Keeper of Cicada Shells, Welcome.

A Brief Introduction

The little amber exoskeleton of a cicada shell is the single most powerful agent of time travel that I know.

A single cicada shell contains:

• Four hundred of million of years of evolution.

• The distinct feeling of playing in the woods behind my house at eight years old.

• A generational history of the same seventeen-year cycle of hibernation, emergence, transformation.

• Memories of building a barbed-wire fence with my grandparents on humid East Texas mornings.

• The experience of holding something as nostalgic to your own childhood, while simultaneously recognizing this memory is shared among millions.

Cicada shells are universal, and massively common, but also precisely and devastatingly specific.

Your cicada shell may not be a cicada shell in the literal sense.

A cicada shell is simply the item, the motif, the totem that seemingly appears and reappears in your life —never when you expect it, and always when you need it most. When you trace back your journey, you find it scattered across your path like breadcrumbs leading you home. When you encounter one in the wild, it plucks you from your present moment and plunges you into the sphere of your entire existence.

It reminds you of your own metamorphosis.

You too, once emerged from the earth and split apart your old husk to make space for your ever-growing self.

A cicada shell is something that means more than it is.

So who is a Keeper of Cicada Shells?

You are!

You have no doubt gathered and cataloged and collected your own cicada shells, on paper or in Notes Apps or, if nowhere else, in your subconscious.

This newsletter shall hereby be my Keeper of Cicada Shells, the place that will hold my stories and bits of writing — a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, seldom distinctly one or the other.

I think we all crave to be more intrepid and fervent in our craft, and this shall be my attempt at just that. So here, cicada shells will be collected and shared, so that they might be seen by others and hopefully resonate with the cicada song that underscores your own life, dear reader.

Love always,

Molly