the unquiet death
One funeral plot will not be enough.
I have died too many times
to find peace in the earth.
I would need a mausoleum just to carry
the bones of all who have loved and left,
who I have lost and loved and love—
love, do you see? Present-tense.
And nothing that is present
can be passed.
Nothing that persists can be put to rest
And if you are a ghost, then so am I,
Tied to different tombstones, the barest slip of the horizon apart.
Will I ever see you again? The world is curved, so perhaps
you will always be just on the edge of my sight,
Just the words, etched into marble we couldn’t afford:
“I won’t leave you. I promise. I promise.”
Headstones and coffins - these are expensive,
and words so very cheap.
Did you mean your second-to-last words?
Our love is divine. Our love will keep me here.
Or only your last?
Our love was of devils. Our love is my shame.
I suppose, in the right light, Lucifer is still an angel,
and I was yours.
(yours, yours, I was always, almost yours.)
Perhaps I am your angel, still—cast in concrete and perched over the grave you chose,
Chasing the nightmares I couldn't catch
when you were in my arms.
Perhaps I am your nightmare, now.
Have you exorcised my ghost yet?
Have you stolen back your soul from the devil you said I was?
Are you comfortable in your coffin, darling?
I do not know.
I do not know. I do not know.
No one ever tells you
how six feet of soil and six hundred days do not feel so different.
You did not even give me a graveside
where I could plant dandelions,
watered with wishes and spite and the stories of how I survived your murder/suicide.
I gave you a funeral, but you weren’t there.
You weren’t there you weren’t there you weren't there.
Tell me, how am I supposed to grieve a ghost who is not dead?
How am I to escape this haunting
when my only summoning circle is the phone number you changed?
How am I supposed to find enough soil to bury my love
—love, loving, loved, lost—
when you never said goodbye?
And so I sit, dangling my feet over this six foot hole you left behind,
measuring myself for it, but never making my bed.
One funeral plot will never be enough
For the life we could have lived.
