My Boy Builds Coffins
- Cherokee Publishing Club
- Nov 21, 2023
- 1 min read
written by Ms. Reid
My boy builds coffins. And I've seen an abundance of his work over the years.
They come in all sizes, all shapes. The most disconcerting coffins are the ones that I can hold in my arms. Yes, there is death amongst us and in our very beings. Our village does not speak of the thing in the forest that demands blood and bones. But we all know of it even if we all have not seen it. We simply do not ruminate on the monthly sacrifices—excuse me, offerings. We do not let them linger in our minds as red x's mark our souls, keeping us out of heaven's gate.
My boy has built a coffin for tomorrow's Harvest. It's small, too. Very small. I try not to
think about the day that he might build mine. Perhaps I'll be one of the "lucky" ones who gets to be eaten up by dirt and worms instead of the thing in the forest.
Of course, the coffins never hold anything inside them. There is never anything left behind in the forest to bury. I like to imagine that the empty coffins are there to hold our sins, so we bury them deep inside the earth lest our trespasses eat us alive instead.
While other villages harvest corn or wheat, we secretly reap the devil's crop.
And our fields are never barren.
Ms. Reid is an English and creative writing teacher at Cherokee High. She is a published horror author and is over the publishing club at Cherokee.
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