Headphones on ears, body in the grass, and though I’ve disappeared into a guitar’s melody – loud and fuzzy – combined with vocals that haunt me, I’m still wondering if the creatures of the soil living beneath my supine frame can tell I’m already dead inside, and if they’re starting to crawl up toward me – laid out on a platter of weeds – eager to feast on the girl who feels nothing despite a guitar’s vibrations and knows she belongs – deep, down – buried with the rest of the damned, flesh rotting at the same rate as her mind with all of her trapped in the darkness below the green, soul flowing up like swirls of smoke through a shoegaze tune.

Tinamarie Cox lives in Arizona with her husband and two children. Her written and visual work has appeared in several publications under various genres. She is also the author of Self-Destruction in Small Doses (Bottlecap Press) and a forthcoming collection titled Through a Sea Laced with Midnight Hues (Nymeria Publishing).