PART ONE
it started with a little black box, past a door and down a hall, one with a light switch that didn’t seem to work. old corridor with a draft, a sound, voice; there might have been someone talking to you.
kid was shaping coloured plasticine between his finger and thumb, shaping it into a figure, a man, cowboy maybe — here’s a head, funny little legs, an arm, arms. the revolver. surrounded on the dining room table by clay sculptures, buildings and streets, a spacecraft, a whale. a world was unfolding in the structures spread out there, pushed and pressed into shapes and bodies and things, and someone might have been talking to him but kid didn’t mind it at all.
as the figure took shape in his hands, kid’s thoughts wandered into memory: it might have been the night before, but kid was sure he had a dream at some point. he was almost sure of it.
he remembered telling his mom about the dream, and she listened to him and paused what she was doing to nod attentively as he told her. when kid finished, she said grandma understood what dreams meant, and she told kid to ask grandma what she thought of the dream.
his fingers were sticky with plasticine and the heel of his right hand was silvery gray from drawing with pencils and kid found grandma in the living room getting ready to play cards.
he climbed onto a chair across from her and she dealt him some cards and while he struggled to get them in order he chewed on his lip and asked her if she knew much about dreams.
i know about dreams, she said. tell me about yours.
she laid down a card, then another, and so did he. They played some cards, and kid told her. kid told her about the first time he dreamed about the shed. he told her about waking up
clawing at his pyjamas throwing off his covers trying to pull the spiders from his body. he told her about his dreams of spiders.
well, she said, dreaming about spiders means you’re growing up.
is that true.
yes. when you dream about spiders it means you’re changing. you’re growing up.
she laid down a card, then another, and so did he. While they played cards kid thought about that. kid thought about the little black box he’d built in his head where he kept the spiders.
the little black box at the end of the hall where the light switch didn’t work. kid thought about the things he promised himself he’d forget, the things he promised he’d bury forever in the deepest place a memory can go. he wondered if that’s what adults meant when they talked about growing up: learning to forget.
stepdad came downstairs and kid could hear the ice clink in his glass as he whispered something into mom’s ear and she gave him a playful push. stepdad came into the living room and stood beside the table and watched grandma beat kid at another hand.
careful, she’s ruthless, kid. she’ll go for the jugular at the first sign of weakness.
he came around behind kid’s chair and poked a finger into his ribs and when grandma beat kid at another hand stepdad said something like i told you so and everyone laughed. mom came in with a bowl of snacks and kid ate by the handful.
—from Yellow Barks Spider by Harman Burns. Published by Radiant Press. © 2024 by Harman Burns. Used with permission of Radiant Press.
Bring home Yellow Barks Spider, Radiant Press, October 22, 2024.
About Yellow Barks Spider:
Yellow Barks Spider (Radiant Press, 2024) akes place in the Canadian prairies, but it seeks to explore this landscape through the intimate lens of a ten-year-old trans kid. Set against the backdrop of the placid countryside, dusty summers and barren winters, it is both a queer coming-of-age novella as well as a deeply psychological character study, reflecting on the nature of memory, trauma, and self-discovery.
In the threadbare prairie town where Kid grew up, life moves slowly. For a troubled ten-year-old, the vast landscape of open skies and barren winters is a place of elemental magic and buried secrets. As the summers pass by, Kid explores a world of weed-choked yards, murky lakes, and a traveling carnival. But when Kid finds himself increasingly haunted by strange spider-infested visions of his next door neighbor’s shed, he falls deeper and deeper into his haunted inner world, eventually turning to mind-altering substances to combat his growing torment. Confronted by this psychic pressure, the book itself begins to crumble, splintering into disparate narrative voices as the workings of Kid’s imagination become animate, tactile—and language self-destructs.
Emerging from this crucible, Kid surfaces into adulthood as she moves through love, sex, and self-discovery as a trans woman. But when she returns to her hometown following the death of a family member, she is forced to reckon with all the fears she once left behind. Yellow Barks Spider is an unforgettable portrait of trauma, isolation, and self-compassion. At its heart, it is a deeply-felt exhumation of memory, love, and the human spirit.
Author Harman Burns
About Harman Burns:
Harman Burns is a Saskatchewan-born trans woman, filmmaker, sound artist and writer. Her practice is informed by folklore, nature, the occult and bodily transfiguration. Her writing has been published in Untethered Magazine and Metatron Press, and was shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction. Burns currently resides on the unceded ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver).