Terra Firma
by Lynette Mejía
Solid ground has never held the promise, the premise of safety for those such as myself. Airborne, I do not abide the comfort it offers, false and gentle notes of sweetness, tendrils waving, reaching up from the depths, a trap of gravity and decomposition and cyclical reorganization that never, ever remembers its own history. "That is the girl," they will say, "who was transformed by her sorrow. She had hoped for death, and instead received wings made of her own bruised skin, held together with sinew, stitched without pattern to old leather and new bone." Now you are my springboard, your exhalations my updrafts, your sighs my lift. Darkness falls and flowers open to receive me, their faces upturned, shining with envy. "Her grief filled the skies," they will say, "and it poured down like rain on our heads. It rattled our skeletons to dust."
Lynette Mejía writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror prose and poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Goblin Fruit, Dreams & Nightmares, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium, and Star*Line, among others. She is currently working on a master’s degree in English Literature at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, and lives in Carencro, Louisiana with her husband, three children, six cats, and one dog. You can find her online at her website.
When asked of what poem the word "cherry" immediately makes her think, she replied as follows: "At the risk of stating the obvious, cherries immediately bring to mind Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market,' rife as it is with all those luscious fruits dripping sweet, intoxicating juices. Interestingly, however, the image also makes me think of William Carlos Williams' 'This is Just to Say,' which, though not about cherries, per se, is my husband's favorite poem, and so I've read it more times than I can count."
Previous | Back to Table of Contents | Next