by Maggie Edwards
She was old⎼so old she crusted over, and the crust smelt like decay⎼that senior home reek of fish bones and too long sleep, but worse. It rolled
off her tongue when she spoke but mostly she coughed into the open air and you tried not to breathe.
She’s gone now, probably completed her transformation into pure crust, or maybe she’s gone crystalline found beauty in death, pressed six feet under earth under your feet, or maybe
she was forming a chrysalis and has rebirthed into wings and antennae, you think, as a monarch rests on her stone for a breath and you know she’s not that smelly piece of crust down there, or wherever she is.
Maggie Edwards is an English teacher in rural South Korea. Her work has appeared in the Antigonish Review, GASHER Journal, and is forthcoming in Red Earth Review, and West Trade Review.
Comentarios