buried
i closed the lid on the coffin door
the wood rough against my hand
edges planting splinters my fingertips
a reminder of the inside hemmed
nails and spikes draining the life
of something still gasping for air
their ragged breathing silenced
by the slam of something unwanted
i planted the coffin deep inside
beside the rumbling of my stomach
and the thundering of my heart
my running blood rocking it in place
burning holes into my muscles
shocking volts up my brain’s electric
and it was more alive inside its confines
but i pretended not to hear it
banging on its heavy wooden lid
screaming its unjust imprisonment
but i buried it further down as if
distance makes drowned out protest
i shovel dirt in rusty spoons of mine
each mound of dirt heavier than before
falling fine and slippery like sand
but each metal clang sees another layer
building around its rough-hewn sides
seeping blood turning it iron-colored
and soon the dirt is black and wet
impenetrable under cemented compact
its leaden weight is barely a difference
under the rest of my shifting insides
and i think it will rot like the rest lain
decomposing into the unrecognizable
a distant memory of a burial where
i regret not crying at the funeral
a smiled at eulogy that i will say
changed my soul into its renewal
but the coffin door busts open
wood split boards releasing them
the never truly dead, maggot-ridden
ugliest under the passage of time
pulling through my six feet of layers
with claws in my five foot frame
painstaking burial uprooted in moments
where i listened to them too long
and they whisper in my ear
of habitual memories unlearned
for once the coffin door had closed
this murder sought to kill us both.
and i pretend not to hear them
supposing the years of grams of dirt had
amounted to a prison i thought would
keep the buried struggling for life
but my sour revenge is not unwritten
reminding me that i cannot kill
what had never died in first place
