Naked the dead, with vacant, piercing stares, wake from their slumber.
Rising they shuffle, with arms extended, to claw and engulf wispy vapors
of my being. They suck the effluent essence that flickers within me.
Their raspy whispers echo hauntingly through thin-branched willows
that bend to scrape the tender, moldy, lime green grass from their feet.
The ghosts, weaken but spry, flutter just beyond the scope of pale eye.
Worn, angular, yellowed nails rake my glimmering, hollowed, boney spine
probingly and leave old, putrid, graveyard scents embedded in pricklings.
Lascivious, invisible tongues lap at my malignant marrow;
their stark, sharp teeth nibbling at the well-springs of life.
Dragged outside to their mud-filled mounds where they once slept,
I ease into earth’s warm, musky, embrace . . . my eyes shuttered.
I yield to restful sleep as, one by one, the fetchers return to slumber.