Alicia Anspaugh

-Even death can’t keep a determined reaper from love—but breaking the rules of the afterlife comes with a price.-

A poem that imagines death not as an ending, but as an old friend—waiting patiently at the close of each lifetime to help set down the weight of pain, disappointment, and struggle, when the soul is ready to begin again.

When a desperate mother encounters a mysterious woman claiming to be the daughter of the Jersey Devil, she is offered a terrible bargain: her children’s health and safety in exchange for something far stranger than her soul. But in the dark forests of the Pine Barrens, some legends aren’t curses at all—they’re survival stories.