Pompeii and Cancer

I came across that Pompeii book
the other day -
The small one we bought at the sweaty gift stall
as the yellow jackets
swarmed the melting ice cream at our feet.

I thought about you again.

When you die in four months
like the machines say you will
You will leave an empty, hands-over-face
terrified used-to-be.
A cavity.

To tourists and the neighbors you don't know
the grass will be lush
the earth, picnic solid
They won't know your little clay figures
or the way you loved your boxwoods.

We will mill about the surface
with sticks on Sundays and holidays
looking for a hole to pour our plaster of Paris
hoping to make a craggy white mold
for a hushed museum memory.

Vesuvius, you sadist.
You bureaucrat.
I stand below on the sun-baked clay
scream my small screams, soak my white shirt
as you choke her with ash and check your voicemail.