by C. C. Rayne

I have no one to hold
when I die, so I want
to hold myself,

hand in the hand of
my endless lover,
sometime child,
often sculptor.

This life has been
a possession
in that I owned it and
in that I was a body
and I often felt that
I possessed myself, naught but
a ghost, I possessed myself,

through my limbs and
between throat and hipbone
lived not a me but a myself,
and I was witness.

And younger, I felt
that death would fit best
if I was one of two skeletons,
those pictures they found
from Rome of two people,
all bone intertwined side to side.

But now, I face that I will die alone,
which is true, but not alone
for I am a body and
I am myself holding myself,
will be holding myself,
like a lover lowering down
the dear first corpse,
then carrying down their own.

C. C. Rayne (@cc_rayne) is a writer, actor, and creator from the East Coast of the USA. C. C.’s work tends to blend the magical with the mundane, and the silly with the strange. C. C’s stories can be read in such places as The Deeps, The Razor, HAD, Sublunary Review, and Demons & Death Drops: An Anthology of Queer Performance Horror. C. C.’s poetry can be read in Rough Cut Press, Soft Star Magazine, Eye to the Telescope, and moth eaten mag.