The Ever-After of Hunters Forever Lost in the Forest
It beats being locked in, I guess, but it’s still a prison, and we jailors are as imprisoned as those we guard, though our floors are the serrapilheira of decomposing leaves and branches crawling with insects and the tiny animals that feed off of them—tiny animals the captives fight over, hungrily gulping them down in their near starvation amidst an abundance they refuse to understand.
We’re captive, forever separated from our before-lives, not free to leave, but free to learn from the forest we’d once set out to plunder.
Learning: that’s how we got promoted from captive-hunters to guards. The forest can be a patient teacher.
Caipora and Curupira might be great protectors, brilliant at resurrecting injured wildlife and creating false trails, howling loudly to trick confused hunters into losing themselves in the forest, but they aren’t very clear on what to do once the forest locks us in, and somebody had to find some semblance of order.
We’re not wild animals, you know?
Not yet anyway. Not until we learn to breathe in the trees, and sing praises to the rising sun, and flow like the river, shifting to shape ourselves into harmony.
About the Author
Amy Marques has been known to call books friends and is on a first name basis with many fictional characters. She has been nominated for multiple awards and has visual art, poetry, and prose published in journals such as Streetcake Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, MoonPark Review, Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Gone Lawn. She is the editor and visual artist for the Duets anthology and has an erasure poetry book coming out in 2024 with Full Mood Publishing. More at https://amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com.
