by Joshua Gessner

I see a girl, hidden behind a curtain of trees, with poisoned lips and rotten teeth. Somewhere, in the pit of her, her heart is just as rotten. I believe if you slit her open, maggots and soot would be all you’d find. There is a shadow of her before she changed, signing her soul in the big black book. Yet that is all we know, the memory of her. For now, she is claimed by the unholy. She is his servant. A witch. I feel her name upon my own lips now. It stings, like a rose’s thorn. Madeline.

Joshua Gessner