They have turned dying into an art,
I thought to my smirking lips.
My vision flitted over the stones,
and came to rest on a name.
The artificial curling of lips:
as if the smirk were a lie
that I was trying to convince myself of,
false bemusement among the marble.
Gravestones with frozen angels
loosened the hold on the lips,
as the beauty of a winged being
would tease the mind with fantasy.
I wandered into the mausoleum,
and the stained glass stood like
a kaleidoscope of chromatic death
filtering light onto the carpet.
The sun was altered by the color,
and an angel statue stood with a trumpet.
Imagined plagues and wrath tightened me,
squeezed my neurons like snakes.
This artifice of life
made in the face of death
called me like a siren
to the rocks of a sure demise.
I resisted,
and persisted,
walking, stalking
the names of the lost.
They were etched into stone
and seemed like they were immortal,
but they moved not,
and then I realized
that they were as still as the body within.