Graveyard Chant

The trials of nerve that boys once dared,
Their braces gleaming like a gladiator’s helm,
A rope that sways ’twixt flight and snare,
A tide that rises before you flee its berth.

The doubt of whether flight is right,
Or held by beauty’s spell to stay —
The graveyards hold more smiles at night
Than all the living dare betray.

Eternal palsy faces in the light,
Among the flowers, sealed in memory’s keep,
Between the breakwaters of marble’s might,
Where stone and flesh together cease to weep.

Among them lies one who no longer scares,
but left behind bruises made with a belt,
hands that touched without consent,
now crossed upon the chest.

The shouts of peers drift close behind,
And gravel cracks beneath their tread.
I am a path of light and stars
Across the darkness of the dead,

What they once were, I am tonight,
My eyes fall shut at midnight,
And I dance alone among the ghosts,
Still flesh, still warm, almost.