[Natasha]
SECTION FOUR: phosphorescence
Everything is beginning to make sense now. I reach out to touch her cheek and the tips of my fingers come away pulsing with an effulgent glow. I gaze at them for a moment, admiring the scope of emulating colours. Emerald green fading into aqua like a rolling sea. Himalayan-salt pink. The orange and vermillion of blooming peonies. With a glance up, I realise that they are synchronous with the sun-swollen sky.
She is the sky. She is the colour. Her eyes are windows into the light.
No, I’m never alone. The thought strings across the space between us, as tangible as the clouds above. Because you are always with me. In the slightest motion, she dips her chin / a blade of grass quivering. I should have known / you were too ethereal to be human…
She smiles again, and I fall. Into her laughter. Her luscious garden. Her phosphorescence.
The trees once told me angels are the realest things on Earth.
* * *
[Supravo]
SECTION FIVE: if i lose myself tonight
The light fades like a gentle breeze. Darkness rises. The jasmines release their fragrance. Fireflies begin to dance in the air. Somewhere, an owl hoots.
“Are you here for good now?” I ask.
“Yes,” she whispers back.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you at night before.”
“A lot has changed since we met.”
A smile that reflects the glow of the moon itself. Eyes that glow and dance like the fireflies. She reflects the night like she did the day. Yet, I had been denied this sight for so long.
No more. I had spent countless nights lost, but now there was someone else lost with me.
If you’re not alone, then you’re never truly lost.
* * *
[Ruth]
SECTION SIX: ethereal night
[This forest looks the way / Nightingales sound / Tall larches lilt and sway / Above the glittering ground. - Grace Hazard Conkling]
Fireflies dance around her.
“Follow me.” She whispers with a lilt.
She twirls, brilliant and glowing and stops, facing the direction of the evergreen forest ahead.
“Where are we going?” I ask and the words I have spoken form in front of my eyes, then vanish into a luminescent blue vapour trail.
“How...” I say, trailing off as the words form in front of my eyes again.
She giggles.
“Follow me,” she whispers again.
I follow. The tips of my fingers pulse with new energy, energy I haven’t felt before.
We arrive at the forest. My feet meld with the dense, cool, soft moss that carpets the forest floor. The hoot of the owl gets louder, clearer.
Toadstools pepper the forest floor; their white spots reflecting the moonlight, which pierces the dense forest’s canopy and lights our path.
We pass a fawn nestled into its mother’s side by a fir’s gnarly, ancient roots. I want to reach out and pet the fawn, but she whispers we must carry on and so I continue through the air which smells sweetly of moss and lilac blooms.
Special Edition. Contributers’ Compilation
Painting by. Claude Monet