If she had listened to her mother during the Evacuation—come with us, you can’t survive alone—she would be moving into a cramped city apartment instead of here. Amenities included—no water, no electricity, nothing. You’ll die like your father: slowly. But she couldn’t picture life there, away from the maples she climbed, the deers haunting the graveyards, and the Alleghenies she hiked with her dad.
Outside, she wanders around the cracker plant. Storehouses slouch into the mud toward their foundation. Rusted cranes scrape the sky, vines weighing them back down to earth.
She imagines her dad, breathing in the benzene from the factory’s burning plastic. Before they hired him for fifteen an hour, his mind was an almanac of plant knowledge—the amount of water to spritz, the optimal soil makeup, the perfect time to harvest produce.
But, when the toxic runoff killed his garden, he told Amara, One day, I’ll tear down that damn factory. Piece by piece. And Amara replied, I’ll do it with you.
Five years later, he withered away with his butterfly milkweeds.
At the entryway, Amara peers out at the wilderness, vines climbing over the barbed-wire fence and creeping through the cracked road. She takes out the urn and releases him to the surrounding jaggerbushes.
Bailey Maybray (he/him) is a queer, Bostonian sci-fi and fantasy writer who drinks too much mango green tea for his own good. He creates strange and wonderful worlds with bizarre, often-queer perspectives, from cyborg alien octopi to robotic play directors. Find him @bailey_maybray on X (formerly Twitter).
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