Sonya Taaffe

Larva

Ghosts walk in the faces of strangers I loved
whose shadows cross me like earthquakes while I sleep.
The dead lie uneasy
when the living haunt the living, fretting
from their graves or beds or books.
Demon‐king, never let me go back to Eden
where the windfalls lie silent as serpents in the grass.
Never let me see your death mask smiling,
so little gone out of it but the light in the eyes.

Sonya Taaffe’s short stories and poems have appeared in such venues as Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction, The Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry, People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy, The Best of Not One of Us, The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase, and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.