Record of Inquest

Acquainted

Since my youth

I’ve known your embrace.

Felt your cold, hair raising trail 

Unexpected, creeping silently,

Like a thief. 

Taking the most valuable things. 

I had not yet known you by name 

When my first goldfish you claimed.

Nor had I heard your cruel laughter carrying 

On my grandma’s husband's shriek

When he felt the dark of you closing in. 

But familiar we became,

That day my aunt believed

She was coming “right back” 

She never returned.

And when I heard the news 

That you came vengefully,

For someone who once,

Narrowly escaped you.

I learned that the living was not all

You reaped in your wake,

When I witnessed your 

Savagery stripping a strapping man 

To the fabric of his existence.

I felt nothing.

I had not yet known you,

I was unfamiliar with your name,

But now, 

We are well acquainted. 

Primary

Like red, yellow and blue,

Primary was the school.

Formally educating me on life.

Through crude jokes and whispers

Of things

No child should entertain,

In the birds and the bees,

I became certified.

With a quarrel every week 

And gossip dripping 

From lips like honey,

My lessons in friendship were attained. 

And oh, what politics I did learn 

Catching the office gapeseed.

Like the mixing of white and black,

Primary was the school.

Teaching me the shades of life too

Like when my world turned 

From color 

To grayscale 

After learning of my teachers passing 

In the fourth grade. 

Or as sadness suffocated me

Sitting in a pew,

Of a fellow prefect's mother's funeral.

In the pain of hopeful longing for a friend 

My age

Who would never return to school again. 

Primary was the school.

Whose halls I left enlightened, 

Striving for excellence and armed 

With a newfound truth,

Life has no respect for one's end. 

B.R.A.T

Boisterous was the laugh 

Gay and melodious

That escaped my lips.

You said

Girls are to be seen

And not heard

Rough was the way that I spoke,

And played

With the boys I knew.

Only to be met with

“Thats not ladylike” 

And

Girls should play with other girls

Animated and adventurous

Dreaming up a million dreams

Believing I could be a million things.

You listened.

And laughed. 

Laced with cruel mockery.

Talkative I was

Speaking about my day,

Expressing thoughts

Feelings too.

But I was too much

Said too much

Felt

Too much. 

Then the song in my laughter faded

Tainted with deep sadness.

My skin thinned, 

Suddenly boys were bad

And 

Hurt by the girls you insisted I play with

Relationships became shrubs

Planted in sand,

Expected

To be swept away by any waves.

Now doubt and pessimism 

Reign in this bruised heart. 

Now you long for me to express something,

Anything

But the words do not come. 

The feelings once easy to place language to

Stuffed to the furthest corner of my mind

Because even for me, 

They have become 

“Too much.”

You wonder where your little firecracker went

She died.

Snuffed out by your words,

Strangled breathless by your own hands. 

She died. 

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF

Each word fragile 

Like broken glass

Wielded to wound me.

And though never a violent woman

Every syllable,

Frail and bittersweet 

Was a gut punch

Leaving these lungs

Heaving. 

Take care of yourself, 

That is what you said

But shattered,

Ravaged by the cancer 

Of my grief 

How could I take care of the mess of me you left?

How could I do, 

What only you did best?

Submitting to Death

There is a weightiness

Tied to the mundane

Like a block of cement fastened 

To these feet.

Drowning me

In this sea of life. 

A heaviness weighing down everything 

Like gravity,

Tethering us to this plane

Haunting every waking minute.

This constant rush,

This striving to be enough

An exhausting game we play.

But there is a finality 

We cannot escape 

Like the certainty of leaves

Shriveling and falling

After bearing fruit.

Unsuspecting to some,

A slumber from which

You never wake.

And if peace is what you offer,

An end to this maddening cycle

Forced upon me, 

I will fall 

Into the depth of your unknown.

You...have permission to take me. 

The Funeral 

It’s dark in here.

My voice echoes 

In the chambers of my mind.

I hear muffled singing

As though from another room

This music is dismal.

Familiar voices carry

With weary undertones

I hear my name whispered

Like a desperate prayer,

Was that a snivel?

Wafting to where I lay

Lingers a familiar scent,

Yellow carnations

My favorites. 

Pouring onto me

A bright white light

A flesh piercing cold

I know what this is now

The sights, smells, sounds.

A final sendoff

Only I, cannot enjoy

As I lay,

Disjointed

From these mortal bones.