By Kaitlyn O’Rinn
All rights reserved.
I am buried
with no stone to rest my head under,
00the same in death as in life
unremarkable, unremarked.
A potter’s field, they call it,
named for the clay quarry
the priests purchased
to bury Judas’ body,
bought with thirty pieces of silver,
the price of his betrayal.
He hung himself with a halter
and the only ground left to him
was unconsecrated,
to be joined in the Field of Blood
by criminals, suicides, strangers,
unshriven dead.
What have I done to merit
a nameless entombment
with such company?
I do not mind the suicides,
but it pains me to share a bed
with rapists and arsonists.
If poverty is a crime
oddness a vice
falling beneath notice a sin,
then I have been duly punished.
However, I wish
my current predicament
did not so closely mirror
my earthly one.