Sinking Above Ground

Poem
Standing at your grave
surrounded by greying grass
and spindly trees that reach for youth
like the gnarled hands of a wise one,
and wilting stones of those passed long before you
of the old, the innocent,
the breeze chills my bones
with my own breath of loneliness.
I no longer want you here,
as that is simply impossible.
I know where your body is,
and it is on the wrong side of the grass,
and it is not you.
It is not you.
And I no longer want me here.
You are somewhere in an unreachable distance,
enmeshed with the fibers of that strange dimension
that I will never grasp the real essence of
in my harrowed human mind,
if there is real essence to be grasped.
Standing at “your” grave,
I want the sympathy, the approval
of all those who passed before you
of all those wandering, strange things who,
with some invisible magnet of essence,
attract loved ones to their memories
and watch them suffer.
They remain aloof in their concealed world,
watching the pain fill their lovers’ eyes so,
that they cannot look anywhere but those rotting, sinking stones,
thinking of those rotting, sinking corpses below.
I want their sympathy for and approval of the pain,
the sorrow,
sinking sorrow,
weighing my heart so heavy
that I want to sink through the grass
through the mud
through the cracks in your body’s casket
and shrivel away from reality
with your bones.
I think I might finally belong more in such a case,
my surroundings finally matching
the grave interior
of my chilled,
wanting heart.
more by A. M. Laine
photograph from unsplash





