martyr for a cause?
raise your head and we'll pretend to be holy.
a death, when it is for a cause, turns into a sacrifice. a murder is a martyrdom.
when my last breath kisses my mouth, ghosts across my lips, my body becomes an item.
i am no longer myself, but rather a corpse. my hands, once used to create and render asunder, will be just flesh. my tongue, once used to cry out and beg, will be one of the first things to rot. my eyes, ever watching and nervous, will be eaten, picked out of my skull like out of a bowl of grapes. decadent. a delight.
i will be buried curved inwards, wrists bent at the wrong angle, fingertips already chewed off. before i grace the coffin and the grave, would you be the first to take a bite out of me? the first to turn the holy mundane? leave your teeth in my limp neck, the first of my blood spilling.
when the snow comes i will be frozen solid, underneath the earth. when the frost melts, the thaw will run down my face in imitation of tears. they will run down the sides of my face where my ears used to be, and disappear into the hair that i have left. when the air warms and expands in my coffin, squeezing through the wooden planks, i will be begging, pleading and and crying out. even after death.
the body of a saint is kept preserved so we may witness their rot. our blessedness was just a masquerade, so i will decompose here in the dark. my bones are not holy, so i will be interred here forever.
if i had tried harder. if my pain was holy, i would still be with you now. if i was anything but what i am, i would be with you still. i'm sorry. my blood is not wine, my flesh not bread. if i tried harder, this would have been worth something, and here i would rise three days from now,
and
i
would
be
healed.
but i am nothing of the sort. so i choke on the soil and cry as it gets in my eyes. my death is just a death.