reka zelja

the dead strewn with flowers, hands clasped in something like defense 

the forensic team has photographed and unwrapped it, careful plucking of silk from skin and padded bones, dusky arms untucked like wings. life in the milky residue. 

    “You have thirty three vertebrae divided into five regions.” The touching stops at the base of your spine, fingers gently pressing on either side. “Our killer took the sacrum, from the Latin os sacrum – holy or sacred bone.”

The sacrum was the part of the animal offered in sacrifice. The Greek’s believed the bone was indestructible. It was thought to be the seat of the human soul.

then again, we've also thought that of livers and hearts. in any case, what we are really after is the frost 

the garden of the dead (pretty soil) 

empathetic undoing of what is sweet and holy, somehow made useful? somehow translated into an uprooting of sympathy? young animal love poised in the trees and radiating sunlight