In the realm of ritual horror, beauty is never benign. The Garden’s Mouth is a quadrille born from the dVerse challenge provided by Lily to use the word “petals”—but in Willy Martinez’s world, petals are not soft symbols of spring. They are torn truths, bleeding from the body, blooming where memory and myth collide. This poem is a fragment of a larger cosmology, where gardens are sentient, altars are hungry, and language itself is a sacrificial act.
The Garden’s Mouth
Petals peeled from her tongue—
not flowers, but flayed confessions.
Each bloom a wound.
Each scent, a lie,
or truth untold.
The altar drank her breath.
Roots curled in marrow.
She whispered old names.
The garden answered,
teeth-first, clenched,
with blossoms that bled memory.
Thank you for visiting with us. For more Poetry or Literature related content, visit our blog at The Ritual. Copyright Mind on Fire Books.
Author of upcoming dark fiction collection, “Folklore and Flesh” – Willy Martinez.
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