erin

the magic number

Math has never been my strong suit, but I do love numbers individually when they don’t require addition or subtraction or complex calculations. When they can just be what they are and not change.

When I learned them in school I gave them all personalities. 4 was the peacemaker. 6 had an attitude problem.

3 was always my favorite.

Partially because of the shape, the way it looks like a backwards E, but mostly for the things it evokes.

Trios of bears and little pigs and Shakespearean witches.

Third-time charms and trilogies and trinities and past, present, future.

It is the magic number, after all.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

sunken ships & siren songs

They say the sea is filled with nothing but claw-snapping creatures and danger. That it should be avoided at all costs, that it is something to fear.

I can’t be certain, but I think they’re wrong. I have glimpsed gardens of coral through rippling waves, explored stately sunken ships in half-remembered dreams with seaweed tangled in my hair.

Even when I’m awake I hear the siren songs that no one else can discern, their ears too full of air to interpret the water sounds.

They tease me when I try to explain. Joke that my long-dead mother must have been a mermaid. Sometimes I wonder if it’s true.

I sit alone on the forbidden shore, drowning my longing in salt-tinged wine and listening to the songs in the waves as they fall against the rocks, begging me to come home.

Wishing I could drink myself to the bottom of the sea where I belong.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

precarious

There are more birds who cannot fly than you might expect. And those who simply choose not to, for their own personal reasons.

Grounded by choice or broken wings or lousy magnetoception.

Though only occasionally is such a phenomena based on fear of heights.

So many flightless birds still climb to tops of buildings or trees, sit happily on electrical wires or water towers.

The perches are sometimes precarious.

But they always have the best views.

And even broken-wing birds are able to see for miles.

Observing astounding sights in feather-ruffling breezes.

Closer to the clouds.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.