decompose by Skye Bowdon (15, New Mexico)*

child, speak no evil. grandmother teaches silence as she rips weeds from flower beds. your throat is rooted in disobedience. discarded greenery will be disposed of with the butcher scraps. bleeding cow heart. rotting chicken intestines. goat tongue. tread lightly. mistakes are not permitted to complain of a calloused voice or splintered skin.

child, see no evil. look down, only
down.

---

eye contact is a gruesome event. avoid the occasion at all costs. muddy ground cakes on the soles of your moth-eaten boots. you feel as though something is looming over you. usually, it’s grandfather’s       robust figure and baleful guffaw, but this time it’s the sky. though you cannot see it, it’s a cloudless clear blue. vice’s sun dries your back to leather.

child, hear no evil. sit atop the wood pile and focus. listen to the gospel of hypnosis that the wind chime sings. exist in the realm between consciousness and oblivion where you can hear a constant low hymn that will trap you in apathy. 

be calmed