Buy So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction
edited by Steve Berman
[Lethe Press, 06.2009]

Exiles

But then the memory fades, driven out by a single green dot, an absinthe fairy. You shake your head to jar it loose and return to your ominous thoughts, but the speck remains, strengthens in color, swells into a small bud. Doubting your sanity, you watch it as it shifts and grows. The green ripens with each breath, uncoils like a blossom, spreads into a broad rectangle. White lines reveal themselves: a series of graceful sweeps and curls—more art than language. You laugh, a bubble of joy escaping chapped lips, the release like ejaculation. The message hovers, teases your hungry eyes, then snaps off. You reach out to recapture the vision, but your hands remain empty. The jarring loss shudders through you and you grip the worn arms of the chair to steady yourself.

Your labored breathing slows and quiets—beyond the darkness you hear a fire engine wail by, birds chattering about the rain, the distant rumble of thunder foretelling heavier showers to come. You rise on the wave of an epiphany, open the window to the moist scent of the garden. The wet blows in brisk gales, baptizing your face with clean, fat drops. The garden takes shape before you: the cascade of rain on the leaves, dance of branches in the wind, secret rush of some small animal scurrying to his home. Oh, you blind fool, you chide yourself, voice thick with snot, it’s all still there.

Finish reading "Exiles" in So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction or The Silent Hustler