by Morgaine Merch Lleuad
He said he’d wait for her in the oldest trees, away from his phones and his family and his busy-ness and his barn conversion with the red door. She didn’t know he’d bring the chair – cold chrome, black leather, squeaking-new – and wondered why he’d carried it all that way, positioned it so he could sit and see his fence posts, still damp with sap from murdered wood; territorial, encroaching. He waited for so long, in the silence of everything hiding: they all waited, she masked in her coat of bark and leaf litter, watching him not seeing, never thinking of the oldest trees and those who lived there, while she waited for much longer, until the chair was empty.
Spark by Michael Marshall Smith
Copyright © Morgaine Merch Lleuad 2016
Morgaine has been (among other things) a medical virologist, a stand-up comedian, a therapist/counsellor, an actor, a musician, a behaviour specialist, and a teacher. She is now a lecturer in Creative Writing, fiction writer and poet. She has various degrees in Biology, an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing, and Asperger’s Syndrome, which may explain a lot. Morgaine’s poetry has been published in many magazines, including The Interpreter’s House, Orbis, The Frogmore Papers, Antiphon, Bare Fiction, Iota and Ink Sweat & Tears.