You sit across from me on the couch, a variety of lamps yellowing the dark room, your fingernails tapping against your knee. The silence is filled with my heartbeat pressing against my neck, my wrists, my fingers. The blood gets caught in my muscles. You...
[audio mp3="https://www.queensquilt.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Ocalenie-Salvation.mp3"][/audio] And so we go back: Back to where ancient spruce stand sentinel over the place where you were born. Where all that’s left is a horseshoe and a brick in a muddy field, quietly making their way back to dust. This is my inheritance you say, an arm sweeping...
Whispering songs will sing back a story of the ever-changing, ever-watchful moon, If there is another so vigilant, let us sing it. The light beams down, a spotlight on her crumpling, hunching form. She awakens like this; under moonlight; shivering, crying, and seeping. Her soft inner thighs stain a...
MARTIN, L.—Died publicly on March 9, 2021, in the same way a caterpillar must die to become a moth. MARTIN, L.—Died quietly on July 16, 2020. All of her organs began to dissolve, with only the important ones remaining. For instance, the letter P. She will...
[audio mp3="https://www.queensquilt.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Host.mp3"][/audio] The dread comes first. The signs begin later, though still months in advance. You’ve seen it happen before. You know what to expect, what to fear. The way your sister’s body changed and betrayed her. The way your best friend survived, only to wish...
Salt embers my tongue, Flushing newness Into her shore. She retires my memories, Refining them through moss Until they run clear. Here, my body is new, Existing only as a vessel For her to cradle. She takes my hand, Guiding my soles through barnacles As the surf ribbons my toes. An exhale lures me into her Luminescent dreams, Rendering...
i. At the spindle top branch balancing flightless, thin and heavy, when the siren sings (Golden one golden one golden one) of her – Fleeing for earth, exile’s attempt at homecoming slip down bark, scrape palms break knees prostrate to ground shove a hand wrist-deep through stubborn soil until elbow, shoulder, wracking knuckles against roots ripping, tearing, wrapping knot around the waist, leashed. ii. (golden one) She recognized...
Poisonous saliva slips between your teeth. Mouths hungry for parts of a body but not a soul, not a mind, not a word: Butterflies swarm around me then fall to the ground as a caterpillar. I climb trees forty feet tall that shrink into blades of grass. I submerge in freezing lakes and wash up on a shore with a crimson sand shower curtain. I meet...