Size / / /
Ode

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I cannot imagine you yet but I can try.

It’s spring. You speak to me of red birds and constellations tucked behind clouds, of baby axolotls and crickets’ songs surviving. You toss your head and sing of tomorrows brighter than candle-blown, and I hook my foot around your ankle and join in perfect harmony. We are fierce. We raze the world once and raise it twice. We bump elbows in the kitchen and spin quarters on the dining room table and laugh at the roundness of robins. Your vocabulary not rooted in fair exchange, in the natural order, in a cost only I would pay, come time — just your shoulder against mine, the ruffle of your laughter, your fingers warm after a life in the cold. You do not demand my voice in return, nor my hands, nor my mind.

I cannot imagine you yet but I can try.



P. H. Low has been published in places such as Fantasy Magazine, Tor.com, Abyss & Apex, If There's Anyone Left, and Star*Line. She is a proud graduate of Viable Paradise, and can be found on Twitter @_lowpH and at ph-low.com.
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16 Jun 2025

When I met the young Mr Turing, I had not yet ascended as Autumn’s King. Nowadays it has become fashionable for the sons and daughters of the lesser fey gentry to improve their position in the shifting hierarchy of the Courts by virtue of intrigue, scandal, and the naked blade; but in those times, it was the custom to advance one’s position through the collection of human bagatelles.
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