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Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

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Graveyard Waltz

By Ana Carpenter

sun sallowed, sunken eyes— we swallow
each other before dusk. cemetery gates

flutter open. darkness is only an idea
we believe with all our shadowed selves, throats

cracked with mourning, blackened bits of voices
in the grass. i am the youngest, loving

each tomb more than the last: children
of stone that need my imaginary arms

to hold them close. this is what i have always
wanted. the others are older, sing

with hollowed mouths to bind the dead. in the dark
we can’t see ourselves. limbs fill

with what we want to be, hills seize
our false ankles and begin the cycle

of dragging missing bodies into earth. truth
is, we died long ago. truth is, we will never

die. truth means nothing as night slips
through our fists—

we dance on the graves of ghosts.

 

Ana Carpenter is a high school junior at Walter Payton College Prep in Chicago, Illinois. Her work has appeared in Polyphony Lit and Rare Byrd Review.  When she’s not writing, she can be found reading, exploring, and shamelessly defending the YA genre.

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: December 2020

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