Loathe

a mask-less mask

and fickle teeth cracking

hiding how you conquer the harvests

as though your hands are covetous

of your dead father's skull

sunkeneyed, long lost to pasture

descending over the sacred forgotten

you who can only ever desecrate

who implores the others to hate

with the rustling of charred bones

all the stray bullets lodged in your back

still the wounds of kindness remain open

with a ransom escaping skyward

as you drag the last piece of yourself

out from the black seawater, brimming

from a rotten jaw grinding in protest

artifices perched on your shoulders

and you call to your mother

the year's salt in your wounds, your words

hang with a cowardly sound neglected

as water neglects what it drowns

the children have witnessed

what the ghost can see