In a red garden, at midnight, the foliage turns to winged demons.
Lunar light cuts like a sickle-shaped knife.
I’m running from a horror film, hunted in forests, on highways.
Men who belong in prison sucked me dry and put me in boxes.
The village will throw their stones if they find me.
They will build up towers higher than the mountain I fell down.
From an urn to a river of hell.
I feel like a crime scene of glass and bones covered in soil.
I want to curl up in a vacant house and feel solace settle on me like a comforting raindrop.
I want to hide from my enemies, vanishing into the calm of the trees.
Leave them standing hollow at a dead end.
I live in shrouds of secrecy.
I weep all over the red leaves.
Will they find me, or am I lost to them forever?
by Darla Cathilde Cutherford