UNIDENTIFIED

For the coroner I am but a number,
my existence taken, gone, I am forever in a rigor slumber.
My new name, John or Jane Doe,
a body bag my new home, unidentified with a tag on my toe.
A victim of deviance, depravity and bloodlust,
my once golden and radiant frame, now deteriorates to dust.
I am classified "foul play suspected,"
but my manner and cause of death is fruitlessly dissected.
Washed up on a shore, or stillborn in a shallow grave,
animals feed, stripping my flesh - now a life too late to save.
My lifeblood has been drained by a blood-sucking vampire,
bathing in my bloodshed, all to satisfy an evil desire.
My unheard cries, distant, vanished echoes,
desperate to scream, choking to breathe, in the end, forced to let go.
Erasing my last effort to be found, my last moments agony,
a stranger devoured my existence, basking in the glory and delighting in abandoning me.
His blood runs a toxic soup, a cesspool of depravity,
my remains a shell, a hollow, gutted cavity.
My face reconstructed in a lifelike bust; clay now, replaces my flesh,
hoping someone will come forward; claim me and love me enough to, in a some small way - honor me in death.
©2005 Karen M. Seith