Next Life

The skull whose name was smoke spoke worm words. Its missing teeth hissed from the gizzard of an owl. How odd, I thought, to be a skull & haunt a body from within! The air smelled of rotting leaves; it was October. Icy feathers began to form on the edges of grass blades— the only kind of next life that made sense to me, stoned as I was. My gut gurgled polyphonically. I considered fear as if from a great height.