Katya Balen

But I think about the stories hiding in my pocket and I can already feel the beginnings and the middles and the ends start to stitch themselves together in my brain and my muscles work on their own.

In my head I think I remember the day she left but the memory is like trying to hold water in my cupped hands and it trickles away before my eyes.

When I try and remember her now it’s like she’s been sliced out of the memory and all that’s left is a black person-shaped shadow where she should be, or sometimes she’s there but then her edges
fuzz and curl into smoke and nothing’s left. I hate her for leaving the wild and I hate her for leaving us and I hate her for leaving our perfect little pocket of the world.