Marian H. Rowe

Any moment now, I will fall asleep. The ground intrudes onward with parched leaves and muggy soil. Bits of it bleed into my ankles as I tread sorely and tediously downhill in the tropical arboretum. It is as big as a forest. There is no one in earshot. The sky, a little hazy, cannot bleach…

The hills of Phyrwold are empty places. They are always empty, of life wild or domesticated to subservience, or of death pervasive in decaying roots and bleeding rivers – emptiness instead holds her pale, pliant hands around the sky, a terrarium of silent fog and silenter rain to paint the trees in silver…