Hello, old friend, it’s been awhile,

We haven’t spoken since that day.

I’ve long forgotten your genial smile,

And let’s be honest, it’s better that way.

I made my peace and shed some tears,

Accepted that all things have to end.

But after some distance and several years,

You found me once more as a different friend.

I thought I was wearing sufficient disguise,

Purging mementos to make my life pure.

But ghosts are persistent when artifice dies,

I was so confident; I was so sure.

I thought that it could be different this time,

There was room in my soul, and I left it ajar.

Should there be consequence? Was there a crime?

I think you can’t help it, it’s just who you are.

I thought you were older, so maybe you could

Be a light in the dark and a similar strange.

You said that you promised, and swore that you would,

But ghosts aren’t alive, and so you’ll never change.

Maybe I missed you, invited you here,

Or summoned the person I wished you could be.

I forgot the fangs and forgot the fear,

I forgot that it felt kind of good to be free.

Everyone is an exorcist after the fact.

Once you know it’s a ghost, of course you can see.

They say “cut them off, amputate and extract,”

But I can’t, when you already did that to me.

My postmortem’s course has concluded its run,

It’s not about me, you have ghosts of your own.

Of your countless promises, make and keep one:

Haunt other hearts, and just leave mine alone.

My name is Celen, and my heart is homesick.

I am not a princess, though that is a common misconception. It is a lie that my head tells when I hold it high on a long, straight neck, in spite of the jewels weighing it down. The silks and satins tell this lie when they drape over sumptuous swells and cinch in ways that flatter and compel the eye. But my hands are honest, kissed by an intense Sun nearer the equator and darkened by those kisses. They are calloused where needles have pricked and poked a learner’s experiments. They are strong and skilled and splendid like my mother’s hands. She taught me everything I know, and she closed her heart to tears when I left. She opened it instead to joy for my better life, and the promise of being raised toward greatness by marrying true royalty.

It has been a year since she kissed me. A year since I arrived, and inflamed the sultan’s passion as we lay belly-to-belly on our marriage bed. But I live in a harem. I am one of so many, and the sly glances and lover’s whispers are not so frequent as once they were. When I stepped from the boat and into his arms, I was his goddess, his beauty, his queen, and now I am but one voice in a menagerie of exotic and lovely pets, swirling into a cloud of possession but not standing free and distinct. I take solace in my silks and satins, my dress form crafted to my precise measurements, because these were not things my mother had. She would sew with anything she could find, and now, I can request everything and within a fortnight I can run it through my fingers, feeling the slide and pull and stretch of the bias, appreciating the fineness of the dyer and the weaver, and before this, the sheep, the cotton, the flax.

As the seamstress, they have come to me because it is their destiny, and they are so lucky to be in the hands my mother passed down to me. Just as I remind myself that I am lucky to be but one dress of many in the sultan’s closet, their fortune is to feel the pierce of my needle and the smoothing of my palms as they take shape and movement when they cling to my breasts and hips.

They were wild once, as I was young. They were free once, as I was without title and expectation. They had like companions; so did I.

This evening, I sit straight though the small of my back aches and burns. I have a corset spread over my lap, and it has been hundreds of stitches, or thousands. I have been engaged this way for hours, joining beauty to beauty, when I hear a knock upon the door of my chamber.

“Lady,” he says, “are you decent, and if so may I enter?”

“I am,” I respond, biting my tongue on a joke about being far more than decent. The sultan has not come to pay me a visit; rather it is one of his viziers, Kane. I look forward to his drop-ins, if only because he is the one to fetch the materials I request on his travels, but his company is nevertheless pleasant enough. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the crest of his waves of dark hair that fall to his shoulders, framing his foxlike, clever face. The royal blue of his uniform suits him; he has a regal air about him. I smile and my warm, brown eyes catch his; they’re dark, like mine.

“You’ve returned from the Orient, my lord. It gladdens my heart to see that you have returned safely,” I say.

“My lady is kind to inform me of this,” Kane laughs, and those eyes glint. “Although, you must forgive me for believing that you are glad for the safety of your silks, rather than the safety of your vizier.”

“You fox,” I chide, though it is difficult to conceal some level of familiarity and even affection for this man. “I appreciate your gentle humor, for it brightens my day and the doldrums that can set in when I am left to my needles and measurements." I exhale, lashes brushing my dusky cheek. “But surely some gestures and overtures could be considered just forward enough.” I expect an answering laugh, acknowledging the jest… but instead, I feel a hand upon my bare shoulder. I glance up at him, eyes wide and startled.

“I would hope that I am being the precise right amount of forward, just now.” Kane takes advantage of my speechlessness to speak his mind, and I pull away, setting aside the unfinished corset so that I may rise and place distance between us.

“I would call it too forward,” I respond, my heart quickening in my chest. “The sultan does not appreciate when others touch his things.”

“But my lady is not a thing,” Kane says, keeping a respectful distance but holding my gaze. “Please, accept my apology and my promise that it shall not happen again. What can I do, to apologize properly for my trespass? Surely we do not need to involve the sultan in these negotiations.”

“Certainly not,” I say, because we both know that the sultan would have Kane’s head for his boldness. Time and distance amplify the power of even such gestures when they are innocent, and I have my doubts that it is the case this time. Perhaps these doubts only flatter me, because I have been alone so long, and there might be a reason for it beyond the sheer number of the sultan’s consorts. “I have enough affection for you that I would not tell my husband… just see that it does not happen again.”

Why is it so difficult to say, to the point where the words nearly stick in my throat like treacle?

“Please, at least allow me to do you a favor. It is the least I can offer when you have been alone all these days, but for contact with your maids,” Kane says, surveying the edges of my chambers. “Perhaps there is something out of order, or to which I can apply a helping hand. My father was a carpenter, and he taught me well.”

Against my better judgment, I do not send him away, but my eyes stray toward the large wardrobe that holds my finished frocks. Most have not been worn before an audience, but are merely my costumes for solitude. “If you mean what you say, Kane… there is a nail in my wardrobe that sticks out to an alarming extent. When I pass in and out, reaching for my dresses… there are times when the material catches, and I must repair it before it tears or frays further. It pains me greatly to pass over stitches I have sewn already, following such traumatic incidents.”

“I am grieved that my lady and her garments have experienced such trauma,” Kane replies, heading straightaway toward the offending wardrobe. While my motives might be ulterior, my words are true; there is, indeed a nail that snags at my knits and weaves, and it has caused me no small amount of distress. I trail after him as he investigates, poking his head through the door to examine what I have reported.

There is a pause. “Lady Celen, I fear that I am not finding the nail of which you speak.”

“Is my lord perhaps nearsighted?” I inquire, teasing him while being surprised that he has not seen such an impudent and protruding nail, when it is in fact all I can see when I step inside.

“I cannot,” Kane answers, though he is standing right beside it. A little closer, and it would snag the blue of his uniform, and then he would see exactly what I mean and experience my precise woes. Impatient, I approach, and brush beside him so that the fabric of our garments glide against one another with a gentle and whispering sound. Our bodies are too close, and this is a mistake for the way it makes my hairs stand and my blood quicken, but it is too late, and another sound catches my breath with a sound like the rustle of taffeta.

The door to the wardrobe closes, and Kane’s arm impedes mine when I reach for it. Fingers are winding through the black coils of my braids, and at first, I’m galled by the man’s nerve and nearly bite his lips when they search for mine in the darkness. But some scandal and shiver gentles the vicious impulse, and instead, I am returning and deepening the kiss. Has it been weeks since I’ve felt the sultan’s skin against mine? Months? How many times have I put on a dress only to remove it alone? I surprise myself with my own audacity when I whisper, “Can you help me loosen these straps?”

I can see nothing in the completely lightless wardrobe, but I hear his breathing grow deeper and heavier, and his hand is pressing against my shoulders as his fingers unfasten the clasps and ties of my ornate garment. I acquiesce, scarcely daring to breathe myself as I take one knee, and then the other, and he presses my hand against the firm swell of his trousers. Now, I am shocked at his audacity, but not enough to turn my cheek to his member as he rests a hand atop my head and frees himself with the other, sliding his pants down his thighs and nudging and sliding against my throat with a lusty moan.

I reach for him, clasping him securely, squeezing along the vellum-soft skin as an iron core gives it form, before taking it in my mouth. I reach behind him to dig my nails into more cushioned flesh, and he startles and trembles; clearly, it is an effort for him to remain silent, and I hum my approval, feeling the vibrations play through his body only to travel to his trunk and make their home nestling somewhere behind his navel.

His hands grasp the sides of my face, because already, he is having difficulty restraining himself from a thrusting rhythm. The tips of my teeth prick into the hardened flesh in warning, and he behaves, leaning against the opposite wall of the wardrobe as I attend to him at my leisure. In my experience, men may take command on a battlefield, expecting it and reveling in the way nations clash and crumble under their banner, but in the boudoir, they wish to be led and attended to, as much as they may insist otherwise.

My tongue slides along the underside of Kane’s member, tracing the thrumming blood in its swollen lust, and I can feel his pulsing urge to overflow. I pull at the back of his shirt, staying his motions, and he quells a sound of protest, but he will not disobey, for it is my turn.

I rise, stepping out of my shoes, taking a perching seat on the rack that holds my hats and shawls. In a show of unusual irreverence and disrespect toward my garments, I shove them to the floor, where they slump and clatter hollowly against the wood, and I gather Kane toward my warmth with crossed, insistent ankles. He obliges all too gladly, plunging against me, already slickened by my tongue as I tilt my hips upward to receive him. This time, I must stifle a cry, because though he is not as large as the sultan, it has been long enough since I felt the touch of a man that the confines of my body clutch him tightly and greedily. It only encourages him, and he thrusts with abandon into my heated appetite. He reaches to clutch at one of my dresses where it hangs to support him, and I am not even thinking of sweat stains, or potential tears as he rides me and devours as the wardrobe groans and creaks beneath the power of his body’s desire.

I am spread open like the seams in the corset that is draped over the back of my chair outside. I would tear myself in half if I could, if it would open me more to both our pleasure. My thighs press into his well-muscled sides, and with a mighty sound of exertion, he slides his hands around them and hitches me against him so that he wears me like a breastplate. He lifts and presses and ravishes me against the wardrobe’s door, and I grind into him as well as I can when he has me pinned like this. He pulls my braids, this time, and I stifle a cry as he places hungry kisses along my jaw. His thrusts quicken, harsh into my yearning, wanton chasm, and my body shudders around his, no longer within my ability to control as instinct overwhelms the demure wont of my title. I cling to him as he thrusts, and I come down hard on a lance that is already spilling pinpricks of ecstasy, raindrops before the deluge. I come first by seconds, my bare back sticking against the polished wood as I pant and plead my ecstasy, and then he is burying himself and giving me cascades of finality, stuttering, sublime.

He withdraws, reaching for the nearest cloth to wipe away the remnants of our lovemaking. I will not see that it is my prized yellow skirt with ruching that took hours until the door opens again and I have to squint against the sudden light.

“Only my loins are aflame, not the wardrobe,” I say, pulling at him as he hastily fastens his trousers, making himself presentable before leaving me undone. I frown, my hold tightening.

“Be that as it may, my lady…”

I find his hand, squeezing it, not caring this time if it is enough force and pressure to pain him. “Say my name,” I urge, setting my jaw. “My name is Celen, not ‘my lady.’”

“Celen,” he replies, surprised, and I wince as I feel a sudden, familiar jab. The nail against my shoulder; he never did fix it. I am about to tell him so, but he is already mumbling that he will see me the next time he brings me my silks and satins, and I know in my heart that the days will turn into weeks, and then months.

I see him again in the gardens as I stroll, feeling a weakened anemic sun against deep, rich skin that craves more warmth than this climate has to offer. He is smiling at another consort, offering her a flower, touching her shoulder in a way that could be considered just forward enough.

My name is Celen. I am home, and my heart is sick.

To whom it may concern,

I’ve started many letters like this over the years. Some of them have included a last will and testament, some of them words of maudlin and saccharine kindness to overcome the bitterness I might impolitely leave in my wake. I’m writing this to nobody in particular, to everyone, to the beginning and the end of everything. I want my reason to walk away to be exonerated, blessed, purged with sage on a brisk and overbright dawn.

That won’t happen. This is a punishing effort, necromancy without knowledge. We’re trying to raise the dead here, because I’ve grieved my parents hundreds of times. This is just the most recent, and maybe the most final, barring that most final of goodbyes.

I just finished a longform essay by Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist I admire, called “Notes on Grief,” in which she details mourning the loss of her father in 2020. I mourned with her as I read; I cried at times for the picture of uncomplicated affection she crafted for her reader. This author has a gift for painting poignancy in plain speech, hurling an equation at the page that detonates profound simplicity. I felt like I cried for different reasons, because my parents are alive, and I’ve incessantly practiced being a grey rock, intentionally uncomplicating my affection.

Is this how I want to spend the last years of my parents’ lives? It’s not, but it’s the way I spent the first years of mine. I’m like the scorpion who asked for a ride across a river from a toad, only to sting the toad, drown us both, and blithely explain that it was inevitably “in my nature.”

No, wait. That’s the story I’ve been told since I was eleven years old, when I became unlovable, difficult, unstable, embarrassing. I envied smaller people, I envied happier people, and when I crushed myself inward in every attempt to disappear, I was ashamed that I couldn’t. A stronger person could, surely; I was just crazy enough to be unlovable, and just sane enough to be impure, manipulative, worthy of reproach and contempt.

My sister, for the record, is crazy too. She’s passed the severity test, though; she’s crazy enough to have acceptance, care, the ability to live with her parents at the age of 26, drink and do drugs, and openly explore her sexuality as a woman under their roof. Allowances are made for this beautiful hurricane, whose temper and tantrums are just part of her dimensional personality and mustn’t be suppressed. She’s an adult, after all. She’s delicate, after all. Her wellness should never, ever be taken for granted, because what if we lose her?

I’m looking behind me, some kind of lost. I’m bewildered that it took this to get here, in therapy with a mediator, after I committed the cardinal sin of standing up for myself and my family when every fiber in my heart knew what it would cost to set a boundary. I know that I’m a person of relatively low value in this world; people would rather dismiss me than fight for a relationship with me. I am, after all, impure, manipulative, and worthy of reproach and contempt. I’m the worst kind of person, and I can’t seem to disappear after all this time. There are children now; there is a husband who loves me more than I deserve. It would be inconsiderate.

I was homeless at twenty one. I was evicted from my parents’ house after an entire lifetime of homeschooling and one disastrous year at a conservative private college because of a concern that I would corrupt my younger sister by reading Cosmopolitan magazine and having sex with a pushy, pressuring boyfriend. Arrangements to stay with my grandmother quickly lapsed as I went from one abusive relationship to another. My ex pressured me into performing sex acts on camera to make money for “us”, but he’d helped me pack up my things and move them from my parents’ house when no one else would, so how could I say no?

Wolves feasted on me in a world I wasn’t prepared for because my parents took my wellness for granted.

Throughout my life the most empowering act I’ve realized I’m capable of is walking away. Walking away is hard. Walking away is painful. Walking away is trying to have dignity and strength, in spite of being unlovable, impure, manipulative, and worthy of reproach and contempt. I’m both old enough to fend for myself, and young and stupid enough to not be worthy of dignity and strength, in my parents’ eyes.

My daughter was photographed and distributed in a vulnerable situation, crying and nude. My mother has called me crazy and mocked me when I was compromised in similar positions. My love for my daughter is uncomplicated affection; it hurts me to know that she has already been used as a prop for someone else’s weaponized shame and guilt. It all comes back to me, because whether or not I engage, I’m the epicenter of ALL that is impure, manipulative, and worthy of reproach and contempt. I deserve it, and I can’t be forgiven until I pay for it.

I don’t want my daughter, or any of my children, to pay for it. I want them to grow up confident, secure, and whole. I don’t want them to comply when they are subjected to guilt, and shame, and exposure because they were inconvenient and unpredictable to a trusted adult in their lives.

I can do my job. I can be a trusted adult and act in my children’s best interests. We are here, today, because you mixed up actions and reactions. Leaving was a reaction to the way you deal with children, and maybe also the parents you still view as children.

I can forgive the past. I can’t abide patterns. I love you, and grieve you, but through my pain, I want to love my daughter, and show her that she is pure, well-intentioned, and worthy of love and grace. She’s four, after all. She’s new. She’s sinless.

How dare you make her feel like she’s not. How dare you frame my family’s reaction to your action as a catalyst. How dare you frame me, once again for an audience, as impure, manipulative, and worthy of reproach and contempt?

Fallen angels, it’s written, can’t shed tears,

Wandering, sullen, for long, lonely years.

Grieving’s for mortals, and reasons to weep,

When all of life’s hardships are solemn and steep.

No longer an angel, you could say I fell,

Gravity gripped me; I stopped short of Hell.

Heaven’s forgotten, eroded by time,

I’ve forgotten His love, I’ve forgotten my crime.

When I fell, it was through blackest night,

Scorched by the swift Borealic lights.

My fiery feet streaked a splintering tail,

I named myself Icarus when my wings failed.

I named myself Pain, on the shattered ground,

I named myself Pity when I was found.

I named myself Hunger, when my pangs were worst,

And when I was parched, I named myself Thirst.

I named myself Wander, with no purpose planned,

I named myself Beggar, outstretching my hand.

I named myself Swan, for my lingering grace,

I named myself Crow, for my charred, ruined face.

My name was Tempted. I found a dropped pack,

My name became Honor when I gave it back.

The owner was flustered, I thought that he’d chide

But he smiled and thanked me; I named myself Pride.

I built a house, named it Home, found a wife,

A human celestial; I named us both Life.

I laughed at her wit and I named myself Mirth,

I named myself Father, for our child’s birth.

I named myself Mortal, but it failed to take,

I named myself Grief for my wretched mistake.

I buried them both side-by-side on a hill,

I named myself Grateful, and think of them, still.

Time soothed my scars, took the limp from my lame,

Meanwhile, I stole for myself many names.

They helped me remember where I had once flown,

And I cried a river, when I was alone.

Wind heard. He came, and I spared him a glance,

As he whispered to me of a second chance.

“Return your names properly, quiet what clings,

If you wish to be granted a new set of wings.”

I turned my face skyward, and thought of the stars,

I thought of the heat, and I thought of the scars.

I thought of the hand and the heart, and the love

Casting me from all I had known, up above.

No longer wandering, hollow inside,

I know of Temptation, and I know of Pride.

I know that on new wings I might never fly,

But I’ll never again be forbidden to cry.

Wind didn’t argue. I think that he’d known,

Long before coming, he’d fly back alone.

One stubborn enough to be cast out at all

Probably would double down, on a fall.

My name was Peace, and my name was Tranquil.

My name was Poem, and then it was Quill.

I returned what I’d borrowed, like fish to the sea,

But I took one, and kept it: I named myself Free.

Today, if you’re here and aware and reading this, you are not in Heaven. It can feel like Heaven, sometimes, just like it can feel like Hell, but don’t worry. You’re not in Hell, either. You comprehend; you have a consciousness. You are not one with Him, and you are not one with the Fire, still a distinct voice in the chorus with your own set of stupid, petty, human problems.

You haven’t shed those things. It’s OK; most of us never do. Most of us covet identity, for even the self that we hate is a self. We both have selves, but don’t confuse that for history or memory. We don’t know if we were spouses, or generals on the opposite sides of a war, or even alive in the same era. We don’t even know what we looked like; every day, our selves try on different costumes. Race is fluid, so is sex and age. We look different nearly every time we wake up next to each other, speaking in different voices and languages, but the selves are the same, and that’s what’s important.

We are two children, today, and we speak French. You are a boy with bony knees, and I am a girl with demon-red plaits to her shoulders. Eggs are for breakfast, set on twin platters along with toast and bacon in the kitchenette. Our wardrobe contains two sets of clothing; we dress in the uniforms as if for school, but the door to the sterile white-painted apartment has never opened. Instead, we settle in to watch TV; outside of what we can devise ourselves, the small screen and single channel, always on, are the only form of entertainment available to us. We pull our blankets from our bed and fashion a shared nest on the floor to view a documentary about parakeets.

“When I was alive,” I say, twisting a braid around my finger, “I think I had a parakeet.”

“You sound like a parakeet,” you scoff, mocking my voice, screeching like a jungle bird. Furious, I throw myself at you and drive my heel into your stomach, scratching at your eyes with my fingernails until I draw blood. Braying wounded sobs, you run to our room and slam the door.

I do not see you again until today. We are two balding, paunchy men past our prime, and we speak Latin. Our breakfast is wine and a small wafer of bread apiece, and when we open our wardrobe, long robes greet our plucking grasps. We don’t turn on the TV yet. Instead, we return to the bedroom to have sex. Sometimes, this never occurs to us; sometimes, it’s all we can think about. We seem to enjoy the act more when we are both male.

“When I was alive,” you say later, lying with your head in my lap as we watch true crime together, “I think I murdered someone.”

I kiss you. I tell you that you’re forgiven, for everything, forever. You pull me to the floor and while police sirens blare over dramatic reenactments and bystander accounts, we make love a second time, and fall asleep folded in each other’s arms.

When we wake up, it’s today. You are a young woman with thin hands that tremble, and I am an old man. We speak Chinese; rice for breakfast, and our clothes are identical grey uniforms with standing collars. On TV, there’s a movie about a hideous hunchback who rings bells in a stunningly beautiful cathedral.

“I think,” I say, “that when I was alive, I was lonely.”

You don’t speak to me. You just cry, chasing the tears from your face with those quavery fingers.

You will not look at me again until today. We are two women in middle age. There is no breakfast; we speak Swahili and wear long, loose dresses. We have sex, and stay in bed, and never watch TV.

“I think that I was jealous, when I was alive,” you murmur, staring at the ceiling. I ask if you are jealous now, and you laugh, because jealousy requires others, and there is only us.

Today, we are both men in our early twenties, athletic and toned. Breakfast is copious amounts of liquor, and we speak English and wear jeans and university t-shirts. On TV, there is a chess tournament, and we track the moves, calling out what we think the next ones should be as though it’s some red-blooded rowdy sport. We trade clothes and laugh at each other, because the alcohol is making us stupid.

“I think that when I was alive,” I slur as the pieces slide, “I was betrayed.”

Your drunken smile fades, and you grow somber, staring at the glass you turn in your hands.

There’s a flash of comprehension, a strike there and gone. For an instant, self is also memory, and history, and we blanch and recoil. We cry, we rage; by the time we have come to blows, we’ve forgotten why, but I am winning. My knees press all my weight into your chest, and my fists pound your face to a bloody and featureless mash.

For an hour, you whimper. When I can’t bear the sound anymore, I go to the closet and find the toolbox we have never needed before, feeling the weight of the hammer in my hands. I’m spared the worst of tasks when you finally fall silent. I leave you lying against a backdrop of television static as I stumble, alone, to bed.

Today, your body is gone, but the carpet is covered in soft fine dust. I am an infant who cannot reach the closet or the table or the TV, and I speak no language. I crawl in circles, wailing endlessly, and no one comes.

Today, if you are here and aware and reading this, you are not in Heaven. If you have a consciousness and a self and you comprehend, please come home, and bring what was stupid, and petty, and human.

Today, I weep, suck famished on my fingers, and search for any sign of you in the static.

TITLE: Today

GENRE: Speculative/Surreal

AGE RANGE: Young Adult, New Adult, Adult

WORD COUNT: Around 1,600 Words

AUTHOR NAME: Alexis Wright

WHY THE PROJECT IS A GOOD FIT: Written in second person in the heart of the COVID Pandemic, this piece is a heartfelt plea for connection with a like soul. It is meant to sound like a letter or a prayer, and the appreciation that even when it’s not ideal, a resonant connection is preferable to a void.

HOOK: Residing in an apartment that is not Heaven or Hell, two souls grapple with the dull grind of routine while their identities shift each day. Through the petty childish fights, wordless tears and lovers’ pillow talk, can they reconcile their similarities, or will they fall to their differences?

SYNOPSIS: The narrator, a soul, opens the piece by explaining to a second soul that they are in neither heaven or hell, and that everyone clings to identity, because at least it’s something. The narrative cycles through a series of “todays”, in which both souls are present but waking to new identities, ages and languages each day. Each day they watch something on the television provided in their apartment. On the first day, they are a male and female child who watch a documentary about parakeets. On the second day, they are both male monks who are lovers, and watch a true crime show. The third day, they are an old man and a young woman who watch “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”. On the fourth day, they are female lovers who remain in their bedroom all day and never turn on the TV. The fifth day sees them as two young males who get drunk while watching a televised chess tournament. The second soul admits to the narrator that in life, he betrayed the narrator. A fight ensues, resulting in the death of the second soul, and the isolation and desperation of the narrator. The narration takes on a distinctly pleading tone, begging for the murdered companion to return, and we learn that the narrator has become a helpless infant unable to partake in the routine without the slain second soul.

TARGET AUDIENCE: Every human who knows what it’s like to desire the company of an enemy over the horrible silence of loneliness (and appreciates a surreal and lyrical voice.)

BIO: Alexis Wright is a violinist, writer, and mother who lives in Michigan. She writes poetry and short stories and is working on her first novel.

PLATFORM: Twitter is @ladywithviolin

EDUCATION: Alexis Wright has a BA in Linguistics from Michigan State University.

EXPERIENCE: Alexis was published in the Towerlight student literary magazine at Hillsdale College. She is a two-time attendee of the Clarion Young Writer’s Conference. She is a freelance writer and editor for various online publications.

PERSONALITY/WRITING STYLE: Alexis vacillates between lyrically poignant and irreverantly humorous. This particular sample veers toward the former. She aspires toward eventually striking a balance, and being known for clarity and beauty of language without taking herself too seriously.

LIKES/HOBBIES: Alexis is a violinist who performs and teaches. She reads fiction and nonfiction voraciously and parents her three young children (all under four) very privately, so as to respect their agency in an increasingly online and exposed world. She writes like her life depends on it every day, because language arts are her first love and her true love. She sews and cosplays, enjoys cinema and fashion, studies world languages for fun and has had an enduring interest in dinosaurs and whales. She’s autistic, but prefers that others don’t get too hung up on this fact as it’s only a small portion of who she is. She feels the same way about motherhood, which is exhausting, but does not and SHOULD not define a woman’s (or writer’s) raison d’être.

HOMETOWN: Holt, Michigan

AGE: 33

They look to me at dusk.

Hollow and hungry, they squint against the azure sky and search for any sign of movement in the base, the body, the spire scratching the indifferent belly of restless clouds. They search for my decisive action for many reasons; I am Oldest, I am Master, I am Power.

They do not know that I am helpless.

My vision lurches, too. I also see blotches in place of stars. Like all of them, I have a torn and ragged place between my ribs that aches and cries when the night is swallowing its own sounds. Shadows and tendrils etch their way through the soil and seep into the roots of our trees. We draw our strength from our Wild, and its nourishment grows ever more pale and evasive. We clamor, reach and cry. Our animals drop dead, our plants crumble to dust, and our precious young vanish like wisps of smoke.

It has been decades since my son vanished, just the same as the others. Some of them were still returning, back then, and I thought that of anyone, a prince might have a chance. The swell of vitality from his departure bolstered our Wild for a time, but it wasn’t nearly enough. His sacrifice felt cheap when days later, the cracking and parching viciously made up for lost time. I raged more than grieved, because a ruler, giving all that she had, should have been worth more.

Years later, we all have even less, and as ever, I must demand it. My ladies are wraiths whittled to bone, and they make way for me only because they would move for a moth’s wing. The frail and brittle pulse of my realm quickens as I step through the courtyard where there used to be gardens, verdant and rich. Now there is only the memory of lush, sculpted greens and flowerbeds, and water that could be wasted on things like wading ponds and fountains.

The last beast of burden perished in autumn, so we pass through the village on foot. I’m followed by my shuffling, slow entourage, handmaidens reaching past their veils to support one another as they sometimes stagger, occasionally kneel. It has nothing to do with their respect for me, or their deference toward my royal status. They are faint with hunger, and if the occasion was not so somber, I would never have made them leave the tower. But of all nights, tonight calls for decorum, and at least the shadow of the grandness my realm once exuded.

I owe her that much.

She knows that I am outside her door. I need no announcement; the dusty street is still and silent, and my subjects watch from slats in shuttered windows. So few of them remain. Almost all of them have lines grooved by ages around their wide and hungry eyes, but this morning, a sound disrupted the silence we’ve all come to know. Primal and mewling and oblivious, it had been stifled swiftly, but it did not matter.

“Your majesty,” she stammers. She drops to her knees, pressing her forehead into the grinding dust, doubtless taking the extra concealed moments to compose herself in my presence. “I was not expecting you.”

Lies are common in my realm. They are more like prayers; ultimately worthless, but comforting in the moment. I humor her.

“Rise,” I command, “for your queen seeks an audience with you.”

Trembling, she stands. She is exhausted, exceeding my realm’s general languor. Sweat clings to her upper lip; dust clings to the sweat. The molecules surrounding her warm skin seem to vibrate; my nose tells me that earlier, she bled in this gritty hovel.

“The honor is too great, Lady.” Her voice is cracked and wavering. She is fighting the urge to scream. I offer her a placid, tempered smile.

“Honor is what brings me to your home,” I say, sweeping past her. She averts her eyes, bows low, struggles to calm the hyperventilating swell of her chest as I survey the otherwise deserted room. I see a kettle and a hearth, a small fire, a floor that has been very recently scoured clean. “I come with news of fortune. You are to be a Noble, and join my court.”

She does not trust herself to speak, or even meet my gaze. She knows that her voice and eyes will betray her, if she does. Her hair hangs lank over her features and I hear her breath shudder on a shallow exhale.

“If you are astonished, you may say so,” I tell her, rounding the side of a dingy mat stuffed with dry, dead pine needles. It has been turned within the last few hours.

“I am,” she forces out, and it only sounds a little like a sob.

I nod to my handmaidens, and they pass to either side of me, dragging the mat aside to reveal a recess in the floorboards. The woman presses her hands over her mouth, and I gaze down into the bundled, softly stirring basket. Even knowing what we would find, the audacity of attempting to hide our realm’s most valuable export is remarkable. Such a trespass would mean a swift execution, in decades past; now, there are so few of us that it actually warrants a promotion. As common as lying in this realm is, I spoke truth when I made this wretch a Noble.

“Please don’t take him,” she whispers.

It requires the strength of two wan handmaidens to lift the basket and set it on the floor. I kneel and graze the back of my hand over the infant’s petal-soft cheek. His sleep is untroubled, for now, but in a few hours he will be hungry. In a few days, he will be nothing at all. I unwrap his swaddle and he seizes and shivers against the sudden chill; his mother lurches forward, but I am the queen. Her will is ashes next to the blaze of my might.

The others have gathered; the grey and shambling crowd are seeping into the streets. They will follow, even if the mother sits swallowed in grief that may yet harden to rage. I lead them, the infant content beneath my cloak, to the edges of our Wild, and all stand solemn vigil as I hand off the infant to one of my handmaidens and pull apart the crumbling, dry soil with my bare hands. I am heedless of the sharp stones that slice into my flesh; my blood mingles, pooling, with the dust, and the infant squalls in discomfort and shock as he is placed in the rough, shallow hole.

We do not call it a grave. We call it a sendoff, because as blood and soil blanket him and the infant’s cries grow muffled and then silent, it is not death. Unburying him would reveal no small body, no trace that he ever existed at all. Every being in attendance know it, and it is why they look to the trees and the bracken. The whispering depths of our Wild seem to yawn wide. Somewhere, inside, a human toddler stumbles blindly and sobs for his mother. We do not have to see him to know that he will not make it far. Heavy footfalls batter and snap fallen branches, we hear a snarl and a shriek to freeze moonlight, and then the silence resumes.

Murmurs ripple through the grim, gathered company. It starts slowly at first, mere crimson pinpricks budding a nearby cluster of bushes. But they swell and ripen with increasing speed, and my subjects rush toward them, their hands and faces stained swiftly dark with the juice of fat red berries that, come morning, will wither and vanish. Tonight, at least, my realm survives, gorging until they are sick and drowsy and sated.

At dawn, they will look away.