"Graveyard Parade" A Poem by Victoria Grace

Here in darkness where I lay,
last piece of candlelight
cheap substitute for day.
They're stumbling by my secret place,
blank hunger haunting me with each face.

I knew them all truthfully,
they were my life, my love, my family.

It happened all in one week.
I clung to them, cried for them, 
while they shivered, 
vomited and grew pale and weak.
I buried my parents and child in backyard graves,
holding a picture of them to my chest.
Next-door neighbors pulled up in their truck and screamed, 
"Come with us! We're heading west".
For a long minute, I said nothing--
my eyes staring ahead; my head feeling damn funny,
my heart slightly dead.
"It's all over with,
nothing can ever make this right", I mumbled.

"That may be so, but we've got our babies to think of.
It's for their lives we'll fight!"

They drove through the extinguished suburb
into the flaming sky.
I still wonder whether they lived or died.
I fell to the ground, pleading for a quiet death,
smelling the burning flesh in the air,
counting the beats of my breath.


I didn't know I'd slept until I woke and saw dead bodies alive
crawling the bloody streets;
sniffing out, hungering, 
for their special, craven meat.
I opened my eyes and dead eyes stared through me.
Screams died deep in my throat.
I laid still
and pretended not to be.
Small fingers touched my back,
pressing down hard.
I knew who they belonged to.
My mind collapsed into the final shard.
I ran like Lot's wife,
escaping a life set aflame.
I kept and kept going past fragmented parts,
until to this damn rotten hole I came.

It's not that I treasure life,
although I scrape together, 
string together
faded time.
I want to see them go by,
catch glimpses of my past,
just for a while--
just before I die.

I've been wrapped in a blanket chasing nightmares
in this cold attic room.
A can of rat poison 
is gonna make this place my tomb.
So I lift the pellets to an open mouth,
sending up a prayer for my salvation,
and what do you think I see out my window?
A weeping child
as alive as you please,
not another inhuman creation.
The poison freezes in my hands.
I toss it to the floor.
Right now, at least, 
it's time to live.
I walk shaky but calm to the barricaded door.