Tag Archives: Emily Rose Cole

Autumn is bleeding all over my sidewalk. Leaves crumple, falling into preemptive rigor mortis before leaping into an oblivion of gold, ochre, vermilion. Soon, the masquerade will commence: children construct false faces to hide their humanity, and scoop the guts … Continue reading →

Curled on the bathroom floor, I watch through the secondhand gaze of the mirror as she dips into her palette of shadows and flutters smoke across living canvas. Stroke by stroke, she teaches me the tricks, the deceptions of framing, … Continue reading →

I do not know the prophesies of tea leaves. Tea is too simple to be complicated by the language of living and dying. Besides, it didn’t take an owl-eyed fortune-teller draped in incensed silk to tell me what would become … Continue reading →

Only tourists and fools seek shelter when the air hums electric green, when rusted earth swirls into eddies, when thunder thrums through our bones. The locals know better. Settling onto lawn chairs, they greet savagery face-to-face, each mouth drawn in … Continue reading →

Courage took me sailing once. His callous-seeded palms gripped rope and wheel with unchecked certainty. When I shuddered, he whistled and strung me a necklace of spindrift spray. Pitching on the edge of danger and regret, he clasped my shoulders, … Continue reading →

These nights I wake to symphonic kyries: seasoned insects singing triumph after seventeen years’ slumber. Like you, cicadas split themselves down the middle and wriggle from antique skin, white and fearless. It’s the definition of bravery to change, to face … Continue reading →