#goody grieving

I AM ADDICTED TO YOUR SMALL KINDNESSES. The witch king in his candied house, breadcrumbs on his tongue, he calls me Gretel. The invitation, flanked on either side by a touch of dimple: Come, he says. Come out of the rain. Leave the wind and storm on my doorstep. Come dry your hair, come lay your glittering skin beside the fire and stay until the last puff of steam has risen from your crooked spine. Come heat your blood beneath my hands, babygirl. You have to understand, I tell him, mine is a language of blood. Translation to potable water is slow, dexterity a requisite and yes, the batch usually ends up poisoned. He rolls his two sturdy shoulders, steps into the light, calls me Aurora. Rest your bones awhile, he says, tucking the spindle away on the highest shelf. Rest, I'll be here when you wake. When I do it is a hundred years later and to empty air, the gentle impression of body in cushion, water running in the kitchen. Water rings on the coffee table. He is long gone, buried with his promise in a ring of lilacs beyond the bramble bush, but the inside of my left thigh remembers the warmth of his hand. The fingerprints he left behind as a trail of breadcrumbs to mark his way home. I will let no birds devour them.

Navel Gazing (I know, I know, it's been ages).

SAY IT WITH FLOWERS. Chloris sets up a modest booth of white pine in the southernmost corner of the parking lot. Spring has come like the declaration of war, gory and gorgeous, and she has freshly picked flowers for sale. Arterial sprays of roses, hydrangea, dahlia, and yarrow. Funereal sprays of mint and rue and rosemary. The colors gushing. A pastel bloodbath. A cacophony of jewel tones. Nature's violent return to form.  A bouquet for Hera, poor Hera, who has yet to learn of her husband's latest indiscretion. Roses, yellow ones, for infidelity. Bittersweet, too, because the truth usually is. Pink larkspur, fickleness, because the lightning god who killed his own parents is never anything else. Cumin ground into the soil, a silent prayer for no more nymphs or naiads or lesser deities tracking their dirt onto her clean hearth. Chloris considers her customer and tugs in joyful marjoram as an afterthought.  After that, it's business as usual. A bushel of orange lilies for Styx to line her river with, glaring and hateful. A statement piece. A single narcissus to lay on Echo's empty grave. For Artemis, edelweiss and snapdragons. Gladiolas wound into crowns for Enyo and Eris, nasturtium woven into victory wreaths and laid at Athena's bare feet. All of them fresh from battle and steeped in blood. Coriander for Medusa, who's been avoiding mirrors again. Lethe, forget-me-nots. She never remembers to pick them up.

DON'T LOOK DOWN. Ocypete is there, on the roof of the building again, contemplating the practical mechanics of flight versus the realities of falling, of shattered vertebra. She imagines the sound her flesh will make when it meets the asphalt, now that it's pockmarked and less burdened with feathers to dampen the impact. She's almost done molting now - at least, that's what the doctors say. Soon she'll be just another flightless bird devoid of color, average as the ostrich, plucked dull as a chicken due for slaughter. Her sisters mean to coax her down as they did last time and the time before that, but she's going to jump this time, she really is. Celaeno calls birdsong up to her as duty requires, but mostly she's a hollow-boned creature with a mind of scrap metal, engine oil. Her mouth is moving, sure, dancing all the right steps, but really she's thinking about her drafting table back in their nest. The designs on it. Sheet after sheet of flipbook schematics hypothesizing wind-up birds with spare parts and steam for wings. All she needs is a flightless bird. Alive, ideally, but she isn't picky. You can do a hell of a lot with a bag of bones, enough elbow grease, and a strong head for cybernetics.

WAR MAKES STRANGE BEDFELLOWS. I know you. You and the old wounds around your eyes like sleep bruises, dug deep as trench warfare. They are an intimate compliment to me, wrist deep in the nuclear waste of my own thick blood. You and I and the endless night. Universe locks every door, bars every window, pumps monoxide into the ether and awaits finality, give in, the half-heard thump of dirt hitting the casket lids.   II. Listen: They have told us we are empty shells, but we are hermit crabs carrying all our earthly possessions on our back. There is a difference. Guilt is a singularity with depth and weight, its own shadow on the moon, its own gravitational pull - life is a war against our own gravity and yes, Athena, you will feel it. You know this already. Because you and I, we are properly acquainted with the Kali days of six armed destruction, the world unmade, the rebuild effort on smoldering rubble. Days of bottle and chain, keep swinging, everyone you've ever met a hostage at knife point aiding in your escape. The Lethe days where the details are blurred and intangible and perhaps incorrect, overdrawn, but for the swarm of bees in your belly.   III.  If you ask me to I will tell the bees, death drowsied and stingerless, that they remember the shape of the hive correctly. That their queen is trapped in honey and quicksand and maybe sinking, but sovereign all the same. You are sovereign all the same. Even on the nights you prove that wolves and girls are born of the same moon, to the same sharp teeth. It's okay to gnash them every so often. Bear them to the world. Tenderize flesh. Shift your bones into a new shape and howl your new name like to wake the dead. When you wake in the morning just the picture of the original girl with those sleep bruises around your eyes like old wounds, your pack will stand ready with cucumber round, concealer, freezer chilled spoon, a note excusing you for the day.  IV. They tell me I twitch in my sleep. Mouth words that never make it as far as sound waves. Sometimes, the only proof that the dreams were real once is the claw marks on the roof of my mouth. It isn't much different from waking. The blood sticks to everything either way. But you, you are tourniquet and butterfly bandage, bathtub gin to sterilize the wound. The controlled demolition of my heartbeat is no match for your flood water. The days of Sisyphus and his stone are here, me climbing and backsliding on this hill for the rest of time, but you are here with snow chains for hands and a sturdy spine, shouldering the weight beside me. The days of Prometheus, the gentle thief, the vultures, septicemia and slow bleed, and here you are still in manacles forged in the same heat. We are a matching set. This is what it is to be weaponized, to put the gun in the bedside table when the sun has set. This is what it is to live with the safety on.   V. You and I, the bruise and the open wound. The healing processed. This is not the end.

HE LOVES ME. He loves me, he loves me not, he lo- He loves the way my organs look snow angeled on the asphalt. He loves my road kill. He loves my blood spattered on the grille, his foot on the gas pedal, the tire treads on my pride. The hole in my sternum, the still-beating heart, the neat cross stitching of his name on the left ventricle pulsing slower and slower, all that gush in his stainless steel palms. He loves the way I stain, lives to bleach the bathtub after every failed attempt on my life. Loves my head under the water, that scream trapped in an air bubble. The intimacy of popping it. He loves my young divorceé breakfast highball, the clink of ice in glass, the sunlight catching the stolen hunk of moon rock he asked me to hold onto after the heist, safe and sound on a single unsteady hand. Loves my sickness so much more than my health, loves my where did the time go, my in it for the children, my didn't wanna die alone, my everybody has their problems, my please, my please, my don't go, my please, my I do. He loves my 'til death. He loves the way my mouth curls into a smile the same as an unfolded switching blade, says   "Brother, you first."

CATHARTES Preying on the leftovers of the dead has done nothing for your reputation, so you may as well eat your fill.

PHOTURIS We regret to remind you that you glow too brightly. Now, nobody is blaming you, but when you shine, death follows. These are the facts. It doesn't matter that you're mimicking countless other glitterbugs before you, the trade tricks handed down from time immemorial. Photinus stole fire. It wasn't his to give. It wasn't yours to weaponize. Be like that cousin of yours, Noctiluca, the one with no mouth. Stop batting your wings at the males of your species and eating them whole.  It's upsetting, really, the orgy of magnesium and enzymes raging in your belly, how they named the process after Lucifer's fall. Remember it was his arrogance, his undeniable incandescence, that undid him. Remember and dim down, beauty. You're attracting attention. You're creating a glare.