My clear flesh as I dressed her in soft oversize cottons drew a border between us she wouldn’t let me cross so I took her out to find familiars. ‘Look’ I said of drowsing roses so like the pinking of Mia’s flesh and meant ‘how perfect you are.’ But she ached to be a bristling thing more durable than petals. ‘Girls should have thorns’ she said, not knowing she did.
It was softer in the rainy season. We’d watch fractured sky hurl creeks at our window and pretend to swim, her scalloped flesh like fins in silvered light. But it vanished with sun.
On the way back from the vet, Mia’s hands hot from the last touch of Mimo’s fur. Pale vomit splashed on roadside sumac where we pulled over, the cat’s crate already cool and Mia deep in the woods without me. What if I left her there where wild things grow? Would she learn why dragons have scales? Could she forgive cats for staying such a short time? Ungraspable, this child of cloud and brambles. How many ways are there to fracture?
I found her crouched in last October’s leaves staring into moss-furred wood and lichen furls. The glow of it, emerald and gold on rain-black trunks and Mia’s shuddering breath as she pushed up her sleeves. ‘So beautiful,’ she said, and was.
Eirene Gentle is a writer of lit, mostly lit, based in Toronto, Canada. Published in The Hooghly Review, Litro, Jake, Maudlin House, Bull, Ink in Thirds, Leon Literary and more.
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