Whispers of Winter
Ashley
N. Goodwin
November, late
afternoon, I am driving fast,
on a secluded road
with nothing but forestland hills.
Blotches of
crimson filter in through the open windows.
There are
whispering piles of golden and apricot hues,
a shedding
audience doomed to the paralyzing blues,
before it revealed
the tortured soul that drove through.
The seedlings in
these peaks conceal the greatest secrets,
absorbing the
anguish while snapping off its tragedies.
But there’s a
cavity beneath my flesh and bones,
that swelled from
the shattered pieces that once fell.
It’s a hollowness
that can’t be pruned, a diseased root.
But the eldest
trees are experts on empathy,
even with a forceful
head-on collision,
they’ll
convert my
screams into their layer of memory.
Ashley
N. Goodwin is 28 years old and resides in Arizona. She got her creative writing
certificate at Mesa Community College and was accepted into the upper division
creative writing program at Arizona State University and is pursuing a
bachelor’s degree in business administration. Her dystopian short story, “The
Voiceless” was published in the December 2022 Issue at The Write Launch. Her
current project is "The Mind Projector," a collection of
psychological horror short stories. Invoking uncomfortable emotions is one of
her favorite things to do.