The Dress She Wore to the Funeral

The Dress She Wore to the Funeral

Black dress, tight at the waist and loose below the knee,
She wore grief the way a razor wears its edge, clean and free,
And I am a bastard for the thought, I know it, wrote it down,
But she was devastating in that black and narrow gown

Her shoulders bare except
for two thin straps that held the whole,
Arrangement up against her body, dark against her soul,
And I stood in the back row thinking things that do not belong,
At a funeral, or anywhere, or in this kind of song

The dress she wore to the funeral still hangs in my head,
Black and fitted and exactly like the wanting that I fed,
In every wrong location, at every wrong time,
The dress she wore to the funeral was a crime

She cried and the mascara tracked her cheek in one dark line,
And even that was beautiful, and I felt every spine,
Of guilt and want collide inside my chest and fuse,
The dress she wore to the funeral and I have got no excuse

I shook her hand in the receiving line,
her fingers cold and thin,
And thought about those fingers somewhere else against my skin,
The worst thought I have ever had, dressed up in black and lace,
The dress she wore to the funeral and the look upon her face