each saguaro pillar in this bare-but-full, sparse-but-ample hill-side forest is a bone in a body i didn’t know i had. whispers surround me, their austere guardian presence like tribal elders confessing crested wisdom—the tangled gift & barbed curse of knowledge, & it’s the same as when the wind gushes her secrets to the border collie whose ears perk in response leaping up to form scalable furry peaks that tweak & prick. i can’t make heads or tails of the contents of these reveals, but, i stand with my spine | | straight | | mirroring my cacti gurus & their skyscraper torsos gazing into this topsy- -turvy horizon sea & becoming a rooted fixture myself, while i graze off the desert gods, confident of one thing— all that really matters is me being here, l i s t e n i n g ~
Abbie Doll is a writer residing in Columbus, OH, with an MFA from Lindenwood University and is a Fiction Editor at Identity Theory. Her work has been featured in Door Is a Jar Magazine, 3:AM Magazine, and Pinch Journal Online, among others. Connect on socials @AbbieDollWrites.
