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Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

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Reader, I

By Zoe Reay-Ellers

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.

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: Winter Poems/Jan 2021

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