The sheet peels off. The spirit dies,
Yet sight persists as through a haze.
In death, we’re left with just our eyes.

No ears to hear the ghostly sighs:
The soundtrack playing all the days
The sheet peels off, the spirit dies.

No tongue for when the fruit rolls by—
No glancing lick, no passing taste.
In death, we’re left with just our eyes.

No skin to shiver tense in fright
On spying the recursive maze.
The sheet peels off; the spirit dies.

No nose to smell if, after the blight,
There lurks an odor of the grave.
In death, we’re left with just our eyes.

The Pac-Man cometh, solar-bright.
We all blink blue in a soul-struck daze.
The sheet peels off; the spirit dies.
In death, we’re left with just our eyes.

————

Mitch Frye teaches and writes in Mobile, Alabama. His critical essays have appeared in such venues as Critique and The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review. His non-critical essays have received treatment at a local urgent care.