Excerpt: One for Sorrow

Sometimes the wheat has a voice. When the sun hides away for me and the rain stays in its sky, heavy with clouds meant for lenses and hearts like mine. The acres of tall breakable stalks frighten, so delicate and wanting. I can hear them, but stay back, only close enough to snap with fury at the shutter. They want absent chemicals, all the things that no one should breathe. Poisons not meant for eyes and lungs, even the toughest skin. And my skin is not tough. I promise the gold waving across the way: someday. I’ll bring the poison. Silver halide on cracked and bleeding fingertips. Sodium thiosulfate, sulfur, gold chloride, silver nitrate, ammonium chloride. A witch’s garden for phantoms coated in the membrane of an egg. Fragile like my wheat and safe from a sun ready to burn, as I am burned.
All I have is this, for now. For you. But it’s so quick and captures your every bit. And if you move there are a thousand snaps of my finger left. To take away one frame still leaves hundreds for me to coat my world.
Sometimes I dream that in the darkness you weave yourselves without hands to ply you, undoing your plaits by dawn. You keep your secrets so well. I’m sure the crows are to blame. In the dream I am only another stalk, twined in and heartless and happy with the crows keeping my secrets too. But the day comes and I can’t undo my waking as you unravel your plaits.
For now, stay still. For me look just that way and sit, dear. Just so, still, and if you need to, pretend the air is full of vapors. You are so lovely and I am quite afraid.
Start at the beginning. And when you come to the end, stop.