Natasha

been lonesome two years since she disappeared

I'm at the park where she was

last seen a vast green clearing wrapped up in maple trees spilling the

morning rain from their leaves

I used to walk here with a girl seventeen at

the time mistress of seventeen smiles sublime with flaming locks of red in

autumn and burning locks of orange in the summertime we were solemn and

awkward that last night together

she laid by my side staring into starless

skies black as fallen angel feathers

I stared into the forest pretending not

to see the hangmen she was hiding in her eyes of serpent green she said

there was another

I refused to believe her

I'd thought we'd kiss till our

tongues tied together all my loving memories became scenes of frenzied

slaughter my hands became cruel talons as they moved to destroy her her neck

broke like a toy in a careless child's grip my tears rained down into dead

eyes and splashed upon her lifeless lips

I put her in the ground like a flower here

I am standing in that same spot today where my angel's empty

shell last laid and as my tears began to well up once more I see a path into

the treeline that I'd never seen before

I follow it down into a ravine find

a hole in the earth framed in the roots of a birch

tree subtle echoes of her

voice speaking words I've never heard but the way

she hissed her "s"'s it

just had to be her I smell honeysuckle then opium two of her signature

scents I pull aside all the thistles and vines

and mesmerized I make my

descent as I crawl further inside the light slowly dies and the dirt begins

to feel like her skin I tremble as

I drag my fingers down the walls

caressing her sweet flesh again

I'm sliding down trying so hard not to fall

slipping on the blood that's seeping from the walls then suddenly

I'm surrounded by a thousand of her eyes

bathing the tunnel in a strange green

light the eyes show me pictures like ghostly television

screens all her thrashing final struggles and her ravaged

corpse serene the tunnel is

closing behind me pressing me further and further down

I'm being swallowed by her earth and c

onsumed by her ground the end is moving into sight I gasp

and I scream as I see her lovely mouth five times the size of me her lips

curl into a grin around her crooked gnashing teeth I'm pulverized and

devoured in the jaws of a girl seventeen