XIV. The Crypt-Keeper’s Last Confession

The lantern is flickering, a dying, gold gasp, In the trembling cage of a skeleton’s grasp. I’ve buried the beauty, I’ve buried the blight, I’ve shoveled the stars into pockets of night. The iron is heavy, the keys are a chain, That rattle like hailstones against the windowpane.

I confess to the silence, I confess to the stone: I’m the king of a kingdom of marrow and bone. I tucked in the children with blankets of clay, And kissed all the lovers who withered away. I sang to the mothers whose voices went dry, And caught every tear from a hollow-eyed sky.

But the secret that stabs like a needle of glass, Is watching the shadows of memory pass. For I am the keeper, the guard of the gate, Who arrived at the wedding a century late. I looked in the mirror, but what did I see? The face of the one who was waiting for me.

“Forgive me,” I whisper to names on the wall, “For I am the ghost who outlived you all.” The shovel is broken, the soil is my bed, And the ink in my veins is the blood of the dead. The lantern is out, and the shivering starts, In the cold, quiet garden of hollowing hearts.

You’ll remember my face when the candles go dim, A tattered, old spirit on the graveyard’s dark rim. For the keeper is crying, a salt-water flood, And the last of the sorrow is written in blood.