NELLE 8 | 2025
I long no more to wake and stumble to the mirror, headless with dreams,
to look at my wrists, stomach, hair, face, self, untamable, unknowable.
Who is this goddess of doubt?
They said I would dream this season. And I do. Like something immortal,
I hunt for love. With hair no one can run through. Eyes a lake no boat
would moor upon. Soles and palms, a landscape of callused roads. I try
to keep glass between me and dreams.
To peer outside from in. I watch speckled, clumsy fawns dance in fields
and deserve that drink of air, the afterstorm of relief. I watch the aspens
stay the same, but I imagine them growing gold and letting go, and me,
always missing it. I make decisions. I tell reflections I’m alive. They said
someone would come, not in a dream, to stand close, and say everything
I thought I wanted.
They did not mention the shield. That it was mine, not his. They did not
teach me how to use it. They did not tell me I was capable of turning
myself to stone. And people would stop asking who is this goddess and
I would have to give myself a name. I decide I want
it to mean monster so I have something to blame. For tragedy, for all this
sleeping so peacefully at night without a head, for waking to a body rigid
as rock, for all this venom, for this winged, leaping horse for a heartbeat.