Lucie Bonvalet

A Cathedral

I phone my grandmother

she is 94

I’m sorry a fire destroyed

the cathedral in her town

she says a forest died

the term forest

is a technical word

used to refer to the ancient

framework of the building

800 years old, made of giant

oaks. Each beam

in the 12th century

came from a different tree

among the interlaced beams

we inhaled a forest, spices

Lucie Bonvalet is a writer, a visual artist and a teacher. Her writing (prose & poetry) can be found in Best Small Fictions 2023, SAND, Monkeybicycle, Phantom Drift Limited, Juked, and elsewhere. Originally from the Dordogne in France, she has lived in Portland, Oregon since 2004.