Mayflies Read Online Free

that was almost directly above her. A large beetle sauntered on the sand near her feet. She wanted to kick it into the river and watch its legs try to gain ground. She stood and as she did a flashlight beam hit her across the face. Her body twisted around and her foot got caught between the boulder on which she was sitting and another rock. She fell.
    The river was in motion at the passing of a motorboat whose driver wasn’t paying attention to the no-wake zone near the park. She was dragged into the undertow and tugged out from shore.
    She had never learned to swim. She tried to move but breathed water. She tried to open her eyes but was blinded by silt and mud.
    When she opened her eyes she was back on shore and covered in the sticky sludge that the river was full of. A bright light shone into her eyes, someone was tugging at her clothes, she heard slow, low voices.

    Sad emerald new and lost. The sky broken, I returned. I was a body churning and into moving I shone. It was out of necessity, these practical beliefs, a protection of cold iron, running water, bells, the special power of bread. The statues that preside over the fountains, the ladies of the forests, the secret spirits between the forest and the river. Wrecked and heavy, I return and return and return and return and return.

    She has a dream where she is followed by several small snails. At first, she doesn’t notice them because they are so small. Their tiny shells barely make a noise when she accidentally steps on one of them. Soon, though, they grow bigger and she cannot help but notice that no matter how fast she walks there is always a large snail, the size of a potato, at her heels. Eventually, these snails become foxes. These foxes are a luminous, solid red. They freeze into statues when she turns to notice them. She does indeed believe, for a while, that they are statues. Solid red foxes frozen in mid-stride, jumping over a fountain, landing on a table, stealing food from a plate. Then she sees one of them blink, and she knows.

    The first stage of life equals water. Once she reaches air she is different.
    She is not a tree or tall grass or the underside of a bridge. Her wings have always been there. She sends the water away. There is a waterway in the distance and she has flown from it.
    If dull wings, a predator. There is a search for shelter. The beginning of clasping. Divided eyes that are wings. A body into another body and vulnerable to wind. Time only lasts hours. It is what gives order.
    She is considered wings, a single claw, an abdomen, legs. She has others who look like her. In several stages, she articulates motion. She is in water, she is in air, she is no longer.

    In the grove on the other side of the river, she lingered near a spread of heavy walnut trees. She shivered in the shade although the sun came through the leaves in sharp fragments. Her ladies followed far behind her, completely unprepared for a walk. They wore black high heels with ankle straps and thin dresses with short sleeves that flapped in the wind. They should have been wearing coats, scarves, and gloves. They laughed as they always did, walking fast in the breeze, pushing each other playfully.
    She stopped and stared at one of the ancient trees. It was so old. Who else had walked here when the grove was just a tangle of saplings? Who were those people? She became exhausted at the thought and sat on the dirty ground and made shapes in the dirt with a stick: a spiral, a triangle, a flower, the letters of a name. She was trying to remember something for which she was not present. She wrote a name over and over and over in the dirt. She pictured a person with that name. She felt she could become this person, someone sitting there among young trees, alone in the damp and chill. Someone just like herself but before.
    Her ladies had been quietly moving towards her taking tiptoe steps. They were playing a game. Whoever startled her first would run several feet away and