The Final Nail Abby Peschges You have to pay honor to the tough stuff, or all you’re doing is lying to yourself in bed when the world is too high and you can’t climb out of the grave that was dug for you. Fingernails stuffed full of the black dirt wiggling with worms and life. Trapped in a breathing cage You’re absorbed until there’s nothing left not even an ounce of spit or courage or a single bead of salt water your soul left behind. I do it because it’s the right thing to do. The right turn away from the light and into the world of dark hair clothed by doctrine and bruises covered by law. When the world is too high and I am only a casket girl* with ideas in my casquette instead of dresses and gems, decorated by my prayers and promises to God I listen for the owl to guide me up and around. I wait for his signal to come. I wait until my ears bleed from the silence and deception the air spits at me. I wait until the moon offers me a way to own my bones and flesh and not let it constrict me like roots holding dirt in place. But the tools I was given tighten instead of loosen, and I become exactly what I was fighting against. *Casket girl: a young girl, often from an orphanage or convent, taken from France to New Orleans to be married. They were accompanied by small chests filled with their clothes, known as casquettes.
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