The Knowing Alicia Cole When they first walk out of the cave, my sisters are shaking. It is cold in that far-away place, cold like a morning iced over, the sharpness of icicles accentuated by the fading moon. We gather each into our arms in turn; if they have need of wailing, they are given blood thick as milk. They sip, slow, mouths reedy like hummingbirds. Then, as the heart desires, fed: the great feast past the mouth of the cave, slightly uphill on a wash of green bank. The small ones ask for candy. Pretty as the dew, bright crystal, slender and quick-tongued; darting like fish, they wriggle, disappear even as we watch. Others are wise. They dip their hands in watermelon hearts, scoop fistfuls of red, sweet as the early light of day. Juice – on their fingers, their wrists, their palms – stains like prayer. Dropped seeds quicken, tangle in the flower’s beds. Vines, green and twining, rise, say: speak with the tongues of stars.
Alicia Cole is a writer, an educator and an esotericist. Her poetry is forthcoming in Lakeside Circus, Mythic Delirium, and Dawntreader; her prose is forthcoming in Torn Pages Anthology and Vagrants Among Ruins. She spends much of her time either freelancing or playing with a menagerie of animals. Updates on her writing and editing career can be found on Facebook and Goodreads.