While I Wait for Dying
by Roseanne Morales

While I wait for dying

collecting tiny stones

in a thick lead pail,

pull the wings off butterflies,

store cats’ claws in a red glass vase;

scents of putrefying roses in a vial of poison.

 

I will scratch my name with hardened bone

along the corridors of this timeless place,

hide love notes to myself in the spaces

between the minutes of the clocks

that chime no more and the cracks

widening in the basement floor.

 

Ticks on the concrete walls

of my solitary cell,

holes dug with sharpened spoons

stuffed with prose that is never read,

soliloquies written on tissue paper,

set the world on fire, then blow it away.

 

Waiting for the day, I will mark the time,

in antique cursive, my careful, fine line

denoting celebration, a microchip embedded

in an unborn brain, to live again,

where my thoughts will not remain.

 

No final remembrance of blood, or pain,

as souls fly into the wisp, a forget me not,

petals scattered in the light rain

where my mind takes leap

as I wait for dying.

 

 

Rebirth
I have only scratched the surface

of this widening gap,

made with cracked nails

and soiled fingers

breaking through the thick albumen.

 

I have shouldered this yolk far too long;

pinning all my fears and hopes

on the method of escape

from these harsh confines.

 

Formless, nameless,

floating in the sticky goo

of life and discovery,

learning, bit by bit

which parts to save, which to kill.

 

Air sack slowly dissipating,

kicking through the filmy shell,

legs, arms fighting, thrashing,

last breath in the netherworld

for the mad dash to renewal.

 

Rebirth is a constant struggle

where one must murder

all that came before,

slain in the futile search

for innocence.

 

ROSE AIELLO MORALES studied English literature and creative writing at Rutgers University in the late 1970s, before moving to Miami, FL, in 1980, where she currently lives with her husband and 10 cats. There she met and married her husband Alex. Since then, she has traveled extensively, living in Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Virginia, California, New Jersey, and Texas. Her poetry has been published in Mad Swirl, Schizo Lit, The Stray Branch, and other magazines.

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