Find her on and on her website amandamcleodwrites. She loves quiet places and learning new words. Her fiction and poetry can be found in many places including Not Very Quiet, Ellipsis Zine, and Mojave He Review. Let’s say, here in the darkness with the waves sighing as they drop gently on the sand, that in spite of it all we can still love each other.Īmanda McLeod is an Australian author and artist, and the Managing Editor at Animal Heart Press. Let’s say no to all the things we’ve said yes to that didn’t happen, to all the people who’ve asked the unforgivable time and time again, to everyone who judged us on our eventual silence. Let’s say we’re invincible, two creatures constructed of diamond, sparkling the way your blue eyes did the first time you looked across this same path and into my own. Let’s say the lights on the water look like glowing Greek columns, in a temple to some goddess of passion. Let’s say the things people like us normally say, do what they normally do, when they take a midnight stroll. Alone in a remote house in Iceland a woman is unnerved by her isolation another can only find respite from the clinging ghost that follows her by submerging herself in an overgrown pool.

Let’s say our fingers entwine, like a fishtail braid and you lean into me as the wind wheeples through the trees, an eerie dirge. A shocking collection of dark stories, ranging from chilling contemporary fairytales to disturbing supernatural fiction. Let’s say we take a walk along the foreshore, like we used to. Let’s say the stars shine down on us, like crinkled balls of tinfoil in an inky sky. Let’s say, just for one night, it won’t rain.

The things we say in the dark