Unknown Skeletons

No one knows.

No one knows.

No one knows.

I could spit acid on their faces,

Scream a litany of vulgar words in their ears,

Get on my knees and slit my belly to

Let my truths pour out

And they still would never know that I am a lie.

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It's a lie caught in my teeth with day-old whiskey

And week-old dandelion weeds.

The lie is carved into the sacred halls of my bones

Like some ancient, demonic runes

That send the scholars screaming,

Nightmares flashing behind opaque eyelids

Decorated in black and blue and red.

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This life is a construction and my blood

Is a piece of the grand charade.

I will never be who I say I am because

I am a shadow flitting through black fields

In the very dead of night.

I gather beneath road kill and the forgotten

Human corpses littering the freeways.

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I am the skeleton creeping out at midnight

To hold wilting petals between my bones

And sing aching melodies that promise

Morning will come.

It's not alright.

The plants are dying and I am the skeleton

Tending to their withering stalks.

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Nathalie Daux

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