A Green Year
James Sullivan
March 30, 2026
This story was originally published in The Headlight Review. It was a finalist for the 2024 Anthony
Canopy Literary Review
The forest files a missing persons report ``` species: human last seen: believing ownership was another word for love distinguishing marks: pockets full of plastic weather ``` The cedar says: They stopped calling me by my name. They stopped saying my names. Before we ceased to say theirs. Meanwhile— a glacier misplaces another century. An owl edits Close to the edge of night. The river returns every apology unopened. ``` [please check one] ``` ☐ extinct ☐ endangered ☐ remembering The moss votes for softness. The wolves abstain. Every tree ring contains the minutes from meetings We never got invited to. At dawn, the wind seals the book, not because the search is over— because the missing are still walking.
When the Fungi Began Correcting Our Grammar First, they objected to the sentence: The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. A long white thread crossed it out. Then another. Soon the forest floor became one enormous revision. ``` replace belongs with breathes through replace resource with relative delete the word forever ``` Beneath our boots, mycelium continued writing without ink, without witnesses, without needing our agreement. One morning, I placed my ear against the ground. The soil said, not in language— in recurrence. Everything fallen was already becoming its next beautiful sentence.
COLLINS C. OPARAOCHA is a writer and poet. He lives and writes in Turkey. His work has appeared or forthcoming in Empyrean literary magazine, Abstract Magazine, Dualiterary Magazine, Merion West magazine, Pink Ochre Literary Magazine, Still Point: Poetry & Culture, Homeplace Magazine, Blue Daisies Journal, The Quasar Review, Abundance Literary Magazine, and he is the author of the novel All Shadows are Black.
This story was originally published in The Headlight Review. It was a finalist for the 2024 Anthony
Photo by Roman Denisenko alight in the south field where the sky is bigger than you knew
During the last generation’s Western war on the Middle East, Chelsea Manning was incarcerated for disclosing secret
1 / We already know how bad language can be—poor grammar and creative punctuation; potty-mouths and shitposters;
Odile stood in the darkest part of the yard, waiting, waiting, and Boy was nowhere in sight.
Shore Some women’s voices are heavy with stories of men who never make it home. Their oaths