Mother labours, too early, with another young midwife. I hush the others outside to make food from nature. We work without heat. Without fussing around in a sooty stone oven. Without bickering over cracked spoons. Without using a recipe set to paper by our late Oma. The afternoon light doesn’t dapple us.

spring burial

On a downed maple, we compare and shape our pats of sunwarmed muck. When our water runs low, we rise to fill each other up. For now, small puddles are enough; we avoid the sloped stream between our land and another farmer’s forest. Many rain worms are smaller than our doctor’s healing leeches—as thin as the pink ribbons once layered into my birthday hair.

the last baby tongues

Who will care that a torn fingernail fell into one of our dark, flourless crusts? Nothing is to be eaten here. The grunts of rooting pigs will cover some sounds breaking from the back of the house. If raw cries do find us, we will still kneel to gather silverweeds and paired samaras. I will keep reaching out my hand.

a walnut shell

*Mud Pies (oil on canvas, 1873) by Ludwig Knaus (1829–1910), prominent
German painter of genre scenes, is held by The Walters Art Museum:
https://art.thewalters.org/object/37.21/

Publisher’s Note:

I’m so pleased to publish Adele Gallogly’s first haibun ever, and I’m doubly delighted because this debut piece is also ekphrastic. 💛  Plus, this marks the first appearance of her work in MacQ. I hope to see much more in future issues!

Adele Gallogly

is new to haibun, which she discovered after she started writing microfiction and other very short forms in 2025. Her flash fiction was highly commended for the 2025 Bridport Prize, and was a finalist for the 60th New Millennium Writing Awards (2026). Her flash is published or forthcoming in 50-Word Stories, Flash the Court, Paragraph Planet, Six Sentences, and elsewhere. Find her on Bluesky [at]AdeleGallogly.