Live Burial

by A. Williamson

Imagine my loneliness, my disembodied
thought, the howling it took to find my
throat, understand I had been trapped

with nothing but a dress split up the back
and useless beads. Would I think they’d
bound my wrists? How long would it take

to untangle my fingers, folded over each
other so demurely. “She was middle-aged
and devout. She will rest in His loving arms,”

they said as I thrashed the pine lid of my coffin.
I have broken my hands, torn my dress, clawed
my skin, and drunk my own blood, but when

men walk past, I hear them ask which girl
still cries so for her lover, wandering the mists
of her despair. When you see them, please,

​tell them, please make them understand how I
mourned my own loss, how I surrendered
my body only slowly, and myself, not at all.

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A. Williamson lives in rural Wisconsin.