I stand before the fluorescent lights of an empty graveyard,
where I silently laid my heart upon its altar—waiting for a benediction that never came.
The glow is unkind; it reveals the cracks in the offering,
the way my hands tremble in the blue-white glare,
the way I reluctantly embrace the cold, dead air,
and the way I am stripped to a frame that is hollow and bare.
I came here to be empty, to leave everything behind,
only for the shadows to be too shallow to hide what I’ve become.
O, skeletons who rose from the deceiving, nurturing soil,
Why must you remind me of the rattling bones with secrets not even my skin can hide?
where every piece of calcium I consume could never purify my own guilt.
I even stripped the enamel from my gnawing teeth,
only to feel the ivory stir beneath the surface, miles deep.
I tried to graft a new silence over the noise of my pulse,
to stitch the skin tight where the truth began to fray.
But the marrow remembers; it hums a low, resonant frequency
that vibrates against the ribs like a bird in a cage of salt.
How cruel, to turn the act of walking into a heavy, grinding penance,
for my heartbeat itself sounds like it's headed towards a greater meaning.
But there is no burial for the things that refuse to die;
as I am appalled by the mere fact that I am still a living being.
Though the breath within my lungs begins to tighten gradually,
I can visualize lying next to my mother as I match her breath with my own pace.
Now, I can only use my remaining air to mumble to myself—
the hope to be consumed by death with a peaceful, loving grace.
I refuse to be carried underground by the people who once loved me,
I requested my casket to be lower than the layers of bedrock,
for it is my natural state to let myself down, to be sunken beneath the growling sea.
In that way, I could stop questioning if I’ve endlessly held them in a tiring headlock.
A headlock that strangled them from the weight of the things I have said,
even though the things I’ve done have affected me more for years and years—
guilt forming over my body like a tied hollow block over my head,
making me replay the moments where I stung people with venom,
and can never forgive myself as my eyes swell up with tears.
Others measure success in height, while others measure theirs in how deeply they’ve ached.
I look at the hands that tried to hold me and see only the strain in their wrists,
the way their smiles thinned under the gravity of my constant collapsing.
It is a mercy to be buried beneath the seabed, far from the reach of their rescue,
how many times can a person be pulled from the wreckage, before the rescuers begin to hate the smell of the salt?
To be sunken is to finally stop leaning; to be low is to finally stop falling.
I will unfasten the anchors I’ve tethered to their hearts,
and let the silt fill the mouth that has asked for too much for too long.
I often question myself how much longer I can carry the burdens,
only mirroring the deceptive reality of telling people “I’m a healed person.”
In the crushing dark, I am finally weightless,
because there is no one left below me to catch the pieces when I break—
At last, the only thing I am letting down is the earth itself.
