I recently read the short and delightful Coffee House Press book, Horse, Flower, Bird, by Kate Bernheimer. This is a delightful book of poetic prose pieces that are connected through haunting, sometimes confused, but always strangely familiar imagery of childhood, girlhood.

While reading this, I felt reconnected with the strangeness of being young and not yet fully understanding the world around me and the social expectations and information that would eventually become themes. Bernheimer is able to capture that world for me, which was stranger and more magical.

Reading it, I just found myself grateful that this quirky little book exists. Sometimes the world, and the literary world, starts to feel very similar to me, and this wasn’t that.