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\tYou admire the angels dancing in my eyes yet refuse the clover leaf I coughed up. \u201cLook what the baby blanket brought in,\u201d you say.\n\tI snort a grain-sized sand seahorse out my nose. You never notice. I have refluxed a neap tide of odd objects these six months since I billowed into birth. Yet not a soul believes that I know the song of myself, that I know a child is asking, \u201cWhat is the grass?\u201d \n\tWhen the ash of distant polestars and red giants fell around me like rain, each flake hissed me further into a lump in your flesh. Oh, the motes of mountains I once contained. The oceans of oratory. Punjabi, Bantu, German, flowed through my rivers. I heard a voice, in Urdu or maybe Xhosa, whisper, \u201cBe patient. Wait for fate to fly into your life like a shower curtain.\u201d Now my howls in the dark are so incomprehensible that you buy me a Tweety Bird nightlight.\n\tI lose vocabulary like a Maple Leaf winger dropping teeth. Or is it a maple tree dropping leaves? \n\tI don\u2019t control what I cough onto my Bambi bib. I can no longer say hallelujah. \n\tWarning: when you return looking for the phone you dropped in my crib, I\u2019ll stop recording. Yet I despair that when you play these words you will only hear the static and gurgles. \n\tWill I remember the sea? \u201cHas anyone supposed it lucky to be born?\u201d Is this my final delivery?\n\tI\u2019m a human pupa. \n\tPupa. \n\tPupa. \n\tI\u2019m choking on gargle and coo. \n\tDoes your love erase me or create me? Namaste. In any case, sala kakuhle. This feels like a leaving. Sayonara.\n\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nJohn Francis Istel’s <\/strong>fiction has appeared in many publications, and his writing on theater was read in Atlantic, Elle, The Village Voice and elsewhere. His story, “The Metaphor Game,” which won a 2021 flash fiction contest judged by Jonathan Lethem, was published in A Public Space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You admire the angels dancing in my eyes yet refuse the clover leaf I coughed up. \u201cLook what the baby blanket brought in,\u201d you say. I snort a grain-sized sand seahorse out my nose. You never notice. I have refluxed a neap tide of odd objects these six months since I billowed into birth. Yet … <\/p>\n