Are you the kind of goth who wears black boots and likes black cats and the sixth book of the Old Testament and historic bohemian libraries that smell like dust and have stained glass windows and straight-backed leather chairs and framed paintings inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven on the walls, the kind of goth who likes to pretend that they’ll die young of tuberculosis, coughing up blood in a deathbed surrounded by roses

or are you of the variety of goth who likes to find white tail deer skulls and antlers picked clean on long walks alone in the swamp, likes to sit on the porch after dark and watch the moths fly too close to the lamps, carefully avoids stepping on fallen robin’s eggs, would rescue an injured bird or snake, walks on lonely country roads alone, prefers ghost stories sung to the tune of an old hymn, a lilting, haunting melody sung in harmony with a quiet and solitary banjo, unsettling stories with a hint of the book of revelation told after dark on a cold night around a smokey campfire, drinking a mug of hot cocoa and looking up at the stars

“Oh, death

Oh, death

Won’t you spare me over

For another year…”