Jackie carried the cocoons inside. The leaves were losing their life already—the vibrant green turning to brittle brown creating a trail of detritus leading from back door to stairs to bed, where she brushed and brushed with her hands until two infants were sleeping on her bed. Not hers, theirs. The one they bought when they moved out here (the other the home of so many unhappy endings). She put her hand to their perfectly formed baby noses and felt tiny hot baby’s breath. She saw eyes moving behind thin veined eyelids. Their lips so soft and pink. Their skin so deep and brown—like the earth she dug them from, like the leaves they shed, like her own skin. They were beautiful and, she decided, they were hers.

Victorya Chase is a writer and educator living in the the Midwest where she works in medical education teaching the importance of narrative competency and understanding the various cultural and personal stories at play in the exam room. Her writing has appeared in Cemetery Dance, Lamplight, and The Unlikely Journal of Entomology.