The Wild Hunt
And for so long I wasn’t anything. A pile of rocks to the side of the trail, might be a tiny grave or some kid’s collection. Circles in the mushrooms at the edge of the woods. Heartbeats through clothes. I was no one except grief. I haunted hilltops and ushered my tears in with the rain. I was so beautiful, but I was nothing–if you looked inside me, it was dead air. You’d fall in, too. You’d disappear.
I looked up at you like from the bottom of a well. And I was reckless for it. I turned thunderstorms inside out, hand over fist. I raced the sun across the sky. I pulled at the oceans until they made tidal waves, and I let them break over me, over and over again. I was there beneath them–I was one with the reef. The wind howled and I sang with it, the wolves and the birds and the trees. I ate everything raw. I was alive. I hadn’t felt that way before. I haven’t felt that way since.
Maybe I don’t have any idea about want
And maybe somewhere the want flies out of our mouths before it becomes words. Maybe the primordial ooze, maybe a single-celled organism and another and another, builds, reaches out a scaly, clawed hand for– . Maybe that instantaneous moment when atoms bond and chemical reactions combust. Maybe just surprise. Maybe I think I can’t look away because I just don’t want to, splicing the strands of fate to put my name in them. Maybe it isn’t matter. Maybe you were just a spare bit of electricity, sprawled sunlit gold against spring grass; maybe my brain fog snapped its neck on the first thing it saw. Maybe jeans and bracelets and a paper frame. An electrical tower teetering in the wind. Ghosts in the machine. Maybe purple thunderclouds at war, slashed orange sunset. Maybe soul-possessed. Maybe drunken planes spiral out of the sky. Maybe vultures. Maybe I disappear again. Maybe you beat me to it.
Jasmina Kuenzli
Jasmina Kuenzli (she/her/hers) loves telling stories. Her recent publications include The Hooghly Review and Underscore Magazine. When she isn’t writing, she can be found playing soccer, reading, and devising plans to land herself a villain role on The Bachelor Franchise. You can learn about her adventures and her insights on grief, the fall of democracy, and true love on Twitter @jasmina62442, Bluesky @jasmina62442.bksy.social, and on Instagram @jasminawritespoetry and @jazztagrams. She would like to thank Brenna and Sarah, who hear every story first, and Harry Styles, who is sunshine distilled in a human being.