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Mail for the Dead

Mail for the dead keeps coming to my house.
When it first arrived
I was very conscientious,
Doing my best to inform each sender of the situation,
but now the mail piles up on tables and in corners
stowing my house under paper and drowning it in artificial memories.

Letters to someone's mother, someone's father.
Junk mail for lovers long since gone.
Birthday cards for the dead and divorced,
bills that will go unpaid, to become
irreparable damage to the credit of the dead.

A Selected Service card came for you the other day.
I said a prayer before I set it on fire,
an antiquated protest against children lost.