Nightingale & Sparrow

Tag: Bouquet of Fears

  • Bouquet of Fears by Noa Covo

    Bouquet of Fears
    by Noa Covo

    Publication Date: 28 July 2020
    Nightingale & Sparrow Press
    9 Pages

    Genre: Fiction

     

    This microchapbook bridges between nature and personal fears, creating a story in which the natural world is intricately tied with the emotional. It is composed of three small fiction pieces: Ocean, Bouquet of Fears, and There Used to be a Sea Here. Each piece contains nature, whether it is inside me, beside me, or around me, and explores fear, worry, and insecurity through the lenses of a force far more significant than myself.

    The consistency of nature is the backbone of this microchapbook, but it is not a work of stagnation, but rather one of human development. It is a work of slow, never ending personal growth, constant, and yet always improving, entwined with the tides, the seasonal blooms, and the slow formation of mountains.

    This tiny book contains three fiction pieces and measures approximately 2.125 x 2.75 inches. Each book is handmade and numbered, representing its place in the limited 100-copy run.

    Each copy is uniquely hand-crafted/folded; because of this, some uneven edges do occur. We think it gives them more character!

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    About the Author

    Noa Covo

    Noa Covo is a teenage writer and high school student. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Reckoning, a journal of environmental justice, Newfound’s Virtual Realities issue, and Rune Bear. She lives in Tel Aviv, Israel with her parents, two siblings, and a fat cat.

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  • from “Ocean,” an excerpt from Bouquet of Fears

    from “Ocean”

    I was once taught that all life on Earth began in the ocean, and that, biologically, humans are seventy percent water. That means seventy percent of us is made of what used to be home.

    I think of the ocean hidden inside me,  tucked away in my cells, mixed with my sweat. I feel the tides in my pulse and the salt in my tears. I haven’t forgotten the ocean. I haven’t forgotten its depths.

    continued in Bouquet of Fears

  • Review of Bouquet of Fears by Noa Covo

    Review by DW McKinney

    Reading Bouquet of Fears is to stand barefoot on the edge of a seaside cliff, staring down the expanse before you as the waves gnaw at the ground beneath you. It is both a plaintive declaration of self and a tacit acknowledgement of the unknown. This microchapbook by Noa Covo is a piercing progression of self, mind, and history detailed in three short stories.

    “Ocean” reflects on the unnamed narrator’s primordial origins and the monsters that followed their ancestors from the ocean’s depths. These monsters don’t become flesh and bone but terrors that make “their way up from my stomach and nestle around my heart.” The story merges with “Bouquet of Fears,” another story that beautifully unravels the narrator’s fears. It’s unclear if these fears are the manifestation of the monsters in “Ocean,” but it doesn’t matter. They carry their own urgency. There’s a delightful power in the way that each fear blooms and is named—or plucked—into existence. The last story, “There Used to be a Sea Here,” brings the collection full circle. Where once the narrator emerged from the wet dark, they long to stand on the rocky shore of what one assumes is hope or wholeness, as they proclaim, “there used to be a sea here” —the monsters receded with the tides long ago and a new history carved within themselves.

    Covo writes with a sharp elegance that ensnares the reader. Her words carry us along on a journey that ends as it began, back at the sea, where we ebb and flow. And this is why Bouquet of Fears must be read again and again. There’s so much to uncover in the brief pages. The words need to rest on the reader’s tongue so that they can divine the salt, bitterness, and sweetness in each line.