Shed Your Skin

Jay Lee-Guard

Hello cemetery road, you with your 

Long gravel tail that stretches endlessly

Towards some vague expression of peace, 

There amongst the tallest trees. 

You are rotting:

Your smooth skin warping

In the way all dying things do,

Sloughing off into graves and rivers;

Your scales kicked along by dog walkers 

And unquiet teenagers.

I walk your tarmac spine

And watch the rain create pools on your uneven surface; 

Your tongue flickering out to drink deeply, 

Your body swelling and groaning like you yearn to shed 

Every part of your name. 

Your body winds up to the old brick church, 

The door double barred and twice bolted. 

I know not how to deliver salvation, but just there 

Through the broken glass

Is the little prayerbook.

And when the last car rumbles away

I am there for your slow burial 

Under the choking vines and crawling grass. 

Goodbye, old cemetery road. 

In some other life 

You were loved

—

Jay Lee-Guard (he/they) is a Pōneke based writer and poet, and current Te Herenga Waka student, who currently seems to be on a streak of writing about death and the unknown. When not feeling morbid, their hobbies include gardening, knitting, baking, and sleeping on campus. His work is often inspired by nature and the everyday things around him—though they have yet to successfully write a good poem about their own garden, or about moths.