Frieda's Grave

Fog was in my mind and mist in my eyes. And voices!
Voices that whispered and screamed into the beating heart of my ears.
My earthly body and mortal spirit - now a living, breathing corpse.

Fog was in my mind and mist in my eyes as I peered down at the laceration scars
running lengthwise up my forearms, standing at the rusted, wrought iron gate of
the castle graveyard - the resting place of my friend, Frieda.

My mind for certain was in a fog - a thick, white veil that concealed reality
from what little normality I had at the time. The soulful voice of mine, muted
to the hallucinatory ones - the whispers that you, the reader, cannot hear!

For within this narrative, you are about to discover destruction
followed by creation. As the old, wilted Sheila now blossoms in rebirth -
from an end to a beginning.                              

These immortal eyes were once pale blue - now golden yellow
and bright beneath the moonlight. There was no respite in my past life,
madness tore me to pieces every day. And every day my soul bled out.  

As I wandered through the smoldering rubble of my life, I wanted to die -
and be reborn. And through this narrative, the reader's eyes
shall dance with my words across the many pages ahead.

And as you read further, you will sense the whirling of clouds overhead,
pulsating with flashes of lightning. What will follow, as you will taste
in the downpour, is a purge of your understandings of what is real.

What is real and true did not become known to me until after my imprisonment
in the looming tower of my family’s castle
and had entered the Gothic Forest.

When the sun had burned away the fog,
and boiled the mist from my eyes, I saw clearly.
I knelt before Frieda's grave, and I intended to join her.

I forgave her when she started whispering to me again.
Voices! Raspy voices of the dead pricking my ears,
driving me mad. The only thing I could do was listen!

And be content with my torturer!
"Self-mutilations are so beautiful in the graveyard,"
Frieda would whisper to me.

Frieda's headstone was draped in moss, and thick branching vines.
There was beauty, no depression there. However, her distant voice
from beneath the clay could tell me to commit suicide.

"Kill yourself! Join me here beneath the earth, Klara."
And there is no doubt that it was her breathy voice
drifting into my ears.

Frieda whispers in death and I would visit her grave
to bring respiting moments of purgatories within.
By that time in my life, I often thought of my own coming sunset.

The glint of the knife in the dusking light as I unsheathed it
was like a flash of lightning in the corner of my eye.
It was there, where I was happy to join my friend in the grave.

But at that moment before I cut, with a firm grip on the handle,
I sensed a heaviness in my heart. My breathing had slowed
and became shallow. Happiness was suddenly tainted by fear.

After wandering through the smoldering rubble of my life,
I wanted to die. And through this narrative, the reader
will widen their eyelids thus unsheathing their perceptive eyes.

As my hand tremored before the first cut, I gazed
at Frieda's headstone one last time as a mortal,
and even my voice tremored as I stuttered,

"the knife dances upon my skin with only I as its partner."
I stopped, for the was a sudden, violent shiver that tore through me
quicker than it had built up. Mortality clearly bled out.

"With only I as its partner..." I continued with a tremoring voice,
"and of course, with a firm grip – I lead on...
with crimson footprints following us."

As I felt the cold, metallic tip of the knife puncturing my flesh,
I squealed and whined as I carried the tip down my forearm.
The first sight of running blood gave me hope, I remember.

So, to ease my thudding heart and go quietly into the night,
I again cut down my forearm. White-hot pain
that I had never felt before, brought me to the realization

that this is what death feels like. So, I continued to recite
my suicide poem, "now our dance has ended -
down the forearm and to the wrist, tears of joy run thick and red!"

Before I died, my eyes came to rest on my friend's headstone
till they glazed over. I leaned back against the trunk of a yew tree
and my eyelids snipped out the orange evening light.

I felt the warmth of the descending sun fade from my face.
I could imagine the illumination of my eyes dimmed
in my long-awaited sunset, as it bled into the blue twilight of my life.

I awoke in rebirth at the witching hour. I lifted an eyelid and noticed
the earth washed in the milky hues of the full moon,
which itself shined white-hot. And there was mist, a vagueness.

"One hug," I muttered, "I just wish I could've given' ya one last hug."
Without parting my teary eyelids, I crawled over Frieda=s grave,
wrapped my bloody arms around her headstone and pressed my lips into the moss.

"Come back." Tears trickled into the moss. "Come back."
Then a breathy voice crept into my ear, "Klara." I hoisted a damp eyelid
and the chilly night gave a fresh chill to my bare, teary eye.

"Klara?" I heard again as both my eyelids unlocked from death.
I remember imagining that I would see an imposing gate to Hell,
in the backdrop of a blood-red sky while my guide would, at some point,

motion me to gaze at the heavens behind me -
and I would lay earthly eyes on that distant Paradiso.
One last look at what was the heaven of my life.