The Honey Witch

by Sydney J. Shields

These are the wild women who run barefoot through the meadow, who teach new songs to the birds, who howl at the moon together. Wild women are their own kind of magic.

“No. You see only springtime. What happens when I am winter? I will tell you, Mr. Notley. When winter comes”—she leans in close so their noses are almost touching—“you will freeze.”

She rolls her eyes at the thought—yes, she is a grown woman, and is that not magical in itself? To have survived this long, despite the world’s penchant for beautiful dead girls?

But what happens when the girl keeps living, when she ages proudly and defiantly, without abandoning imagination, or stories, or that secret wish to find magic wherever it hides? Well, then the poets would call her a witch. It is better to be lost in a beautiful daydream than trapped in a dim reality.

“One hundred years is more than enough for me.” Marigold places the jar back on the counter. “But I didn’t get to spend those hundred years with you.” Her voice comes as a whisper. “Even if I did, it still wouldn’t be enough. I’ll never be ready for you to go.”

A Honey Witch provides women with choice—something they are all too often denied.

“What any woman wants for herself is not for you to decide. You would do well to remember that.”

“I am certain it was less about him and more about enjoying the feeling of being chosen by someone who I thought was better than me.

It is a mistake to think of grief as an absence. It’s more of a dark, shadowy thing that sits in constant periphery, always there, always stealing air and making it hard to breathe.

I am starved for you. I did not want to stop. I still want you.