Sleeping Kate -Extended Version-
-I love the simplicity of the old one. But this extended version is special, I think...-
Caskets unmade
Naked bodies sprawled in waste
Yellow, white and pale brown skins all in one
Emaciated fear lingering in the pale eyes
Spines tingle at the crunch of excessive skeletons
Grimy boots unmercifully stomp
Nostrils used to the stench
Ready or not, embracing the ash
Afraid to express
Afraid to breathe
Unable to stop the grief
Colder eyes than the dead themselves look on
They are bored, it seems
Untainted by the sound of groans
Unmoved by the crack of weak spines
Spineless themselves, these guards even smile
Frozen, blue eyes iced with a sneer
Black, demonic pupils steadied overtime
The corpses reflected in their transparent gloss
Teeth grind
A young boy picks up a dried hip bone
Small, calloused fingers clutch the last of his father
The eternal frowned mouth is caked with drool, tears and muck
Hair whitened as if ghosts have stolen his youth
This bone is jagged and worn
Once used by force as a bowl for his insect-infested meal
Shakily given to Her—the last She would eat
Before the officials watched Her slowly starve
Today the bone will be used as a shovel—his final labor
Last effort for closure
The boy knows they are all looking
Both the enemy and the oppressed unified
All experiencing, all watching
He simply knows that overtime,
Tears of hope will decompose the hardest of hearts
And the boy drives his shovel into the hard ground
Pounding away at the chilled, blood-stained soil
Drowning out the groans with his own cries
Flooding the dryness with his sorrows
Breaking up the surface to bury Sleeping Kate
Sleeping Kate showed the officers
The skeleton she built out of bone fragments
Sleeping Kate told them we were all the same inside
With this truth, she died
With their guilt, they continued life
They tried. . .
The officers tried to bury Sleeping Kate
But Sleeping Kate is always alive,
Building skeletons in their minds. . .
Copyright © Laura Breidenthal | Year Posted 2014
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