Common Ghosts

how many ghosts do you keep locked up in your closet? do you take them out one by one, unpack the bleached limbs of their immortal guilt, and wonder what blood their skinless hands once bore? the worst kind is that which you cannot see, the crimson that has sunk down through the soul, burning into the marrow of these bones you turn between your palms: the blood that their hands painted globes with, the red they drew over their maps, their compasses, the heart-red, muscle-red, passion-red ink of an empire it was not the blue kind they liked to think ran in their own damned veins our blood does not run blue — nobody’s does, except maybe the dead’s — we have that in common, the way it tastes like salt and ash and iron mixed in with the sugar, the tea, the spices; when the land starved, it saw red, saw blue, saw white red skies, blue seas, white bones— the bones in your closet whisper, sometimes. they are guilty and no penance can ever gift back a history stolen, the voice of a world, choked my ghosts cannot rest in peace their voices, voices like the sea and the sky and the bones, rattling, keep their vindictive song known; do you sleep? or do you close the closet door when you grow weary of that truth and forget that some bones will never sleep beneath their own earth? tell me, how many bodies can you count, tell me, how red are the palms between which you hold the eternal weight of yourself rule britannia! my ghosts sing: rule the seas and the skies and the bones my closet is so full of ghosts

how many ghosts do you keep locked up in your closet? do you take them out one by one, unpack the bleached limbs of their immortal guilt, and wonder what blood their skinless hands once bore? the worst kind is that which you cannot see, the crimson that has sunk down through the soul, burning into the marrow of these bones you turn between your palms: the blood that their hands painted globes with, the red they drew over their maps, their compasses, the heart-red, muscle-red, passion-red ink of an empire it was not the blue kind they liked to think ran in their own damned veins our blood does not run blue — nobody’s does, except maybe the dead’s — we have that in common, the way it tastes like salt and ash and iron mixed in with the sugar, the tea, the spices; when the land starved, it saw red, saw blue, saw white red skies, blue seas, white bones— the bones in your closet whisper, sometimes. they are guilty and no penance can ever gift back a history stolen, the voice of a world, choked my ghosts cannot rest in peace their voices, voices like the sea and the sky and the bones, rattling, keep their vindictive song known; do you sleep? or do you close the closet door when you grow weary of that truth and forget that some bones will never sleep beneath their own earth? tell me, how many bodies can you count, tell me, how red are the palms between which you hold the eternal weight of yourself rule britannia! my ghosts sing: rule the seas and the skies and the bones my closet is so full of ghostsby Magdalena, Age 17

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