by Catherine, Grade 11
The dawn is snarling with its rolling clouds
of burgundy, clawing open wounds like smoke
that left a dying mister’s pallor mouth.
Some places are confusing, like the room –
a kitchen, I believe – I killed him in.
My work is most admirable, I assume,
For not a maggot ever called it home,
and yet my birds have feasted on it to
the bone; left none but O, his silver tongue! –
It haunts me, dead or living, spitting lies
that foam and fester from the core of trees
I’ve planted, innocent to a passerby.
The only knowing eyes were that of walls
around, enclosing rage with silence, so
intrinsic as I watched his shoulders fall
To frame the dawn. I bought a shadow once,
for fifteen pounds, and I had found its use!
And granted, I will never see the sun,
But look, gods; look: his headstone, my pedestal.