Size / / /

You use

an instrument of tusk,

of yellow tooth,

imperfections filed

into ghost.

They are invisible, to most.

Your fingers know.

I know your fingers.

I know them in the salt-sea.

I know them, charcoal-smudged,

smelling of smoke.

I know them pulped by fruit,

still wet with sea,

the sweet and the sour.

With this object,

your spider-fingers take

from wires hidden

in a box.

You transform

a swell of notes.

The stars, a silence, a sudden

dive and then a thunderstorm

- and now I have forgotten

how to take my skin off

like a lady's dovegray glove

and put it back on

as purple as the stomach of a flea.

To run like a deer.

To hide like a hay stalk in a hay stack.

All I can do

is root,

and snarl, and feel my thoughts

tangle and cross, grow green leaves,

   edged like teeth

and dense with veins.

All I can do is snarl, tangled

heavily across this chair,

and cling to the wall.

At least I have thorns,

although I open wide, whiter than silk

and redder than thread.

Despite my head,

I blossom like fire from a match.

I forget

how to shed

this shape:

When you close the lid,

and take your fingers from the monster's teeth,

and come to pluck me,

scatter my petals

so that I will never grow again—

I hope you bleed.




Jessica P. Wick is a writer and freelance editor living in Rhode Island. She enjoys rambling through graveyards and writing by candlelight. Her poetry may be found scattered across the internet. Her novella “An Unkindness” is out June 2020 in A Sinister Quartet from Mythic Delirium. Other dark fiction may be found in Rigor Morbid: Lest Ye Become from Bronzeville Books.
Current Issue
18 Nov 2024

Your distress signals are understood
Somehow we’re now Harold Lloyd/Jackie Chan, letting go of the minute hand
It was always a beautiful day on April 22, 1952.
By: Susannah Rand
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
In this episode of the Strange Horizons Fiction podcast, Michael Ireland presents Little Lila by Susannah Rand, read by Claire McNerney. Subscribe to the Strange Horizons podcast: Spotify
Issue 11 Nov 2024
Issue 4 Nov 2024
Issue 28 Oct 2024
Issue 21 Oct 2024
By: KT Bryski
Podcast read by: Devin Martin
Issue 14 Oct 2024
Issue 7 Oct 2024
By: Christopher Blake
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 30 Sep 2024
Issue 23 Sep 2024
By: LeeAnn Perry
Art by: nino
Issue 16 Sep 2024
Issue 9 Sep 2024
Load More