Klisto summer

Previously

…I was standing in my grandmother’s kitchen, the stove cold, the windows blackened with frost. Outside, the new moon hung like a closed eye, a slit of darkness in the sky. The beast was not a beast; it was the cold that comes after the last fire. The world was a distant cosmos, and the cosmos was a close new moon, and I was standing in the kitchen, my hand on the cold iron of the stove. I touched my own hand. It was real—warm, trembling. But the green light seeped under the door, thin as a blade, patient as a root. I locked the door. I said, “Viespatie. Emanueli.” And I waited for the mutation to find me, for the gene to wake, for the door to open or to stay closed forever.