WPC 3-1-26

after i die

stretch my skin into parchment.
bind it. archive it.

the hands Celia needled into my thighs
a diagram of how to love me
from the inside out.
Marlowe's lyrics penned across my arms
i'm ready to be free
but not without a fight
my home strung across the strings
of my wrist, the prickly pear
on my back, forever a reminder
of what they couldn't take from us,
the whip on my ass so no one could deny
I was a freak 'til the end.

even the choices I wouldn't make today.
I have the choices I made then
to thank for that.

Sean's airplant that looks like gnarled talons
grasping at my ankle.
the skull i got the day before lockdown,
which i impaled on a piece of rebar.
it never healed quite right after that.

I know that one day
time will take everything
just as it gives, and gives.
That is what time does.

But until that day
when the world is not just
what we leave of it -
spike fields and obelisks -
but what it heals into

is it wrong for me
to want to tell you
we were here
and we
were thinking of you
who had yet to arrive.