Fiona Morrison

For the June edition of the Forest Chapbook Series, we worked with the University of Edinburgh Creative Writing MSc programme, highlighting one poetry and one fiction writer, and produced a separate chapbook for each.

Excerpt:

dandelion, dan’di-li-en, n. a common yellow-flowered composite
(Taraxacum officinale) with jagged-toothed leaves. [Fr. dent de lion, lion-
tooth]

It was the first word she’d looked up in the dictionary and the first flower she’d ever picked. How the white whiskers that floated softly through the wind were anything like lions’ teeth she did not know. As she lay on the ground to reach the mass of white flowers that strained upwards to break free from the edge of the towering cliff, she had leaned in for the kill and blown them completely bare. All except one. Her hair hung over the side of the dark rock, striving to dip its curling ends into the black waves, but it was given to the wind and not the sea as she stood up quickly with the largest dandelion – the chosen one – and ran home.