by: Daniel Ausema.

During spring migration, an errant wind blew my seed-house aside. I fought to regain control, frantic to not lose the others, the route, my home ahead. Winds spun me into different pathways. All spring and summer I struggled to find my way back. The breath of the world’s winds cursed me, gust by breeze.

When I finally came to the summer houses, autumn already firmly in control, they were empty shells, ghosts of home, not real. I flitted on before a new wind.

It blew me along familiar paths, and even in solitude, I recognized that path itself as home.

© 2024. Daniel Ausema

Daniel Ausema’s fiction and poetry have appeared in Strange Horizons, Diabolical Plots, and Fantasy Magazine, and his novels include the Spire City series and the Arcist Chronicles. He lives in Colorado at the foot of the Rockies.

Posted June 26, 2024.