Author Archives: Krysia Jopek

Lazy, hazy—I fell in the night garden—just missing the yellow roses’ thorns. The sweat pea curled around me, redolent—adorning me worthy. Things didn’t go as planned. The beloved, the monkshood, didn’t return this summer. That part of the east flowerbed, … Continue reading →

The winds garnered our shadows to comfort jumpy birds. Shadows of hands, in particular, sculpted their nests into perfect circles for the bluest eggs, the most mellifluous of song. *** The sun knew nothing of this. *** To turn oneself … Continue reading →

Night pulled new hostages down for the dream world, a dozen at a time. *** Time became a main character in the play, a drama—not a comedy. Well, a tragedy if honesty should factor in, but Time would really tell. … Continue reading →

The cave where we grew secrets was a safe place; our memories couldn’t harvest us. The glass beakers and vials held amalgamations of human tears, rainwater, bee pollen, and dust. If pressed, unlike the alchemist, we would not give up … Continue reading →

Love was an amputation with too many phantom limbs. The legs ached to walk to the house of the beloved and climb the tree ladder to his second house in the stars with their indelible sequences. Up there, we dreamed … Continue reading →

The woman in the painting had fallen off the fence between Monday and Tuesday. She pulled the blanket of stars down to examine them, one by one, burning her fingers. When she touched her face, a halo blossomed with the … Continue reading →

The ones who did not recognize the subject were sent away with a refund. The caretaker played her favorite music, so she would take the pills without biting his hand. A steadying branch, the beloved [at times], radiates amidst the … Continue reading →

You can’t park there. We gave you the wrong vaccine for melancholy. Your ex has married and won the lottery. Your current spouse has a secret bank account. There are 38 more days of winter even though the groundhog did … Continue reading →

I cut my heart out with a kitchen knife and threw it in the sea at high tide because it no longer served me. I built a boat from driftwood to look for it, but it had sunk beneath the … Continue reading →

  Melancholia perched atop the Angel of Poetry on the Christmas tree, an invisible Elf on the Shelf there for maybe days. When no one was looking, she slid through the necklaces of tiniest lights across the crystal snowflake ornaments, … Continue reading →