‘Aphrodite in An Open Casket’, ‘Sins, Like Violets’ & ‘A Girl’s Sword; Her Princess’
Photographer: Dane Kaiser
Aphrodite in An Open Casket
I take the scribbled note from my hands and check it one more time, making sure I read the note correctly. It looked like a tendril of spilled ink, with a shaky hand that fervently wrote: “Garden, near the brick and stone.” My warm breath creates smoke signals around me in the cold air. At least I’m sure I’m alive. I enter a gated square with lines of stone to catch each footfall. The smell of floral rot: the rose, peony, and soil swirled around me in a delicate game of tug of war. Baby pinks, passionate reds, sickly browns and greens, a kaleidoscope of a garden on the edge of a bustling downtown.
The rot condescends the brick mansion, its permanent partner in decay. It feels peaceful at a time like this, the day feels a little bit like night, while birds still sing their sonnets.
Suddenly, I hear a voice call out to me, dark and deep, so much so that I feel it in the depths of my chest, like a bass drum.
“You’ve found it.” He says.
I turn to face him, the teeth grinding in my jaw being the only stable bravery I own.
“Yes? Of course I did, I’ve compared every piece of this city to this very description.” I hold up the note as I shake my head, ignoring the sly smile peeling across his face.
He leads me to a patch of flowers, fallen and rotten— I could taste the nausea boiling in my stomach. The stranger points a pale finger to a particularly macabre flower, white and grey as ash with patches of pink that still made it look beautiful in its fate, lying beautifully like Aphrodite in an open casket.
“There,” he says smoothly–but sharp as a knife, “See that? In the study of plants, whenever you see the rot, you cut it off to save the other plants.”
My body stills as I peer down, frozen, feeling as helpless as the garden itself, the fog-turned-rain adorning their petals with pearlescent teardrops.
“This one, a shame, couldn’t be saved.” He continues.
His hand snakes around my neck like a python and I its prey, his breath warm against my freezing neck.
“Sometimes, you must sever the blight at just the right time, so nothing else is affected. Will you be that beauty saved, or will you lie in rot— like that poor thing there? The choice is yours, but sometimes nature does it for you before you can cut the rot out.” His voice softens, almost apologetic.
I swallow hard, my insides twisting and turning.
I sigh, but it comes out more as a heave.
My mind begins to play tricks on me, my head swirling with begging whispers of escape, escape, escape.
In my peripheral vision, I see the glimmer of a blade raised just above my head. I close my eyes and brace for this ugly thorn in my side.
Sins, Like Violets
They said “sinful” like it wasn’t the word
for violets growing from veins.
Like we don’t bloom from the bars
of their caged certainty:
petals with decay,
spitre and starlight.
The feelings came with a fever.
heart full of misremembered names,
tongue tasting of herbal vapor and her cheap lipstick,
esh aches with dull warmth underneath.
I carved Sappho into her neck with my own bitten nails,
and held her carefully like a secret on the edge of my lips.
I’ve seen girls like me resurrect themselves clean
with a whisper and a bruised rib— a bite of the sweet and molding apple. Call this alleyway an altar, for golden laurel crowns and demigods, and mortals that fall below. This kaleidoscope night is my Eurydice, and I its Orpheus.
Forbidden to look back until I see the thorn-blood red rise of the sun.
A Girl’s Sword; Her Princess
A lavender fog hugs low to the valley,
ivy grips the ash-stone tower like whispered prayer. Her dress is stitched from spider’s silk,
but her eyes, Gods help me, burn like war.
No suitor’s sonnet sung to her.
No prince’s vow dares weigh her chest.
Not one man could unbind the oath
that I, her knight, have sworn.
I ride beneath a banner of starlight,
no crest nor family name to call my own.
just shapes stitched into my sleeves
and the sweetest scent of lilac on my armor, where I held her last. She meets me where the garden hides,
beneath the hush of smoky moonrise,
where roses dream and time forgets to blink.
“My knight,” she murmurs into my mouth,
“you dance with death, grinning at fate.
By dawn, they’ll come for your end—
and I cannot bear to hear the silence from your heart.” I gaze into her lantern-lit eyes and say:
“I chase the saccharine heart that unfurls my will.
If death nds me tonight, may heaven grant me an eternity to watch you sleep.” We kiss like sacred ame,
like the tide breaking on burning shores.
The battle drums draw closer.
We stay until the sky turns red with mourning.
Let kings decree and blind prophets warn.
Let their blades bloom inside my ribs.
They’ll crown me not with gold, but thorns.
and I’ll lie in peace beneath the soil,
because I loved her, I loved her, I loved her.
Let them call me traitor, sin personified, but I am her martyr, her patron, her chosen one. Let her place a single violet on my unmarked grave, to show she still thinks of me.
Tonight, we are two young girls in the midnight hour, pretending we know anything, everything, about love.
Kenna DeValor (they/them/theirs) is a glittering mythical creature that lives right outside your peripherals. (Just kidding!) Kenna is a queer and nonbinary writer that hails from pothole-adorned paradise: Bethlehem, PA and has been published over 50+ times in 2024 alone (Including Word's Faire with "Mother Mirror"!) They recently came out with their third poetry collection entitled DISCOFRUIT. Kenna proudly holds a B.A in English/Creative Writing from Bloomsburg University. Kenna currently attends Wilkes University for their MFA program in Creative Writing (Poetry/Fiction/Publishing). When not writing, reading, or making fun DIY zines, Kenna is a professional tattoo artist and the EIC/Founder of the lit-arts magazine FlowerMouth Press.
