Joe Pearson
She takes three steps then falls into dew. Early morning – she laughed us awake before dawn. Turbines rotate on the hilltop. My brave, impossible daughter regains unsteady feet. Earth’s damp glistens in her smile.
We never thought she would exist; no child should live in a cataclysm. Yet I pull her close and she is sweat and dirt and changing atoms. She does not speak but is always listening. I vow to help her cut through noise and build something that sings.
There was a time when we, humanity, could also not communicate. Isolated and prideful, we toyed with oblivion, believing our own untruths. But now we climb shakily to our feet as sunlight creeps over the meadow. Today, for the first time in a long while, I no longer feel like dying.
She takes another step.
Joe Pearson is a British fiction writer living in Paris, France. He writes about climate change, cultural displacement, masculinity and fatherhood. His short fiction has appeared in Indelible and was longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award. You can find out more about his writing here.
Briefly Write 