To Be Devoured

by Sara Tantlinger

Each grave marker nothing more than a symbol of solid pain, constantly digging broken concrete slabs deeper into my head, reminders of all the funerals I’ve attended in my nearly three decades of life.

What a strange, marvelous thing it would be. Eat away the bad parts—for me, eat away my sadness, the sticky, bitter feelings with their rage inside my body, cloying my will to live somedays. Most days.

Do not dwell in graveyards. Do not dwell in graveyards.

nothing more than a vain ghoul of a human who hurts people and dries them up into empty shells.