THE ORIGIN OF THE FUNERAL HAT
Twice, Coretta King dreamt of her husband’s
assassination. In the first dream, she sat
frozen as a centerpiece as he calmly opened
his mouth to let the bullet in like a newborn
leaning into a nipple. In the second, he was
dancing in an uncrossable ballroom and she
could only watch as a hundred tiny metal fists
beat themselves against his impervious chest.
Both nights, she woke in a sweat, shook him,
whispered “Martin, Martin,” the way she used to
when they first tried on each other’s bodies, until
her husband finally came back to her from sleep.
Coretta always knew what was coming. She
knew what plague of roaches was crawling up
her husband’s trunk. They wanted to chop him
down; they wanted to hang their bloody laundry
from his stalks. Coretta grew up watching brown
boys who looked like her husband grow up into
dead things; she knew it was only a matter
of time—but when that time came, Coretta asked
for an open coffin so her children would know
their father wasn’t coming home. All her fear
left her body like a procession. She wore a tall,
thatched hat to the funeral, black as a crow’s beak,
and a veil circling her face like an astronaut’s helmet
as if to say I am not of this, I am only a visitor.
As if to say, if you’re coming for me too, then
don’t you dare miss. Change moves like a bullet
and you already pulled the trigger. You think this
is gonna stop it? You think it’s not already done?
