Sarah Koz

“I could hear the roaring fill the air but I could not find a source. A waterfall around the bend, I thought, across these rocks. Ahead, I could see a small crack in the rock. I went forward prepared to leap it. As I took the step nearest it, I glanced down.

“And nearly fell, two hundred feet I’m sure, into a boiling cauldron of water trapped in a deep, narrow chasm of stone so curled and convoluted by erosion that it seemed like some fantastic cloth. I can record all this now but at the time I had to fling myself back, and the navigator grabbed me and prevented me from sliding in. We both fell backward, and I lay there panting and sweating.

“‘What?’ she said. ‘What?’ I gestured, and she crawled ahead. When she returned, her face was white, but she was laughing.

“‘I can die now,’ she said, that Avanue phrase Annalise has read in books but I had never heard spoken before. The navigator lay beside me laughing until she calmed, while the others, including the merchanter, took their turn. He alone seemed unmoved.

“When we jumped across the chasm (so narrow there was no effort to it)—and there is no easy way to say it—she jumped not across but in. I did not see it. No-one saw it but the merchanter. I only heard her falling laughter.…

“Annalise tells me that if a northerner says that phrase ‘I can die now,’ it means great joy, but they mean it truly. Not many of them choose to actually die, but they do not grieve for those who do.”
― Candas Jane Dorsey, Black Wine

“Hers was not an easy sleep. Through her dreams there came and went the young girls of her mother’s stories: girls who had left their little houses against the rules and custom. Some of them were bitten by snakes and died at once; some of them lived long enough to bring shame and sorrow to their families, and then died; and there was the one who cut herself and sucked her own blood and liked the taste so much, she ate more and more of herself, becoming nothing but a head—a Cannibal Head—which devoured her parents and her brothers and sisters and then rolled horribly over the earth with an insatiable need always to eat human flesh, more and more and more.”
― Theodora Kroeber, The Inland Whale: Nine Stories Retold from California Indian Legends

“Day Thirty-Four

Handsome hunting heron,
standing in the weir,
our lives are lived apart
yet our bodies are so near;
as you wade across the water
seeking fish to eat,
I cannot help but wonder:
do you ever get cold feet?

Serenely splendid heron,
staring into river,
the wind that blows your feathers
is causing me to shiver;
the setting sun is sinking,
the ducks are flying home,
I cannot help but wonder:
do you ever feel alone?”
― Jez Green, Wonderland: A Forty-Day Poetic Pandemic Diary

“Were they taken apart like this? But they seemed to be able to function after, though I couldn’t imagine how we would. We clung to each other. After a while I started to cry. Annalise held me.

“‘In the book,’ she said, ‘they say that after fucking one is omnivorously sad.’

“‘It’s not that.’

“‘What then?’

“‘It’s so easy for you.’

“‘Easy?’ She looked at me and her grin slipped off, right off into nowhere. ‘Easy? We could die of this. Don’t you feel it? Right now, we could be dying of each other. How do you think that feels, when I could be thrown out like garbage any day? And you, you are the heir to everything.’

“She had never talked about it before. Now I was so far into my own fear that it took me time to realize they were the same fears. We lay in silence, holding each other tight, until I caught up to it and passed ahead.

“‘How can she hurt them?’ I said finally. ‘What if…?’

“‘You are not her,’ said Annalise, which she had said before, but now, she took my shoulders fiercely and held me so she could look into my face. ‘You are not hers,’ she said. The difference was immense, and she struck my fear away easily. I was washed with gratitude, relief. ‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘You never cry.’

“‘I never knew stuff before,’ I said. ‘How this changes everything. How it’s full of fear. In the books I read, it’s full of joy. In the books you read, it shows you how to put your hands into me and pull my heart out.’

“‘Poor princess,’ she said. ‘And what have you done with mine heart? You have eaten it all up.’

“After that we were shy and had to start to make stupid jokes, though I could not imagine ever seeing the light of day again, I felt so different.”
― Candas Jane Dorsey, Black Wine