The Scattered Bones

by Nicole Scarano

I cried because his voice was everything. It reached inside my soul, rewriting my definition of perfection. It strangled my erratically beating heart and coated my mind with its harshness. That sound. It could burn the world to ash with its power, and it terrified me how it erased the wariness of men that servitude had engrained in my being.

“I’ll want you even in death, Sellah. There’s no afterlife, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll love you until I’m dead in the dirt, then I’ll love you until my body is nothing but bones. And when my bones fade to dust coating the earth, I’ll still want you.”