Marrow

Memento Mori: "Remember you must die."
= = =
Death is near, enjoy the now.
For we have always known mortality.

On this Halloween morn,
I awaken, mouth thick-caked with dried blood. 
Though no gauze remains,
their dry ghosts haunt the ledges of my jaw.
Black ooze comes from my nostrils,
I am a sight for a drive-through Forest of Screams fest.

Vanquished molars, two pair,
drifted from me like deciduous leaves
(though much less gently)
have me in Jack-O-Lantern mode
on this spirited day.

Hands palpate nightstand,
unable to wrench lids yet open.
I seek a tumbler of water;
anything to quench my iron-tinged tongue.

Instead, fingers come across
a small sharp-edged plastic-front packet.
Dry eyes open, weary.
See four bloody bones, two broken:
fat-smeared and blurry
behind their polypropylene window
as if ghoulish goods for sale by a wicked baker.

In my hands I hold
my own marrow,
my skeleton
I cradle my end, in my heart-pulsing palm.

I peer down on my scattering
of elphin osso bucco 
and I know that I too cannot escape 

– Remember you must die –

The day before, the surgeon had asked me:
"Do you want to keep the teeth?"

And I had exclaimed,
"YES!"
Because they are mine,
those teeth, my teeth.
And they remind me,
starting today,
that behind this life is death.

So laugh,
for the love of it.