The Summer I Died

If you remember, that was the summer I died.

Right on the cusp of fall when I fell.
Back sliding down the wall, the stall,
was my sarcophagus.
The loose sliding lock cut me off and sealed me in like thin
ice under my feet.

I was buried alive in my hands, that’s how I died.
At the end of summer
I was buried alive, with a broken record of half blinks
The clink,
clink,
clink,
of lucky charms links.
They held onto luck the same way I held my composure.

She had three freckles on her face.
One for beauty, one for business
And one to hold onto so I wouldn’t drown
But I slipped, and I fell into her eyes.
Every blink stole a breath from my chest.
Every clink counted down towards my death.

She wasn’t the only one to visit
Before my eyes dulled,
and my skin grew cold,
restless as it slowly turned to stone.
The other, spoke a problem solvers language.
Tongue swollen,
Brows pushing into unbothered eyes.
Problem solver wasn’t the other one’s first language.
But I was the first to see, she was more dead than me.

I was buried alive,
Suffocated inside a graffitied tomb of tile and flesh
My heart was a land mine
Stepped on with one slide to the right that should have gone left
The world crumbled from the aftershock.

I drowned,

I died.

When autumn eyes first glanced up to the shivering sun.