June Naps in the Town Cemetery by Jessi Harrison

A cricket follows you into the house.                                You do not                               know this at first.  But the echoed chirping of trappeddesperation haunts its wayinto your dreams.                                   Funny, on how a bad night, your bed sheets become a blade. Your sweat becomes the guillotine. Andyour dreams become an awakeninginto the afterlife.  You watch the way                                 I breathe. Like an exoskeleton pickingout and rearranging each ribbone with every rise of the chest.  In your sleep - you speak to mein riddles. Like you can’t affordtongues. Like the devil has been cleansed from insideyou. Like you gave uppoison years ago.                                   Yet here we lie. Dirtying things that do not deservestains. Carving our names into the trunks of trees just to provephysicality. Knocking over grave markers in the cemetery like the answer to every secretis in the haunting,                                 not in the ghost.