He lay on the bed and watched the clouds out the window.
With closed eyes he felt the storm.
Vibrating the hairs on his skin like ghosts passing through.
He buried himself of course, there on his bed.
Sinking into the sheets like a body into a grave.
He was dead from the waist down.
Waiting for the little chalky helpers to plunge the skull.
But the water he felt was from the rain, which tapped at his brain.
Droplets of doubt and remorse.
Tidal fantasies of being swept away.
Yet forever he would lay, in that state of not doing.
Making love to paralysis with the sweet relief of excuse.
He died three days ago, yet still he talked.
Arguing with god, cursing the devil.
Gnawing at the skin of self in a heated display of shame.
He’d known death before of course.
It rattled and moaned around his house since that day.
That awful Tuesday when they left.
He had grown new skin. He had tried to begin again.
But death remained a friend, like a wad of gum stuck in his soul.
He blamed it, he shamed it. He cursed and versed in vain to it.
It was there now, the sad spectator to an actual demise.
Apathetically sweeping up the dust, like one would make a bed.
That bed which heaved with the weight of his guilt.
Throwing out the dreams that played on the ceiling.
While the nightmares wormed underneath.
That bed which was his last embrace now.
Peppered in petals that masked the thorns.
Intimately feeling its way underneath his skin.
And swallowing him forever, in the dandelions of demise.
