when death casts its long shadow / when you kneel to it in a grave / head bowed, fingertips aching for something that lies beyond the dirt / is this too a kind of prayer?

a malediction spoken between the fragile stems of chrysanthemums / wing-clipped moths sedentary against the empty coffin / a rotting in progress / a funeral prepared, a body unburied, a grief that could swallow the world.

call it armageddon / call it a girl in agony / call it the act of dying slowly.

make it an act of rebellion / make the heavens fall / in a sheet of rain as sharp as silver spears / so that even the divine know your name / and the earth shakes at your passing.

the result: a redistribution of matter gone wrong / more of you left in the space where your molecules once were / a ghost that can be touched / a ghost that doesn’t know it has died / a girl turned tragedy turned monster turned memory.