Hi, I’m Antigone and I’m historically morbid, also bored because I finally got around to reformatting this. Also, I deleted some typos, which, unfortunately, I did not realise were there. While I’m at it, I would like to apologise for my French (it’s my fourth language), and if any of you are more proficient than I am, feel free to correct me!

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I.
i knew the splendour of the dust
and the grime on isabella’s skeleton.

II.
the hair the colour of finely gilded
metal under fiery july suns no longer
remains, nor do the eyes, ocean froth
blue, stare alight at a world that exists
solely to be won and conquered. empty
sockets proclaim our truth. a fair body,
grotesque, worn, and consumed by
worms and time is hidden away at
newgate, where no one ever visits.
we miss you, isabella, but what kind
of deranged nutter says that?

III.
apparently, i do, but i don’t count;
i have no voice, no say, no mind that
is not clouded by summertime haze or
my own rotten ignorance. modern dust
will linger on my own casket someday.
modern dust is everywhere, everything –
the smog of the cities, the ashes blowing
in a hot israeli wind. the bombs took them,
but we who live choke on the flesh of dead
men and gunpowder.

IV.
I will die like i lived: without cause,
doubt, memory; but maybe somewhere
the memory – no, a thought – of frothy
ocean eyes and a woman so powerful
and so imposing will grow like a toxic
mould in the darkest places of my mind.
my mind has died and my spirit has just
retired. i need someone who will see this,
but we are all dead and beyond saving.

V.
i run my fingers over the ivory-yellow
bones, pausing to look at the monstrous
face of loathsome, ugly nothingness. i hate
skulls, they scare me, but this was a person,
this was a queen, my only remaining reminder
that people once lived. in spite of england and
marriage, times, war and circumstances, she
lived and never crawled through gutters like
those so-called men of today yet do. she was
evil, you may think, but she lived, she lived; i
wish i could say the same about myself.

VI.
her eyes, or lack thereof, bore into
the core of lead and stardust that
lodges in my throat. i am deranged,
but i am learning not to care; i am
learning not to pity the monster that
i am.

VII.
bon fils bon fils avez-vous pitié de
gentil mortimer, elle a dit. mais
avez-vous pitié de moi; je suis un
coeur sans un roi, et je mourus
pour réussir! je suis seule, mais
n’est pas mauvais, honnêtement.

VIII.

i would pity myself if i were terrible;
I think i am but, I will not beg for pity,
nor will i begin to fathom my many
wrongdoings. I would rather bury
them in the earth and wait for the
hidden pockets of carbon-based
misery – my poor dear brain – to
grow violets and poppies and some
forget-me-nots where that dream
lies.

IX.
dreams lie here, right here; we’re not
dreaming, are we? Isabella, i would have
loved to meet, you but you’re dead and i
live halfway, afraid of the future and the
past. i want the past: chivalry and song
and days in which possibility is possible.
i need life in this body, not smog. hold
your golden head up high and stare the
heavens in the face for me, then return
as a skeleton in caked grime, but don’t
smile at the horror or else you’ll make
that face forever. we’ll all look like this
when we’re dead, myself included.

X.
the only difference is that i am a
weak, stupid, muttering artist with
nothing to say and no talent to say
it if i did. i have no capacity, no reason,
no true reason to breathe. i came all
these kilometres to look at a goddamned
dead woman. i would like to live but then,
isabella, some paths just aren’t possible.
at least you saw the ones that were.