KRISTINA PERCY

SPRING/SUMMER ISSUE #06 POET

KRISTINA PERCY (she/ her) lives on Vancouver Island, Canada, in the traditional territories of the Ligwiłda’xw people. Neither of her degrees have anything to do with creative writing. Her work has been published extensively in her Gmail drafts folder, and you can also find it on Instagram @__kpwrites

AN OCTOPUS HAS THREE HEARTS, & OTHER WONDERS

The amount of wonder in the world is unknown,
but we do know this: it is, so far, not endangered.
Wonder lives anywhere. Find it in a volcano,
blocked storm drain, crease of a favourite page.
It feeds best in the shifting dark on the far edge
of sleep, but can survive on the thinnest peels of
thought or pride. In captivity, where even those
are scarce, wonder has been known to wander
from its too-small tank and run its suckers over any
ordinary thing: a pencil, a succulent.

As it grows, wonder learns that a door is not a
wall. Did you know that wonder can pick a lock?
That it can regrow each part of itself severed
by its many critics?

Wonder lives just long enough to tend to its One
Great Idea. It dies soon after the idea is born.