Death Prayer

by Mina Victoria

Evelyn Bertrand, Untitled, digital photograph, 2025. Courtesy of Unsplash.

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Death Prayer

mina victoria | APR 2026 | Issue 51

Decay in the breeze carries
newness to the cosmos
and the trees. At home,
the deer’s joints soften in the warm wet
meant to pick the bones clean.
Each time I change the water, I smell
death. When I transfer the bone
from container to resting space
its joints bend. Before decay,
this leg bent
with the spring of a leap —
life. When my best friend died
he became bone-dust; not deer-like
or wolf-like
or scorpion-like.
I would’ve climbed
into the casket with him if I could.
Held his bones so close they might
finally
bend toward rest.

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mina victoria is a writer and wanderer of in-betweens. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Virginia Tech, and is hard at work breathing book-life into her thesis. mina’s work can be found in The Rumpus.