Prompts: Why is poetry the language of the dead? Is everything a lie? What did the last spider you kill say?
breath is the language of the dead for the dead lie awake dreaming. such dreams i have never felt, sitting on the beachhead, trying to crush out from life even one grain of sand. they remain like mote ghosts of golems, we are building golems now. building to encase ourselves in sand, burning like paper, all the hormones burn us away. still i have never known the breath of the dead, for it steals in fleets like the knives of the morning sun. in amber to be stockaded like cattle, once divined in its entrails the breathing secrets of. once revealed burning paper, a face in flames, a portrait, all in flames to show our thoughts of the dead, the fleeting breath of.
fleeting breath of the mangled corpse, insect legs spread and twitching. said i could build a home and live on fly flesh. said i could build a home for us together, spiderlegs wrapped around you or plummet down your throat. i could die a martyr in your throat. a face in flames, thoughts of the dead burn regal on your chin. thoughts of the dead score lines in your eyes, count the beats of your heart, one by one the quiver of your chin. could build a home but now i am laid lowly. in the hopskip of cobwebs i traced your silhouette, like some born brittle like a porcelain doll.
but if it was all untrue surely the facets of the earth would have long consumed me. seen chance after chance to snap my own neck, see the orchids bloom in starch beauty over my tomb, moss covers the tombs that stretch beside every suburb. i’m waiting for all this to go away but the truth of it is in the bones gloved by felt and buried through amnesia, in retrograde seeing our true ends reflected in mirrors beneath each blink of dreamy eyes. in shadows blossomed from our earlobes and pouring to velvet our tombs in sleek finish, in darkness seen pale lines warp the facets of my face.
@CHTHONICHELL writes stories & things & forgets who they are