by Sarah Jackson

Once buried I thought you’d be gone,
tendrils crisp as bone, crumbling like charred paper.
But every night your soft hands find me.
I lie awake, listening tense
for the caress of your whispering filaments,
the first pinprick breaths.
Scared to sleep, then scared to wake
and tear myself free from the mesh of you
stitched to my skin in the dark.
I rise sick, drugged by our exchanges
sugars pushed through me
the things that you’ve drained.
I run and you catch me, leisurely
unrolling your milky fingers,
still speckled with the black earth
I hoped would hold you.
You are a net. Each night
I feel the threads tighten,
our merged memories, thin as hairs,
rustling, latticing
under my skin.

Sarah Jackson’s work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Translunar Travelers Lounge, and Crow & Cross Keys. She is editor of Inner Worlds magazine. Her website is sarah-i-jackson.ghost.io and you can find her on mastodon as @sarahijackson@wandering.shop.