Photo by Mor Shani on Unsplash
by Erin Vance —
In St. Michan’s crypt, I shook hands with a nun
and a hanged man.
—or maybe it was in my grandfather’s cellar—
Regardless, I remember there was a ferret or an otter—
some long mammal,
dancing figure eights around my ankles.
After I stared long into the gaping mouths of St Michan’s mummies
—or my grandfather’s collection of corpses—
and breathed their dust deep into my bronchioles,
I walked down the street to a juice bar
and through a long violet straw
sipped cherry blood and looked directly into the sun.
Erin Emily Ann Vance, MA is a Canadian fiction writer and poet. Her novel Advice for Taxidermists and Amateur Beekeepers will be published by Stonehouse Publishing in Fall 2019 and her second poetry chapbook, The Sorceress Who Left Too Soon was released by Coven Editions in Spring 2019.