Behind the house with the fragmented windows
and the corroded pipes
and the cobwebs and ages under the stairs,
she buried herself
under the earth and grime
until the roots contained her decayed soul
and encased around her brittle scarred limbs.
Until the dirt crept down her windpipes,
until her tarnished lungs were suffused
with ashes and dirt.
Until roots replaced her veins and
smothered her cracked ribcage.
Behind the house with the fragmented windows,
under the grass and gravel,
that was rougher than
her mother’s dispirited retorts,
where she once capered and skipped, and never thought
would become her grave.
By the ethereal creatures she played with
in her younger and more susceptible years.
Dig up her bones but leave her soul.
Who would ever want cruel contaminated beauty
as a periphery for such a fouled soul?
It was when she stopped falling asleep on the way home,
when her nightlight ceased to make her feel safe,
when a lover’s unlawful kisses replaced her family’s amity,
when a lover’s lethal passion parted her lethal loneliness,
when home became a person and not a place,
was when she buried herself
behind the house with the fragmented windows.