Open Up Your Skull
The young girl—she was light
and breakable, like an insect. Body an artist’s mold.
He had to dig a hole fit for a chest.
So he could squash
the bug. A trail littered with blood and leaves.
Her screams make the dog bark.
Her hands torn from birch bark.
He continues his work by faint light—
heaving, grunting, slurring. It leaves
him tired and spent. He created a mold
of her perfect skull in his mind. It was firm. A ripened squash.
He would keep her in his chest,
close to his heart. A hidden chest,
buried under sheets of white bark.
But her face had become a misshapen squash.
Her skin purple and light,
bread covered in mold.
Under the birch trees, her throat full of leaves.
It pains him that this is how he leaves
her. He thinks about her deflated chest,
her lungs of black mold.
When he comes to visit her the dog will bark.
He studies her face, light
extinguished. Stomach gutted like a squash.
She will forgive him. For his thoughts—he had to squash
Down fall his tears. Down fall the leaves.
Her bones are light.
He digs his hands into her chest,
his skin like bark.
He will never be able to mold
her thoughts. The lichen on the trees is mold.
By bystander birch trees, a rotting squash
slept there. Under white bark,
and lifeless leaves.
A buried chest.
And then it began to become light
again.
Savannah Meyer is a junior creative writing major with a concentration in poetry at SUNY Purchase. She lives in the Hudson Valley and is a poetry editor for both Feral Feline Lit Mag and Italics Mine. Savannah is a mother to two tree frogs and loves to write about body horror and forests.