Bury Me Beneath The Flowers

I am gathering wildflowers for your grave.

They sprout from my palm,

Mismatched with the dark shadows

Fluttering, swarming, swallowing my heart.

The fog has finally settled on the field of flowers,

But I plucked them in the dead of night.

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"Bury me beneath the flowers."

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Was it brave to clip their stalks under moonlight

Or a cunning use of the dark?

Tell me, was it bravery that brought me here

Or sheer stupidity thinking I would see...

I brought you the flowers.

I stole the seeds of forget-me-nots,

Planted them when the dirt was fresh.

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"Cover me in songs that roar."

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There was this song we used to hear,

Do you remember the one?

The way the notes skated over the piano keys,

The way you skated over those keys, floating.

A ghost haunting the melody

Until the violin wept and the piano roared.

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"Let me sleep beneath the shade."

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I put you here, carried you bloody from your lost battle

In a war you had no business fighting alone.

It's the oak, brown with simple autumnal colours,

Sitting where we first saw that shooting star,

The warning of things to come.

Beautiful things to be lost, fizzled out in the black.

You'll sleep beneath the shade.

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"Bring me forget-me-nots..."

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I have them, they're tattooed in my skin.

Each puncture stung and I was back with each prick

Watching it fly through your beautiful body

And turn you into a patchwork of black and white and red.

I ruined a whole field of them with the bodies of your enemy,

Pick the seeds from the mouths of the fallen.

They grow with you, with me, from me.

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"So I never doubt I still reside in your soul."

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To reside in my soul you would have to be apart from it

And you are nothing less than the whole of me.

The hole in me.

The soil is cool beneath my hand,

Grass already tamped down for its long winter sleep.

But the sky is still alive with light and crisp cold.

You until the end, until the bitter, weeping end.

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"So I never doubt that day."

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The one in your back garden near the cluster of trees,

Nestled against your chest in the first of a finite number

Of stolen kisses and closed eyes.

Iron touched lips and tongues then with a smile,

Haunted by the last.

The bloody kiss on unmoving lips.

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"So I never doubt...my memory..."

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It was real.

As real as the bootprints sunk in the mud around our-

My front door.

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"The ghosts of a life we tried to live..."

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The stones stack one atop another in his mind,

Hugging the Chesnut door and weathered knocker.

Glass breaks through the wall,

Exposing the man pressed ear to chest against another,

A tall, imposing man with a glint in his eyes

And a subtle curve to lips unused to smiling.

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"And all the embraces..."

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Green flashes up, shifting into an aurora borealis

Dancing through the dark eyes.

Lips brush against lips and small nebulas collide,

Exploding through fingers gripping shoulders.

He falls back through the room, through the corridor,

Shuffling with hands fisted in fabric

Until the glass sees no more.

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"That stitch our souls together."

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Silence blows across the grave.

Blue-faced flowers bow.

A man falls to his knees, fists against his eyes.

Tears stream into the dirt.

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"Bury me beneath the forget-me-nots."

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His hands twine around his center as he grieves

Loud and ugly,

Screaming into the morning sun and autumn sky

Wishing of nothing more than to feel those lips again,

Hear the song and dance on his breath again.

Anguish screams from his throat,

Clawing lines of red with its sharp talons.

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"And forget me not."

.

Never.

Not so long as I live.

Not after I die.

I will keep the music in my heart,

The touch of your lips on mine forever.

And I will forget you never.

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Silver Serpent Books.

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