Beneath the roots of the honeyglow tree, a small creature dreams. Not the cold, empty sleep of winter, only a nap on a warm autumn day. His bed, a nest of moss and grass, has been fortified with yellow leaves, and there he lies, curled like a vine, hugging his thick silvery tail. His nose […]
My mother taught me the language of the trees.She carried the language within her just as she once carried me: swollen, kicking, full of life. If words could blossom in blood, I would have been born singing the trees’ songs.But words are not blood. I know that now.When I was a girl, my mother would […]
Her father picks her up at her mother’s apartment and drives her out to the nearest national park to hike and forage mushrooms. His battered SUV pulls up right at six on Saturday and idles until her mother tucks spare pajamas pants into her backpack and sleepily kisses her forehead. His mother-in-law cabin is too […]
The forest where I lost my heart was full of autumn. Trees clung to leaves drenched in yellow. My chest pulsed with heartbeat echoes.Perhaps my heart was hidden under a mossy log or in the belly of a fox, perhaps in the cold twilight of a brook.Three roads diverged in the wood.I took the first […]
The parrot had already eaten twenty-seven pages of the wizard’s book, and the wizard still hadn’t noticed. The book was an overlong, bloated mess, stuffed with extra slips of paper and nearly bursting out of its binding, for the wizard believed his every thought important enough to immortalize with pen and ink. The page the […]
I was a stranger in a land of ice and snow. I had traded the sun on my face because I thought here, I could be safe. In a kingdom where people had no flesh, why would its hues carry meaning? And yet these beings of ice, shining and beautiful and brimming with magic, looked […]
My lungs ache, full of water. Within the ache is a sparkling burn that I love already. I need it like I needed air.I pull my head from the waves. The beach hisses, tinny and sharp. Water streams from my nose and the acrid tang of traffic stings my nostrils.I want to run up the […]
It’s the first time Camille sees his bone collection.She prowls the edge of Simon’s bookcase, brushing her fingers along the specimens on the shelves. The softly lit bones remind her of seashells, smooth and white, silky under her touch. Small animal skulls with teeth sharp enough to pierce skin; a larger one with twisting horns, […]
“It’s not enough,” you say. We’re in the living room. The upstairs neighbors are vacuuming and the downstairs neighbors have music on and I am holding you. It’s an apartment; it’s how it goes. Sometimes it’s so loud you feel sandwiched between sound and sometimes it’s deafening quiet. Sometimes it’s neither of those and still […]