Elegy for Pearl Bryan
KD Leigh
A girl’s head floats, ghostly,
Rotting softly, in still water,
Face colorless, contorted,
A scream of ancient horror.
(Two men and a woman enter.)
Hair wisps, rise and fall,
Fringe on Death’s tattered cloak,
Strands suspended, umbilical cords coiling,
round a lineage of crumbling stone.
(Two men leave.)
Stretched over a skeletal frame,
Skin surrenders to bone’s motherly swell,
The stench of three lives unled,
Lay lost at the bottom of a well.
(A woman's headless corpse,
follows behind them.)
Heavy veins, a noose in afterbirth,
Wilting like a trail of love-lies-bleeding,
And a girl approaches pearlescent eternity.
Eyes, like shells, pried open and pleading.