Five Days Dead

 

By: Hunter Christian

 

 

Facedown in a shallow grave I lay;

with nature's rot tugging on my body, my limbs, the fabric of my soul's construct,

wherein death fills the void that,

my murder vacated

 

A hole within a hole;

disparate, divergent, fragmented,

a patchwork quilt shorn at its seams;

where, threaded gruesomeness blanketed a cold charnel's finality

 

An imminent demise,

an aforethought reckoning,

The ghastlier reality of disturbed dreams;

dreamt within a tortured mind's disturbed beckoning

 

A wooded gravesite hurriedly shoddy;

the consequence of long held resentments,

My dismembered corpse lay exposed to  harsh woodland elements,

Disembodied limbs,

A decapitated head,

Poorly hidden by,

a hastened concealment, hurriedly stashed away in a dark, dank, putrid muddy hole

 

I am five days dead

 

No lonesome bride who's heart aches with dread,

No sorrow as her dimly lit shadow bows her pretty diminutive head,

She sits alone in silence,

reciting scripture in muted lyrical sermons beneath her breath instead,

all the while she's contemplating humanity's want for bloodshed, vengeance, and violence

 

I am five days dead

 

Alone she prays away the day onward into night,

in melancholic vigil amidst the flickering glow of solemnity's impermanence,

Her delicate limbs shiver, her pouty lips quiver, a symptom of the staid words she sacredly delivers,

Whispering a simple rhyme from a simpler time, bound to change from present tense to past tense

 

It's only tense appropriate for rhyming words for the dead,

From the mouth, as from the ear, the present tense must be purged and cleansed,

Washed away so that all that remains, are the past's wretched stains,

Stained verbiage of a lesser kind, born the farthermost behind,

The divide of what's decent and indecent,

what's kind and what is unkind,

Where dirty little secrets are sown, and the latter is reaped as characteristics bred,

Inherited by curiously nosey townsfolk who spew indecency instead,

About the living, the dying, as well as the dead,

Gossipy busybodies who feed the grapevine

When folks discover that not all is well, good, nor fine

Just simple folks with simpler heads

Dishing dirt on an average, everyday,  everyman who has been done wrong and who's –

Five days dead

Facedown rotting in his earthen deathbed

Five days dead

Just folksy filth and fodder for the townsfolk aforesaid

 

Just five days before

Erased from this putrid gore

Undrained pallor recoloring my skintone

Unsawed apart limbs, head, and bones

Whole again,

As raindrops pelted a rooftop made of worn asphalt shingles blanketed with sheets of tin,

Oh my, where to begin,

To speak of the step-by-step events that led to my death, to my last blood-gargling breath,

If only I had a premonition, an inkling, of the plan they hatched, what they had in store,

For me as I just lay coolly on my kitchen floor

Cooling off a hothead by the old rickety screen door

Five days before

A lovers spat about litter on the floor from her mangy cat

Led to stones thrown about this and that

From our lips the vitriolic venom poured and poured

Her hands choked up on my old aluminum bat

My head bashed in on the kitchen floor

Five days before

She called a supposedly distant and forgotten ex

As my blood coagulated and dried

The two perpetrators engaged in a tawdry fuck,

Save intimacy or simpler tales told of consensual sex,

The sickened gratuity immersed within latent harlotry,

Acted out in my wedding bed while I slowly died

Five days before

The aftermath of jealous rage

Jealously for an ex-convict and a promiscuous whore

I cannot unturn this life’s page

From five days before

She said proudly that she settled the score

Five days before

 

Five days gone

Dane she ask that may bygones be bygones

Someday henceforth a hiker sees a bone by a mossy stone

No amicable resolution is concluded foregone

Five days gone

A hacksaw and a pact

Disposal difficult with my body intact

Hacked into pieces large and small

Into a Hefty garbage bag the two neatly stacked

He dug the hole while she patronized the mall

Five days gone

The smell of death rose up to meet the dawn

Suspicious cops interrogate and snoop

Around the cul-de-sac and the nearby loop

Neighbors drop dime without remorse

They knew our marriage may take this course

They surmised it'd be her instead, of course

Five days gone

 

Five days turned into five long, long years

Forgotten now

Not a single soul alive sheds a tear

Lost from history somehow

My fate is the fate I always feared

The irony strikes once more

For I was the one who killed that whore

Then I lived until a ripe old age of eight-four

 

At five days dead

My heart filled with dread

For judgment day before an angry jury

Would be my fate facing her family's fury

Five days dead

I confessed to offing her instead

I bashed in her pretty little head

I hacked her up as soon as she were dead

I hid her corpse under our second hand wedding bed

 

Under extreme duress

I came clean, I owned up, I fessed up

Damn it, I confess!

Five days dead

The jury passed its verdict to my judge

Even in death scorned folks carry a grudge

Up from my screwed-up youth those folks drudged

A moment in time

So long ago I had suppressed the crime

Five days dead

The judge and jury found me guilty as sin

The following day my punishment did begin

Again, and again, and again

Five days dead

 

At six days dead I began my sentence

Everyday henceforth ticks off a checklist of repentance

For one hundred years

And for one hundred days

I must relive her fears

I must die as she died for me to repay

I must cry as she cried

I must beg, and plead, get viciously beaten, and bleed as she bled

I must die as she died

 

Through her eyes I will beat myself until I'm dead

Day after day

For one hundred years and one hundred days

For the killing I must pay and repay

This is my just comeuppance I do agree

And if I could travel back to age twenty-three

I'd keep her safe from the younger me

I'd ask for forgiveness

I would calm my youthful impulsiveness

I would face my demons within

For your demons will catch-up with you

You will answer for your sins

No matter how many or how few

Hasten to begin

A path away from sin

For you will relive your sins again

From the viewpoint of those you've hurt

Death will not be the end my friend

For when your corpse lay in the dirt

A hundred fold hence you will make amends

Again, and again, and again…