Unrequited + Dead Things

Unrequited

He leaves wildflowers on her porch. They’re dry when Seia finds them. The petals have fallen off. 

The forest is far away down a dirt road. There are dead things there. Sometimes they come out.

Seia comes home with dead things on her shoulder. She kicks the flowers off the doormat and goes inside to boil her catch.

He tries to talk to her when she comes to the depot to get matches, bullets, and fishing tackle. She doesn’t talk.

She goes back into the forest where the dead things are. He watches her go, and wonders why he cares.

Dead Things

Seia pushes through the bramble. It tears at her arms and fingers. There’s a stone-stack doorway into the skin of the forest hidden deep under berry vines.

She crawls into the tunnel, and lights two paraffin candles. She writes a message to her parents with a stump of charcoal on the back of a label for a box of shotgun shells, and she buries it in a small hole. Fungus crawls into her fingertips where they curl into the dirt.

She blows out the candles, and walks home.

The village doesn’t want her anymore. She reeks of dead things.