When autumn came, the professor’s drought ended. He was offered a new office, and having curated things all his season, now brought with him an armada. Like the sequoia desk, which faced due north after much grunting. The hawk skull, placed gingerly on the lip of the wood, milk-colored and dry. And his two mismatched wingbacks, one green and patterned in sunflowers, the other slate. Last, the portrait of an indian blackbuck fixed to the eastern wall. But after arranging the collection with care, he heard chirping from the window pane and looked. There was a grasshopper on the other side. Later, he put his nose between two pages in a book of shinto. He had pressed there a cherry blossom, but hadn’t remembered it to smell so much like moths.
Evan Nicholls attends James Madison University (‘20) and is from Fauquier County, Virginia. He is involved with JMU’s literary magazine, Gardy Loo, and has work appearing in CHEAP POP, Penny, and formercactus, as well as forthcoming in The Jellyfish Review. Follow him on Twitter @nicholls_evan .
Lost Balloon 