Carve a circle in your chest with a knife your mother touched. Wash your hands in the copper river it creates. Prepare a meal of thyme and wine, to be consumed at the hour of your birth. Craft a shrine. Draw a sigil in the earth. Crush a doll with mortar and pestle while speaking the names of your childhood friends in a language you do not know. Place a candle in the window under the light of a waxing moon. Hum the tune your grandfather used to calm you in the restless night. After all of this, open wide. Devour hell and all its companions. Grind the sweet old bones between your teeth.
Erin Marie Hall is a pagan, poet, and visual artist from South Bend, IN. She earned a BA in English at Indiana University and now works as a program coordinator at the University of Notre Dame. Her work, which explores sexuality, mental illness, the body, and the apocalyptic, has appeared or is forthcoming in Unlost Journal, After the Pause, Rust + Moth, and your nightmares.