Without You

Spirits hide in fists
Of the left-behinds.
Hide in hearts
Of the unresolved.

Wind
With its teeth bared
Growling, drooling,
Prowling
Through death markers.
Cobblestones.

You lay here.

Closer. Closer
To your decay.
Rotting. Wretched.

I’ll reach into the mud
Into the death dirt.

“Please,” I’ll say.

And as my hand tightens
On your bare bones
You will waken from your hell.
Raked with set jaw and full force.
Dragged, pried, crushed into re-existence.
Sucked into your corpse.

Your old sailor bones will be brittle.
Your mouth empty of teeth long rotted away.
Your decrepit lungs expanding and collapsing. Wet hollow gags.
Your eyes rolling into the back of your head, working to focus on the nothing left inside.


No compassion.
No mercy.
As every last bit of you is thrown to the ground.
Garbage.


(Assignment #1: grandparent poem)