When the Forecast Forgets the Wildfires ~ fiction by Audrey T. Carroll

Three grackles appear to me and

as they stare it is impossible to look away, transfixed (transluced) (transpired) by this encounter as though they have something to prove, a message to pass on

and I cannot begin to understand the five questions (who) (what) (when) (where) (why) even as I should have at least some answers to give but the why—

the why undoes them all—

and I find myself hoping, hoping for some greater meaning to this (to all of this) to make my hand steady through the next choice and the next, as though some destiny awaits that lifts away all responsibility (accountability) and then life could just be experienced

instead of feeling as though the world is on fire and all I am capable of is lighting matches and finding more kerosene to make pretty fire flare from the waters, a sorceress from a fairy tale gone mad

and all this haze, all this haze

and all these warnings, omens, smoke on air currents across a continent and it feels

and it feels like lungs burning, sight fading

because we cannot see one another, we cannot watch

through skies obscured, and so we wait and hope

even with grackles staring intention into us on our doorstep,

we cannot find it—I cannot find it—

in me to learn a spell to heal,

so still I sit—so still, I sit—with little more than the world spinning in fire, stop and drop be damned, just roll and roll and roll,

and didn’t I want to save this place, once?

Audrey T. Carroll is the author of the What Blooms in the Dark (ELJ Editions, 2024) and Parts of Speech: A Disabled Dictionary (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). Her writing has appeared in Lost Balloon, CRAFT, JMWW, Bending Genres, and others. She is a bi/queer/genderqueer and disabled/chronically ill writer. She serves as a Diversity & Inclusion Editor for the Journal of Creative Writing Studies, and as a Fiction Editor for Chaotic Merge Magazine. She can be found at http://AudreyTCarrollWrites.weebly.com and @AudreyTCarroll on Twitter/Instagram.