paid in full

I have three coins in my pocket one for my mother one for my grandmother and the last for me

in the story-I’d put them over cold faces closed eyes pay the ferryman for the ride

my mother must have hitchhiked not the first time my grandmother didn’t want to leave she’s holding onto gravestone with her thin nails accepting fake flowers as tribute side by side with the man she loved then hated then loved again

the ground is too cold here to bury me nothing melts glacier ice and so I wonder if I walk out until I can only see snow from horizon to horizon until my footsteps have gone all but one will the snow swallow me slowly bury this body close to plague sufferers dead Russians and polar bear bones

I could haunt the wave-dark seas pester whale hunters or softer grandmothers listen to oceans inside the chests of great beasts rest when spirals cease