It all comes rushing out:
all of them, every last one.
The weary take the raw in their battered, streaming jaws
and snap shut.
Dreams throw taste dark into the divide.
Dearly beloved:
you have not survived.
You will not be revived
except you will.
You will and you won’t.
You did and you don’t.
The dead and dying
have learned that a flood
has no need of boats.
The shipwreck survives.
The nightmare rewires
you.
You and all you believe yourself to be.
You and the curses of all that were left behind;
you have become one behind whose eyes
is the force of hundred, thousand, million, octillion minds
is set afire, all at once,
is set alight, for all peoples to know, and fear
and render their bodies and hearts, souls and minds up to
still breathing, still terrified;
still alive.
40,023 years later,
we say the living have every right
to condemn the dead, and fear them, and flay them for their pride;
what has been forgotten
is that some dead things still live,
still cling,
still writhe and scream and twist inside.
Still know that the best kind of smile
is caked, and cut, and almost certainly
bone-dry.