Grave Diggers

Grave Diggers For Richard Siken When we met I became aware of the hole I’d been digging for decades, a ditch of sorts, a burial plot for my feelings, my secrets, all the ugly bits. Twenty four hours later I stood in the shower thinking of you, the way your left hand gripped your coffee cup, how your eyes looked quickly at me before they nervously looked away. You said, in other words, you said, you don’t want this, I’m flawed, I wear my mistakes around my neck, a tie pulled too tight, a noose. Two shells, the undead, going through the motions among the living. You climbed down into my pit, held the shards of glass to the light, cut your finger on my edges to show me how you still bleed. Come lay in this grave with me, I beckon, imagine in this darkness the dirt they’d throw on our bodies if they knew how our hands held each other. Feel how alive you feel as the earth fills in around us. Wanting life will be our death. Love, our resurrection.