you are not in wonderland ➵ poems

no burials, no mourners

When I was fourteen, I buried a body. He wasn't dead - not really - but he was to me. Died with a knife in his front that I took from my back where he'd carved a hole in my life, his grave sits in the back of my head.

Here is what she told me:
No burials, no mourners.
Destroying him has only destroyed yourself.
Forgive him - not for him, for you.

I worked hard to kill him; I wasn't losing myself. I thought I should bury myself too. I was so broken, I may as well have been a ghost. I'd place my grave far from his -

I couldn't.

When I was seventeen, I buried another body. It was the body of my self-hatred, this mangled beast from inside my head, casted away at sea and drowned. I still hadn't forgiven him, but it was still for me: I loved myself enough to hate him, and that was how it should have been.