Only Your Grave Is Really Yours Poem by Patti Masterman

What we have, we hold:
Car thieves scatter clothes, mail
to make the stolen ​more​
their own.

Solomon said, split the child in half;
Each party gets a wing, a thigh.
In the real world none lets go willingly.

To have and to hold:
The dust on the threshold,
the wind at the eaves.

There's interest on the principal
until they own the whole house
​t​he dirt beneath it too.

What we have, we hold onto for dear life
until we have become just another something-
an object someone else holds

For as long as they dare,
or as long as breath lasts,
​while the​
dirt lies insensate.

The world's spinning a thousand miles an hour
through dimensions no one can own,
and can't eve​r​
sink a stake into.

Your grave is still yours
only so long as your bones have ​the ​
weight
and girth, with which to fill it.