Alicia Marie

@bonexflower.bsky.social

76 Followers 160 Following

BIPOC novelist exploring memory, folklore, history, horror, and the stories people carry. Based in New Jersey. Mother of two teenage brats and three fickle cats. I didn't mean to rhyme. Also, I talk about gas. Alot. https://bonexflower.substack.com/

Moodboard for SEDIMENT, a mythic historical horror novel. A collage of Black and African figures near water: men with instruments and river poles, women standing, bowing, or submerged in water, hands touching a stream, white garments, shells, ritual-like river scenes, a golden river at sunset, and a foggy blue forest. The images evoke elemental water, Central African folklore, spiritual inheritance, ancestral memory, and a bloodline haunting that travels from one river toward the Mississippi.
An aged parchment-style page featuring an excerpt from SEDIMENT. The highlighted word is “almost.” The excerpt shows Neori setting terms with a river spirit who has made himself nearly human for her, insisting that if she chooses him, the choice must remain hers.
Then she said, “If I am the reason children do not stay, close my womb.” The rope at the ford went still. “If I am not, show me where the breath goes.” No one moved. The water took the sound and did what water does. It held what had weight and let the rest pass. Footsteps came from the path. Her husband arrived with two men behind him. They stopped where dry ended and wet began, where men often let courage stand in front of them and do the labor. “Get up, Neori,” he said. “You shame our house.” She did not turn. “Speak it here,” she said. “Say what you say into the water.” He looked toward the pool, then toward the men at the ford. Their eyes gave him a little more height. “Hear me,” he said. “I cast this woman off. Her body kills sleep. I will take another. I will have sons.” I kept his words too. Neori stood then and faced him without stepping closer. “Bring her here when you choose her,” she said. “Say her name at the bank. Say what you will make of her life.” He spat and left.
Prodigy is, at its essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession. Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channled into destructive fanaticism. Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all. --Parable of the Sower
I am at my limit
Neka passed the place where the old man’s blood lay under dust. The tree took nothing from me. Men had brought bodies to it with a command: forget. They put that command into counting, into rope, into dust, into the watching of other men. They put it into the mouths of guards. They pushed women around the trunk and wanted father, mother, child, river, field, drum, shrine, food, scar, and first language to fall away with each turn. Neka’s blood ran under her tongue. I held Neori there. I held Safa. I held the boy whose first word shook every vessel. I held the husband with mud on his knees, saying what he saw until his voice thinned. I held Neka’s mother whispering Neori over a newborn’s face. I held Adjo and Komi because rain had given me their names. The tree took sweat. It took dust from their feet. It took skin where rope had rubbed wrists open. It did not take the names I kept. After the seventh turn, Neka spat blood at the root.