“Graveyard Dirt” | Katharine Anderson | Poetry

Graveyard Dirt

Katharine Anderson

have you ever noticed a graveyard in winter?

they don’t want you to know what i know about a graveyard in winter. you see the ground doesn’t freeze over— not in the slightest.

the corpses know the long nights are theirs and they’re scratching at the coffins, breaking out and wandering about town, showing their exit wounds to little kids and dancing around inside basement windows.

i don’t mind it. it’s the time of year when i start eating graveyard dirt.

it’s romantic, i think.

i’m going to work to class to work, work, work in the dark without eating. i’m coming home,

too tired to cook, too tired to feel warm.

but the graveyard dirt is there, and i eat it by the spoonful each night before bed. the corpses are there, cuddled beside me after a boy i tried to love leaves my bed.

i sit in my bed, spitting up dirt, and mull over all my ghosts, all my graves. i wonder what my uncle saw before he swam in pills. i wonder what my father saw before he put the bullet in his brain.

it’s comforting to know that no matter what i lose i will always have my graveyard dirt, my skeletons in the closet, my halloween lovers and christmas ghosts directing my pen as i write love songs to the no one beside me on the train.

and the metro is freezing, and i still don’t have a proper coat, but a skeleton is squeezing my hand, and when i smile my teeth fall out, bloody and warm and vibrant against the gray skies.