Inspired by Anne Sexton
You aligned your inked soldiers
gray with cavernous yawns gleaming bright,
black anthems marking their despondent trail.
With shreds of evidence, scrawled ransom notes,
just how much proof of life did we require beyond
the gripped grinding of your bones, the harsh tremolo
of your caustic voice before we finally realized
how far you'd fallen, how deep you'd descended
into those aching crevasses carved by chaos?
How much brutality must one mortal frame
be subjected to, endure, before the structure gives way,
crumbling into severe shards of glass,
misted clumps of dust?
You screeched and scrawled
until ears turned deaf, eyes blind,
neglecting the density of your sorrow
until you could bear no more beatings of your breast -
you stilled yourself so gently, the slight rippling of torn wings
could not be heard.
We wept for this grave loss, unkempt
and fevered with contagion such madness leaves behind,
a wake we could not consciously attend without shattering
our own brittle reflections in antiqued mirrors
we'd so long ignored, snared as we were
by a placid existence.
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