"A Woman's Weapon" by KC Grifant

​In the botanist’s garden
A leafy offshoot reaches, like a hand, suppliant
along the wrought iron table where he takes his tea
 
The botanist trails his calloused thumbs
along the folds of her frond.
Nicolle: a testament to his talents, a flash of ferocious fuchsia among the verdant
 
Every night he talks to her,
Every night he thinks
of her leaves uncurling
 
She bleeds bitter essences to make him itch;
builds barricades of barbed thorns.
But he’d put on his stained yellow gloves and
trim
her
back.
 
Nicolle had once been forged of femurs and freckles.
When they met, he envisioned unfurling his muscles into hers.
But she had shot him down, sheared his dreams, so
 
He infused a concoction of his raging rejection into a bouquet.
Nicolle arranged the anonymous blooms, not seeing how
Their chemicals coerced her cells to morph and contort.
 
He found her later,
Bones splintering into stalks
Wet eyes whorling into pristine petals.
 
Now he sits, sipping.
Watching Nicolle’s tendrils unwind toward him
like he had always hoped.
 
The botanist doesn’t see
the trail of insect bodies beneath her drooping leaf,
her toxic tainted shimmer turning toward his tea.

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KC Grifant is an award-winning Southern Californian author who writes speculative stories published in podcasts, Stoker-nominated anthologies and magazines. She is author of the supernatural western Monster Gunslinger series and Shrouded Horror: Tales of the Uncanny; editor of Women of the Weird West; and co-editor of Dread Coast: SoCal Horror Tales and Of Terrors and Tombstones. She is co-founder and co-chair of the San Diego Horror Writers Association, a member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association, and a SFWA mentor. Learn more at www.KCGrifant.com.

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