If you enjoy this feature and would like to see more, let me know with a comment, 💌 share, ♥️ like, or better yet, a 🔄 restack!
You can purchase Written Tales Magazine in print or digital, or become a paid subscriber and download your favorite editions. To view our upcoming stories & poems, please visit our publishing schedule calendar.
I You are the young girl trailing her hand against the hot adobe wall. You are the landscape painting: wild strokes of sage and piñon. You are the fallen apricot bruised, calling to the unripe apple in the tree. You are the hour burning as black clouds gather over the Sangre de Cristo. You are the gray pigeon huddled with its flock in the belfry below a bare white cross. You are St. Francis, forever feeding a dove on your arm in the veil of the voluptuous church-body. You are the rain come now; long dark fingers in the distance touching down: cricket wind, lightning skin. II You are eating an apple when the rain comes. You’ve watched the dark cloud advance, willing it to arrive, thundering over the mesa like a herd of wild horses. After so much dry heat a sudden wind in your hair. “Some might call this mercy,” you tell the sage as you run through dirt and rocks to find cover. Sheltered, you take another bite of the fruit in your hand. Grit from the storm’s abrupt chaos grates in your mouth. Hummingbird’s last homily darts through your head: “No one died for your sins.”
