Fireflies
Your eyelash fell
On my cheek
As we made love, you made
A wish
In another dimension
My breasts two full moons
I placed your hand on my belly
The first kick
Your eyes lit up with a thousand fireflies
I blew each candle out
Birthday cakes counting backwards
My eyes mounds of dirt
Yours, four-leaf clovers
I planted a periscope
In my chest
Now every day I’m telegramming you
My darkest confessions
Full stop. Expecting
You to drop my heart but
Every time I throw
You catch it
I know I love you I’m jealous
Of the pillow crushed
Against your body when I’ve missed
Your bed too many days
Broken trust
Is a feral cat
On the fire escape
Waiting to be coaxed
Back inside
In this dimension
I throw myself down
The well of your love
Landing on a soft
Bed of wishes
Carella Keil
Carella is a writer and digital artist who splits her time between the ethereal world of dreams and Toronto, Canada, depending on the weather. Her work involves themes of mental health, nature, and sexuality, often in a surrealist tone. Many of her short stories jigsaw together into a magical realism narrative, and she is currently working on the connective tissue for a fiction collection. Her debut poetry collection, Undercover Butterfly, was published in May 2026 by Dark Thirty Poetry Publishing and is available for purchase. She is the 2023 Door is a Jar Writing Award winner in nonfiction and the Fall 2025 Cardinal Sins first-place award recipient in fiction. She has received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and is the featured artist for the Fall 2024 issue of Blue Earth Review. Her work previously appeared in Burningword 104 and 114, and in numerous literary journals including Columbia Journal, BULL Lit Mag, Berkeley Fiction Review, Ponder Review, Wizards in Space and Tangled Locks. Her art is featured on the covers of over a dozen literary journals, including Glassworks Magazine, Nightingale and Sparrow, Cosmic Daffodil, Silk Road Review, In Parentheses, and Straylight Magazine.
