To Be Dead

What does it mean to be dead
and reborn as a new star
in the blackest of morning?

The raven has delivered the eulogy
at my feet as a dove
might carry peace.
His black eyes
the heads of shiny pins
that pierce my skin,
bleed me of everything
I knew to be true.

“You are nothing.
You were nothing.
You will be nothing again.”
he caws, loud,
so a not to be mistaken.

But how can I be nothing
when these tears flow warm,
salty into an ocean of grief,
year after year pleading for release
from my suffering?

My father has fallen—
sacrificing himself from a high place
in order that I should not suffer.

My mother prays to her Jesus
in order that I not suffer.

My children grasp at the hem of my worn
and dirty garments begging
that I be forgiven for holding
too much light—
stolen from the moon and Earth’s sun
in order to feed those more hungry
than I am.

But this black bird
has come with his beady eyes,
clutching mine and has cut the tethers
to yet another life of sorrow.
His blade is sharp and swift
and I swirl into the great universe
of empty and cold
where music and the Fates
are not allowed to dance.
The singing of a happy heart
is only a memory,
and for this lack of kindness
I cannot be thankful.

To what new treasure
will I ever be queen again
when even the Angels of Death
fly away from me?
They all fear me now.
I have become this creature
who cannot be sewn into the fabric
of even the patches on the knees of a poor
and exhausted farmer in his dusty fields.

I am
less than
the worms
that will consume
my rotting flesh.

I am less than
any imagined number
and more dreaded than a criminal.

I am not to cross back
to the other side of this life
to be measured
among the living.

The lace of this christening gown
disintegrates in this thin air
and I am naked, cold, and crying
at this prophecy of the eternity
of nothingness.