by: Rachel Parker | Published in The Maine Review Issue 11.2 | When I was a girl, I was enthralled with butterflies. Their stately names—monarch, viceroy, painted lady—each sounded to me more like royalty than biology. I wished sometimes I could become one, unfurl kaleidoscope wings and float off into some other world, light as breath. And so I spent afternoons planting butterfly bushes and milkweed in the sunniest corner of the yard, imagining the precise steps to trans

by: Rachel Parker | Published in Issue 61 of Beyond Word Magazine and inspired by this striking collage, “High Rise Rose” from artist Nancy DeCamillis | On Tuesday, eight-year-old Lucy ate lunch with her father on the twentieth floor of the glass building where he worked with numbers all day. She brought her sketchbook, and while he typed on his computer, she drew roses climbing up the windows. "They don't grow this high up," her father said without looking away from his

by: Rachel Parker | Published in Penstriken Spring 2025 Edition, "Lines" . | In my grandfather’s study on Sunday afternoons, the map hung beside his leather chair, its edges brown and curling like autumn leaves. Dust gathered in the creases where India met Pakistan. He’d spread his hands across the old British Empire–all that pink expanse seeming impossibly vast to me at seven. The age spots scattered across his skin like tea stains on paper as his fingers traced the borders