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Our Old Haunt by Frances Badgett

I have built neither monument nor temple, only this stack of pocked rocks, river stones drilled by rapids with holes like eye sockets in a human skull, stone orbital bone smooth. What if you return? What if the front porch light dims when you ring the bell? What if the creaking third step chases you like a haint to the amber fall sky? My life feels moss-wrapped and forgotten. Your memories are always here, quiet kept among the weeds, hovering over these stones, ghost-hung sheet over the line, your grandmother’s voice floating through the river-cut pines. I tore the hem of this dress and wrapped your memory of a heart in it. I place it with my skull stones, which are not a shrine. Just memory made rock, moss connecting your finger to the pulse on my neck.

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Frances Badgett has been the fiction editor of Contrary Magazine since 2003. Her work has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, X-R-A-Y, Salamander, JMWW, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, 100 Word Story and elsewhere. She has been published in the JMWW Anthology, been on the Wigleaf 50 twice, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She lives in Bellingham, Washington with her husband, daughter, and two cats. This is her first story with Two Hawks Quarterly.