Your Bones

were so predestined to be buried

we hardly noticed when they were laid to rest

six feet below the ground.

As a girl you would play, 

laughter echoing in graveyards

up until the day you were burned then reprimanded 

for sticking sticky child's fingers

into cap holes of candles

embellished with the Virgin Mary.

Her image peeling at the corners in heat.

The scent always permeated whatever thoughts you had, 

coiling around your troubles like a life vest,

like the times you gripped your mother's hand at take-off, 

in anticipation in place of fear

and the waves of exhilaration that final night;

murder weapon gleaming in your eyes like a cataract

always blinded by that dark desire 

to bypass your existence

No one noticed it, humming out of your core,

No one knew your hands trembled almost as terribly as your delicate crown

You see, you used to wander graveyards,

back when you were young.

To smell the distilled gas of holy wax, dripping,

no longer in remembrance, but resolve,

to get that prickling feeling 

right below your hummingbird clavicle

that you couldn't quite name,

but thought most closely resembled loneliness,

then belonging. 

You were intelligent so you must have known 

how the living take away until there is nothing left.

Now I picture your bones already brittle

because you lived planning your death.

Reviews

[Perdition]

This one cries like a spring fledging being swallowed. I imagine two souls in your words, walking (one young ; the other tried) through a collage of memory. Sharing thoughts along a fading field. Their honest, yet crackling frame is faltering from that weight of life... colored with the palette of their past. A moment of perfection whilst we drown our faithful cognition. Committed to this sunlight and softened by our destiny. Reality well done. In other words, "I really like this one."

[janimarei]

i love this so much. it stirred some childhood memories of my own. painful and beautiful

[Gerald Parker]

Oh, you've deleted your reply to my review!

[anamezic]

I'm sorry. I wanted to tell you it was about me, but didn't feel like launching into a great explanation. I wrote it in second person so I could read it to my parents without them unavoidably worrying for my state of well being.

[Gerald Parker]

Now that's intriguing and unsettling. A brave thing to articulate. Thank you for telling me. Perhaps delete your reply now?

[Orlando Murcia]

Wow! That's all I have too say...


Fantastic work!!!

[Gerald Parker]

Strange isn't, how we use the second person, even though they don't they are being addressed? I'm wondering how old you were when you wrote this, because the depth of emotion is ageless. Finely observed detailed images. Well done.

[Sami Khalil]

A very good write. Thank you for sharing...:)