Death by Murakami

green-felt pool tables,
chunky paperweights in
police interrogation rooms,
smoke rising from tall
crematorium smokestacks,
white flowers on school desks,
gas station receipt 
tucked under the windshield wiper,
suffocating contradiction
endlessly spinning in circles,
I have no idea how long
it took him to die

Compiled July 25, 2020

All lines are direct quotes from the last two pages of the second chapter of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood