Thirst

by Marina Yuszczuk

Only those able to pay for the right to poetry in death are here; for everyone else, common graves or bare stone signal, definitively, their insignificance in life.

Only the flesh knows horror; bones, once clean, might as well be fossils, pieces of wood, curiosities. It’s flesh that has been keeping me up at night.

Humans have invented countless stories in which those of my kind have no life of our own; if I might be permitted a moment of lyricism, we exist only to populate their nightmares. They could never understand this insatiable thirst. Much less this extraordinary, indomitable instinct for survival, which can only be explained by the fact that we are beasts.

On the other hand, it was a religion founded on a murder. How could I not find that appealing?

The cemetery opens and closes, like an oyster on the ocean floor, to reveal its contents and offer this promise to all who aspire to rest in its embrace: You are not a grain of sand; you are a pearl.

Death was on the horizon, yes, but so was this adult life of mine that had disappointed me in nearly every possible way. It existed under the sign of disillusionment, the destruction of everything I had believed was indestructible, a daily resignation to reality.

Every horror has a moment when it glistens; after that, it’s just sad.