Lay Myself Down in the Bog
by Emily Wagner
I don’t want to die I want to be dead to sleep, to sink, to turn and change and become Mysterious. Sink into a bog wearing something confusing, holding something strange — mummified or ossified or whatever the right word is my face become coal black and serene, something for future archeologists to wonder at, argue over:“Was she typical look she was a witch you can tell by the thing in her hand NO CLEARLY she was a sacrifice a lost widow a young girl who fell”
finally being seen but not as myself. Just a curiosity, possibly stuck in a museum. If I do this right I can confuse them so much they’ll let me sink back into the bog, to sleep and dream with my Mona Lisa smile, my enigmatic ways that shame them and offer no answers. I don’t want to leave my life but I want my life to leave me, to pass on and go without me. I can wait here in the bog and become something else. Maybe I’ll never be found. That’s not the interesting option though. I want to be found, I want to be seen, discovered, marvelled over As I never could be in life. I want to be frustrating I don’t want to hear the things people say. Let me sleep. Let me sink.
Emily Wagner is a Young Adult Librarian by day and the Program Chair for Readercon by also day. She knits and spins and reads books when she can, and library patrons tend to believe she has magic powers, so who is she to argue? Emily's favorite fruit is pomegranate, at least today.
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