The Depths
Diana Olney
Last spring,
there was a woman in the river.
Her body
was cigarette chiaroscuro
shifting with sirens’ lures.
I breathed her in—
little deaths
and long shadows,
second thoughts
and first betrayals,
starvation and rusted wounds
—but didn’t dare
touch her,
because I could sense
the teeth of her suffering
the way one woman instinctively senses
the defensive bite of another.
Last night,
there was a woman in the river.
Her voice
was the last broken verse
of an asphyxiated swan song.
I listened—
choking crowns and
pocket stones,
burning lungs and thunder,
obsolescence and cold
—but didn’t dare
touch her,
because I could feel
the sharp edges
of every note,
the way silent women feel
the shape of every word
they swallow.
This morning,
a tap had been left running,
inexorably flowing
from my sleepless mind
to the river’s edge—
where the woman waited
just below the surface,
her eyes mirroring
those who had already fallen:
Eve and Lilith,
Juliet and Ophelia,
Persephone and Cassandra,
and all the other
beautiful sorrows
bound by the weight
of ink and water.
I looked—
entrapment and defiance,
love and madness,
winter and warning
—but didn’t
have to touch a single one of them
to know
the depths of their drowning,
because, like all tragic stories
dredged from waking nightmares,
my drifting heart remembered
the way to the bottom.
Diana Olney is a Seattle writer of dark, speculative, and queer
literature. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize,
optioned for film adaptation, and has appeared or is forthcoming in
publications by Blackstone Publishing, Small Wonders Magazine, The
Deadlands, Merganser Magazine, Story Unlikely, Celestial Echo Press,
Memento Mori Ink Magazine, and many others. Her upcoming
novella, Trauma Queen, will be published by Crystal Lake Publishing
in 2027. She is also the creator of Siren’s Song, an original queer
horror/comedy comic series. And thanks to the dedication of her
two furry assistants, all of Diana’s work is cat-approved! Visit her
website www.dianaolney.com or Instagram @dianaolneyauthor for
updates on her latest tales.
Photo Credit: Kurt Clark Photography
