Light Boxes Read Online Free PDF

that skin of mushy green. It was too much for me. The floor and walls and ceiling of our home were covered in moss. The dog was covered in moss but was still alive, and he ran around the home barking green-colored clouds. Thaddeus was tearing it out in fistfuls from the walls. Caldor was swinging a scythe in wide, low arcs.
    Selah, said Thaddeus, start on the floor. Tear out what you can and burn it in the stove.
    Caldor yelled at me as I stood there with my arms frozen to my sides. I thought about the way the horses died. I thought of death and war and the sadness of this once-colorful town.
    Selah, please, the floor, said Thaddeus, who kicked his feet, flicked at the moss that grew over the toes of his boots.
    I went back to where the horses were.
    I knelt down in the cold, snow-freckled green. I peeled the moss away from their bodies. Their eyes had burst and their tongues were hanging out. Their necks were ropes of muscle and wet moss from the snow that now looked like green foam.
    I placed my head inside a horse’s neck. Deep inside that web of flesh, among the organs and bone, I saw a miniature town that was identical to ours. I saw Thaddeus and Caldor and Bianca and everyone else asleep in hammocks tied to the ribcage. I saw a little balloon carrying horses in a basket. I saw kites pushing clouds into a burning sun. And where the stomach was, I saw myself standing on a frozen river. Wind tunnels around my legs lifted my dress and pulled my hair toward the clouds. I could feel the cracking of ice against the bottom of my feet. Fish ate water and screamed for me to come down and have some tea, have some mint.

Thaddeus
    The shopkeepers in town said they saw Selah out on the river. One of them went after her. He reached his hand out, but she shook and stamped her feet. She broke the ice beneath her and fell.
    I tried to save her, Thaddeus, said the shopkeeper, who was a little old man with a crooked back. He walked with a cane that had a curved end in the shape of an eagle, which he clutched.
    I lay out on the ice as best I could and tried to find her through the hole. I’m sorry, sir, but what I saw, I don’t know if it’s February getting to me or not. But here, this is what I saw. He quivered, then straightened his back.
    He handed me parchment paper. He shouted for the death of February, and a few other shopkeepers rallied around him, and they disappeared inside the inn. Outside the inn were great big heaps of wilting moss, dying ants, a butcher skinning a wolf.
    I unfolded the parchment. I thought of Bianca and Selah and this ongoing war. I sat on the ground in the street as the wagons passed me by, the wheels slipping in the snow. There was a drawing on the parchment. It was drawn in lead and showed a woman, Selah, underwater. Brown fish with horse heads encircled her. Her hands were angry clouds. Kite strings were wrapped around her body, and she was screaming with a mouth full of snow.
    Â 
    It continued snowing and the
    Â 
    War Effort gathered around Thaddeus, who wouldn’t move from the street. The shopkeepers cleared the snow around him with shovels. Thaddeus held a crumpled ball of parchment in his fist and refused to speak. At one point a wagon wheel crushed his hand, but he didn’t flinch.
    There’s still a war to fight, one War Effort member said.
    The town needs you, said another.
    Caldor Clemens grabbed Thaddeus by the shoulders and shook him.
    You can place your frustration on February, he said, looking into the dark eyes of Thaddeus.
    Thaddeus mumbled and tightened his fists but didn’t move. Three war members—blue bird mask, a carpenter and Caldor Clemens—tried to push him over. Caldor said that it was like trying to move a chimney. They had no choice but to leave him in the street night after night after night.
    The left side of my body is Bianca, and my right side is Selah. With no body I have no reason to move from this spot.
    I dreamed you a field of