I got a job as a grave digger.
I had great difficulty completing
the digging bit, so my thick knuckled
colleague, Jeff, would do that part
for me. I would just stand back and cheer
him on, clapping every time he lifted
a particularly large clump of dirt.
Jeff wouldn’t say much during a shift,
on account of him not having a tongue,
but we knew how to communicate. He had eyes
that could talk – if you know what I mean.
He’d wink when I’d open my lunchbox
to let me know he wanted one of my ham sandwiches
and then wink again to let me know
he didn’t like it. Haha. If he wanted water
he’d blink blink blink, and you should have seen
how wide those peepers would open
whenever a corpse broke out of its coffin
and through the earth and grabbed our shins.
I could hear his eyelids screaming.

© Carl Burkitt 2023