by A. Riel Regan
It starts out as a black cloud, and she thinks Oh God, it’s coming.
It starts out as a black cloud all cozy up in her chest, right behind her heart.
Then it centers itself behind her sternum as the vapors solidify,
conglomerate, metastasize, manifest;
manifests itself with little fishhooks digging into her bones, her lily-soft flesh.
Then it expands, pushing back her spine and her organs
and against her skin and her soul
but she lets it, because it feels–feels like substance, something she lacks.
And the sludge keeps pushing and keeps pushing and maybe she should drive it out, but
she can’t, it’s too late now.
She feels it slither into her bones, make home in her weary little head and her limbs, and it’s
heavy, so heavyshe doesn’t ever want to rise out of bed.
But as she lies there, the tar whispers, mutters, sings.
It calls out her name, then her flaws—No, chants them!Drones them, like a
prison sentence, like her family,
who never knew the sting of the string of weights that flopped
from their mouths,
all ugly and harsh yellow and gnarled.
Like the creepy-crawlies that swarm from
the mouths of her family as they watch her
crawl in war trenches of loud silence,
like ants and like flies flocking to a body because
that’s all the beau monde leave—
scavengerot and woodmeat.
The afflictions cause paroxysms as
they fasten themselves to her ankles,
all because she walked farther than them
that fell prey to the comfort of giving in,
and stood through more than them that
had never been disillusioned.
And yet, she presses on and so it does too—it’s part of her now,
and she has a choice; Rip the parasitic gunk from her chest andbleedor
bundle up and let it fester and stay it through ‘til it washes away…
however long that may be,
and hope to whatever god there may be that she can make it
when she still has to run from her antagonists
so they don’t beat her
and from her deuteragonists
so they don’t pursue her.
And just when she thinks maybe she’s gotten away, she slips
and she falls
and it’s raining
and she can feel the shadows at her feet
like tentacles and spider legs, like
shark teeth and ghost slime
and it has her and it shakes her and it drags her and
she doesn’t struggle
She doesn’t even struggle.
She can feel the ink in her bones thickening
and she wretches and she cries as the substance pours out of her pores and
bleeds all through her skin and the substance reunites with the miasma.
She doesn’t cry, she just lies there, conscious,
and she lets it, because it feels—
feels like substance, something she lacks.
A. Riel Regan is a queer, emerging author of poetry and fiction with an intense appreciation for “the human heart in conflict,” as Faulkner said. Their writing often deals with themes of conflict within the self, chronic illness, knowing oneself through nature, and spiritual connections. Their poetry has been featured in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the Kentucky State Poetry Society’s Pegasus, The Curious Nothing, and Impossible Task. When not writing or reading, they find themselves killing half their houseplants and boldly defending the other half from their cats.
Emerge Literary Journal 