#amnion

the stars go out and they don’t come back

there’s a smell of hot metal and sex, and you nearly choke on it

the air’s thick and cloying, like you’ve walked into a dog’s mouth, and there’s a sudden wind that threatens to strip the flesh from your bones, and with it a terrible howling

when it passes all is still, and though the heat and the smell and the dark persist, you wonder if you are dead or dying

but there are lights—guttering flames—in the distance, suggesting the narrow mouth of a long, dark passage, its surface glistening, limned with that faraway orange glow

there is no way back.