Undying

Frozen fingers, red at the knuckles and tips,

the ghost of ghastly veins pulsing under paper-thin skin.

Icy cold and temperature dropping,

down, down, down,

until the body shakes with cold,

knuckles cracking and muscles

twitching to generate long-lost warmth.

Joints ache and stiffen with the cold,

muscles tense;

all you can do is limp and whimper

pleas of help, for it to stop,

whatever it was.

Bile, or is it blood, rises slowly,

creeping up a cold, long throat.

At first, it’s all spit that coats your cold, cracking, slightly parted lips,

but now a thin line of deep red blood trickles from your lips,

through your shirt to your ever-colder, ashen skin.

Your stomach turns from the smell.

The smell, the smell, the smell--

Rotten and dead, dying, the smell of earth,

of a graveyard on a rainy day,

of a long-abandoned butcher’s shop on fire.

but you're cold, so cold and getting colder.

Your body is a frozen flesh fire, stiff and scared.

That is, while the flesh lasts.

It’s peeling now, in putrid parts,

Fingertips black with rot, or frostbite or both

Falling flesh, dark with rot, bloody and peeling,

revealing not ivory-white bone, but muscle,

seizing and twitching fight for life or death

You’re dead, dying, decayed,

half-living, half-dead

Ought to be buried of burned, bones charred,

But the animal brain screams for life

Not yet, not yet, not yet

The red creeps in, the rot suffocates,

Yet you shuffle on, hungry for life, for blood, for warmth.

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