United States of America
Lauren Kayes is a queer, disabled writer of fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. She lives in Los Angeles with her dog and leopard gecko.
I imagine a light held to the place where I open would illuminate a mess of torn flesh, throbbing red-wet.
But the weight is right. It feels like heart and brain and fur and beard and bone, all tied off in a plastic bag.
I had a dream the other night that my teeth were falling out. First whole, molars followed by canines, then in chunks and shards.
There are cranberries to pick in the white flowers, and a rose soaked in juice from the berries, pink and wet like the inside of a lip, a flick of tongue.
He plans to catch us like mice, like rabbits, Jaws snapping spines, rope tight ‘round ankles, Hearts in ruddy hands beating blood-bright.
Caterpillars slurp the soup of their own bodies to grow and I can’t imagine we were told that you have to eat your skin and stomach and heart to become something beautiful.
I draw a tree over my healing bruise in ballpoint pen, the kind that smears when you look at it funny. Inky branches unfurl over a palm-sized wash of golden currant and leaf green and muddled blackberry purple, all colors that are absent from Los Angeles autumn.
Just reach past your ribs, hold your beating heart in your hands, and listen.