Lizzy Burnam 🐞

The wailing woman who dredges the lake with a broken branch looking for the body of her dead daughter is the same woman who once wore white reading bedtime stories about monsters defeated by a spunk the size of a flat skipping stone. I am the lake overflowing like a drooling mouth after the storm. I am the storm lurching toward the forest where the spider-silk nest of a blue-throated mountain-gem is asleep in a brittle branch. I am the brittle branch breaking. I am the woman carrying fists full of mud and nothing more. Not a whisper, not a peep. Whatever child lived under that black water has long since stopped breathing. Whatever she had to say is gone. Listen to me: You only get one chance to skip that stone. You only get one chance to gather those bones before the wailing woman wraps you in a thin white sheet and holds you underwater, til the slosh fades to stillness and the spine becomes cold.