Don't Let the Forest In

by C.G. Drews

Dove was the one everyone saw, and Andrew was the one they forgot.

He couldn’t risk allowing his mouth to say the things he only dared scream in his head.

Sometimes he’d lie awake at night and unpack all his feelings about this boy-shaped hurricane named Thomas Rye.

This boy did what he wanted on impulse and regretted nothing.

Andrew wanted that—to be so full of fierce life it spilled over his edges.

Andrew bit back a laugh as Thomas snatched the Tim Tams and then scurried like a goblin over the roof.

Or because Thomas

only knew how to bite people for attention.

“They’re meant to be paper cuts.”

“I’m scared of everything except the dark.”

“When I cut you open,” Andrew finally said, “all I’ll find is that we match.”

literal shivers.

To write something nice, he’d need something nice to say. But his ribs were a cage for monsters and they cut their teeth on his bones.

“Anyone could be a monster. In the right circumstances.

“I like how you are. There’s an entire world of ink and magic stuffed inside your head, and I

think it’s beautiful. I just wish everything didn’t hurt you so much.”

Maybe it was easier to whisper sweet and aching things in the dark.

“I need to be treated softly, like a delicate egg.”

If the trees belonged to Thomas, midnight was in love with Andrew.

This is all they were, at the end of it all, boys with stomachs empty and concave, waiting to be filled by Wickwood and forests and rot.

Everyone wanted something. Everyone yearned or searched or hungered—even monsters.

“Everything inside me is in ruins,” Thomas said. “For you.”

tangled in each other’s arms like two licorice twists.

I am here and I am here and I am here.”

He could only handle life if he looked at it carefully from the corner of his eye.

I loved her like she was my family. But I love you … like you’re my whole world.”