Threnody in Dark Wood, by Avra Margariti
This is not the first wake where she’s been called to tear her hair, clothes, and voice to shreds, but it is by far the strangest. Closed casket, empty funeral home. The anonymous letter she received instructed her to slip through the back door like a phantasma herself, and not exchange words with a single soul, nor peek into the dark wood coffin as she sang its dead through the threshold of her being.