The Ossuary at Ocean’s End

by Marisca Pichette

We welcome you your bones
wrapped in seaweed and
ancestor’s scales,
following the tides that led you
here
to us.

Lay them by tails
Lay them by shells that once
were not empty.
Lay them in waters too dark
to find a second
time.

We welcome your bones
too heavy to float
and make room 
for a reef
of dead.

waves lap and salt
             sinks
into arms
of all who once held,

continue holding–
even as oceans 
end.

© Copyright Marisca Pichette

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Marisca Pichette is an author of speculative fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Fireside, Apparition Lit, PseudoPod, PodCastle, and Uncharted, among others. Her debut novel, Broken, is forthcoming in August 2022 with Heroic Books. A lover of moss and monsters, she lives in Western Massachusetts.

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Read the Rest of the October Issue

• The Ossuary at Ocean’s End by Marisca Pichette
• Elemental by Marlan Quade Cook
• portrait of a girl in water by Ashley Bao
• A Thousand Souls by Marie Brennan
• Seafloor Skull by Inkshark
• The Ghosts of Mermaids & The Answer Atop Mermaid’s Rest by Coral Alejandra Moore and Cathin Yang
• Awoken by Elyse Russell and Miranda Leyson
• The Abyssal Architect by Ori Jay
• One Last Shriek by Umiyuri Katsuyama
• Merfolks as a Passage from My Thoughts and Doings by Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto
• This Is Your Home by Stefan Slater
• Mermaidsong by Csilla Kleinheincz
• Fish Out of Water: How Mermaids Represent Disabled, Queer Folk Like Me by Melanie Jayne Ashford
• “a sea-like condition” by Felicia Martinez
• This Is You by Kathryn Kania
• Before You Go in Search of Spirits & The Truth They Hear in My Heart by Cathin Yang and Coral Alejandra Moore
• Dreams of Another Life by Elizabeth Kestrel Rogers
• Charting the Next Adventure by Meg Frank