WAYS IN WHICH I AM EITHER LIKE THE EARTH, OR A HYPER-REALISTIC LOVE DOLL

The way I feel unsure how much of my smile is me flashing my skull as a peace offering. The way

I’m able to wrap both arms around myself, the parlor trick; the way that, from behind, it looks as

though I’m being embraced, but forwards, I am exaggeratedly, laughably, alone. The way I regard

the words tender and timber as interchangeable. The way I think exchanges of power are sexy until

they are not. The way I muse about being full of heat, of cracking open the sun and counting how

many of me roll out. The way my mouth is either steadfastly peaceable or very, very surprised.

The way I look at my lifelines like train tracks. Train tracks like window frames. Window frames

like vacancies. Hands like loss. The way my eyes gape until, suddenly, I am horizontal and they

then shovel themselves shut and forget to be holes. The way I am at once concrete and

hallucinatory, depending on who’s looking at me. The way that standing still suggests I melt into

myself. The way I

wait.


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RaeJeana Brooks is a Florida-born essayist archiving pleasure and connectedness. She is an MFA candidate at Antioch University Los Angeles and has extra fruit in her backpack, for you.

RaeJeana Brooks