The Rapture of Rot
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Written: August 02, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Crystol Woods
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In the slipshod cradle beneath the apple tree,
a bruised fruit folds ajar—
molten sweet sapidity pooling
through velvet skin.
Eviscerated grace, they say,
but I grasp the quiddity of life unmasked.
A burnt sienna kiss of aurora—
flesh undulating with fungal bloom,
wispy gossamer threads that stitch
the inevitable return to the earth.
It is not ruined.
It is a transformation:
a diaphanous ballet
between death and what dreams may grow.
We ogle brightness,
but rot is brighter still—iridescent with purpose,
alabaster spores pirouetting as sylphlike specters
on a sacred odyssey to placate
the starving soil.
It is seraphic.
It is a panacea.
It is quintessence made humble.
Rapture lies in this ineffable nexus—
decay whispers loud as a lullaby.
The rakish grubs maunder through
a velvet pyre of rind and memory,
and the loquacious beetle sermonizes
on endings as beginnings,
as though time had a gullet
And rot was its sweetest wine.
Call it grotesque.
Call it abhorrent.
But beauty—true, ineffable beauty—
wears many masks.
And in these nebulous throes of perishing,
I watch a face burnished by truth,
smiling with roots in its eyes.
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