“When the Shadows Showed All” by Marisca Pichette

The helter skelter is adorned in bells
their clappers silenced, swallowed
to fuel its song.

The helter skelter appears at daybreak
but not at dawn. When the sun cracks,
splits open her sides and leaks
all light into the moon
the helter skelter climbs from the dark
and keens.

It is made of magma
freshly cooled.
It is made of promises
freshly broken.

It is made of secrets that were never
ever
secret.

The helter skelter is neither ugly
nor beautiful. It is an assemblage
of everything we squirm to think,
forget to say.

Resplendent in cacophonous silence
the helter skelter struts empty streets
admires its reflection in curtained windows
and leaving, offers nothing
of remembrance.

Those who saw it swore they never
but I was there

and I have this bell, half-melted,
cracked-wilted, to show

for an hour—maybe less,
maybe more—
we were free.

Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Massachusetts. More of her work appears in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, and others. Her 2023 poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker and Elgin Awards. Her cli-fi novella, Every Dark Cloud, is out now from Ghost Orchid Press.