Culminating Piece Final by J.Mayo

Poem used: Edge | The Poetry Foundation

The woman is perfected.

My steps creep closer to the woman lying on the stone-plated road. A sudden hand grasps my arm, and the figure’s hand tightens as my vision stares into her dead body. Wearing a smile of accomplishment, it gives me the chills just staring at the oblivion of her smile.

“Don’t even try to touch her, ghost boy.” Graham speaks firmly still gripping my arm.

“Like hell would I touch her? She’s dead,” I scoff. I’m starting to think Graham’s trust in me is non-existent.

The illusions of a Greek necessity flows in her toga. Something about this woman makes me think of a statue rather than a human. Her frozen-in-time face. Her position of laying in arms. Everything about her seems off. 

“Don’t even bother investigating this one.” Graham sighs tiredly.

“Am not going to do that.”

He rolls his eyes. “Sure, keep lying to me about this one.”

My gaze snaps back onto the woman lying in front of us. The cravings of bare feet seem to be saying: We have come so far, it is over. Our steps become slow as the world around us becomes still—almost too still, each dead child coiled into a white serpant. 

“There’s children at the scene too.” Graham’s voice lowers. He drops to his knee; his eyes wanders across the children’s state. The small hands of children grasp onto a handle of each little pitcher of milk, now empty. 

“Hard to tell if the children drank before or during their passing,” I mutter.

Graham sighs, the sigh of unknowing. The woman’s structure folds them back into her body as petals of a rose close when the garden stiffens and odor bleed from the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

“Disgusting.” Graham has to mutter something rude. My palm smacks his shoulder to have him contain his composure of not to judge the situation. “It’s the truth, Poe.”

“Yea, but respect the dead, mate.”

Graham shrugs and goes off to investigate more of the crime around us. The moon has nothing to be sad about but the intense beating of my soul and cold chills run through my body.

The woman seems used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag. I feel like she’s going to move any minute now and cast a deep nightmare within me. But all I have to do is wait.