graveyard

window half cracked—
a weekend I spend attempting
to glue frozen branches
to eyelids

with tongue
I coerce buds to
believe I am the sun

you pull a scab off my knee
place it next to the icing on a plate of pastries…

That night is realistically Bernhard saying

it’s better to die having made the journey we’ve been longing for than to be stifled by our longing
it’s better to die having made the journey we’ve been longing for than to be stifled by our longing

quiet word-ghosts kiss my skin
you put your hand on their shoulders before
you enter me in the cemetery

…the dead cheer us to completion
the dead look with disdain
upon my abandoned sock

their dirt-bound souls
wiggle glass fingers
arranging shards

into the old skeleton
of lights-off museum

where I was
slumped on brown
carpet, surrounded by

this nested teeth of lost flesh.

I’m running late; my car drives away without me
my mouth, covered in
toothpaste, my body
full of holes

I wait
poke neck out
half cracked window—
slam it down
again & again

the rhythm of blood
returning to trees

MaraJean Hagen-Spath is editor and poetry curator for Motif Magazine out of Providence, Rhode Island. She has a bachelor's degree in Philosophy and English from the University of Rhode Island. She serves as a reader for the literary journal Ocean State Review, and her poetry has been published in Ether(Bound) and SolidaRIty Magazine