THE HERBARIUM — GABRIELLE GRIFFIS
/The curator knew a small storm would choke the seaside town. She collected every seed, flower, and root she could find, attempting to preserve what would soon be lost to the ocean. Some species could only be found at night, insects that fed on the leaves of trees in darkness to avoid aviary predation. It was as if certain creatures only existed at particular times: morning, afternoon, evening. The sun traveled across the sky. The curator spent more and more time under moonlight, her fingers stained with sap. Her eyes were tinted with the anatomies of other lifeforms. She breathed terpenes.
Strange things happened in edge environments, between plains and mountains, land and water.
Her herbarium contained specimens of every known plant in the region: bluestem, honeysuckle, cinnamon fern. Volumes of dried moss sat in cabinets and drawers. Mist rolled over the moors the night the curator went missing. Her empty car illuminated the forest. A search party was formed. Flashlights scanned the water. Sun rose over juniper swamps.
A heavy rain followed. Streets flooded. Buildings lost power for months. The smell of muck and wet earth hung in the air. Basements moldered. Anosmia ensued. Dresses scented with black spores hung on clothing lines.
After the storm, the school year was canceled. Boats beached on jetties. The surf was littered with horseshoe crabs and whales. The search party was abandoned. Vegetation overtook deserted lots. Dust gathered in the herbarium, year after year until one day a figure emerged from the forest.
Moss had grown into her hair. Her brown eyes turned green. She walked through the abandoned town, past saltworn fishing wharfs, empty gas stations, and rusted signs. Ghosts of summer baseball games cast shadows in overgrown fields.
Crows gathered in the trees. Finches perched in the grass. She saw herself picking horse chestnuts with her mother before the blight. She saw the truck where she had her first kiss, a transfer van carrying her grandmother’s body. She saw the past and future as mycelia wove through her gray matter. She saw herself, trying to save this place, to learn from this place, over and over again, until she reached the herbarium, and opened the doors.
Gabrielle Griffis is a multimedia artist, writer, and musician. She studied creative writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she has also worked for the Juniper Writing Institute. Her fiction has been published in Wigleaf, Split Lip Magazine, Matchbook, Monkeybicycle, XRAY Literary Magazine, Necessary Fiction, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere. She works as a librarian on Cape Cod. You can visit her website at gabriellegriffis.com.
