The Emptiness that Marks Us

by Holly Day

Thousands of years from now, the dead bodies we leave behind 
will have turned to lye and eaten their way through the earth. Great
caverns 
will spread beneath our cemeteries as bodies melt through caskets 
as empty and huge as the cathedrals crumbling aboveground. 

Small creatures will find their way into these caverns, their descendants 
slowly becoming blind with each new generation. Pools of water 
filled with eyeless fish and newts will spread through the tunnels 
perhaps still carrying traces of embalming fluid and lead.