To Corinth, Sister of the Elect, Daughter of the Almighty:

I regret that this is the first letter from my desk in months, please excuse the absence of veneration. Time has been elusive as we enter into a season of Twelvetide and you understand the extensive pageantry involved with its execution. Alas, I do no write in regards to this event, but to address some troubling rumors that have boiled up...

We were mermaid-young, our hips unformed against the July heat as we slipped noisily into the pool. You told me that I could be the prince that came to save you from the tyranny of your father, a god of the sea, the man who turned your legs into fins and scales and your heart into salt water.

It would only take a kiss. Pretend, you breathed at me and then on three! We submerged ourselves into the...

I swung silently around the bend, into the turret’s alcove, trying to swallow my breathing. A thin stream of sweat stung the corners of my eyes. The Geist was lumbering down the portico, his footsteps neither unsubtle or quiet. This Geist was either dumb or bold, and I wasn’t in the mood to find out which one....

We were chosen young. So young, my mother was only a swear of a stern mouth and a ruddy forehead. An oiled curl escaped the crisp white of her bonnet, but I do remember that because it was the same rusty red as my own. Her voice, nothing, I hear nothing if I try to pull back thoughts of those days when I was only a chubby-legged toddler. She is only a fevered dream, opaque memory.

I have no remem...

When you roiled into this world,

Folded envelope-tight until

You unfurled, your silhouette was etched

against the hospital window’s

crisp white sunshine, the beginning of

the first heat of a Tennessee spring.

Clutching you against my breast that

Entire southern summer,

Us both a Pollack of

Sweat and tears and milk.

We learned to be humans as the

June thunderstorms broiled in the horizon.

Years ...