Juniper & Thorn

by Ava Reid

He was the beacon of a hundred unblinking stares.

You should know, of course, that there are only two kinds of mothers in stories, and if you are a mother, you are either wicked or you are dead.

But there’s hardly anything in life worth doing that doesn’t make somebody angry.

I imagined pulling back the band of white flesh around my nail, peeling it in spirals like potato skin, until my whole hand was gloved in red. I visited upon myself one small violence after another, inside the safe bunker of my mind.

my desire curled its long tendrils out of my belly, blooming in the light and the heat.

Magic is the first sip of good wine that makes the edges of your vision blur. Magic is the cool breeze of the boardwalk at night and organ music in the air. Magic is landing a grand jeté and nearly going deaf with the crowd’s applause. Magic is the low flicker of tavern lights and the girl you’re courting leaning close so you can kiss.”

I told him about how he guarded our maidenheads like a jealous lord guarded his most fertile lands, so that only he could plant there.

Was I a woman inside the body of a monster, or was I a monster inside the body of a woman?

If you ever loved me, it was only because I was a soft thing you threw down into the bottom of a pit to break your fall.”

“Think of a potion like a sprinkling of rainwater: it can sprout a seed, but it cannot coax up a plant from a tract of barren land.”

“That will be my own seed to nurture or to kill as I see fit. But you have let a whole tree sprout up inside of you, and its branches are dripping with fat black berries.”