POEM: The Bloody Scratch of Me

The flesh beneath your fingernails,
Excavated for an autopsy of us,
Was all that you could not burn
Or give away to Goodwill –

The bloody scratch of me is what remains
Of the clods of our earthen bodies
and black & blue ocean limbs
Once smothered by ripe certainty.

We tripped into bed sheets and blood,
The disintegrated crumbs of who
We’d wished we had been -
Found long after we’d vanished into thin air and

That bloody scratch of me was
Left to decompose in memory.