The Wrong Moment

Someone dropped the casserole

and it shattered

and I laughed.

Not a small laugh.

A real one.

Loud enough that people heard it

over the organ music,

loud enough that my face went hot,

that I had to cover my mouth

like I could take it back.

The red sauce spread across the floor

like something alive,

like the grief we were all supposed to be feeling

had finally found a body,

had finally spilled out,

and it was so ridiculous,

so perfectly awful,

that my body betrayed me.

I laughed at a funeral.

I laughed at someone's careful dish,

at the careful arrangement of food

meant to say: I'm thinking of you,

I'm here, I made something,

and it broke.

Everything breaks.

That's what I was laughing at.

That's what my face was burning for—

not the laugh itself,

but the truth it told,

the way my body knew

before my mind caught up

that this was funny,

that we were all standing in a basement

trying to pretend

that anything we make

won't end up shattered,

won't end up spilled,

won't end up like that sauce,

spreading and staining

and refusing to be cleaned up.

I'm still ashamed of it.

I'm still hearing the sound

of my own laugh

echoing under the fluorescent lights,

still feeling the way people looked at me,

still knowing that I laughed

when I should have been silent,

when I should have been anything

but honest.