Rebirth & Deathcaps, Jessica Drake-Thomas

He will stalk what he cannot have. Dark as shadows, he hunts me along the path I take. Beneath the ground the mycelium speak—white funnels, stretching up like dead fingers to the surface. One day, they will rise

& I’m barefoot in the woods, walking their invisible paths, dressed in linen, crown of briars, tangled in my hair.

He’s a demon, a dead god— a crown of antlers, sleek like a carrion crow, chasing me through the deep of the wood. He will kill what he cannot take.

I dream often of houses, haunted by angry ghosts, how I become one of them. When I say I’m a ghost, what I mean is— unheard. I came out through the mirror, gasping as I woke. He will consume what he cannot possess, what slips through his fingers.

Leaning in, he stabs me through, my blood runs in rivers down my legs, black in the night. His eyes are flame & shadow. I see them; now, I see—

I fall, palms open in the dark, damp dirt. Deathcaps bloom from my abdomen, my forehead, my chin, the cups of my eyes. My bloodless lips fall open, a black snake slithering up from the ruin of my belly.

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Jessica Drake-Thomas is a poet & fiction-writer. She's the author of "Burials", a gothic horror poetry collection. She's a poetry editor at Coffin Bell Journal. She's a witchy-type who loves her magic like her coffee: dark, with sugar.