The Dead Princess
By
Brandon R. Burdette
1
Her funeral happened on a dark, wet, autumnal day. Fall's soggy leaves, red and orange, yellow and brown, were stamped all over the tar of the glossy, Kinkade-like street. I watched the service take place from my car, just outside the cemetery gates, and the active rain assisted in my obscurity. She had just died the week prior, so her body hadn’t been held very long in the morgue. I also knew that the casket in which she was currently enclosed was aiding the preservation of her profound natural beauty. She’d been buried the night before so as to avoid the following day’s ill weather.
2
I had to dig her up, and as fast as I could. I was tapping the heel of my shoe, mad with anticipation, watching the funeral obsessively, eager to get to her. My shovel was resting in the trunk. Everybody gathered for her was dressed in black -- I saw several umbrellas and boots. There was a Priest, of course -- in other words: a man who didn't know her, speaking his lies to the vulnerable ears of her loved ones.
3
I saw her beautiful face in her Obituary, just a few days before the funeral. I must've gazed at her photo for an hour. I wept over her death -- I cried, devastated and angered that such an angel had to die. Once I had her full name, I found her immediately on social media. I saw her posts from just a week and a half ago. She was publicly lamenting the unjust cruelty of the world, and confessing that she felt lonely -- posts that were met with the sound of crickets. The fact that nobody had the supportive courage to step up and say anything to her implied that everyone in attendance at the funeral was a coward, a hypocrite, or both. Imagine the imprisoning sense of contrition they were experiencing! It must be unbearable, the excruciating awareness that it is too late to provide someone in need with a single syllable of solace. On her Facebook page, I was able to see pictures from her life -- moments with girlfriends, hikes, nights at parties, selfies at home, daily shots of campus life at the University she attended. This was an ecstatic girl when she was happy, and a maudlin girl when she was melancholic. She was very clearly a personality of severe highs and lows -- lows which one, now and then, does not arise from. What a tragedy ... Her article in the paper said she "died unexpectedly," which is our world's spineless way of saying she ended things on her own terms. As I sat in the car and watched her service in the rain, I recalled her photographs from social media in which she appeared joyous, and I felt heartbroken …
4
I want you to know at the outset, dear spectator of my innermost thoughts, that I am not a necrophile. That is, I was not more attracted to the dead version of her than I was to the version of her in her pictures in which she shone with life and joy. I simply discovered her too late. I had never seen her around town. If I had known of her as she lived, I would have preferred to experience her living presence over her deceased one. But this was my only chance at some time with her before the swift process of decomposition robbed her skeleton of all her beauty … Even as I looked on at the funeral, I was agonizingly conscious of the reality that the clock was ticking – that the precious girl was lying in the cold earth … What a waste of beauty! What a cruel injustice! What a divine crime! But I would not allow her remaining beauty to go to waste … I would not be able to bear it if her flesh began to rot in my presence, so I did not plan to spend any time with her once decomposition seriously announced itself. However, up until that point, I would do a number of romantic and sweet things with her beautiful corpse, but I would not do anything twisted or sick with it. No -- my sole desire was to spend an evening with a beautiful Princess such as she, in such a manner as to have my hyper-sensitivities of emotion guarded by her deadness, her utter submission if you will, her quietude, her acquiescence and compliance … My dream was to paint her fingernails and toenails, put her in a pretty and modest dress, comb her hair, dance with her to Ravel’s Pavane, sit her at my table and have dinner and wine across from her, talk to her, read to her, then go to sleep next to her, side by side, nose to nose, running my fingers through the dark silk of her hair …
5
When the funeral cleared out, I grabbed my shovel from the trunk and went to work. My hands blistered and bled as I dug. What a foolish idea it was, to think it would be easier to dig in the wet soil! And what a sloppy job I did! I slipped and fell a number of times along the way … As I got nearer to her casket, it bothered me that she would inevitably get dirty and muddy upon my grabbing of her …
6
I despised it when my shovel finally made violent contact with her casket, because I only desired to be gentle with her. The ground felt surprisingly solid beneath me. I crouched down, staring at her for minutes once I opened it partially, using the coffin lid to shield the falling rain. I did not want her to get wet, but I had no choice. From what I could see of her, she still possessed fresh, albeit perishable, beauty. She had been plucked out of the land of the living, like a rose cut from its flourishing bush. There she was, the goddess from the Obituary, the beautiful Queen from social media — there she was, a sleeping Princess with her hands at her sides, her wounds covered in wristbands …
7
I pushed open the casket, she began to be rained upon, and I picked her up from under her arms. She was completely limp, of course, and seemed to weigh twice as much as she would appear to weigh. I liked that I was in control — I thrived on the feeling that she was totally dependent on my every move to guide her. I carried her in my arms like her hero as we were both drenched by the rain, walking us across the cemetery and back to my car, abandoning her pillaged gravesite. (The next day, no doubt, it would be the shock and the horror of the town, what I had done in that cemetery, once it was discovered.) — I looked up at the glowing Moon, which symbolized for me a convicting eye on my wrongdoing … I was compelled to commit this bizarre sin — I was the helpless slave of her beauty … From the moment I saw her, I loved her … And since she was dead, I would never know if she would have rejected me in life, had she interacted with me in the days of her free will … I could only hope that, if her soul was watching me coddle its discarded costume, she understood and forgave my enchaining affections … As her black hair got wetter in the rain, she looked all the more beautiful to me — she looked as if she were asleep in the arms of her protector. I knelt in the grass, with her back resting on my knee, and I kissed her lifeless lips, both of our eyes closed, among the graves … I held the back of her head in the palm of one hand, and caressed her cheek tenderly with the thumb of my other hand. As I looked at her beautiful face, I got lost in it, enamored by its features … I dreaded taking her back out into the world, home with me — part of me wanted to stay in that cemetery with her — part of me wanted to crawl back into the grave with her, and close the heavenly bed of the coffin on us eternally …
8
I sat her in the passenger seat, buckled and strapped her in securely, and walked around the car to get into the driver’s seat, hating that I was distant from her for even a moment. I put the key into the ignition, and that’s when she spoke …
9
“Baby,” she said … — My heart started palpitating as I turned my head to look at her … Her healthy eyes were watery with tears … She was smiling, looking at me adoringly … I flinched, hitting the back of my head on my window, terrified … I looked at her, stunned … “You came back for me, baby … You came to get me … I love you so much, and I have missed you desperately …” — She was crying, but still smiling … — I asked her, “What is this?” — She took my hands into her hands, laughing and sniffling. — “Your spirit is muddled right now. Soon you will have a clear understanding of what’s going on …” — She tickled me, screamed happily, and jumped into my lap. We were nose to nose, and she had her arms wrapped around my neck. “Now we will be together forever,” she said, and she kissed me passionately … We felt inseparable … — “Your love was better than life, and it always will be,” she said, while looking directly into my eyes. “My heart breaks for all of our family and friends that I left behind, but they knew how much I loved you … I meant it when I said that I would follow you anywhere …” — She kissed me again and again, grinning as if she had a daisy in her mouth … — Holding her at the hips, and still taken aback, I said, “Listen, I am thrilled that you are somehow alive and happy, as it turns out, but what are you saying? What in the world are you talking about, and what does this all mean?” She threw her head back playfully, but was genuinely frustrated … “Ugh!” she cried out … She looked at me in the eyes again, and said with seriousness, “Baby, we’re dead … I don’t understand why you are so confused, and I didn’t know where you went … Where have you been?” — She reached into my pocket, grabbed my phone, typed in my passcode, and went to my Photo Albums … There we were, together, all over my apartment — moments in the kitchen, in the living room, in the bedroom … — She went onto her social media, and there I was with her, in all of those same pictures I’d seen of her before … I looked up at her from my phone … “Reya … What happened to us?” — She was excited that I was starting to remember … She held my face, nurturingly … — “Baby … You died a few weeks ago on the way home from work … It was a vehicle pursuit, and the suspect died, too, when he crashed into you … It’s a miracle I lasted even a week after you were taken from me … I couldn’t stand the apartment anymore, without you … Your absence was the end of me … I was already dead, for a week … It seemed like nobody wanted me around them, like I was some sort of nuisance — a miserable, depressing Debbie Downer, raining on everyone’s parade … The only comforting thought was that maybe I could find you somewhere in the afterlife, and we could be together again … We can’t leave this cemetery … Your spirit is in denial more than it is lost and confused … It refuses to accept death … Follow me, my love …” — She led us out of the car, and walked us back to her grave, over the grass and in the rain … As we approached her site, there was a man who was walking away from it, and who disappeared into the surrounding wooded area … “Don’t mind him,” she said — “stay focused, baby …” — She walked us up to her marble plaque, which said my name as well … “I left instructions, saying I wanted to be with you here … They call it a double-depth companion plot. Your body is in your casket, buried beneath mine …” — She looked pleased with how the arrangement had turned out … “Lie with me?” she asked, looking up at me with her brown eyes …
10
The next morning, the groundskeeper came in to do his work for the day, and called the police when he found my car, completely thrashed, sitting outside the cemetery gates … Fall’s leaves swirled in the pure, post-rain wind … The authorities found our plot to be at peace and undisturbed, my shovel resting in the adjoining grass … An officer picked it up, eyeing its bloodstained shaft. — When her Mother was called back to the graveyard, to help confirm it was indeed our car, she found Reya’s wristbands in the grass, held them close to her heart, and knew that her daughter was whole again …
Brandon R. Burdette is a poet from Los Angeles, CA. Poems of his were first published in The Houston Literary Review in 2005. — His website is: brandonrburdette.com
By
Brandon R. Burdette
1
Her funeral happened on a dark, wet, autumnal day. Fall's soggy leaves, red and orange, yellow and brown, were stamped all over the tar of the glossy, Kinkade-like street. I watched the service take place from my car, just outside the cemetery gates, and the active rain assisted in my obscurity. She had just died the week prior, so her body hadn’t been held very long in the morgue. I also knew that the casket in which she was currently enclosed was aiding the preservation of her profound natural beauty. She’d been buried the night before so as to avoid the following day’s ill weather.
2
I had to dig her up, and as fast as I could. I was tapping the heel of my shoe, mad with anticipation, watching the funeral obsessively, eager to get to her. My shovel was resting in the trunk. Everybody gathered for her was dressed in black -- I saw several umbrellas and boots. There was a Priest, of course -- in other words: a man who didn't know her, speaking his lies to the vulnerable ears of her loved ones.
3
I saw her beautiful face in her Obituary, just a few days before the funeral. I must've gazed at her photo for an hour. I wept over her death -- I cried, devastated and angered that such an angel had to die. Once I had her full name, I found her immediately on social media. I saw her posts from just a week and a half ago. She was publicly lamenting the unjust cruelty of the world, and confessing that she felt lonely -- posts that were met with the sound of crickets. The fact that nobody had the supportive courage to step up and say anything to her implied that everyone in attendance at the funeral was a coward, a hypocrite, or both. Imagine the imprisoning sense of contrition they were experiencing! It must be unbearable, the excruciating awareness that it is too late to provide someone in need with a single syllable of solace. On her Facebook page, I was able to see pictures from her life -- moments with girlfriends, hikes, nights at parties, selfies at home, daily shots of campus life at the University she attended. This was an ecstatic girl when she was happy, and a maudlin girl when she was melancholic. She was very clearly a personality of severe highs and lows -- lows which one, now and then, does not arise from. What a tragedy ... Her article in the paper said she "died unexpectedly," which is our world's spineless way of saying she ended things on her own terms. As I sat in the car and watched her service in the rain, I recalled her photographs from social media in which she appeared joyous, and I felt heartbroken …
4
I want you to know at the outset, dear spectator of my innermost thoughts, that I am not a necrophile. That is, I was not more attracted to the dead version of her than I was to the version of her in her pictures in which she shone with life and joy. I simply discovered her too late. I had never seen her around town. If I had known of her as she lived, I would have preferred to experience her living presence over her deceased one. But this was my only chance at some time with her before the swift process of decomposition robbed her skeleton of all her beauty … Even as I looked on at the funeral, I was agonizingly conscious of the reality that the clock was ticking – that the precious girl was lying in the cold earth … What a waste of beauty! What a cruel injustice! What a divine crime! But I would not allow her remaining beauty to go to waste … I would not be able to bear it if her flesh began to rot in my presence, so I did not plan to spend any time with her once decomposition seriously announced itself. However, up until that point, I would do a number of romantic and sweet things with her beautiful corpse, but I would not do anything twisted or sick with it. No -- my sole desire was to spend an evening with a beautiful Princess such as she, in such a manner as to have my hyper-sensitivities of emotion guarded by her deadness, her utter submission if you will, her quietude, her acquiescence and compliance … My dream was to paint her fingernails and toenails, put her in a pretty and modest dress, comb her hair, dance with her to Ravel’s Pavane, sit her at my table and have dinner and wine across from her, talk to her, read to her, then go to sleep next to her, side by side, nose to nose, running my fingers through the dark silk of her hair …
5
When the funeral cleared out, I grabbed my shovel from the trunk and went to work. My hands blistered and bled as I dug. What a foolish idea it was, to think it would be easier to dig in the wet soil! And what a sloppy job I did! I slipped and fell a number of times along the way … As I got nearer to her casket, it bothered me that she would inevitably get dirty and muddy upon my grabbing of her …
6
I despised it when my shovel finally made violent contact with her casket, because I only desired to be gentle with her. The ground felt surprisingly solid beneath me. I crouched down, staring at her for minutes once I opened it partially, using the coffin lid to shield the falling rain. I did not want her to get wet, but I had no choice. From what I could see of her, she still possessed fresh, albeit perishable, beauty. She had been plucked out of the land of the living, like a rose cut from its flourishing bush. There she was, the goddess from the Obituary, the beautiful Queen from social media — there she was, a sleeping Princess with her hands at her sides, her wounds covered in wristbands …
7
I pushed open the casket, she began to be rained upon, and I picked her up from under her arms. She was completely limp, of course, and seemed to weigh twice as much as she would appear to weigh. I liked that I was in control — I thrived on the feeling that she was totally dependent on my every move to guide her. I carried her in my arms like her hero as we were both drenched by the rain, walking us across the cemetery and back to my car, abandoning her pillaged gravesite. (The next day, no doubt, it would be the shock and the horror of the town, what I had done in that cemetery, once it was discovered.) — I looked up at the glowing Moon, which symbolized for me a convicting eye on my wrongdoing … I was compelled to commit this bizarre sin — I was the helpless slave of her beauty … From the moment I saw her, I loved her … And since she was dead, I would never know if she would have rejected me in life, had she interacted with me in the days of her free will … I could only hope that, if her soul was watching me coddle its discarded costume, she understood and forgave my enchaining affections … As her black hair got wetter in the rain, she looked all the more beautiful to me — she looked as if she were asleep in the arms of her protector. I knelt in the grass, with her back resting on my knee, and I kissed her lifeless lips, both of our eyes closed, among the graves … I held the back of her head in the palm of one hand, and caressed her cheek tenderly with the thumb of my other hand. As I looked at her beautiful face, I got lost in it, enamored by its features … I dreaded taking her back out into the world, home with me — part of me wanted to stay in that cemetery with her — part of me wanted to crawl back into the grave with her, and close the heavenly bed of the coffin on us eternally …
8
I sat her in the passenger seat, buckled and strapped her in securely, and walked around the car to get into the driver’s seat, hating that I was distant from her for even a moment. I put the key into the ignition, and that’s when she spoke …
9
“Baby,” she said … — My heart started palpitating as I turned my head to look at her … Her healthy eyes were watery with tears … She was smiling, looking at me adoringly … I flinched, hitting the back of my head on my window, terrified … I looked at her, stunned … “You came back for me, baby … You came to get me … I love you so much, and I have missed you desperately …” — She was crying, but still smiling … — I asked her, “What is this?” — She took my hands into her hands, laughing and sniffling. — “Your spirit is muddled right now. Soon you will have a clear understanding of what’s going on …” — She tickled me, screamed happily, and jumped into my lap. We were nose to nose, and she had her arms wrapped around my neck. “Now we will be together forever,” she said, and she kissed me passionately … We felt inseparable … — “Your love was better than life, and it always will be,” she said, while looking directly into my eyes. “My heart breaks for all of our family and friends that I left behind, but they knew how much I loved you … I meant it when I said that I would follow you anywhere …” — She kissed me again and again, grinning as if she had a daisy in her mouth … — Holding her at the hips, and still taken aback, I said, “Listen, I am thrilled that you are somehow alive and happy, as it turns out, but what are you saying? What in the world are you talking about, and what does this all mean?” She threw her head back playfully, but was genuinely frustrated … “Ugh!” she cried out … She looked at me in the eyes again, and said with seriousness, “Baby, we’re dead … I don’t understand why you are so confused, and I didn’t know where you went … Where have you been?” — She reached into my pocket, grabbed my phone, typed in my passcode, and went to my Photo Albums … There we were, together, all over my apartment — moments in the kitchen, in the living room, in the bedroom … — She went onto her social media, and there I was with her, in all of those same pictures I’d seen of her before … I looked up at her from my phone … “Reya … What happened to us?” — She was excited that I was starting to remember … She held my face, nurturingly … — “Baby … You died a few weeks ago on the way home from work … It was a vehicle pursuit, and the suspect died, too, when he crashed into you … It’s a miracle I lasted even a week after you were taken from me … I couldn’t stand the apartment anymore, without you … Your absence was the end of me … I was already dead, for a week … It seemed like nobody wanted me around them, like I was some sort of nuisance — a miserable, depressing Debbie Downer, raining on everyone’s parade … The only comforting thought was that maybe I could find you somewhere in the afterlife, and we could be together again … We can’t leave this cemetery … Your spirit is in denial more than it is lost and confused … It refuses to accept death … Follow me, my love …” — She led us out of the car, and walked us back to her grave, over the grass and in the rain … As we approached her site, there was a man who was walking away from it, and who disappeared into the surrounding wooded area … “Don’t mind him,” she said — “stay focused, baby …” — She walked us up to her marble plaque, which said my name as well … “I left instructions, saying I wanted to be with you here … They call it a double-depth companion plot. Your body is in your casket, buried beneath mine …” — She looked pleased with how the arrangement had turned out … “Lie with me?” she asked, looking up at me with her brown eyes …
10
The next morning, the groundskeeper came in to do his work for the day, and called the police when he found my car, completely thrashed, sitting outside the cemetery gates … Fall’s leaves swirled in the pure, post-rain wind … The authorities found our plot to be at peace and undisturbed, my shovel resting in the adjoining grass … An officer picked it up, eyeing its bloodstained shaft. — When her Mother was called back to the graveyard, to help confirm it was indeed our car, she found Reya’s wristbands in the grass, held them close to her heart, and knew that her daughter was whole again …
Brandon R. Burdette is a poet from Los Angeles, CA. Poems of his were first published in The Houston Literary Review in 2005. — His website is: brandonrburdette.com
