Hekla

Nature mimics the fridge when old volcanoes stench just like when I forget to clear the egg drawer. Sulfurous and salty, pungent clouds until you reach forward, expecting a shell but the texture takes over. Bumps that ooze brown, taut slime shakes like a geriatrics’ dessert table except instead of tapioca bubbles we have unlimited possibilities for creation through hot molten core that comes down hot, slow, fast, think, smooth, rough, away and toward.

Thomas knew the screaming, how sound travels during an ice storm up and into ear canals at warm human temperatures.

Bill wrote it all down-published in his prime but Ishmael turned it around – the mariner became the next big thing, not bemoaning but joking about his hot headedness as the two portals down to Purgatory, ironic since residents swore that at night the voices yelled hot, spewing forth cries, hawking up their glowing phlegm as a warning. Humans may understand the why of these pressure cookers work now but the magic remains when eyes look deep from the precipice to a reposed underworld.