Burning Bright by Marisa Gedgaudas

In my dream, there is a tiger in the water.

A flash of striped orange swimming slow circles in the murky pool at my feet.

The sky is dark, the water darker.

I do not know what the tiger wants but I am fixed in place by fear, fascination, the fury of orange/black/orange.

I turn to find your shelf strewn with old books. Their pages are brimming with drawings, poems, letters. Each book contains all of our memories and your secret stories of me.

I look closer.

They are mostly old stories of mostly a different me. The pages turn and so the stories. I catch my breath and quickly close the books.

I do not want to know the ending.

I must not know the ending.

I turn again.

It's there, in the tiger's teeth.

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dream of publication by Jacob Friesenhahn

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Mushroom Searching by Zary Fekete