Memento Mori

Touch it. Reach / under the crumbling back deck / hands in blue dishwashing gloves, grab / the raccoon skull. Pull it loose / from its pelt, feel / decomposition’s texture. / This is how dead things are. / This is how you will be one day / if you are lucky / a smell, a skull, some hair / a novelty for a boy to find / in his yard, ask his mother / to get for him / to marvel over.

Katherine Anderson Howell (she/her) writes and parents in Washington, D.C. She is a poet, a licensed esthetician and an independent scholar of disability and fandom. Her work can be found in publications as varied as The Account, Whale Road Review, and Misfit Magazine, among others. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and for a Pushcart Prize.