Your Suicide Script

came off beautifully, obeyed classic
Chekhovian rules of dramaturgy,

rule one being: if you bring a gun
onto the stage, you have to use it.

Of course, I only saw the second act,
the service in your memory

where two dozen candles burned inside
a dozen pairs of your exquisite, empty shoes,

each flame reflected, multiplied,
in the polish of your hand-sewn, two-toned,

butter-soft balmorals and wing-tipped
brogues, oxfords, loafers, dirty bucks

that promised any minute to ignite
a pyre of hide and eyelet,

tassel, heel bed, wax and wick.
But didn’t.

Talk wound down. Candles sputtered,
guttered in their liquid and your shoes

did what shoes do without owners:
nothing. Become

props. Leading me back
to the first, more problematic act.

Too minimalist, too bare.
That single chair. The shotgun.

And the cast of one.