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# Sepulchress
- URL: https://www.merionwest.com/sepulchress/
- Published: 2026-05-21T20:23:36.000Z
- Updated: 2026-06-11T21:45:53.000Z
- Author: MW Editors
- Tags: Poetry, Arts

> Digging beneath the dirt of my body is the only

> way I know to escape it: its fatal birdcage, its sung

> prison of bones. And as I labor You tell me of all the women

> who failed to listen, how now they are enshrouded

> in salt pillars & sunken in bogs & dissolved in lime.

> Unwilling I learn of the river, the tower, the millstone, the grave—

> & for a thousand miles around us the tall candles

> of evening are burning me to the ground.

> Anchoress me away. Blame the light for peering

> into my internment, for making of itself an unholy ghost.

> Place my (bird)cage where it will never open. Your voice

> a spear in my unsanctified heart, I go below ground.

> The insects are kinder than You ever were. Cruel god,

> abbess me empty. I pack dirt in my mouth so I cannot pray. 

### Amy DeBellis is the author of the novels *All Our Tomorrows*, *Methuselah*, and *The Widening Gyre*.