by Miles Klee
What comes up. Look both ways. Stove hot.
Vision slows, shadows seething. It’s not to be believed. Atmosphere turns hazy, blue shot with curious mist. Hand outstretched and fingers splayed. Wait.
Emma drifts, immaculate. The ship will be her tomb.
Not mine.
The door dreams of
falling away
it
wakens
and
does.
Only
betweenness and
the
cold.
I come apart atom
by
atom
starting at the toes.
A glimpse of my hand, full of ash.
Aidan and Phoebe, their paled voices.
I woke up to everything else. The cosmos groaned and realigned. New at the end of unspooling wire and melted dawn. Gravity forsakes its hold, the transformation speeding, wild. Close my fist, it breaks away.
Aidan. Me.
I carried both sleds under one arm, holding Aidan’s small hand in my bloodied one. We moved in silence, he sniffling from time to time, me squeezing in reply. And in that last point of contact I felt the world slipping into ghastly futures, its grasp failing. Blue weakness slacked the beaten knuckles. The world a hiding place. Aidan, all that fastened me to it. I bounced his fist, cased in mine, wanting never to release. Certain I would. That I already had.
Mercy, please. I’m not ready to be free. I expected. Let the sun come out again: its warmth will colonize my skin. Let me stretch across the surface—release locks up my heart so tight. I reach and nothing will be held. Stolen moondust takes revenge, escapes, flares outward in decaying spirals, catches a swell that lifts me spinning too with coiled fear, over the creek, through the toss of dancing treetops and up to plumes of restless cloud, and I am turning through the years, I am lighter still.
Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
HECUBA /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY
CAL /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY /// TWENTY YEARS AGO
AIDAN /// SANDPIPER, NEW JERSEY /// SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO
"THUNDERDAN AND THE LIGHTNING ROD" /// EPISODE 904A /// NEW YORK, NEW YORK /// ONE YEAR AGO
DH /// KELVIN, NORTH CAROLINA /// LAST SUMMER
AIDAN /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY
OFFICER R. DANKE /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY /// LAST WINTER
CAL /// LUNAR ORBIT
AIDAN /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY
GRADY /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY
DH /// ANDRONICUS, FLORIDA /// LAST FALL
AIDAN /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY /// THIRTEEN YEARS AGO
PROFESSOR FLEER /// IVYLAND COLLEGE /// ONE YEAR AGO
CAL /// NEW YORK, NEW YORK /// SIXTEEN YEARS AGO
AIDAN /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY
HECUBA /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY /// TWO YEARS AGO
AIDAN /// SANDPIPER, NEW JERSEY /// SEVEN YEARS AGO
DH /// SPECTRE, GEORGIA /// LAST SUMMER
FRANCIS /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY /// LAST SUMMER
CAL /// LUNAR ORBIT
AIDAN /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY /// LAST WINTER
DH /// OXBONE, MICHIGAN /// LAST WINTER 14
IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY /// THIRTEEN YEARS AGO
AIDAN /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY
DH /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY /// TWO YEARS AGO
AIDAN /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY
CAL