"Full Disclosure" by Nora Weston

Art created with Midjourney AI

​The old crabapple tree spoke first, loud
and clear, except listening takes expertise.  
Its crooked trunk and skeletal limbs
do their best to support apples
rotten to the core, hanging on
until they drop to death.
 
A bed of tangled weeds hides nests
of ground hornets that engulf
the fallen fruit, an arbitrary cemetery,
ignored. Burning bushes way past
glory days of crimson, look charred and sore
as though seeded on a volcanic planet.
 
Windows. Cleaned yesterday,
but within four days the glass will fade
into shades of gray, tainted with scents
of decay. Worse, the entryway mirror
is coveted by sheer madness since
it returns after being discarded.
 
Nothing hides under our beds, yet never
would arms or legs dangle, or dare
set foot upon aged floors after 3:17am.
Just pretend you exist on a tropical island,
drift into a warm place, sway on a hammock
while waiting for sunlight to break.
 
Basement. Do not consider looking back
at those etched glass doors once shut,
eyes ahead. Trust me on this.
And if the old man wearing a black hat asks
for a cup of tea, he prefers the pale yellow
mug displaying a pristine crabapple tree.

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Nora Weston is a Michigan based writer/artist. Her work has appeared in Bete Noire and James Gunn’s Ad Astra. Currently, work has been published by Green Ink Poetry, Crow Toes Quarterly, Illumen, and Strange Horizons. Work has been accepted by Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine and Utopia Science Fiction Magazine.

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