guardian angler

2. i had a greek mythology phase in middle school - what, he says, didn’t we all? and maybe we did, but isn’t it nice that we did. we were middle school freaks and we spent our spare time learning stories, learning constellations, learning songs. it’s beautiful, i think: these stories that have been told for hundreds of years, now retold by us.

3. i’m not so young anymore. my friends drink too much at the campout, young and dumb. i keep them from vomiting on themselves, and i burn leaves and set sticks on fire in between because i can’t stand alcohol. it’s nice, i think, to be relied on. at least that’s what i tell myself, watching smoke curl like silk.

4. cold chocolate in the summer, sunset on the horizon. the ice cream place in town, and all the places i can leave next year but will never, truly, leave behind. it’s sweet, i think, or maybe it isn’t, but at least if i pretend then i don’t have to think of all the things in this town i’ll never be able to forget.

2. the ocean’s all kinds of wild, these days. i think i like it better than the sandy beach – all these rocks, all the whitecaps off the waves. when the gulls wheel overhead, they scream in the face of the oncoming storm. it sounds like they’re laughing, and maybe you deserve it. the foghorns in the columns of mist, the lighthouse spinning, all lonely and afraid. maybe we both deserve it.

3. haze on the horizon, the sun a big ball of red. out west is all lit up, a wall of hotspots on the map. the world’s all set to burn. you’re all set to watch.

4. every summer like the turn of the seasons. gotta wonder why everything’s a circle, nowadays. again? always again. stories are only true so long as you keep telling them, and we keep telling them. we always keep telling them.

2. we went to the beach very little when we were young. when we did, i’d run out on the piers. i hate the ocean, but something about the wind and the gulls above felt free. it never hurt that i could look out so far, where the waves touched the sky. dolphins, you’d point, and even if there weren’t any i’d say i saw them too. it’s better to have hope about these lovely things, than be told they were never there at all.

3. people talk all this crap about getting better. when did i get better? when you asked why there were scars on my stomach. when you stopped eating parts of your tortilla because i didn’t. copycat. oh, sister - i couldn’t let you be devoured by the monster i was.

4. i was never much of a believer in god, but cathedrals could do it. cathedrals and mountains are the same, in a way. towering and soaring, murals painted to the sky. i always lit one of those prayer candles, even though we were supposed to pay for them. you always thought that was the funniest thing.

2. cobalt sky. cobalt and indigo and silver and charcoal and so many words you wouldn’t believe it. it’s so humid i can’t even breathe. when the thunder rolls across the fields, the grasses wave. the huge clouds grow in the distance like citadels in the sky, and the lightning is like fingers, like wings. i can’t breathe. i’m looking for some way to say that the majesty of this emotion is incomparable.

3. there’s some phrase stuck in my head – as above, so below. it doesn’t really mean what i always think it means, but it’s still beautiful. in the still water of the lake at dawn, the mountains are reflected back upon themselves, giants staring down at themselves. i’m looking for some way to say that i don’t know what there is other than this.

4. tea parties are things with fairies. acorn-cap teacups, sugar cubes a delicacy. it was just a thing when i was little. where there was a tea party, there would also be fairies. i’m looking for some way to say that if only there was magic in the ordinary.

2. there’s someone inside you no one has seen. it’s not that you’re scared to let that someone out, it’s that you’re not sure. you don’t know what fits you yet. you don’t know if you fit you yet. what will you do if you let that someone out? who will you become?

3. perhaps is like a magic word to repeat in your head. perhaps if you’d grown out your hair, perhaps if you’d kept with soccer, perhaps if your body could be the shape you want it to be and not the one that it is. perhaps is a magic word. perhaps does nothing, in the end. perhaps, you think, if only i did not have to choose between one or the other.

4. your best friend is a fragile young man, and you are a fragile young girl. he’s a young man; you’re a young girl. neither of you want to be. he asks you to pierce his ears and you do, you do, you do - numb it with ice. push the needle through. that’s all. that’s all, the pain is over now.

2. it’s hard to say what i mean when i tell you that dining is a word for hot dogs and sloppy joes. i’ll never be at home in a place where there are multiple forks or multiple courses because places like those have always been warzones. i say, it’s fine dining, and i mean, it’s all made of love.

3. it’s hard to say what i mean when i tell you that sometimes i feel just like the cicadas. the heat always brings their chorus, the trees themselves screaming, but this summer it’s the seventeen-year cicadas, too. their re-emergence, pulling themselves out of holes in the ground, beady eyes and golden wings, swirling through the air like a biblical plague. like this is all their life is, lightning storms and summer rain, oppressive heat and the backdrop of their own siren-drone. like this is all their life ever needs to be.

4. it’s hard to say what i mean when i tell you that i already have a sisterhood. i mean, i do and i don’t. i mean, not that white girl sorority stuff where shirts are optional and drinking is not, but i mean – fireflies and prom dresses at the park. a picnic at sunset. long silences and longer histories, but a shoulder to cry on anyway.

2. there’s an ivory comb on my dresser. fifty times through my hair, long and shining. when i think of her she’s always dancing, always laughing – swinging from the ropes with the sea-breeze in her hair like there’s nowhere else she’s meant to be. sometimes i feel like all i am is that comb, pretty and useless; i hope when she writes to me, she thinks i’m worth it.

3. that one’s a troublemaker, they used to say of her. i didn’t disagree. she was, snatching oranges and pushing me off cliffs, like maybe if she pulled me into the ocean often enough we’d both grow gills. i didn’t mind then, and i don’t mind now. the things we love are worth persevering for.

4. maybe the colonies weren’t the place for her. maybe that’s why she jumped on that boat, made away, proved them all right – pirates are, after all, the definition of trouble makers. but i think i can understand her, because i always was good at it. this place is too bright, too new. the ocean is a fickle goddess, but a truer one than greed.

2. everybody’s got that grandpa. you know, you do, too. the one who’s been struck by lightning fourteen times and spit in the devil’s face. it’s not that i don’t believe them – really, i do, nobody’s that crazy for no reason – but sometimes i don’t think it’s about the bravado. sometimes i wonder what they saw, in that moment before it hit. sometimes i wonder, if i go up on the mountain, if i stand and wait for the electricity to arc towards me like the lord’s own fingers, what i’ll see, too.

3. it’s not that you’re doomed to never leave a place like this – i promise, you’ll get out. it’s just that you never know when you want to leave. it’s the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen – the river and the mist at dawn, the mountains so golden at sunset. it’s just that leaving will never feel right, and that’s the trap. sometimes you need to let go of it. sometimes they never teach you how to.

4. there’s fresh milk in the fridge. there’s strawberries from a town over, and lettuce from the farm down the road. look – just take a drink. you’ll be ok, i promise.

leader: sorel (bio)

2. the world sings to me on these chilly spring mornings. the sky is lavender and periwinkle and salmon and cantaloupe, feathery clouds barely painting the dawn. my legs swing from the bed of the truck, damp from the dew, and birds sing. i try not to speak, because i won’t add to the symphony of the waking world. it is already so beautiful. i do not know why you complain about the hush.

3. these back roads know me better than i’ll ever know myself. gold-dipped trees at six in the evening, fields of green bordered by white fences. the gravel rattles underneath as i shift from fourth gear to third, turning down a road that perhaps was not there before. my mountains are calling me home, the road ever before me – the dark wood, the burbling creek, the wandering stone walls. i do not know why you beg me to stop.

4. i love many people, deeply and openly. it is all i know, especially with my friends, and i do not try to hide it. love is what shapes the world, what creates stories, whatever kind of love it may be. i do not know why you want me to hide it.

2. the wolves are the first to creep into the places where the cities once were. you’re camped out in the skeleton of an apartment building, and through the gaps in the roof you can see the stars. outside, the wolves are pacing. they howl at the moon, which has been full for five days. they won’t hurt you. you know that, but you don’t know why. that’s a lie. you’re not so different from them, not anymore.

3. when you walk through the remnants of old citadels, sometimes the statues still stand. they are being devoured by vines, flowers that bloom in the eye hollows, ivy across the shields. there are no more gods in this world. there haven’t been, not since everything ended. but there’s stone and dirt and water and life, and that is good enough.

4. this place isn’t your home. your home is buried beneath the waves, your rolling blue mountains swallowed up by the sea. you still feel like a visitor to these hills, to the plains and the broken towns and the world split in half. yet you walk anyway, feet sore and back aching, resting every night by the fire. you’re not the only one who wanders, but you don’t talk to the others. you are not lonely, but still you feel alone.

2. in both houses my hands are tied behind my back. in the house of my mother’s father i am the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter – what will i be? everything, is the answer. you must be the first and the best. in the house of my father’s mother i am the third youngest cousin out of sixteen – what will i be? nothing, is the answer. you do not need to succeed where others already have. what room is there to be myself?

3. in the house of my mother’s father, we tiptoe through the rooms in search of easter eggs. inside them is candy i do not like and a riddle i am too young to understand. what are you teaching them these days, my grandfather asks my mother. in the house of my father’s mother we turn pillows upside down, reach behind china cabinets in pursuit of a spatula with a smile on it. when we find it, my grandmother laughs with us over a joke that has never been ours but maybe, maybe, could be.

4. they say that silence is a void. they forget that the cacophony swallows you whole just as easily. in the house of my mother’s father we do not shout. we do not run. in the house of my father’s mother we sing songs around the piano, and we seat fifteen people around a dinner table in one room and fifteen in the kitchen. i, so young, listen and am not heard.

curator: sorel (bio)

2. when the house is empty, i sing. sea shanties and show tunes and folk songs. what a world full of light. cookies in the oven and a song in my mouth, windows wide open and a seat on the roof, watching the sun set. i wonder what the emptiness would look like somewhere else, a home i’ve chosen – bay windows and a mountain view, a loft and a fireplace fit for a king. i think the emptiness would look different, because empty is empty but it doesn’t mean alone. i want to live my dreams but i do not want to leave the house i have been raised in. these are different kinds; is the house half empty? is the house half full?

3. walking through the garden in the back during the heat of the warm season is half-awake, half-alive. i do not like bees but i laugh when my sister yelps at one, unafraid. the flowers are pink and red and dark crimson. perhaps they could remind me of blood, but mostly they just remind me of long-gone childhood days when we would shred the petals and throw them in the air like confetti. perhaps it was killing, but mostly it was innocent joy.

4. i am most joyful when the skies grow dark and cloudy, midsummer’s eve humid and electric. cicadas drone and a breeze lifts the trees, showing the pale undersides of their leaves. storm coming, i say, because even though that is an old wive’s tale it has never proved me wrong. thunder rumbles, the house dim, and from the corner office our radar sounds. my sister and i race, tripping over corners of the couch, to hear the words severe thunderstorm warning.

2. the man who walks in the woods after dark is not your friend. oh, he may sing a song like he is, he may tell you tales of beasts he’s killed and foes he’s slayed, but if you look carefully at the webs of song in the air you will see they are tangled like hair scraped from the skull and matted with blood. the man who walks in the woods is a savior and a hero, and such folks are not for us. so when the man who walks in the dark comes to your door – remember, my dear, he is not your friend.

3. every year we forget how the stars shine in the summer, how the cold retreats for just a few months and leaves us breathless. when you see the majesty of the mountains in the twilight of the summer on the longest days of the year, my dear, you must remember that they are your first and holiest love. the eagle soars on updrafts above the peaks, where the snow refuses to leave. he calls out, fierce and sharply. so you must remember, my dear – he and the sky are your last and bitterest love.

4. we do not forget the animals in the forest. they are our sisters, first and foremost. wolf with her gleaming teeth, crow with her ink feathers. deer who steps lightly, and rabbit who teaches us to run. you must remember, my dear, that you are not so different from them. girls who bite and snarl, who draw blood when it is needed and sink poison in when it is not. you must remember, my dear, that you are just as wild as they.