NIA HOWARD

I’m the wink that flusters, the skirt hiked up to tease, a glimpse of the missing puzzle piece hidden beneath the couch. I’m the white whale and the one to claim the catch; the perfect word on the tip of your tongue,   the snake’s victory when he swallowed his own tail.

rich, here, does not mean luscious fruit, neither a deep color, nor bare feet in the wild dirt– not a flower who knows its laughter without effort. I’ll wear down the soles of my shoes to pay my taxes and then find my candle flickering in the void. I work backwards and without anchor, like…

At the end of the age, the words wrung dry; we sifted through the sweet- tasting pulp left on the rinds and sucked them in through our chattering teeth…   we were in need of words, you see. The cogs had taken over, the well-oiled wheels had taken over, had moved us far too forward…

Spring is eternal here, lonely but not empty— like the geese’s bellied cry echoing across the lake, skimming its surface like a teaspoon. She rains; she settles mists over slick streets, lingering despite a cold, distant sun. And I ask the earth when she might allow the bloom. They say she never has, and I…

Feels good to stretch out my soul’s alien limbs, and rove this empty space for a blessing that hid beneath a stale memory, a stagnant absence.   I thrive in the silence like a leaking faucet dripping well into the dead of night because I’ve heard the magic in this nothingness—   the sound of…

thin-skinned paper singes. we snuff the embers out into an empty candle tin. A green satin robe, a cone of incense. I usher a secret smoke out into the cold air and onto a sleeping city. divinity is never so far away…