A woman and child lose one another under fluorescent bulbs. Scouring aisles, the mother trumpets alarm. Alone. Halved. Cleaved by her sudden emptiness. The child curls to a fiddlehead in the cave of an endcap. He hears his mother’s voice, but he’s a fern and not a lost boy anymore.

Mureall Hebert lives near Seattle, WA. Her writing has appeared in trampset, Hobart, Citron Review, matchbook, and elsewhere. Find her online at www.mureallhebert.com and @mureallhebert.bsky.social