My mother wants the dead to go away,
tired of how they pop up among the list of the living,
in whatever the last profile picture they selected
not knowing it was the last. Perhaps next
to last because they’d been thinking
about giving up social media, eventually,
or perhaps not everything, perhaps just the games
of colorful chains and timers,
hoping for a boost from friends.
There’d be one more picture before that, right?
One more after they’d lost the weight,
one more after they got those partials,
one more after the tan lines faded,
but certainly not the last, forever floating
on a yellow raft in someone’s backyard pool.
Jennifer Schomburg Kanke is originally from Columbus, Ohio and currently lives in Tallahassee, Florida where she edits boring confidential documents at Tallahassee Community College. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, and Court Green. She is a reader for Emrys.