The Specimen

Stiff limbs and

Blank staring eyes.

You float,

Suspended.

Skin tight,

Stomach bloated.

Drowned.

A specimen,

Behind your glass.

Encased in liquid.

Liquid preservation.

 

Your mouth hangs open

Never to close,

Your last words

Trapped on a tongue

That cannot move.

A tongue which

Never again shall

Pronounce,

Words. Sounds.

 

Your fingers, splayed

To avoid curling,

Rest against the glass.

As if the ghost of you

Is waving at the passing

World.

 

What passing world?

 

On your shelf in

A cupboard, in the darkness.

What world is it you see?

To whom do you wave,

And smile benignly?

Your gruesome lips

Stretched wide in a

Terrible grin.

 

Is it the other specimens?

In their tanks and bottles,

Pressed behind glass,

Never rotting in their

Alcohol baths.

 

And do they return your

Friendly gesture?

Or are they too encased

In the horror of their

Deaths, their brutal

Murders, to spare a glance

At one another.

 

Is it to the butterflies

And moths, the insects

Pinioned to their boards

That you direct your

Still greetings?

The emerald beetles with

Their glittering wing casings

Skewered.

 

Or the

Prehistoric creatures

Trapped in amber.

At least they may boast

An accidental death.

 

 

You stare

Emptily outwards, and in the

Glass, your reflection

Stares back.

Your splayed fingers,

Meeting.

Reviews

[Beatrice Mars]

....um. wow. O.O < my face is like that. That was amazing, so graphic and scary and haunting and...just wow