Natasha

Been two lonesome years since she disappeared

I'm at the park where she was last seen

A vast green clearing wrapped in maple trees spilling the morning rain from their leaves

I used to walk here with a girl seventeen at the time

Mistress of seventeen smiles

Sublime with flaming locks of red in autumn

And burning locks of orange in the summertime

We were solemn and awkward that last night together

She laid by my side staring into starless skies black as fallen angel feathers

I stared into the forest pretending not to see the hangmen she was hiding in her eyes of serpent green

She said that there was another

I refused to believe her

I thought we'd kiss until our tongues tied together

All my loving memories became scenes of frenzied slaughter

My hands became cruel talons as they moved to destroy her

Her neck broke like a toy in a careless child's grip

My tears rained down into dead eyes and splashed upon her lifeless lips

I put her in the ground like a flower

Here I am standing in that same spot today where my angel's empty shell last laid

And as my tears begin to well up once more I see a path into the treeline that I'd never seen before

I follow it down into a ravine and find a hole in the earth framed in the roots of a birch tree

Subtle echoes of her voice speaking words I've never heard before but the way she hissed her "s"s it just had to be her

I smell honeysuckle then opium

Two of her signature scents

I pull aside all the thistles and vines and mesmerized I made my descent as I crawl further inside

The light slowly dies and the dirt begins to feel like her skin

I tremble as I drag my fingers down the walls caressing her sweet flesh again

I'm sliding downward trying so hard not to fall slipping on the blood that's seeping from the walls

Then suddenly I'm surrounded by a thousand of her eyes bathing the tunnel in a strange green light

The eyes show me pictures like ghostly television screens

All her thrashing final struggles and her ravaged corpse

Serene the tunnel is closing behind me

Pressing me further and further down

I'm being swallowed by her earth and consumed by her ground

The end is moving into sight

I gasp and I scream as I see her lovely mouth five times the size of me

Her lips curl into a grin around her crooked gnashing teeth

I'm pulverized and devoured in the jaws of a girl seventeen