Michaela Shroeder

beauty in the foothills of existence, where lies my rotting body?

stuffed full of sin, shame, and ignominy, open wounds fester, the gruesome sight covered in a field of beguiling red roses within this expansive and mendacious meadow.

from the moment
those intoxicating fingers
grazed my obsessive body

I found myself rotting

suffocating on endless shame
guilty of sorrows brought

sentenced to lay,
my obsessive skin decaying
next to your pervasive,
intoxicating body

beauty in the foothills of eternity, who wrote my elegy? who, in this darkest night, came forth to my funeral, found a piece missing, and used their sacrifice to atone for me?

“Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today”

no, I must be misremembering

how might they begin
commemorating me?

heaving out,

“how long lived she,
in that aching body?”

penance in the rose field of coddling, as I prop that inescapable body atop my own rotting. where hide you, eternity? blessed Mary, I should’ve found you in sanctity.

God, where is your grace?

we all make a choice
mine jeering
“this is eternity?”

clinging as my body rots
obsessiveness melts off skin
permeating into disintegrating bones

call it predestined
do you believe?

I am her; she is me

in the name of whatever may exist, amen.