the hallway is longer than I remember
but the walls still blink like old televisions
buzzing static prayers, I never meant to say
and maybe that’s the only truth I’ve ever told

I used to think
that graves were for the dead
but I saw you last week
sitting in the shade of one
talking to the stone like it owed you something

dust in your fingernails,
coffee spilled on your shirt
half-smile like a cracked jar
I asked if you were okay
and you looked right through me—
said nothing but “almost”

there are holes in the ground
that match the shape of our names
and the wind knows all of them
it whispers backwards in the morning
pulling memories from my throat
like strings of wet wool

I buried my first version of myself
beneath a playground slide
age seven, maybe eight
he didn’t cry, just sank
quietly, like a stone in jelly

and then the others followed—
the one who thought love was a sharp light
the one who learned to lie like breathing
the one who stopped writing poems

sometimes I wonder
how many funerals I’ve missed
how many of me
are just waiting
for someone to say goodbye

have you found your grave?
or are you still
digging with your bare hands
pretending the mud is gold
pretending the silence is sleep

maybe graves aren’t endings
maybe they’re just
rooms we forgot we built
with all the doors locked from the inside
and no windows,
just mirrors
fogged by time and sweat

maybe we aren’t supposed to find them
just feel them
under our skin
pressing like questions
no one’s brave enough to ask

I scream where no one ever stands,
With fractured voice and pleading hands.
I shout to skies, to winds, to dust
To bones like mine and hearts unjust.
No ear will bend, no soul draws near,
Yet still I scream through every year.

I am the grave, the end you flee,
The truth beneath your trembling knee.
You pass with flowers, soft and kind,
But none of you look deep to find
The words I hold beneath the clay,
Of life you waste, the price you pay.

I hold myself, I breathe in slow,
My scream turns quiet, soft and low.
Not anger now—just aching care,
A voice that only wants to spare
You from the race that kills your soul,
And leads you to this silent hole.

You fight for love, for dreams, for names,
You guard your world from loss and flames.
But when your breath begins to fall,
None of it will heed your call.
No gold, no touch, no lover's face
Will follow you to this still place.

I too had dreams, I too had pride,
I laughed, I bled, I broke inside.
I swore I'd never die alone
But here I lie, just dust and bone.
The ones I saved, the ones I knew,
Have long moved on, as you will too.

I tried to shout before the end,
I tried to tell you, tried to mend
The path you walk with blinded eyes,
But joy and fear both sell you lies.
You hear me not—you never do.
You think this end won't come for you.

I watch you cry, then chase the same,
You wipe your tears and play the game.
You mourn the dead, then forge ahead,
Ignoring all we ever said.
You want to live—but not to see
The weightless truth inside of me.

So I screamed again, until I cracked,
My voice like stone, my sorrow stacked.
I broke myself to make you hear
But silence grew with every year.
And then I knew—this world won't change.
To them, the grave is dark and strange.

I, too, once danced and looked away,
While older graves would plead and say:
“Don’t chase the wind, don’t chase the fire,
All ends in dust, your false desire”
But I just smiled, then turned aside
And laughed, and loved, and cursed, and died.

So now I rest. My screaming ends.
No more to beg. No more to bend.
Perhaps this world will only see
When all return to dust like me.
But should you stop, and hear one day
Know it was me… who tried to say.

I was walking in the cemetery,
a place where death sits quietly among grass, bush and trees,
where grief is softened by green,
where the living come to forget and remember.

Sunlight filtered through the leaves.
Birdsong floated, indifferent and kind.
Graves stood in silence
some proud, built with stone too heavy for the dead,
others modest, marked by trees,
their roots winding down
into stories no one tells anymore.

Most had flowers.
Bouquets like offerings,
some fresh, some already fading.
Life pretending it can outlast death.

Then I saw it
a tulip, maroon,
its head bowed, its stem bent
not plucked,
but broken while still alive.

It hadn’t been laid there in tribute.
It was growing.
Rooted.
Alive.
And dying.

It leaned on the edge of a grave
like a mourner
who had run out of words.

Its siblings stood tall beside it,
still laughing in color,
still reaching for the sky,
unaware of their fallen one
or perhaps resigned to the order of things.

There was something tragic in its solitude.
A flower that had come to give beauty
and now was dying
on dust already claimed by death.

The irony was sharp
even the beautiful who serve the dead
must die too.

And no one brings flowers
for the flower that dies.

I stood still.
The tulip did not move.
A breeze passed, but it did not rise.
Some deaths happen quietly,
with no audience,
no cry,
just a slow fading
into the soil.

And I wondered
Is this what we are?
Not stone,
not names,
but small, nameless offerings
meant to bloom once,
to bow quietly,
and to vanish
without sound
while the world keeps walking.

Everything ends,
Debt collected by the light that gave it life.
Not everyone lives past the grave,
Often forgotten, memory slipping away.
I know for certain I will fade,
For that is how it must be.
Do away with my name and virtue,
Let only the raw words stay.
Yet still, when I do die,
I want a cannonade on evil,
And stars falling from the sky.

Not yet plant or earth but soon.
Not yet runes or sin immune

In this room, and as my tomb,
My voice, only speaks as blooms:

Maybe then the creatures and eaters
Can make a home out of this unbeliever

For maybe I perceived or perhaps I was the deceiver
But I hope that in death,
I could be their redeemer
So when the weavers weave their homes
All along my bones,
My tryst with the reaper
Are where the feasts were.

This bone-tired body is a battlefield
where I keep returning
to bury the same soldier,
over and over.

His face shifts like seasons—
familiar and foreign,
the line between my lines,
fading into fable,
floating into folklore.

He’s died here a hundred times,
and I survived every one.
But I keep coming back,
thinking I might unearth
something softer.

My hands tremble from holding too much—
soliloquies, symptoms, scapegoats,
saltshakers, semicolons, starry-eyed sighs.
My knees buckle under the weight
of a history I can’t rewrite.

No matter how many poems erupt
from my shell-shock,
how many mornings I crawl from trenches,
listening to the sound of birdsong—
I always return, ***** in hand.

He stares up from the dirt,
his mouth unmoving but full of accusations.
"You never let me go,"
he whispers without sound,
"and I’ll keep rising until you do.
Don’t you get it?
You buried yourself here too."

How many deaths does it take
to make a ghost let go?
I’m running out of shovels,
but never out of wishes.

Some wounds are wars,
and some wars never surrender.
If I stop digging, will the war finally end—
or will it bloom
in the silence I leave behind?

Emily, Emily, called back,
But not set free,
By those who worship
and study thee!

Summers see the young ones
Gather on your lonely grave.
Kissing with immortal tongues,
To desire they are slaves;

But you forgive them blithely,
tell them to proceed,
In your name and memory,
The one thing you knew not was greed.

-Sharon Talbot