All the others nights are darker by Chad Musick

If the doors would open, if hands would relinquish sweet baubles of mercy to ward this child against evil, then the hungry ghosts, the wolves dressed up as humans, could be chased back to their lairs by the candy of my breath. For tonight. They know that tasting this sweetness requires less, requires patience: razor blades concealed in absence of apples, growling that emerges from below the throat. All the other nights will be enough time, they promise, for me to learn the lessons of silence. To learn what it takes to not be a skeleton.

Mouths yearn to be filled,
tongues to writhe, bodies
to yield to savoring flesh.

Chad Musick is an authors’ editor for scientific and technical manuscripts. He earned a PhD in mathematical sciences from Nagoya University and lives in Nagoya, Japan, with his family.