You burn the midnight oil again. Your dogs bark at the nothing outside while you pose subtly in front of the bathroom mirror. You imagine looking like Velma Dinkley, or Mia Wallace, or some other fringed-haired, feminine badass. Freights echo from miles away. This feels like a beginning—really, look at it—you got bangs today, and an epiphany, you started singing to your houseplants, scrubbed yesterday’s dishes with a bright pink sponge, and then it all goes dark. Your body, a broken steam engine, scrapes against the black. You dream of endings—the final meal on vacation, or an unmarked page after an epilogue, one last swig of amber ale before the glass stands empty. You are the earth, frozen, or maybe a still frame—echoing flames void of motion, hurricanes on pause, quaking tremors halted—every bird suspended above an umbrella of night.
Hannah Cajandig-Taylor
Hannah Cajandig-Taylor resides in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where she is an MFA Candidate at Northern Michigan University and an Associate Editor for Passages North. Her prose and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Tulane Review, Drunk Monkeys, Coffin Bell, Gravitas, and Crack the Spine, among others. She has a bike named Stella and enjoys murders documentaries.
