Renewal

I worm my way to the desiccated heart of scorched pasture. 30-acres is a world when you are carrying what I am carrying. The guilt is feather-light, but the duffle bag weighs 180 pounds, the same as my ex-lover. I’m skinny but strong, and if I go about my task in bursts, I know that I’ll manage.

I throw down the straps and catch my breath. My head is pounding, and my hands are on fire, my legs are lead. Under the stars, bedraggled sentries stare me down. I am watched by sad flower faces at night. The sunflowers mope and sag, their confidence robbed by the dark. I wedge my heel into a woody stalk, causing a giant to fall to the earth. It offers no resistance, as if overdue to collapse, like an ex-lover who has drunk belladonna in his beer.

Back at it, I tug at the straps, making a man-wide trail in the dry, flowering grass. There is a crunch that accompanies each of my footfalls. It hasn’t rained since June, and it’s nearly September.

I sit on the duffle bag, and my ass becomes wet, but not from rain. I strain to fart, forcing one out. I want to pollute what’s inside.

Remember when you called me a witch? I slap the bag beneath me. Remember when you tugged my hair and pulled my nose? A witch nose, you called it, even though it’s a mole, not a wart upon its tip. Remember when you made me small? Like a magic spell, you shrunk me down. You’re a witch, you said, But I am a wizard, you boasted.

My palms are raw across the nylon handles of a wizard’s crypt. I tug and tug and tug and pause for breath. I sit and wiggle my ass. I push and strain, but do not want to shit my pants, which are already soaked with his blood. I take up the handles and start again, nearing the heart of the withered acreage.

I remember when you called me a witch, I say aloud to the shrouded moon, to the somber manes of field flowers. I stashed my thoughts in the gaps of your wicked, wizard thrashing, seeding a plan in the calm between your lightning bolts and fire, fists and flame. I weathered your storm, then took away the rain. I killed the fields, just as I knew I’d kill you.

I graze the belladonna leaves, their brittle stems and little black berries. I knock them flat while dragging his fabric coffin. I look at them fondly, those plants whose name I have borrowed for my own. I am Belladonna, fragile but deadly. I am plain, but I am elegant. My roots are hidden, as are my intentions. I am undermined and often overlooked, like belladonna root in Budweiser.

I stand at the center of an arid field, where the tall grass and dead flowers veil a man from all but the astral bodies lurking above. It’s a nice place to rest, where the belladonna grows thick, thriving amid times of drought.

I release my burden and catch my breath—the first breath in years, it seems. As I walk back across the tortured grass and ailing weeds, the stars fade away and the sky weeps for joy. All around me, the rain falls heavily. The world is renewed. The dry spell is over.

BIO: James Callan lives and writes in Aotearoa (New Zealand). His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, BULL, Bottle Rocket, Reckon Review, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere. His collection, Those Who Remain Quiet, is available from Anxiety Press.