What I Want When I'm Gone

-- I was looking at a portrait of two men building a tomb for themselves. I thought about what would happen if people still believed you could take things with you into the afterlife. I was thinking about what heaven actually might be. I was thinking about a woman who perhaps didn’t have such a great life on earth, imagining a better one once she’s gone. This is what came out. --

“What I Want When I’m Gone”

I want the dress from Breakfast at Tiffany’s
And I want to be able to fit into it
I want the pearls
And I want a croissant
I want ‘Moon River’ playing
And the streets of New York City
In the morning
As I walk toward a store
To stare into the display windows

I want that every morning

I want the afternoon to be brunch
With several loud obese Southern women
Who have names like Mitsy and Tata
I want to drink mimosas with them
And gossip about who’s a whore and who isn’t
Even though everyone will be
And I want to make them laugh
Big bellyaching laughs
That shake the table
And spill the mimosas everywhere

And I don’t want to have to clean
Anything
Ever

I want bawdy polka dot dresses
And a tiny waistline
My hair done everyday
The moment I wake up
And I want it to stay in place
Even if I jump and down
Which I will
On giant mattresses
Strewn throughout a giant room
That resembles a showroom
In a department store

I want to jump from one mattress to the next
In pointy heels that could pop balloons
And maybe I will pop balloons
But I won’t damage the mattresses
Because they’ll be like magic
And I’ll hop all over the place
While smiling salesmen look on
As if I’m doing
Exactly
What I’m supposed to be doing

And when I’m done
I’ll tip them
Like they’re waiters
Who sell mattresses

I want to come home
To watch my soap operas
And I want to watch them
With my staff of servants
Who all love me
Much more than their former bosses
Who were mean to them
And wouldn’t let them watch television
While they worked

Not like me

I’ll let them watch with me
And we’ll yell at the screen
When the characters we don’t like come on
And we’ll cry
When the characters we like get married
And we’ll laugh
When someone is cloned
And then given aging juice
So they can look like the person
Who they were cloned from

Then we’ll all eat a snack
Maybe apple slices

Every night there will be a ball
Because I will have a ballroom in my house
That looks like the ballroom
From Beauty and the Beast
With the pretty stars
When they started using computer animation
And that’s what it will look like

All my guests will look pretty and plain
While the stars and the sky
Will look too good to be real

I will wear an unnecessarily long dress
One that can’t actually fit in the ballroom
And I’ll keep saying to my guests

‘You should see the rest of my dress
It’s fantastic.’

But no one will ever see the rest of it
It will be an eternal mystery

At least fifty of my guests
Will be men
Dying to marry me
They’ll all propose every night
And every night I’ll pick one
To say ‘Yes’ to
Even though the wedding will never happen
Because who would want to be married in heaven?

I never met a man I liked while I was alive
At least not enough to marry
Why should that change in heaven?
I’ll like being single in heaven
I can date Elvis
But I probably won’t
Because I never got the fascination with him
Although I do like his hair

Btu he’ll be at the party
And so will Benjamin Franklin
And maybe Madame Curie
Definitely Madame Curie
And probably Marie Antoinette
But if she’s nasty
Then she can be thrown out
By one of my devoted security guards

I’ll know how to dance
I’ll know all the dances
And I’ll spin around the floor
While everyone looks on admiringly
And people will make toasts
All to me
All night long
About how much they love me
And what a good soul I am

There will be square pizza
Even though it’s out of place
From that place I used to go to
In the bad neighborhood
Because that's where the best pizza comes from

And there will strawberries
Dipped in chocolate
Dipped in melted bananas
Dipped in melted kit kat bars
Rolled in oreos
And it will all be disgustingly full of fat
And I'll eat it
And never gain a pound

There will duck
But nobody will eat it
Because duck is vile
But it’ll be there
Because duck is chic

At some point in the party
I’ll wander off to another room
Where I keep photos of people
Still living

I’ll hold up each photo
And tap it lightly
In order to see what that person is up to
And I’ll see my granddaughter
Put on her junior prom dress
And I’ll see my daughter
Tell people she wishes I was there
To see my granddaughter
Get into a limo
And go off to the prom
With a lovely boy
Much dumber than she is

And I’ll see my son
Win an award for designing
A better stop-motion camera
He'll thank me
And I'll find that lovely
And I’ll see my grandson
Eat duck and hate it
That'll make me laugh

I’ll run my hands over books I loved
That I keep in bookcases
Big oak bookcases
That line the walls of my study
And reach two stories tall
Some of them I haven’t read
But I will
Because I have time
I have nothing but time

I’ll tap the globe I keep next to my desk
A desk I sit at in the afternoon
And write letters to people
Inviting them to that night’s party
Even though they’d come anyway
It’s nice to write out invitations
With fancy calligraphy
Making the ‘e’s look like lemon drops
And the 'a's look like clouds

The globe will spin
And I’ll see lovers in Paris
It’ll spin again
And I’ll see Sunday dinners in Palermo
It’ll spin again
And I’ll see my niece moving
Into an apartment in Chicago
It’ll spin again
And I’ll see my nephew
Perform a piano recital
It’ll spin again and again
And each time it stops
I’ll see something I couldn’t have seen
When I was too close to it all
When I wouldn’t have understood
What it was I was seeing

First love
Family
Ambition
Talent
Taste
Home

Then I’ll sneak back to the guests
Who ask where I’ve been
And I’ll say--

'Everywhere'

But they’ll think I’m joking
Because they don’t know
They don’t know about the globe
And the photographs
And home

They wouldn’t want to know that I miss things
Because you’re not supposed to miss things
When you’re in a better place
But you do
You miss them
And it makes you feel good
Not just sad
Good too
Because it means you’re missed
Like you miss

The guests tell me I’ve lost weight
And I have
So much so
I’d be unrecognizable
To anyone back home
I couldn’t lose that much
Before I got here
But as soon as I did
I looked just like I always wanted to look
And I put on that Breakfast at Tiffany’s dress
Like I was born to wear it

The guests and I will drink all night
And when the sun rises
I’ll wake up in my dress
The long ballroom dress
That doesn’t fit in my bedroom
And cartoon birds
Will fly around my head
Chirping away at me
And I’ll have one of the maids
Open up the curtains
And say—

‘It’s another glorious day’

And it will be
Everyday