposition timeline, every opening a door
for the liquid evidence of what the body held before.

The nose, the mouth, the ears, the places where the living
once received the world now doing the posthumous giving
back of everything the body borrowed from the earth,
a purging that inverts the process of the birth.

The coroner has seen a thousand purges and can tell
the hour of the death by the consistency and smell
of what the body has released, the viscosity a clock
that ticks in secretions and in every postmortem shock.

The mattress underneath is ruined past all salvation,
the purge has soaked through every layer of the foundation
of the bed where someone slept and then stopped sleeping,
and the body is doing what the body has been keeping
in reserve for this exact occasion.

The purge, the body returning what it took.
The purge, the final chapter of the book
written in the fluids of the dead.
And the purge leaves nothing but the bone and the bed.

They flipped the mattress.
It soaked through both sides.
They threw it in the dumpster.
The stain remained on the floor.