have discarded my name. Cast it into the clattering cattails across the road from my house. It was sucking the marrow from my bones, reader. Devolving me into animation. A desecrated host. I stretched yesterday and felt as though my skin had shifted into that of a worm’s. Segmented. Preferring to partake in burial rites. I should have collapsed, reader. The mirror shattered instead, unable to bear the image of my bird-boned limbs. I dashed out into the rain. Knelt in the flooded grass. Painted my jawline and cheekbones stark with muddy hatred. Reader, even dirtied I am achingly bare. Painfully other. A shadow yearning to cast itself into brightness, only to panic when it has been swallowed whole by noon-time sunlight. Left meandering in the clearly articulated limbo of twilight. I need to fill that emptiness with deft strokes. But reader? I am left staring at an unsteady hand.
Zoe Reay-Ellers is a writer from Washington State. You can find her work in The Heritage Review, and The Eunoia Review. When not writing, she can be found baking and taking long walks.