The road that chokes on its own gravel By Alyssa Laird

A waving light tricking the eyes of headlights lost wanderers spectate over how dark it is when they aren’t even wearing shades. Scanning the road hanging tightly to the right against the cheek of the mountain that cuts and bruises where kisses should be.

This road forgives, though unforgiving. This road forgets, though unforgetting. This road twists gravity upside-the-head, places a penny between two left feet-it’s tails. This road callouses soft spaces, lines padded trees across its elbows, gives a facade of something safe; something that beckons one onward the way wanderers do when they…spectate over how dark it is, green eyes gleaming like glittered marbles in the setting sun when they aren’t even wearing shades.

Writer bio: “I am a 24 year old vision- ary and poetic writer inspired by the natural world. My work can be considered a prac- tice in personifi cation, but really this is less a practice, and more an honest representation of how I see the world. Vibrant and teeming with knowledge. Alive and interconnected, with all its devotion to love, to peace, to cha- os, and to entropy. To write is to take part in the great healing practice of negentropy, or “putting things back together”. The paper is the gift of dying forests, where we can wring out the inky memories of our life experiences and bring the trees to life again! The paper is where all things make sense in the unravel- ing, where threads of color roll into a thou- sand different stories. So let us tell them! Let us become the fi ne sculptors of these words the heart of nature whispers softly of. For me, for you, for everyone.”

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