by Morgan L. Ventura
Content warning: Endangered body, grief, trauma (C-PTSD)
Gracile and pale, the shimmering bones call out to me
in a salty way, to spite the massive, glacial lake
that gives the Midwest its occasional hill and lilt.
I am on a landlocked beach no island can haunt, yet
the thirst ensues. It is a thirst that can’t be quenched,
and water turns to mist, a vapor ripe with smoke, petrol,
and watermelon from the last time we ever crawled on
pure sand. There is even a hunger, but my ruddy thick
tongue is like Lake Michigan’s shore, cracking
in the rain. In the mirror of the sky, I, for a moment,
dream I am a shiny, iridescent agate. I imagine earth
enveloping me, gyrating and pulsing like men –
or is it machines – tearing tender earth to pieces. Until,
and only until, I am consumed. To find home in the soil.
Only to repeat again. Science is divine, I think. To know
that the sand and bones shivering beneath my body
will hibernate – or reincarnate –born again to a fresh
world, a new time. If I lie still, I can feel echoes.
MORGAN L. VENTURA is a Sicilian-Irish American writer and anthropologist originally from Chicago and now based between Vancouver and Oaxaca. Their work appears in Phantom Drift, Geist, Ghost City Review, and Folklore Thursday (among others). When not writing about the otherworldly, Morgan tweets @hmorganvl or can be found on Instagram @_h.morgan_88
Extinction No. 6 can be found in Augur Magazine Issue 3.2.
