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

by: Rachel Parker | Published in Issue 58 of Beyond Word Magazine and inspired by this striking painting, “The Artist” from artist Joe Barbella | I turn the corner and there I am, scattered across sixty floors of mirrored glass. Only it isn’t me. Or rather, it's not just me. My reflection fractures—eyes multiplied, mouth divided. A kaleidoscope of myself. There's the girl who once hid in bathroom stalls during lunch, counting ceiling tiles until the bell. The teenager who

By: Rachel Parker | Published on April 14, 2025 in Beautiful Things by Riverteeth Journal | My son is terrified of the water. Each time he steps in, his small back tenses, his teeth clench, his lip quivers. Last summer, he taught himself to traverse the entire perimeter of the pool by clinging to its border—inch by painstaking inch—rather than daring to float across its risky middle. His fingertips leave little, damp prints along the pool’s edge that fade almost as quickly

by: Rachel Parker | Published in the Winter 2024 issue of Penstricken Magazine | In the heavy air of an August morning, I watch my daughter walk away. Her new backpack waves a bright yellow goodbye to me with each step. The school looms ahead: flat and brick. Just moments ago, I held her close, feeling the thrum of her little heart beating against my chest. My own pulse had slowed to match it, a rhythm we’ve shared since before she drew her first breath. She glances back,

by: Rachel Parker | Published by Anomaly Poetry in their Winter 2024 anthology, Tidings | Through cobalt depths she moves like a mountain dreaming, forty tons of ancient knowing parting the sea's dark silk. Her flukes write scripture in swirling water, while deep in her bones lie star-maps of migration, routes her grandmothers sang. She carries coordinates in the curves of her spine, in the slow pulse of primordial blood, while around her the cold sea churns,