Draped in my finest black lace,
curled on a red and white checkerboard blanket
sipping cabernet—eating fresh fruits
at the foot of a grave labelled:
VIOLA
With a pocketknife and shaky hands,
an apple cored and placed at the altar of your memory.
Red delicious; like your lips might have been.
An ethereal giggle–
the scene begins to melt around me,
a monochromatic kaleidoscope of dancing moon—damp moss
a pluck of your strings.
Rising from the ground
a harpy in Victorian dress—
translucent skin draped lightly over porous bones;
scent of cinnamon, cardamom, damp earth;
a decaying carrot cake.
Viola, you ignite my senses.
From my body
erupts a holy chorus
Hallelujah/amen
from cathedrals
in every pulsing cell
You reach for me,
touch me—burn me with the jelly of your ectoplasm
My heart thrills–
paroxysms of joy in beads of sweet sweat.
Viola, you are why I play in the cemetery.
Cheeky thing,
your essence bathes me
phantom fingertips drawing maps of the unknown over my body.
There’s a flood in the houses of Sodom
and I’ll let it wash me away!
Oh Viola,
I did not know any hunger could match my own—
you tore into me, through me,
I gave to you—
rapturous screams, incoherent affirmations—a feast that satiated neither of us.
But the thrill
it was enough to keep any gal enthralled.
Rosalyn Sandri is a poet, educator, and proud transgender woman currently trapped in Texas. She taught 10th-grade English for 10 years, until she was fired amid controversy over her gender identity. Now, she spends most of her time as a graduate student and poet. Most of her poems deal very frankly with her experiences as a transgender woman; however, recently, horror has been her refuge, especially ghost stories and body horror. Rosalyn has hoarded her poetry for most of her life (think, Emily Dickinson) but now feels ready to share herself with the world. You can find her on Substack under “Disrupting the Binary” or on YouTube as Rosalyn the Transgender Poet (@RosalynSandriPoetry).
Published 2/14/26