The man wrote a letter to his wife every day

save for two special days when he saw her. 

On those days he would stick his hands into the earth 

and uncover her charred form, 

her eyes black pits that stared back at his,

her lips shrunken and agape with rot and maggots.

Like lovers reunited, 

he would plant a kiss there

and taste her polluted tissue.

The moisture would soon spawn mold

that futilely attempted to swallow her back into the earth. 

The man would then take her hands

as if to pull her into a lively dance,

and place his letters in her loose grip,

caressing the deflated flesh of her fingers

with his writer’s callouses.

He’d then lay her hands back over her chest, 

trapping his writing between. 

Each scratched indentation on the pages would call upon its neighbor 

to create the ward that would bind the woman to this earth once more.

Here she would remain, decaying but never decomposing, 

bound by her involuntary consecration. 

The man would have to leave her shortly;

He could only bear the stench of his sins for so long.

For as much as he loved her,

he knew that he did not love her enough to let her go.