The Poem Eater // Born of a Flower
An Urban Fantasy
1...
Fairy magic gets its power from observation, and so the last of the dwindling Fae live in your walls.
Perhaps not your walls, reader, but someone you know, or someone you've talked to, or someone you hate. And maybe, just maybe, there really is one watching you now.
Christina and Delilah live in the walls at 39-22 57th Street in Woodside, Queens, long since displaced from their ancestral forest by man. They are weak fairies (like many of their contemporaries), barely able to enchant a grove of trees or heal a wounded deer. But they are experienced observers, skilled voyeurs, competent poets: essential workers in the ever-shrinking Expanse of Fairydom.
They've been posted at this specific spot for several years, on assignment from the Department of Observation and Literature. It's a dingy, dilapidated pre-war walk-up. The floors creak, strange sounds reverberate through the pipes, and the cockroaches and rats make poor wallmates.
But the people—or rather, their drama—are the perfect fairy food.
2...
In Unit #1D, a nice enough one-bedroom apartment, 28-year-old Michelle Wang was k-holing in a puddle of her own vomit. Hiding in her not-quite-walk-in closet was one of our fairy friends, Christina, furiously scribbling line after line of verse. Jesus fucking Christ, the fairy thought, what a messy bitch.
You would never catch me like this. She shook her head. Sometimes I wish we could talk to these emotionally stunted morons. Christina was tempted to do just that. But only tempted, not convinced.
Michelle's apartment was neat and clean, save for the pool of bile on the floor and tower of dishes in the sink. Despite her six-figure salary, the living room was sparsely decorated and furnished with cheap build-it-yourself tables, chairs, bookcases, and a desk ordered online. Pop-punk was blaring through a pair of overly-loud headphones, faintly audible to Christina from her hiding spot.
But let's rewind a bit.
The web developer was working at home when she received the "I can't do this anymore" text from Matthew, her boyfriend of four years. She lied to her manager about a fake doctor appointment she had 'forgotten' to mention and took the rest of the day off to grieve.
By getting astronomically high.
She filled her ex-boyfriend's bong with weed, put three ice cubes down the tube, and took a hit. The thick smoke reminded her of Matthew's favorite off-white cotton sweater. She hacked up a piece of her lungs and began to cry.
With the first drug out of the way, Michelle then reached into her desk drawer, slid her arm deep into the recesses of cheap plywood, and emerged with two small bags. Cocaine and ketamine.
Young love, young love! a pound of flesh and a pound of snow smoke from her lips, milky smoke coming undone // heartbreak // no hope no hope...
She took a little scoop of the cocaine on her pinky nail and sniffed, her nostrils already slightly clogged by her crying fit. She put the coke down, satisfied, and dumped out the baggie of ketamine onto her coffee table. Of that, she snorted much more than a little scoop.
No hope, no hope! five lines of powder and a bump of coke melancholy air, filled with smoke memories pushing // snot // no more no more...
Michelle escaped her body, anesthetized from the unloving pain. She was too heavy to move; her field of vision was blurred and shrunken, and she felt herself outside looking in, seeing a failed, broken, ugly woman. After a few minutes, she puked her guts out. It felt good.
No more, no more! He hated you and your jokes you're worthless; you're broke wake up // oozing // nothing nothing... No thing! No more. No hope.
Back in the present, Christina finished her poem. She felt it was rather trite, perhaps uninspired, but at least it was something. Delilah better have gotten something too. Because I'm starving after watching this grown woman waste and rot all day. She sent her poem off to headquarters and received her payment.
Before she left, she cast a spell of healing on the heartbroken resident of Unit #1D.
Oh Christina, the narrator thought. You talk a lot of shit for someone so nice.
3...
Across the hall, the smell of bleach and marijuana crept into unit #1B, and a single light flicked on. Delilah, the other fairy in our story, was nearly finished with her surveillance duty for the day, peering out at the floorboards of the studio apartment through a crack in the wall.
The sole occupant of the apartment, 32-year-old Efraín Valdez, soon entered and haphazardly removed his work boots, stomping out bits of dried plaster on the dirtied Bienvenidos door mat. He took a raspy breath and cracked his back with a stretch. A limp was visible in his step. Worse than last week, the fairy thought.
Still in his work clothes, he sank into a mottled couch and closed his eyes. Delilah floated up to a higher position for a better view.
She studied the tradesman, searching for a thread of inspiration to pull on. His beige work pants were splattered with splotches of paint. Sweat stains yellowed the collar of his undershirt, the piss-colored polyester peeking out from under his black hoodie.
His curly hair was in rebellion, twisting every which way after 9 hours of confinement beneath a hard hat, and the salty odor of labor leaked from his pores.
Delightfully proletarian. The fairy poet thought. Yes, how quaint! How timeless! It must have been a difficult day for poor old Efraín.
Delilah produced a pad of miniature paper and a nearly microscopic pen from her magical sack. She prepared to write. Alas, I am nearing the end of my shift. A short poem shall have to do.
A haiku for the handyman!
She wrote:
On a couch sinking, under scaffolds, into sleep his bones hammered hard
She tore the poem out of the pad and inspected it for errors. Satisfied, she whisked the paper away to the Department of Observation and Literature with an incantation. Moments later, her work product was rewarded in kind, and a poem written by another fairy in another house about another person somewhere far away materialized in her hands.
It was not quite in tune with her more conservative tastes. But Christina may like it. She hoped her partner was equally successful and that tonight they would dine on something delicious. With a tinge of Efraín's tiredness vicariously tugging at her wings, she returned to their boiler room fairy-hovel.
4...
Atop the boiler, the fairies consumed their poems. Imbued with the mana of another fairy, flavored with the drama of human life, and given substance by the written word, this was the standard Fae fare.
Delilah went first, reciting the dish she received as payment with her typical perfection. Christina followed, never quite reaching the same level of skill. Both were satiated from the meal; it was a productive day for our fairy friends.
"You wouldn't believe what Michelle got up to today," Christina said, taking a tiny sip of alcoholic nectar from a tiny cup.
Delilah frowned. "That poor girl! What was it this time?"
"A real nuclear bender. She blasted her own brains out practically. She'll survive though. Unless she keeps it up. Oh, let me back up. You know Matthew? Her boyfriend? He broke up with her! I knew he was afraid to commit."
"Hmph. You young people are all like that."
"Young? I'm not some human child. I'm almost a century old. We're not all hags like you, Delilah."
"You're lucky I find your impropriety endearing." Delilah rolled her eyes. "'Tis true, I'm old! And I've been in this job for millennia, so I know how to commit to something."
"Oh yeah? Let's ask your ex-husband about that. Or your ex-ex husband. Or ex-ex-ex. I forget, does it go back to ex-ex-ex-ex?"
"Touché my dear, touché."
"Anyway," Christina continued. "She passed out in a pile of her own puke. A bucket of her own bile."
Goddamnit. The foul-mouthed fairy thought. I could've used that line.
"It was fucking disgusting. And there I am, watching her from the closet, just praying she would get it together."
"Yes, that does sound rather stress-inducing. But I'm sure it made for excellent inspiration! Heartbreak always does."
She still needs to get used to sights like that, the elder fairy thought. I've seen a man force-fed his own entrails. And it made for quite the poem.
"Sure, I guess." Christina stood up. "I'm going to go watch whatever they've got on in #3C. That new TV they bought is gorgeous. I just hope it's not a baking show again."
"Those are great!"
"If you say so, hag."
The moon was high in the sky as our fairies went their separate ways, glowing softly behind summer rain clouds.
5...
How do these people sit in front of a computer all day and not blow their brains out? Delilah thought as she made her early afternoon rounds between the apartments of remote workers and other stay-at-homes. I like my job, and I still want to kill myself sometimes.
Nothing interesting was going on in #2A, #4D, or #5B. One of the humans was still sleeping in, not even pretending to log in for the morning video conference. Another, an older woman, was responding to emails while watching daytime TV. The third was a teenage boy staying home from school, playing video games whenever he wasn’t having a coughing fit.
Christina floated up through the walls of the apartment building onto the roof and gazed over the not-quite-urban, not-quite-suburban neighborhood. It was a warm August day, slightly humid, with a breeze of flavor wafting from the jerk chicken truck down the block. At times like these, she thought of her birth from a flower (a lily of the valley in bloom), how she emerged so pure and white from that ancient plant in one of the last primeval forests of Norfolk, England, and how she now spent her days in the mean streets of New York City.
As a young Fae, she spied on the children of East Anglia playing in meadows and creeks, their laughter carried onward by the wind. But the War jaded her—not the first; she was not alive for that, though she heard the stories. But the second.
Dark smoke covering the sun, bombs snuffing out humans, plants, animals, fungi, the dirt, the rocks, the water, children sent off to fight, farmwives dour and troubled, the whole of England under siege, and the continent on fire.
And so, like many, when she was just a child, twenty years old, she asked for a new station from the Fairy Lords. The wisest of the Fae, who had lived through thousands of wars (but none such as this), granted her request. They sent her through one of the last remaining forest portals to the New World.
On the rooftop, Christina thought back to that first day.
6...
When she opened her eyes on the other side of the portal, Christina was somewhere in Summit, New Jersey. Before her was a circle of red-speckled mushrooms in a small clearing. Three magical beings sat in a triangle around the portal, keeping it hidden from mortal man and ensuring safe transit.
"Welcome to the Garden State," said an impish gnome. He smoked a gnarled cigar and sat atop a pine stump, his weathered, pointy hat more gray than green, his elderly countenance mischievous and sly.
"From England to New Jersey," piped a gnomish imp. "People have been making that mistake since the 1600s! Hahaha."
The impish gnome chided the gnomish imp. "Oh, c'mon Ebeneezer, it's not so bad! They could've sent her to Boston."
A dwarfish goblin cackled, the husky sound echoing through the trees. "There's only three woodland portals left on this continent, girlie, this one here, one up north, and the last in the bowels of Kentucky. I'd say ya got lucky m'self."
Our young fairy friend was taken aback. These under-creatures were talking to her like she was some common sprite, not a Flowerborn Fae! Was she that weak-looking? That unimpressive?
"I am the Flowerborn Christina!" she blurted out. "You will not speak so casually to me!"
"This is America, girlie. The land of the free, we don't take orders from no fairy young'n no matter what asshole you crawled out of," the goblin said, his cackle booming once more.
"Is that so?" a sweet, serious voice called from every direction at once.
Glittering fairy dust soaked the clearing from above, and the triangle of portal guards fell silent, their mouths sealed shut by enchantment.
Delilah descended from the canopy like an angel from on high, a ray of sunlight silhouetting her lithe body. Her crystalline wings glowed with orange fire, and the edges of her figure blurred from extra-dimensional radiated energy.
"You must be Christina. Ignore these..." She paused to choose her words carefully. "Dysgenic cretins! And come with me, my dear. You have much to learn."
7...
After an hour or so, Christina quit daydreaming, and it was back to work. Because she had spent her time wallowing in nostalgia, she could only rush up an overwrought, frankly pretentious piece about the sick child. Delilah managed another short poem about Efraín, but it was worse than the day before.
Their meal was thus returned in kind and similarly subpar, and Christina wore her disappointment openly.
Delilah sighed. "Moping doesn't suit you, child. What's wrong?"
"Nothing." Christina said. "Or maybe everything. I don't know. I've been in my head a lot recently."
"There are worse places to be."
"If I've learned anything from watching these humans, it's that someone always has it worse than you. Someone has it better too."
"And are you thinking about someone who has it better, my dear?"
"Not better. Worse. That's what's bothering me. Maybe you're desensitized to it after a millennia of this shit, but I'm not." Christina's voice grew louder. "Just watching people suffer. It was the same in England, and it's the same here. The world is dying. The magical world, the human world, the sacred, the profane—it's all fucking dying. Rotting away! We're living in a bloated corpse. A polluted estuary. A godforsaken miasma of decay! And everyone is rotting away too, watching it all happen. Doesn't that bother you? When was the last time a fairy-child was born of a flower?"
Delilah thought for a moment. "Fifty years ago, I believe." There was sadness on her face. "Yes, yes, it bothers me, Christina. I feel for the Earth, the humans, the animals, the plants, the rocks. I've seen lakes dry up and forests turn to stone. I've seen empires die, opium dens, brothels. I've seen it all, Christina. But we go on, for we are not like them. You'll learn to go on one day too."
"And where is it all going, you old hag? Straight to fucking hell."
8...
Michelle was rotting in bed, rotting like the whole world.
Christina sat above the napping human, perched on the unmoving blade of a ceiling fan. Incense smoke drifted toward her. Sandalwood.
Why do we dream? Because it seems like we're dying when we're awake and it seems like we're trying to be something that we can only be in our dreams. Why do we dream? Because it seems so hopeless to go on and it seems so hopeless to love but I can be me in my dreams.
The human awoke to her 2:00 p.m. alarm. Her long black hair was a tangled mess. Her eyes were bloodshot, encrusted with rheum. The voids of her irises swallowed the incoming light and replaced it with despair.
"Fuck me," Michelle said as she rolled out of bed. "Fuck fuck fuck me. God fucking dammit!"
Why do we wake up? Because it seems like maybe things can be better and it seems like maybe the rising sun can make us happy outside our dreams. Why do we wake up? Because it seems like maybe one day and one day soon that maybe someone can make our lives just like our dreams.
Finished with her poem, Christina continued to watch the poor human.
There was a feeling Michelle was connected to her in some way. She pitied her more than the others, though she wasn't sure why. There was a vulnerability in both of them, perhaps. Some defective emotional immaturity that led to plastering over hurt with a façade of indifference.
The incense stick was now ash, and the sandalwood scent was overpowered by weed. Despite her nap, Michelle remained unmotivated and lethargic. She gave up on work and took a rip from her dirty bong. Just like yesterday.
Maybe I'll go out tonight, Michelle thought. I have some molly. I could go all night. BUT FUCK. I'm so fucking worthless. I'm fucking broke. I can't afford this. FUCK! I need to push those UI improvements soon or I'm screwed. I'm so fucking worthless. I need to die. Matthew needs to die. Why did he break up with me? Why do I fucking care? It's because I was too clingy. Or my acne. Or my hair. I'm a disgusting, worthless piece of trash garbage and he was amazing and sweet and I don't deserve anything... She was spiraling, panicking and sinking deeper into her insecurities.
I don't even like drugs. I don't even like smoking. It sucks. This all sucks. I should die. I need to die. I need to die. I need to die. I'm trash. I'm garbage. Fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me... She sank to the floor and stayed there, eyes parallel to the wooden ground.
Our fairy poet cast another spell on her and left, unable to bear watching any longer.
9...
"We need to help her!" Christina pleaded with her elder as they debriefed after dinner.
"Christina, darling, she's a human. They live, they die; it makes no difference to us, despite your feelings. They are sentient dust, apparitions in the night that disappear upon closer examination." Delilah tsk-tsked. "You should count your blessings; a spiral into suicide is a potent source of inspiration if you know how to use it."
"And what are we? Sentient lichen? Long-living, never moving, never thinking, clinging to rocks as the Earth moves and quakes around us? You should know better. We don't live in Merrie England anymore, and we never will. The Fae are dying too; the magic is dying; the whole world is dying. Someone needs to—we need to act."
"One day you will understand, Flowerborn Fae."
"Don't feed me that bullshit."
"Listen to me closely, young one." Delilah's wings beamed white light, and her eyes shifted colors: their natural green, then an eggshell blue, bright red, burnished bronze, and cold steel. Her voice boomed. "You will NEVER help a human. You will never be seen by them; you will never talk to them. This is our sacred law, and one not made lightly. For the magical and the profane are not separate by our choice, but by a Power greater than you can even imagine."
"I can imagine a lot."
"Yet your small-mindedness betrays a lack of imagination. You know nothing of the old glory of the Fae, the power we once held. And such power even then pales in comparison to the real Power: the One who shaped the firmament, who set down the laws of the universe, and separated reality and unreality. You fail to understand we are not, and the humans are. We are not of the Earth, and we are not even of Time or Space. The veil between reality and unreality is thin. We can meddle in reality, and they can occasionally meander into unreality; that much is true. But if you break the veil, if you try to merge the two, you will only succeed in dragging one into the other."
Delilah then brought her voice to a whisper, as if God himself were eavesdropping. "Do you want to know why our Expanse shrinks more and more, Christina? Why there are fewer blossomings than ever, and more and more Great Elders fade from the aether? It is because of Fae like you, bringing us down to the level of mere existence, into the fetid swamps of Time and Space."
10...
Christina was unpersuaded by Delilah's metaphysical lecture. Why should we hide in nonexistence? Why should we not part the veil for good? She was not only unpersuaded; she was angry. Like all youth, getting lectured to simply made her more stubborn, more rebellious. Her wings shimmered crimson, and her eyes pulsed hues of rage. Slowly, sorrow seeped into the equation: incandescent streaks of blues and blacks. Her immaturity goaded her toward drastic action, and she made her way to Unit #1D. She was immediately met with full vindication.
Michelle stood atop her sullen office chair, delicately trying to stay balanced upright as it twisted under her weight. She found her footing after a few near slips and smiled. She tucked her head into the noose swinging above and inhaled, the breath one last memory of life.
Her fairy overseer sprung into action, materializing through the wall and into the center of the room, every-colored sparks springing forth from her flight path. The lights in the room flickered, and Space dilated and doubled over on itself. Time slowed, then quickened, then slowed again, unable to process an incursion of the unreal.
"STOP!" Christina shouted, her ethereal voice shining over vibrating air molecules, sound made visible.
Michelle stared blankly at the magical creature. The bristles of the noose scratched at her throat, irritating her skin. She wasn't sober, but she wasn't too far gone either. She thought maybe she was already dead or in the process of dying, that the end-of-life DMT was flooding her brain and causing her to hallucinate childhood visions of dancing fairies and rainbow clouds, purple unicorns and pretty princesses.
The two locked eyes. The degenerated junkie and the rebellious fairy-child, born of a white lily. Everything began to change in the room, the meeting of the unmeetable causing contortions and distortions in the century-old apartment's material reality.
The walls turned to transparent azure crystal. The room became an oceanic sky prison, refracting mysterious beams of pink light originating from otherworldly spotlights. Where the beams touched the floor, the trash littering the area came alive, appendages and flagella squirming on protoplasmic narcotic detritus. Liquids turned to midnight black ash, and the noose around Michelle's neck slithered away into a prismatic burrow beneath a rug.
Christina could not fathom what she was seeing or what she had done. This was the two worlds colliding, and one would soon win out. As the room changed, so too did Michelle. She was enveloped in a silken cocoon, the hairs on her head turning a ghostly white and wrapping themselves around her body. The cocoon started to shrink.
It glowed with pale phosphorescence as it became smaller and smaller. After a few minutes, it stood about a foot high, resting innocently on the center of the office chair, the cushion of which was a bed of soft moss. Christina still hovered in the air, hypnotized by the spectacle.
Vines grew up from the underbrush of the floorboards, trellising the legs of the chair and wrapping themselves around the cocoon. They bloomed with ghostly flowers, and kaleidoscopic patterns rippled across their leaves.
A heavy mist began to fill the room.
The moisture hung cloud-like in the air. Christina lost sight of Michelle, the dark gray curtain now impenetrably thick.
Suddenly, there was a crash like thunder and a flash of indescribable energy. In a blink, the room returned to as it was: the trash again dead and inert, the noose hanging from above, the walls nothing more than a blank canvas.
But the cocoon remained.
11...
Michelle felt a tingling sensation. Limbs reoriented themselves, organs shifted positions, and tendons and ligaments crawled through her body. Blood vessels flowed like ephemeral rainfall-rivers into nooks and crannies while the cocoon's magic sculpted her new figure.
Visible in her mind's eye was a pool of clear water. It was still as a sheet of glass but reflected nothing. Gazing into the pool, Michelle saw complete emptiness—a total absence of color or texture. She stuck a finger down into the void and watched it disappear. Next came her arm, then her head and shoulders, and finally her entire body.
She was floating, gravity inverting upon itself and all sense of space collapsing. What was the surface of a pool was now the bottom of a hole. A faint glow was visible from above-below. She kicked her legs and swam towards the up-down light. When she reached the waterline, it was a thin, clear membrane that would not allow her to escape.
She fought the gelatinous barrier, biting, scratching, thrashing, and gnashing her way through. It gave way after a heavy struggle.
And there she was: in Unit #1D, at 39-22 57th Street, in Woodside, Queens, New York, New York. Watching her was Christina.
The room seemed larger.
"Michelle? Can you hear me?" The fairy called to her.
Michelle could hear her, see her, and sense Christina now too. "What the fuck just happened? I'm dead, right? Who the hell are you? Jesus Christ. What the fuck!"
"You're... alive. I'm so sorry, Michelle. I messed up. Fucking hell, I messed up. But you're alive."
"I didn't want to be alive. Why did you stop me?" Her voice seemed pitched higher. "And, again, what the hell is going on?"
"I can explain everything."
Michelle flew into the air, her fresh fairy wings glistening with a thin, slimy coating.
I'm in the air, she realized. I'm flying. She looked at her tiny hands. I'm so small. She looked at her tiny legs and every part of her tiny body she could see. Oh my God...
"Explain. Now."
12...
Michelle liked being a fairy. It took several months, but she gradually came into her own. The initial shock of metamorphosis was tempered by prior feelings of inadequacy. In her mind, living on as a fairy was better than coasting as a cokehead fuck-up, and as far as she knew, better than dying too.
And she could write. She was a dedicated student, dutifully attending literature lessons from her fairy elders and devouring as many poems as she could, literally and figuratively. She was a natural voyeur as well, curious about experiencing new things through other people.
Her first solo assignment was today, and she woke with a flutter in her chest. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. She repeated the mantra over and over as she navigated the walls of the apartment building. Her destination was Unit #2C, occupied by one Damian Jones.
Damian was a workaholic, a retail manager, and today was his day off. He was alone and irritated. His fiancé was working, his best friend was out of town, and even his introverted, unemployed half-brother somehow had plans today. But this was no problem for Damian Jones. Because I'm in control of how I respond to things that upset me, he reminded himself, half-remembering advice from a half-read self-help book.
Rather than wallow anxiously, Damian had a new hobby to work on. He was building a model airplane, a 1/32 scale Morane-Saulnier type N. It was more tedious than he anticipated, and he found working with the small pieces required an incredibly dexterous hand. But again, he wouldn't let that stop him.
Initially, Michelle was stumped. She needed drama, not self-control. But the more she observed, the more beauty she saw in Damian. He was everything she never was. He was so pure. Tears welled in her eyes, and the immense weight of her screw-ups and failures pressed down on her like she was human again.
I can capture this feeling, she thought. She wrote her first stanza.
Tiny wings in the sky slide through star clouds Slicing out thick scoops of dense angel ground The cockpit, a portal, a view toward the sun A pinhead, a mortal, what's done and undone
Damian dropped a piece of the cockpit. He sifted through the carpet to find it. There wasn't a single wrinkle of annoyance on his face.
Please take me onboard your flying machine! Take me above snowy peaks and grassy ravines I'm a creature of habit, staring down a gun And you're what I need, you're the only one
Michelle read the poem over and submitted it as her day's work. She kept watching Damian, however, unable to look away. She was entranced by his single-minded focus.
Something dangerous came to her mind, and she couldn't force it out. She tried and tried to keep it down, battling with herself. But it kept coming.
It was a simple thought, a human thought, and in almost any other circumstance it was an innocent thought. She closed her eyes and tried to strangle the thought. She held it down and attempted to snuff the life out of the thought and kill the thought where it stood. But the thought wouldn't die.
So our newest fairy friend let it linger—this very bad, maybe good thought.
I should say hello.
Illustration by Pedro Becker.