Inklings 2023

“I will buy your whole stock.” “Thanks, mister!” the girl exclaims. The man buys the hats and the little girl makes her way home per his request. She puts her cherry hat back on as she skips over the hills. When her mother tells her to go to the same village the next day, the girl loses her way and never finds her way back to a man, neither old nor young. But it is fine, because that girl will forget and remember a new village, and she will talk about and eat for and sleep because tomorrow. In this village, when the floors begin to wear, the owner of the house fixes it, whether it takes a month or twenty years, because there is nothing else to do. Time ticks on in the golden clock in the house of men neither old nor young. For the roofs are pristine forever for everyone in the village of golden water. Under the cherry trees’ barren and gray limbs floats an autumn gale, blissfully tearing the earth apart, banging the chimes, and burying the squirrels deep below the ground. It is neither too warm nor too cold as the birds settle down in between the leaves, building nests on each roof, tucking their children underneath sharp wings. The crystal-blue creek dries up in the summer, but once again it flows through the green and gray terrain, carrying the little orange fish to their destinations, where they’ll grow old and die and be born again. WINDOW Emilia Suarez Herrero ’23 31