Poem: #Maggots

CW: gore, body horror, death imagery

 

Went through a lot of drafts, and this is also a rare first posting. Dated about 14th March, 2020.

 

#Maggots:

 

Social media is an overpriced mortician putting

make-up on the dead, or so they tell me.

It certainly felt that way building a relationship

out of the contour you showed to the world while

pretending I didn't exist seven days of every eight -

relationship in this sense just meaning, of course,

that you told me my chest was the chest your

heart beat inside, and we had really great sex a

couple half-dozen times; and just in this sense

meaning, Don't worry, I never wanted to call

myself your girlfriend, in the same breath as

your promise that it didn't have to be a lesser

thing, just because; but, as always, I was defined

by the just.

 

If I saw you, I think I'd say, I hope you're doing

okay, by which I'd mean, I hope it kind of sucks

right now; it in this sense meaning... I don't know.

It. You seem happy on social media, one day

in every eight, which I assume means you haven't

changed at all; the mortician knows its job too

well, knows how to gut me like a supermodel's

ugly when every eighth day rolls around. I could

bury you six feet under and never think about

you again - by which I mean, block you, and

never think about you again - but I promised to

keep things civil between us, and my soul's

cemetery is not well-versed in manners. I'd

pretend I'd never known you if I saw you on the

street, and I'd do it so well you'd wonder how

you ever touched me without getting freezer-burn -

by which I mean, I'd have a panic attack after,

but better that than letting you see the grisly

mess of my corpse's smile, which is the primary

alternative. Historically, I don't look good with

maggots oozing between my teeth - but, then,

some might say it's hypocritical of me to

criticise the way you let social media lie about

your scars while I play mortician for my own.

And by all this, I mean, I'd never sink so low

as to ask you why you still check my snapchat

story every day, whether it means as little to you

as any stranger's, or if you check it like a double-

rum and lemonade on a Thursday afternoon -

by which I mean, my carefully manufactured

smile to get you through the day, while the

sting serves as reminder of the last hangover

I gave you.

 

I want to be the ground in which flowers

grow. I want strangers to feel the sun on their

face when I smile. People have told me I was

a ray of light when I was in love with you; it's

this concept of heartbreak which breaks my heart,

the truth that years of working on myself can't

hold a candle to the sunlight happiness of three

weeks of just with someone else. I endeavour

to love myself on purpose, to tend to my heart

like a bonsai - pruning branches to make the

trunk stronger, by which I mean, loving no-

one until I can love everyone, by way of loving

myself. The concept of a forest could not

exist until two things evolved: first, that plants

should hold themselves up by a husk of their

own dead cells, by which I mean bark,

enabling anything taller than a fern to ever

grow; and second, that something could turn

death into feast, by which I mean microbes

turning wood into soil. See, every time I see

your name every one day in eight, I do not feel

like wildflowers could grow from my chest.

But I think maybe I am not to blame for the

maggots making feast of my flesh. I am ugly

when I hurt, but the purpose with which I aim

to love myself is to put away the mortician's

make-up, to lay to rest the foundation of civility

which turns my grief into a #glowup six months

from now. One day, I will wear my old hurts as

my spine, but I must prune the branches of my

unrequited devotion first. One day, a wildflower

meadow will burst from my chest, but I must let

the maggots make ruin of me before then. You

did not mean to hurt me, by which I mean you

hurt me, by which I mean I will wear you as

bark, by which I mean I have lost count of the

excuses I have made for you - by which I

mean, ignore me; this is merely the blowflies

dancing on my tongue.