Morbid

I sleep like a corpse, arms crossed or hands folded in supplication.  Or, like the living dead, I moan and shift, seeking escape from these confines, dreaming of a world I will never see again, eyes forced closed.  When I do dream, it is of him.  He, who drags my bleeding entrails through the city, tangled in the gears of his ten-speed bike.  Miles upon miles of carrion call to the rats in the gutters, "take him, I'm done."

I spent the weekend in bed, feverish and dizzy, unable to open my eyes for a searing pain in my right frontal lobe.  There are no restful days when even the pillow betrays.  The betrayals of the body I'm growing accustomed to.  The betrayals of the heart, I never will.  On Monday I had to work.  Every turn or bend transformed me into a drunken ballerina, whirling precipitously close to the edge of full collapse.  Somehow, I made it through.  Miracles can still happen for the decayed.

As tears begin to rust these shackles of love I can feel them loosen occasionally, only to be countered by the bloating of rigor mortis, which pours my flesh over them the way foam overflows a tube.  If I am foam, it explains it all.  Soon, there may be no more shackles, only the shackle part of me.  Like rotting teeth or fingernails, another thing to maintain in poverty and solitude.  

I am a social and optimistic, highly morbid, person.  He wanted me waiting in the kitchen, but when my heart was on a platter he pushed it away.  Then, it was still fresh, or so I thought.  Perhaps prepared with too much sauce, he always claimed to like simplicity, but only from me.  I am not simple.  I am trapped in a world I no longer belong in, forced to feed on the brains of others who've made it through, or who haven't.

Grandma is one who has.  She says, "It's your movie."  Mine is a genre pic.  It's a tragic love story of a zombie's unrequited love for a stone.  Grandma says, "you decide."  So I did, and he didn't have a splash-guard to stop the fluid of my bleeding heart from spitting against my face as he spun away into the distance, never to return.  Grandma says, "I love you," to everyone, and means it.  He gives his love to a t-shirt, or a picture of auto-fellatio, or a stuffed animal, or to anyone at all who shows an ounce of superficial interest.  Really, he'll give his love to anyone but me.

A free-thinker, and a talent who has seen more days than I may ever, Grandma says all the right things.  I simply do all the wrong things.  That must be it.  For the most part, I have acted with integrity, wherever possible.  If anything, I spoiled him.  He was spoiled already, to a great extent, I now realize.  That last piece of fruit in the bottom of the bowl, browned and useless for anything but compost.  Except, I am the compost, a lily-gilder turned daisy-pusher.

Mephistopheles, where?  Only within.  Within us all.  Yet the angels abound, and she is one.  Powerful radiance and magical zest propel a strong mind and a lithe body towards ever greater triumphs.  Majestic faith and trust, not only in self, but in the future, inspire everyone she touches.  She always has a kind word, she always has an open heart, she is one of the good ones.