The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Blue Moon Harvest
by Tawny McCarty

We stacked the hearts in the root cellar, ridged and resting slow,  

skins the color of old bruises in the hush below the snow.

A moon that lost its sky in the place where willows never weep

And dust keeps score against its rationed sleep

.

We fed them dark, we fed them ash, we fed them careful names,  

until the blue one clicked awake and breathed between the frames.  

No door swung wide, no lantern lit, just floorboards taking air,  

and every name we thought we lost came tiptoeing up the stair.

.

The stems were keys, each rib a lock, a chorus made of bone,  

and only the moon blue rind would turn when touched with careful tone.  

We called it harvest, but they were counting what we owed.  

Do not salt the cellar, leave them thirst, let silence bar the road.

 

Fiction © Copyright Tawny McCarty
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com