Her heart feels heavy and there are tears behind her eyes. Her whole body hurts. The sensation is all-consuming. The future is knocking and she doesn’t like what it’s carrying. Unlike before, this is not an adventure or an illustrious trip: it’s an about-turn; a reversal of trajectory, heading face-on into a familiar undesirable she thought herself to have fled.

Attempting to alleviate the uncomfortable, she throws it over her shoulder until it’s far enough away to ignore, delaying its revival until a more convenient time. In the interim, she invents a new project: at least preoccupied, there will be less room for thinking and her thoughts, if any, will be of minutiae.

For a subject, she picks an orange gourd: a week shy of Halloween, pumpkins are as good a theme as any. They are also an apt symbol, being concerned with ghoulish things. What better vessel for her demons than a vegetable with limbs?

by Rebecca L. Atherton
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