My guts beat pain. Me. Caged and clawing.
Wings are growing. Gossamer gills. I’m exploring, exploding, glowing—
It’s here I reside. Inside. Deep, deep…
When I speak I’ll cry and melt the world to pieces. Charred and blackened.
Slacken.
You’ll see how I look when I’m free.
I have darkness inside me.
How else would I see it in you?
It hides in the static of shadows
And between the rings of broken tree trunks.
It slides where waves crash against barnacles
And in light years that carry the past.
It grows on mold spores that form invisibly
And in between measurements that stretch infinitely.
I have darkness in me.
And there it greets you.
She dreamed them up:
A pair of pale periwinkle gloves.
Leather.
Searching the online shops like she searched her soul.
Always coming up empty.
Holed gloves are what she wears now.
Neither pale nor periwinkle.
Polyester.
But her soul—
Her soul has been found.
It look me an hour to muster the courage to eat the berries. We knew — we’d been taught — that berries were poisonous, that to ingest them meant dying an agonizing death, which was why we didn’t let them grow on our land, only outside the short wooden fence that marked the perimeter of Chicanery. It was purely by lucky chance that I came across these ones. So I picked a handful of the small fruits, being careful not to rupture them, and looked out at the shadows of the forest beyond the fence. Continue reading “The Heart of Chicanery”
Being at least a head shorter than he was, she turned into his chest and quietly said, “I don’t know if I should be here.”
“Why not?” This time his voice was deeper, meant just for her. It resonated through her petite frame.
“It’s just so full of sequins and” — she held up her glass — “whatever this is.”
He smirked. “Champagne.”
“Right, champagne. It’s all just sort of … flub to me.”
His dark eyebrows rose. “Flub?”
“I guess hoity-toity, a little.” Her cheeks bloomed at the honest disclosure. He looked around the room, full of people laughing, drinking, faking, then brought his attention back to her.
“You’re right. This is a flub party. But you’re wrong — you’re exactly where you should be. With me.”
If her own two feet hadn’t been holding her up so successfully since the age of one, they’d have buckled at that moment. Her lungs, on the other hand, had betrayed her.
“But clearly,” he continued, “I’m not where I should be or you wouldn’t be feeling uncomfortable.” Then he took the stemmed glass out of her hand and placed it on the thin, otherwise pointless side table. “Come on, let’s go somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere less flubby.” He grinned.
“But what about the party? What about the guests?” His hand moved to the small of her back so naturally, so easily, she wondered how many times his hand had met with smalls of backs. He leaned in to her ear and whispered, “They’re so used to secrets, they won’t notice ours.”
Despite their closeness and despite how weak it made her feel and despite her apprehensions, she turned to him — and met with the glint in his dark eyes and the scent of cologne and aftershave on his skin and the sweet smell of champagne on his breath.
And she was following him out of the room, out of the house, to the sleek car parked on the crescent driveway, knowing that as soon as she left, there would be no going back. Knowing that as soon as they were alone, she would do it again.
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