sepulcher

too long have i been silenced;
the weight in my caged chest held hostage.
my body, a prison of secrets
that my heart is too weak to hold.

palpitations hammer out trenches,
fashioning hollow spaces just to fill them with pain.
i bless these efforts, building walls of memories
as i scratch my own story in towers of heaped filth.

heaviness steeps in the rivers
and spills out.
walls erode and moats brim with decay
as my heart swells, threatening to burst.

polluted streams feed my limbs
until everything is dirty, everything is black
and blue and purple and green.
but nothing is red. nothing is chaste. nothing is cleansed.

i am left alone, awoken and bruised
by the abuse as i claw through the grime, searching for my key.
all the while, the lock is jammed. i am left with no hammer;
no key. a sleepless carrion, plagued with dreams.