sepulchre ovenbird I watch him circle the perimeter of an open field. Everything is white. Everything is snow. The sky is a uniform sheet of dingy clouds. His young body is small against the wide landscape. He pulls a threadbare parka around himself, tugs the hood down over his face, and walks into the wind, which whips up icy powder making the earth look like a stormy sea. I come to stand beside him between two marble pillars that rise like winter’s teeth from the bony earth. The columns mark a place where the veil between worlds is thin. Beyond the gate lies a solitary gravestone, white granite flecked with pearlescent shards. The grave belongs to the boy, who is alive, but also dead, or dead, but also alive. We approach hallowed ground and watch the marker rise from the earth, like a mountain forming under tectonic pressure. Stone angels take their place beside a looming sepulchre, their wings painted gold, shimmering in the gloaming. A pedestal cracks through the crust of snow and we find upon its pulpit a heavy book with gilt pages, jewel encrusted covers held closed with a silver clasp. The boy touches his index finger to the ornate keyhole and the book springs open, its illuminated pages falling open to a wet plate photograph in fading sepia. The boy never knew his mother and this picture unlocks the mystery of her past. The image is startling, showing a deformed face wracked with misery. The upper half of the face is nondescript and ordinary, but the thin line of the mouth is a mirrored plane that reflects a second nose which grows upon the lower jaw, an upside down facsimile of the one above. The mouth moves and the bottom nose rides up and down with the chin, like the beak of a dying bird. The boy stares in horror, every word drying up in his throat. In the distance a man approaches, tall and thin, wearing a black trench coat that swirls around his ankles and a grey felt homburg hat. His form resolves slowly from the blowing snow and he approaches like a spectre, unhurried, bringing a chill that settles in the mind. When he is close he looms over us, tall and gaunt like death. His long fingers stroke the pages of the book and his eyes lock onto the boy, who is trembling at my side. When he speaks his voice is low like gathering thunder, like water building up behind a dam, like an aneurism you didn’t even know was there. “Your mother was plagued with a host of deformities,” he tells the boy. “I didn’t intend to get her pregnant. Her womb was twisted within her, the birth canal not fully formed. When I found she was with child I begged her to abort, but she refused. She felt you moving within her and she was willing to die to let you see the light. And she did die. Horribly and painfully as your miserable body ripped her apart in your haste to live. Now you know. And I never want to see you again. I want to forget that you drew breath upon this earth.” The man stalks off into the storm and the boy’s eyes swim with grief. He swings his gaze around the crumbling crypt and catches sight of scores of gleaming mason jars upon a high shelf. Each is dusty with age, but full of preserves stored here to feed the dead in the afterlife. I feel a burning rage build in his tiny chest and he sweeps the jars to the floor where they shatter, leaking honey and vinegar and olive oil onto the dirt floor. The dead will not rest easy now, deprived of the sweet and sour gifts left to sustain them. There will never be another day that isn’t haunted. Never a night untroubled by gummy mouths desperate to suckle at the breast of a dwindling future. 260317 what's it to you? who go blather from