When you were a child, I asked my mother, did you swim in a birdbath? Did the sun shine on you? Will you come back after you die and let us know what heaven is like?

I asked my child self to pick a violet and hold it in her palm. I told her, you will be okay.
She said, but will you?

I will never write about what it felt like to be nine years old, mouth open in my dreams when a bee flew in. Screaming and screaming in my red shorts and red and white striped shirt. Standing on the corner of my block. I locked the beehive in the attic, pocketed the key. I will never tell you the truth. Was it fear of being eaten by a shark or fear of being locked in a mental asylum or fear of being bitten by a rabid bat on a full moon? I rocked the secret to sleep in a cradle of birch. I picked the scab on my knee until it bled, until it was pink and new and I could wake up and start again.

The bees have come here to rest their wings on my pillowcase, to circle my neck like a collar of sadness. The ocean has come here to spin yarn from henbit, to spit purple into the sky.

I asked the ghosts to come into the attic with me and never leave.

I asked the babies to go down into the cellar and sing lullabies to the spiders. No, they said, we will not. We are afraid of the cellar. But if you bring the spiders upstairs, we will sing to them.

Georgia Bellas is a writer/artist/filmmaker. She was the creator and host of Mr. Bear’s Violet Hour Saloon for many years and has received awards for her work in radio, film, and writing, as well as a 2024–25 Racine Art Museum Artist Fellowship Award.