Nettle Children
Remember when your heart knew how to mend itself and all that really mattered were the pedals of a grifter bike.
And the lass you loved smelled of north wind and puddles. Was the colour of Wednesdays when you thought of her in the dark.
When she told you every room in her house was an accident that kept on happening, you swore to your two inch Yoda you would help her bury her scream in the garden, properly deep, to protect it.
All she ever muttered was the language of nettles even though you knew her to be fluent in twenty pence mix-ups and the gurgling of going-away rivers.
When her family hacked her down with their rusted sickles, burned the shy roots of her all the way past nothing, you remembered that summer she showed you her flowers.
How the dust of her danced over the dry stone walls as she smiled. Confused the crows into believing themselves owls.
Now time just forgets her, her pollen all spent. Just the stinging prickles of memories remain; occasionally leak from your heart, become a whole patch of butterflies.
Marcia Hindson has work published or forthcoming in The Interpreter's House, Tears In The Fence, Bare Fiction, Obsessed With Pipework, Riggwelter, and Atrium, among others. Born in the north of England in a small mining village, that strange landscape influences her work and the way she processes the world.