Resurrection

   
Two sets of footprints    
lead from the door    
to the bedroom.    
   
Graveyard dirt and heartblood    
mixed into a sludge    
and slurred across    
my pristine    
oak floors.    
   
I was chopping onions    
because it’s something I do now    
And froze at the sound    
of your knuckles on my door.    
Palsied hands moved underwater    
as existentialism became bullshit    
   
because zombies and ghosts  
and all the things that scream  
 motherfucker in the night    
were real.    
   
You were real.    
   
My hand digs in my scalp,    
face a rictus,    
because I buried you.    
I threw myself on your coffin,    
I screamed to god that it wasn’t fair,    
I begged the universe to take me    
because life on your headstone    
wasn’t life at all.    
   
I buried you.    
   
Clods of dirt marred my    
rattan door mat, and    
a handprint I could have    
traced from memory    
stained my door frame.    
   
I stabbed first,    
before I could so much as think,    
shoving my onion knife in your chest    
with a feral scream,    
but the light in your eyes didn’t fade.    
   
I’d forgotten.    
You can’t kill the dead like that.    
   
So I put it through my own heart,    
too fast for you to stop it,    
and fell to my knees like a puling Juliette.    
   
I looked up,    
as always,    
from your feet;    
you smeared heartblood,    
like red lipstick    
across my cheek    
from where it bubbled    
on my mouth    
   
And helped me up.    
   
I staggered away, leaving the door open.    
   
I staggered away,    
clutching furniture    
like an old woman    
as I made my way to a    
shroud of sheets    
beckoning me onward.    
   
My bare feet dragged    
through the maroon river    
cascading down my    
slim body    
   
And there are two    
sets of footprints    
leading    
from the doorway    
to the bedroom.