Memento Mori

You will have an eternity to think inside the box...

Hello,

I hope that you are all well. Just a brief-ish foreword to disclose some information regarding this piece. I am considering this piece for entry into the upcoming Young Writers Awards 2017, a competition run annually by the BBC for young budding authors aged fourteen to eighteen, living in the UK. If you are eligible to enter the competition and feel that it would benefit you here is a link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4PrGlh3csfFgrgdw43K698Q/the-bbc...

Any feedback or criticism at all, whether it be positive negative etc. would be extremely helpful and I will accept all gratefully! Please be kind enough to let me know if you did or didn’t enjoy it and the reason or reasons why.

A follow for the first person who can identify the name of the poet who wrote the lines highlighted and underlined in bold (no cheating via search engines of any format!). The rest of the piece excluding the lines derived from said poet is my original work; I felt that these lines applied to this piece considering that this particular piece was inspired by the poem. You may also remark if you have read any of my other literary works that some of the imagery used is comparable. However, I have a perfectly viable excuse: I was unfortunately and very recently attacked by a severe bout of writer’s block.

Thank you for taking your time to read through my brief-ish foreword and hopefully my work.

Kind Regards,

Rosie Sumner

PS: If you have any enquiries regarding any of my work, please do not hesitate to contact me. If required here is a link to the artist of the cover image: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=...

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Silently, I regard the moments where night is bound to day, dawn. The binding between the dead of night and the vitality of morning becomes unravelled by the ashen fingers of dawning winter sunlight, the bittersweet lament of bird song and the arrival of the mourners: this is the point at which the threads of life and death become torn apart at the seams…

There is nothing I can do but watch as the world around me is ripped to shreds and burned to ash, flaking away with falling snow.

Silently, a veil of pallid cloud ghosts across leaden skies, the silvery shroud hangs low to frozen earth. Both the heavens and earth are cadaverous, wan and sallow. The landscape blanched and bloodless, leeched of life and silhouetted against a skyline that appears spectral…

There is no separation between the heavens and earth; no separation between this world and the otherworld, not today.

Silently, the coffin is cautiously raised from the catafalque by pall bearers in one precise, fluid motion. Heads bowed in respect and concentration upon their assigned task they march the coffin to the hearse. The mourners gathered outside are too a sombre assembly. Sleek, sharp garbed in uniform attire. Their grim apparel reflects the nature of the affair. Rigid and rigorous they cut severe figures in solemn suits of all black, heads bowed. Steadily, the coffin is placed into the hearse. Sickeningly, my stomach lurches beginning to churn; the bitter zest of nausea bites at my throat; racing my heart tears at my ribcage with sharpened claws of horrified apprehension; claws sodden with foreboding and dripping with fear…

Fear of the inevitable. I recall it’s the unknown we fear regarding death and darkness, nothing more.

Silently, the hearse crawls through deserted streets. Upon the landau, a glossy, raven coffin gleams polished and glistening with silver furniture. The sterling plate upon the coffin lid reads ‘mea sepulchrum et flentibus’ the inscription is concealed, adorned by a delicate spray of flowers. Behind the director, the funeral procession forms a serpentine succession, snaking through barren streets. The mourners scarcely regard one another. Averting tearful gazes, avoiding contrived words of condolence. The reluctance to shatter the silence smothers the already suffocating atmosphere that lingers around the cortege. The burden of being administered the responsibility of picking up splintered shards of silence intolerable. The fear of being cut on fragments of serrated stares insufferable. The procession continues in silence…

Catching sight of gnarled wrought iron gates the murmur of voices begins to rise as do the pained cries of most in attendance. All of which are hastily stifled as every member of the cortege nears the graveside. And all fall in line.

Silently, the procession follows the coffin to the steady pace of ‘Marche Fúnebre’. The steady drum of rain audible against umbrellas that proffer little if any protection against the downpour. The view of the sky above is hopelessly obscured by twisted branches stripped bare by the driving rain. Shafts of pale winter sunlight drip through the boughs of skeletal trees and pool upon sodden earth, entombed in frost. The coffin is gently lowered into the gaping mouth of an open grave, baring knurled fangs of knotted roots and unforgiving crooked spurs of earth. Three scatters of earth are showered upon the coffin; one for past, present… future? The mourners disperse and so the congregation departs…

The ink of night has bled into day; darkness has fallen; I still remain here at the cemetery and all is quiet now.

Silently, like a ghost, a creature drifts listlessly through the gloom upon frosted feathers, wings that scarcely whisper through the silence. With eyes of liquid night, the creature regards the forgotten kingdom of the fallen. At the centre of this sovereignty is a stone structure that looms through the darkness; the only thing that seldom breaks the emptiness in my solitary surroundings. Weathered, disintegrating stone walls are crowned by a decaying, towering spire that hopelessly claws its way to the belly of the night sky above…

It is a realm of ruins, a place in time captured by a spell of death’s own enchantment and tyrant shadows that claim the reign of this perished empire as their own.

Silently, I look above, I will always look above. In hollow, cloud veiled skies a pearly river of argent silver glistens. Below a meandering river twists through the heart of dense forest like a ribbon of mercury. A chill barrels over the land with bare teeth and icy jaws, prowling hungrily through shadow. The ink of night bleeds into winding woodland, silver moonlight drips through branches, pooling upon frozen earth. Radiantly, the moon casts its pearly aura over this sepulchre of solitude and silence, tossed like a ghostly galleon upon a sea of shining stars, entwined in a labyrinthine tangle of glittering constellations, lacing together as one to tell stories that are centuries old and yet immortalised though icy flames. The river ensnares the surrounding darkness swirling in a sinuous stream of aqueous shadow. It is at present the night’s darkest hour; the hour before dawn. I regard the eastern horizon gravely. Shortly, night will grow weary and follow the lengthening shadows over the western horizon and vanish from sight. Tendrils of night will swiftly withdraw from the coils of dawn that snake their way across the horizon and chase the river of silver behind the infinite skyline.

The world thinks of me as gone; I only vanish with each new dawn.

Softly, I reassure those within the land of the living, “Do not stand at my grave and weep I am not there. I do not sleep.  Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die. Reader beware as you pass by. As you are now, so once was I. As am now, so you will be. Therefore, be prepared to follow me” …

Memento Mori; you will have an eternity to think inside the box.