Memento Mori, Michaela Mayer

With the salt slip of wind on my cheek

I saw the skeleton. Buried in grey muck

beside the beach, cattails waving on either

side, the hooves now silent, unmoving:

a deer dissolved down to bone. The stench

of death dripping from the air. Gone

its days of loping through dawn forests.

Here to stay, the curl of its leathered hide.

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Michaela Mayer is a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher and poet from Virginia. Her works have been previously published in Burning House Press, Mineral Lit Mag, Minute Magazine, Snapdragon Journal, Winged Nation, Perhappened, and Windows Facing Windows. She can be found on Twitter @mswannmayer5.