Originally published in The Deadlands in December 2023

Troop No. 80085

 

girl guides

us down into our decadent

afterlife.

 

scouts in sashes patched

with souls

spritz us with bath & body works

and smudge us

with sage.

 

in summer camp we sat round a fire

and listened to how all d*kes

go to hell.

 

behind communal showers

we danced a hexing circle

and ate trefoils laced

with lust.

 

on the opposite side of a false lake

charon-crossed creek

we kissed death

and listened to her whisper

 

all my greatest girls 

get a shadow of their own.

 

flesh-freed, shame-flayed

we crush cookies into dust

rip box tops into orisons

soggy on the bank

of the lake we used to drown

our chastity.

 

our death is the latest badge

stitched to rotting skin

luminous beneath the moon.

 

sitting cross-legged in mosquito pools

we learn the names of the shadows

who lead our immortal troop:

 

hecate, artemis, baba yaga

llorona, lilith, succubus

bloodied between matching sets

of lips.

 

bitten nails chipped black with cheap

polish, cuticles chewed back

fingers fumble calculator buttons,

add us up to a number 

all the boys know—

 

80085

spirits screaming

spines arching

vomiting our desires in torrents

of angry stars.

 

daisies grow into huntresses,

brownies blossom intentions

all our own.

 

in life, you couldn’t pry us apart–

sharing beds and showers

exploring the contours of bodies

alike and different all the same.

 

in death, we grow.

loving longer, holding harder

than brittle bones allowed.

 

look up, little girl:

the sky’s awash in shadows

tangled sheet ropes stretched

from horizon to horizon.

 

reach up and find

ladder, net, quilt

whispering all our history you never heard

 

captivated round a crackling fire

on the other side 

of love.

Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Massachusetts, on Pocumtuck and Abenaki land. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Vastarien, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nightmare Magazine, and others. She is the flash winner of the 2022 F(r)iction Spring Literary Contest and has been nominated for the Bram Stoker, Pushcart, Best of the Net, Elgin, Utopia, Rhysling, and Dwarf Stars awards. Her Bram Stoker and Elgin Award-nominated poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, is out now from Android Press.