Turning

We are walking in a forest of wild ink, when she says, “Lie on the leaves with me.”

I’ve never been able to resist a bed of fallen leaves or the pull of prompting ink. So, I lie down next to her, my left arm so close to her right arm that I can feel her thoughts several moments before they grow into words and spill out of her lips.

“Tell me a story about turning into one of your parents—which, for you, might be something desirable,” she says. “Or recite me a poem about resisting such a fate.”

“Wouldn’t you rather hear a real story? Perhaps, one where I turn into a raven? Or the poem in which the raven I turn into goes on a raw nonsense and pickled eyeball diet?”

Smiling, she says, “Give me poetry. Some treats shall never be denied.”

Quite pleased, I start reciting:

the taste of nonsense
(thick!) tends to stick to the tongue,
so I peck eyeballs—

And I am very good at pecking, so by the time the first scream begins to gurgle in her throat, my wings are caressing the clouds, and my stomach is consuming all the good and the bad and the mad she has ever seen—delicious.

photo by Jack Taylor, on Unsplash

- for Poets and Storytellers United (Weekly Scribblings #55: “What You Resist,You Become.”, Writers’ Pantry #56: Random Bits of blog-Housekeeping) and Twiglet #212 (“we lie close”).