play, pause, replay

there's a dead kid in our garden

There's a dead kid in the grass of our overgrown garden.

The bloom of blood on his white shirt, crimson splattered

on the grass, blue swelling on his numb limbs.

There's a skeleton of a "see you later" next to the bleeding wildflowers.

The blue of the sky fades away—to oblivion, heavier than my heart.

The bones draw the false art of death, 

with stains of blood and rotten blue.

There's a whiff of lilacs that has sprouted from

The bruise on the kid's pale cheek.

It wasn't about sad boys and decayed prose this time.

There's a long-gone melody in the afterglow.

I touch his limbs—they feel so raw.

The blooming blood makes me want to bury him

in the folds of my dead brain matter.

My nails claw his flesh as more blood trickles down.

Metaphors of girlhood ripple in the fading blue of his skin.

A light pink scar grows under my nail beds; the blood on his 

face smears me in a maroon haze.

I don't cry—I can't. There isn't

any pain sleeping beneath the wrinkles of my skin.

I've crushed the violet between my teeth for years; now

there's another bruise under his eyes.

The cinnamon flesh of tragedies bursts open

like the last red sky of the house of cards.

His scars burn on the edge of the blue sun.

Do you remember how pain smells like, kid?

The strawberry sweetness that makes you 

burn the places where the others drew your scars.

No bullet holes pierce your heart, 

No knives twist your dead flesh.

You almost die in the swell of summer torture.

Your heart's ripped in the daylight; you're made of glass shards.

You smack your head against the concrete; you can't feel it anymore.

Your purple bruises now draw dead sunsets and bleeding mouths.

Cry no more, kid. Lay down on the concrete

and taste the metal of your gnawing pain.

Stack your crooked heart pieces against the wall

and feel that gaping hole inside of you.

Now the mirage of golden summers is fading away—in the baby 

blue of the yawning waves. You don't die, you don't die, you don't die.

You remain laid—slit open—in the sunlight, stitched with dead rose bites.

– I wish I was the dead kid burning with the last stabs of decay

* * *

A/N: Hey lovely readers, I just wanted to pop in and say a massive thank you for all the wonderful comments on my poems. Your words are truly encouraging and mean the world to me.

If you've got a spare moment and are interested, I'd love for you to take a peek at my other two poems. But only if it interests you, absolutely no obligation!

Cheers for being amazing,

Sreeja.