Mykki Rios

In a dark, thicketed forest:

A little girl with silver eyes, silver hair, silver scars flees. She is blind, but there’s nothing to see anyways. As far as she knows, she has exactly as many senses as anything else.

Her visions are coveted. Pale and young, she is a light source in itself. The woodland isn’t anywhere yet. It is shifting, thorny, and there is no path. The trees grasp like hands, but there are also other hands crawling after her. Beings low to the ground in the primordial ooze. Brambles tear at her feet, snag and rip out strands of her hair. She knows she does not wish to be captured. Even in this world of no boundaries, she has some inkling of what a cage means. Unfortunately, before rules or reason, there is survival, which means in turn there is fear.

The mud under her feet murmurs, bubbles, groans. A bird does not exist yet. A song does not exist yet. An instrument is far off from being invented. What the little girl is chasing is more the idea of light. The notion of music. Respite.

The ground underneath her feet grows stabler, but more complicated. There are roots now. Knots. When she runs into the column of the tree, she is grateful to nearly break her nose. Her body finding something closer in nature to herself is a relief.

She sinks into the embrace of the immense tree trunk. As her breathing slows, she realizes she does not hear the pursuing of the hungry hands. She does not know it, but she has gone somewhere they cannot follow.

What you find is largely determined by what you chase after. The girl has been looking for a hiding place. The hands have only been looking for her. The hands have no concept of haven, or altar, or home. A base understanding of possession is insufficient to reach the tree. They pass by it, or over it, or perhaps recede, becoming the first wave, long before someone finds and names the sea.

In the here and now, the little girl sobs. Tears mingling with her bloody nose, and everything remains dark, so it is irrelevant if the tears are ungainly, show weakness, are not pretty. When the gasps become shallower, less frequent, the tree says, “You can stay here if you so desire.”

The little girl asks, “Where is here?”

“Nowhere yet, but together we can change so much, bring new possibilities forth. I cannot return you to the sky, but together we can name it, name everything under it with time.”

“I cannot remember where I came from.”

The tree replies, “That means you can go anywhere, once there is somewhere to go. For now, you can rest. Sink into my roots, into the meat of my heart-wood. Slowly, ring by ring, we will bring clarity to our surroundings and to ourselves. Remembering and remembering and remembering.”

The little girl does not respond, having already been lulled to sleep by the tree’s words.

The tree embraces her small, broken form. Amber slowly enrobes her, giving her shelter, love, time to grow her wings. For the first time, maybe ever, there is a mother with child. Together they will create a world from scrap. For now though, there is rest. Sleep. Burial as healing.

A tree plants the first seed, a little kernel of sky, that came from elsewhere.

Mykki Rios is a queer genderfluid Mexican-American writer, performer and multimedia artist. Raised in Chicago, and having lived many places across the globe, they recently returned home to the Windy City. Mykki has had works featured in issues of HAD, BRUISER Mag, Tampa Review, and more. They were also a finalist in Lupercalia Press’ 2022 Chapbook Series Contest. Their poems have been nominated for the Monarch Queer Literary Awards and the Pushcart Prize.