Toxic Traditions - Megan Riddell

Aid my digestion like black pepper, so I can throw you up and leave. A child, desperate to believe a fairy will compensate you for lost teeth—

teeth I’ll tear from catacombs and elevate as roman pillars just to watch as they get buried by crumbling concrete.

I am a parasite; you are the crack of sunlight I cover with thumb tacks and a bed sheet.

I am gasoline; you are the pistol in my father’s safe and the knife he used to spread icing on my 9th birthday cake.

---

Megan Riddell graduated with her bachelors degree in Creative Writing from and is now an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida where she primarily studies poetry and creative non-fiction. Megan's writing inspirations are that of contemporary poets, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, and two of her poems are published in The Quarantine Collection.