Alicia Freeman is a graduate student and Mustang Daily poetry contributor.
*A Zombie Interlude*
Watch me carve our names
Into that graffitied bench
(or that dancing hobo’s neck.)
Sometimes when I think of life,
I think it’s all an apocalypse
of some
heartbreaking,
destroying kind.
I don’t see any zombies here
I only see families between
the crossroads of the trees
And a handless man
drunk at 5 o’clock
(it actually is 5 o’clock
somewhere.)
I wonder what it was like when
I was a teenager
Wandering through this land
like I belonged somewhere
and I was meant for something.
It’s funny how things change
(like your undead mother trying
to chew out your brains.)
People talk about their first
Love like it’s something special.
I cannot pinpoint who my first
Love really was.
I guess that’s a problem.
I guess that’s something you
do not forget.
(“Love so short,
forgetting so long,”
but so easy … )
I’d like to say I destroyed the
memories of my former loves
Like a shotgun blast to the heart
But certain things still sting
and certain parts still ache
We act as though everything is
Behind us, some lesson learned
“But the only thing I ever learned from love is how to shoot somebody who outdrew you.”
“I want to glide down over Valhalla,”
I want to step over the ledge
of the bridge and
break my neck in the
Free-fall,
drown in the creek when
my body forgets how to
swallow.
Hear the lingering of the piano,
Hear the painful thump of my
Heart.
To say I love you
would be
womanly hysteria.
To say I like you very much
would be
too much for our situation.
To say I think about you at least every other moment of my day
would be
the truth I’d never tell you.
Here is the apocalyptic,
Here is the modern wasteland.
If a zombie bit you,
And I had to shoot your
beautiful face off,
I’d risk my life to kiss you
first.
(We would be zombie lovers
feasting on the remains
of our exes,
And traveling down the creek
to our zombie home
and our zombie children.)
I don’t love you, remember,
But spending my nights
traveling to some forgotten
home with you
Sounds more wonderful
than the sweetest note
of the most perfect song.
“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees”
(to make you bloom
and thrive
and come, fall,
into melodious love
with me.)
Feast on my heart.
It is for you.