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Don’t Melt
A. J. Van Belle
Ice shard in cardboard
Don’t melt.
Sleep, the winds hiss.
Go back to empty boxes.
There was never a baby.
Go back to sleep.
But the box is not empty.
The wind tells lies.
Fragile Reality
Invisible wind blows
through the bedroom
Where she’s dying.
The wallpaper peels.
The candle gutters.
Shadows slide past,
dim wash of watercolor.
Otherworld superimposed.
Fragile reality
paints our eyes but it
peels away like paper.
A. J. Van Belle's work has been published by Jazz House, Quill & Crow, Ghost Orchid Press, WriteHive, Gurt Dog Press, Ghostlight, and Macfarlane Lantern Publishing. When not writing, they work as a molecular ecologist who serenades their fungal cultures by dictating fiction when no one else is in the lab.
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