Kindred

Then I shuttered my eyes to the mundane

and saw living blue flame

rising inside me, then

seeping out through my fingertips.

Then I stripped naked

the curtains from my ears

and heard the flame

calling out to a kindred soul

in the heart of a tiny salamander.

    Our eyes caught and we knew this truth:

What people don’t see or hear

is so much bigger than what 

they caught.

 J. Pratt-Walter, © 2020

Forest Faerie Lesson

She thought it was

the stony hand of gravity pressing her

all the day long into the grit

of twilight, and her breath

was heavily afraid.

Then the forest faeries whispered

into her mind,

her mind shaped its music,

her music lit her heart,

her heart, for a moment, held all the sky,

every animal person, every plant.

She saw gravity’s authority only works

when you believe in it,

as does flight,

so she gained sky, the ugly-duckling-days made fresh,

her own brilliance filling her hourglass

with green magic that was

always there.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2018

Almighty

No matter who is pregnant,

nor how, within

the chalice of her body

the match is struck,

alight, and there blooms

the unspeakable goddess

Almighty

in a tiny cake

of cells.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2017