you are a corpse, i tell her.
you may not be dead
in the clinical sense
but you hardly count as alive.
a living, breathing entity
rotting from the inside out.
she doesn't believe me.
you have been dead for a long time, i say.
your muscles have atrophied
from the excuses you made
for the actions you never took.
your lungs are shriveled and blackened, i say
poisoned by the hate you
couldn't stop breathing.
your tongue is swollen, i say
heavy with the words
you should have spoken.
she doesn't hear me.
i look into her eyes
and they are hollow,
like the bones wrapped in layers of decaying flesh
or the empty promises she couldn't keep.
she won't listen.
why won't she listen?
you are a corpse, i scream
and her hollow-like-bone
eyes meet mine,
a brown dark enough to be black.
"and you are the killer" she states
her expression unreasonably calm
while the refraction of light between us
bends and breaks and the air
shatters
into a million jagged prisms.
i stagger back
from this dead girl
who claims i have killed her
and i shake my head
over
and over
and over again,
even as realization settles
and the evidence of guilt
leaks through my eyes.
i attempt to wipe it away
with shaking hands
only to smear blood
across my tear-stained face.
she does not look away.
i break apart then
and so does she-
splitting clean in half,
flesh and blood and bone
unraveling as one
as we cry together,
my rotting reflection and i.
Japleen Joshi
Grade: 10 / Sec. IV
Aurora Academic Charter High School
Edmonton, AB
“Rigor mortis is the post-mortem stiffening of muscles and settling of blood, a phenomenon that puts into perspective both the debilitating impact of death and how it renders us all unrecognizable. My poem attempts to externalize the inner conflict of confronting a version of ourselves that we often neglect by framing it as a homicide of the self. Sometimes, it's hard to realize that we can be both the victim and the one responsible for our own decay. ”
Bio
Japleen Joshi is a Grade 10 student from Alberta. She loves writing poetry, reading books, and watching musicals in her free time, and is passionate about art, philosophy, and storytelling. Her work draws inspiration from both the stories she has read and the world around her.