Four seats
at the table, one empty.
Old friend across me,
the other, new and exciting.
“Did you smell the smoke
outside this morning?”
I ask, flicking the table’s
dead lighter.
I know it won’t work,
but new friend watches
like I am a magician,
so I keep trying.
“Heard it was a mulch fire,”
old friend answers,
digging into his pipe.
Does he realize
the irony that lingers?
I begin telling a story
about a dead-tired
woman and all the fires
she had to extinguish
inside of her.
Three mouths
at the table, two talking.
Old friend’s joke about
Taco Bell is more interesting.
“I can’t breathe,”
new friend wheezes
through bouts of laughter.
He has stopped watching
my game with the lighter.
Disconnected,
old friend acts like he
has never seen
the shape of my lips
talking about important
things.
Six eyes
at the table, two glistening,
two lost in a haze
too unfamiliar with this
feeling of closeness,
two dancing, still curious.
New friend’s attention
eagerly returns when I stand.
“Night,” I sigh, handing
him the dead-tired lighter
as if passing
on the reigns to my
magic act.
Four seats
at the table, two empty.
About the Creator
Sam Eliza Green
Wayward soul, who finds belonging in the eerie and bittersweet. Poetry, short stories, and epics. Stay a while if you're struggling to feel understood. There's a place for you here.
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Six Feet Under
Buried alive. What a horrible way to go. Yazz lay there, in her own thoughts. What else could she do? She was hungry, thirsty, tired, mentally, and physically exhausted, and more than anything, she was bored. She hoped she would die of boredom before anything else, anything else would've been more painful. Like many people had, she and her friends had talked about what they reckon the worst ways to die were, it was a morbid subject, but it came up every now and again. Yazz had always been one to argue her point on drowning, others had mentioned burning alive, slowly and painfully bleeding to death, hung drawn and quartered, and being starved to death. It was strange that none of them had considered being buried alive, it had never come up. But now, she was thinking back to those conversations her and her friends had had, how could they have not thought about it? It took a lot longer than the others, you were completely confined, you couldn't move or do anything, you just had to wait, until your body was physically unable to support a life system anymore, which could take up to four days. Four! By far the longest out of all of them. She recounted some of these conversations just to try and pass the time, anything to pass the time. It was difficult to know how much time had passed since she had been underground, it was difficult to know anything. There were many things that Yazz didn't know, she didn't know where she was, she didn't know how she'd got into the coffin, she'd just woken up there. Yazz also didn't know what time it was, or even what day it was, she guessed at Tuesday, it was Sunday evening when she'd been buried alive, intentionally, and although it had felt like weeks had passed, she was still alive, which means she hadn't died from dehydration, and therefore it couldn't have been more than four days.
By Liam Storm4 days ago in Fiction
Comments (2)
This was again beautifully evoked. I have been in this situation too and this , and the way that "you" felt took me back there. It is a strange sensation seeing two people who are connected through you, establish their own regardless of you.
I've felt this way before and it sucks! Loved your poem!