Poorly Executed Epitaphs by Ellen Muller

Poorly Executed Epitaphs

In death, God immediately hands you a list of every person who ever harboured a crush on you,

finally putting an end any ambiguity

Faceless creative lost to a cycle of free labour

Embalmed with Writers Tears whisky

Chipped coffee-stained smile, haunted by an impalpable loneliness while surrounded by friendly faces

Fading ink-stained fingertips

bequeathing a small hoard of crimpled black skinny leg jeans

and op-shop penguins

Last reflection spent estimating what percentage of personality had hinged on pop culture and well- timed Simpsons quotes

So many hours

and punnets of cherries wasted

attempting to perfect the timeless art of seduction

and learn how to tie a knot in a cherry-stem

à la Audrey from Twin Peaks

Incapable of listening to ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ in full

fearing it detailed an ending that was destined for them any day now

As they walked the city,

their guardian angel,

was a white cat with green eyes,

from a 1950s lamp billboard

Life is like a round of goon of fortune,

you will likely get a very average fruity lexia

Theirs was a relatively apt tinder bio – albeit paired with suspiciously well-lit photos that were admittedly, from at least three years ago

A routine displeasure to the eyes of elderly commuters

for the visible tattoos

the resting bitch-face

and the waste they constituted to conventional prettiness

Hazel eyed, skittish door slammer

left burning in perfectionist limbo

Fidgety, glass-eyed, stargazer

too impatient to attempt tracing any sense of the constellations

A crazy-eyed, well-meaning over-waterer

inadvertently responsible for the homicide of countless houseplants

A finesse for concealing crippling fragility under a perfectly orchestrated social media presence

A spirit left lingering on a once regular tramline,

hoping still for that one casual chance encounter that would’ve made you change your mind

They used to replay every smile she had once given them, and for one moment,

things didn’t seem broken

The whole years of unrequited love trope isn’t romantic when you’re stuck living it

Wordsmith whose poetry did,

thankfully,

get slightly less cringey once they really were over that one breakup

Did it count as having finished reading some impressively-lengthed bit of literature if you can’t for the life of you remember what the basic plot was?

Assumed people thought, cared or considered them a hell of a lot more than they actually did

Check out Poe’s Very Attractive Cousin for more of Ellen’s work or head to their website/Instagram.

Executive Producers

Daniel Henson

Sue White