Size / / /

for Asakiyume

The architect of snow and stone

sculpts crystals into single perfect snowflakes

her solstice-gifts to eye and heart.

Her lenses are chill and crisp:

contact-correction to prisms' paradigm,

orienting souls to the slow creep of crystal-growth,

the angled jewels of cooling liquid.

Sublime; shattered in all shards,

ever absent from the moss-cushioned world,

she seeks not the rounded rock-runs left for lichen,

the great glassine groove-paths from gliding glaciers.

For her there are only all the ices, condensing:

the endless play of methane on nitrogen,

ammonia on water, crinkled carbonised crust,

limpid layers in diffuse depths, tints revealed

in the pale offerings of a day-distant Sun.

For those who visit, staying half an orbit,

she folds kindness into a viewpoint:

origami-intricate flowers of fractal petals

blooming into blackness under slow cosmic-ray rain.

They blossom fresh as frost-numbed pain

only once the world's atmosphere snows out again.


This poem was part of our 2012 fund drive bonus issue! Read more about Strange Horizons' funding model, or donate, here.




Michele Bannister has an uncommon fondness for distant worlds both small and icy. She lives in Australia, where she is working towards her doctorate in astronomy. Her poetry has appeared in Strange Horizons, Ideomancer, Stone Telling and other venues, in the Here, We Cross anthology (Stone Bird Press, 2012), and is forthcoming in inkscrawl and Goblin Fruit.
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18 Mar 2024

Strange Horizons
We are very happy to welcome Dante Luiz as a new fiction editor on the team! Dante is a Ignyte Award winning author, and has been with Strange Horizons working as an Art Director for the past several years. We’re stoked to bring him on to the fiction side and have him bring his wonderful insight and skill to the fiction team.
Day in and day out, the rough waters of the Pacific slam themselves against the protrusion of sandstone the locals refer to as Morro Rock. White streaks of bird shit bleed down the rock, a testament to the rare birds of prey that nest in its pocked face overlooking the bay.
in my defence, juggling biological and artificial, i tripped over my shoelace, and spilled my lungs empty of the innocence that was, before guilt.
the birds, / who carry with them / the many names of the dead
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