Today, she's eaten: three spoonfuls of peanut butter — her dinner — barefoot in her kitchen after midnight; seaweed crackers as blood dripped out her nose, courtesy of the dry air; decaf earl grey with lemon after she woke, also in the kitchen, also barefoot, when she startled — at skittering legs against her bare walls. Usually, the dance is with shadows slanting over white paint, each corner shades of shadow, but —
the shadow moves. Long-legged. An invasion in her space, an unwanted guest trailing along her walls like fingers along her spine, down her hips, down her legs. She is frozen. She can't move to strike. She does not want its legs inside her walls. She can't eat — she does not want a single thing inside her walls.
lay down with the dilation of the pupils dilation of the eyes look into each other the dark holes where the retina is beneath your exoskeleton legs wide leaning in towards her skin shivers dilation more light dilation of the hole of the blood vessels under the skin of the legs wide eyes closed blood flushing the skin the love rocking from to you blowing back & forth our mouths gaped legs gaped more legs clutching inside breathing in to your out out to your in love rocking pupils dilating into each other's dark holes reaching legs & forth the pause backwards time rolls rocking the pause turning our love rocks legs wide skittering how they will love rocks the pause how they sex love rocks & someday we will
Centipede | Sirianna Helleloid
Sirianna Helleloid is a production accountant by day & by night is mostly asleep; somewhere between the two she writes. She's had poems in JAKE, The Gravity of the Thing, Catapult Magazine, Diagram, & Twin Bird Review. Her manuscript &maybe was a finalist for the 2023 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize.
Twitter: @elelelelloyd
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