Feature Image:
Princess Sabra, or The King’s Daughter (1865), by Edward Burne-Jones

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Once there was a story
that lost its end.
It turned in tepid circles
grasping ideas & air
scented like half-remembered
memories,
moments lost.

Dust motes moved in where
commas used to be.
Lint smudged out plotlines
& shadows cast by early morning
erased all words that followed
the first.

Can there be a story in just one word?
Once
Once
Once.

Must it be repeated? Or, once
once had come, been said,
must it transform—
stretch its sides to accommodate
twice, thrice, more?

Once wonders. Once ponders.
Once sees at last
there’s no need to fret about
middles, endings, denouements.

All the reader needs to spin
a kaleidoscope of wonder

is Once.

Feature Image:
Nova Magistirium Suspiria Lacrimosa @novathemagicalcat

1. Each evening you find a black cat on your doorstep. It doesn’t meow or paw the screen or beg for food. It sits facing out, away from the house, as if watching, guarding, protecting.

2. You decide to name the cat Clive.

3. Your compost pile is a haven for mushrooms—almost every species you know and a few you don’t. You gather some—just the two species you’re sure of—and make risotto at sunset. Passing the brush pile, you notice the cuttings from your garden are covered in thriving nightshade. Purple flowers flutter in the breeze, blushing yellow as evening falls.

4. You offer Clive some risotto. He ignores you but doesn’t run away. You scritch him gently between the ears.

5. You wake up at midnight every night. The moon is always shining (except when it’s new as can be). At your bedroom window, you look out across the yard. You see the compost pile, a hundred fruiting bodies glowing pale, calling to insects to taste their flesh, carry their spores. Awake, you wonder what stirred you. (Clive is nowhere to be found.) As you stand—not tired, but calm, rested, waiting for you don’t know what—you fancy you hear a tune, a humming like the lowest note on a cello. It sounds almost like a chant, a summoning. Each night, it becomes clearer, until at last you can make out a single word: Arise