Bones & Teeth
 
My eyes see branches, bark, and splintered wood,
 fungus, moss, and flowers, a slater crawling in the lichen,
a damp worm aching through the loam.
My brain registers bones, bones, bones
 as it takes something gorgeous
 and squeezes out the darker things.
 Jagged wood and shards of stone reveal themselves as scattered teeth.
Parchment whorls of silver birch become flaking, failing human skin.
The mind bites into pareidolia,
 chewing horror from a summer walk
as one cold drop seeps down my spine
and my gullet clenches, chewing in response.
I beg of my heart and adrenal system,
 do not listen, but pareidolia beckons,
fatally seductive,
 and listen they always do.

A.L. Kersel is a writer from the west of Scotland. Her prose has appeared in anthologies from Tranquillity Publishing, Tales of Tremendous Tragicide and Halcyon Days and Cyanide Nights, as well as online at A Million and One Magazine and Storgy Magazine. Bones & Teeth is her first published poem.