Afterlife

This poem is not about death.....

They found my body and dragged it across the desert;

The sand gnawed my unwanted flesh,

Until I was a skeleton with no face.

Years passed before we reached the city.

I remember how frightened I was,

When they set my dry bones in an empty room

With a cold tile floor.

It was at once too dark and too bright.

I could barely make out their shadowy figures,

All at once they crowded round me.

Their voices were loud,

Or their voice,

I couldn’t tell if there were many or only one.

When I saw the teeth of the blade

I tried to scream,

But I had no mouth.

Then I saw what they were doing.

As they passed the blade,

Each carefully sawed a piece of their own flesh.

Then, with all the tenderness of my mother,

They sewed their sacrificial meat to my bones.

When I healed I looked exactly like them,

And sounded like them,

And moved with them.

But there are still marks,

Stitches,

And when I look hard enough at the cracks,

I can almost see my own face.

Reviews

[Matthew Kult]

Hello Molly,

Oh my head hurts...so I read this twice and yet I still think I have no clue, although I do agree with Mariska. I could see school, any organized religion, authority through and through.

The writing was fantastic, and even with being confused was a very enjoyable read. I do hope you mail me and atleast give me your thoughts. I would appreciate it.

Regards,

Matthew

[Poeticpiers]

A strange and rather ambiguous write,shades of Frankenstein or what Frankensteins monster might have been if treated with tlc

[CLosed]

This is, i am without words, which is rare.
Amazing.

[NoneOfYourBusiness akaK..]

profoundly disturbing because it's array is beautiful~ of course I personalized it to my own epic fail where he was strumming my cranium with his iron tipped fingers and my jawbones like a lyre~ little humpty dumpty girl all broken to pieces . . .


"And when I look hard enough at the cracks,
I can almost see my own face."

somewhere elsewheres he said~ "why complain at least your eyes are still your own"

the carcass here is extraordinary~ peeling in reverse where the juice comes at the beginning before the rind is turned into a place setting~

[Zeitgeist Manifesto]

Wow. This was a dramatic tell of forced assimilation.
What a beautiful, but frightening nightmare.

[Jim]

Great poem. I love the ambiguity, the way readers have to struggle to figure out what is going on. By the way, a little typo--"heard" should be "hard" in the penultimate line

[marisa starkilicious]

At first, I was thinking," What is this about?" But I came to understand at the end. And one word came to mind: conformity. To display this, I love the metaphors you used. But then again, I could be way off, because I am bad at interpreting poetry. Nonetheless, it is a very well written poem.

It kind of reminds me of The Twilight Zone episode "Eye of the Beholder" where the woman receives surgery to become more "attractive" and "normal", when in fact she is both, and everyone else is hideously disformed.


Anyway, very good job on this.