By the Dead Purple Lady
Published in the May 2019 issue of The Write Launch Literary Magazine
poetry
You could no more take
the green from grass
or take the dark from night
than you could take
the purple from the
dead lady you made me touch
her unbothered hands
sincere in their end.
There is no such thing
as funerals
for children in a world in which
adults are consumed by the denial
of faeries in their tales
so full up on misconceptions about
the nature of death and
the nature of children.
All of your anguish in life
was wasted on you
because you never
learned to be wretched and
your sermons possessed you.
There was
no saving you.
No exorcism of you.
You just let strange and inappropriate
expectations masquerade as love
and you made me into what you
expected and needed
at the time. You contained multitudes
from your life of you
and no one knew if they were
witnessing a ruination
or a rumination
when you grabbed me
by the hand to kneel
by the dead purple lady
in the crate with the sincerely
finished hands
and then demanded
I repent.
And people
just let you.
There were
unnamed demons
flying everywhere.