Sestina Day 28: Reverse Zombie

In honour of the excellent film 28 Days Later, I felt it was time for a zombie sestina.  The NaPoWriMo Prompt was to write a poem backwards, line by line. They suggested ‘starting’ with a famous saying as the last line and then working your way up to the top.

However the combination of zombies and backwardsness reminded me of an excellent and unexpectedly moving trailer for the horribly gory zombie themed game Dead Island shown to me by the lovely  Saxon and Emma , which shows a similar, but not identical story in reverse chronological order.  My story is different because of syllable count. I didn’t have space to put ravaging zombie hordes in my poem, so I had to settle for an undead fox.

Obviously, as you read mine, it’s the right way round, but I did write it from the bottom up!

We need to get away from everything

Because my work is always on my mind

I’ve no time for my wife and little girl

It’s so long since we had some peace and quiet

I only see my daughter when she sleeps

If I keep on like this, I’ll soon be dead.

 

Out walking in the woods, we find a dead

Fox. And my girl cries and strokes the thing

It stirs, and bites. She cries, and later sleeps

And now something is preying on my mind

I check her pulse. It’s gone completely quiet

And then she wakes, and now she’s not our girl.

 

I lock the bedroom door against the girl

Who used to be our child, the walking dead

We hold each other, and our sobs are quiet

How did our darling girl become this thing?

Once bitten, both of us will lose our minds

All we can do is wait until she sleeps.

 

My wife had tried to snatch an hour’s sleep

Somehow, she still got bitten by our girl.

I stabbed her, before she could lose her mind

And now she’s lying in the bedroom, dead

I don’t feel sad, it was the kindest thing.

I turn, for suddenly the house is quiet.

 

I find her curled up in the corner, quiet.

She looks just like she used to, as she sleeps

It isn’t her, it’s some unfeeling thing.

I draw my knife, decapitate my girl

And sag, relieved: what she became is dead.

My wife and child both gone, and I don’t mind

 

For soon, I will be dead. How could I mind?

Though everything’s destroyed, it’s now so quiet

In peace at last she sleeps, my little girl.