Children of Titans, 
we eat our young, 
we eat our dead, 
but neither prove 
nourishing. 

The young— 
too ephemeral, 
flimsy, 
incapable of supporting 
the demands of bodies 
long ago transformed 
into monsters.

But they taste 
like forgotten dreams 
soaked in the wine 
of half-remembered tears. 

The dead 
are made of tougher stuff, 
rugged and grizzled, 
like us; 
rusted through 
—vast cyclopean husks 
dotting the ashy terrain, 
seeping chlorine 
and formaldehyde 
into the pus-stained air 
of midlife.

We eat our dead 
and we eat our young, 
and in our madness forget 
that we ourselves, 
in Dionysian fashion, 
were twice born.

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About the author: Victor T. Cypert is a writer of short stories, poetry, and speculative nonfiction. His work has appeared in Lamplight Magazine, Illumen, and Wild Musette Journal. He is the second place winner of the 2017 Parsec Ink short story contest. He lives in Alabama.

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