Mirage Asylum, Wildflower, Baltimore, MD
Sandpaper tongues drag lightly against waxy cheeks. Wet noses push into wrinkled sleeping skin. Time to wake up! UP! Time to feed us. A claw carefully extends outward, scraping harder this time. Into the skin. Feed. Us.
A bit of flesh spindly bones we are quiet we don’t ask for much we have no lips cannot suck drink biting columns of water catching drops catching spiders cobwebs caught on ears sniffing dry heaving trodding over fallen leaves meat from bone coughing shedding shifty eyes flickering yellow. Fur collects in the corners of the room. Who dwells amongst the dead? Slinking between crumbling stones dead flowers scratched CDs dust-covered ivy, stopping to rub faces against the shins of elderly visitors on weekends.
Embalmed bodies, do they even rot? Picking the flowering hops from a sickly bush creeping up the cemetery wall– what fertilizes this? The bodies don’t, I promise! Look, the bodies are encased in so many layers of wood and plush, nothing gets to them. But they eat your face after you die on your sofa. Clawing into waxy green skin. Wet noses and all. Feed. Us.
text by, Christina Gigliotti