A Study in Drowning

by Ava Reid

She thought of the time she had turned over a fallen log in her grandparents’ back garden: the wood had disintegrated right there in her hand, and she’d stared down at the slimy dead leaves, the white mold, the fungi that had sprouted up like flower heads, each one shaped and striated like an oyster shell. Trees didn’t die when they were cut down, did they? Their dying took months, years. What a terrible fate to endure.

The weight of a memory is one thing. You get very used to swimming with it dragging you down. Once it’s loosed, you hardly know what to do with your body. You don’t understand its lightness.”