Danse Macabre

Only then,
When he held the dead girl in his arms
(Swollen with river water, yet so fragile
Her skin seeming to tear like paper under his
Brisk hands, and he so afraid of dying,
So afraid of the dead that he did not dare even
To smother her rouged cheeks in mad kisses
And her name stopped dead at the backs of his teeth),
Only then was he
Consumed with a terror of living and dying both, a terror like fighting,
Consumed with a terror of the water in the river and
The flowers in the grave, of the dirt that formed
Immobile cliffs around him, unforgiving and crushing him
Into dust, and a terror of the dust, and a terror of his own
Skin and the way he could feel it wrinkling, his own hair
Graying and whitening, and her closed eyes and her parted
Lips and the way time was no longer hers

When the hands closed at his throat then it felt
As though forty thousand brothers with their red-rimmed
Envious eyes had become hell-bent on pounding him
Faster and
Further into the dust.