september 2018
here is fear:
it is late september and you are a field organizer for the democratic party and governor scott walker must not must not get reelected or it will all be for nothing (it may very well all be for nothing anyways) and you have 153 calls to make to unpleasant and disinterested people but it is already dark outside and it is late september and you open the door to the back porch to seek reassurance from the large yellow moon but the door is still warm from the day’s sun and it is covered in boxelder bugs and they all fall inside onto the kitchen floor and if your parents were there they would crush them with a paper towel but here is fear and what if the callous murder of a blameless boxelder bug tips the karmic balance of the universe? so you get the broom and sweep up the bugs with care (tears press on the back of your eyes like tiny hot suns) and you take them across the kitchen to the other door which is north facing and not sun warmed and therefore not covered in bugs and you fling them (gently) back out into the moonful night and you go back inside and catch a straggler in your hands as she flies for the ceiling fan and throw her outside too with some kind of whispered prayer like she is an oracle or a messenger and then you go back inside again and there are more boxelder bugs (always more boxelder bugs) but you have 153 calls to make so you convince yourself that the bugs are out of reach and also they clearly want to be inside and so you sit down at the kitchen table which is made of yellow maple and you turn on your laptop and you turn on your cell phone and you pray to the moon and the boxelder bugs and whatever god is out there in the universe that you will not fail, that this is what you are supposed to be doing, that here is the fear but the fear will not press you into nothingness.
Emilee Martell grew up on a hobby farm in rural Wisconsin, where she absorbed innumerable life lessons from her land and her cats. She attended St. Olaf College in Minnesota, earning degrees in English and Environmental Studies. Mostly, she writes science fiction and fantasy novels, but sometimes the flash bug bites and only God herself knows what happens after that.