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Writer's pictureLammergeier Staff

Everyone's [Redacted] | Alix Perry

Updated: Jan 16

after Surya Botofasina


The sky eats the sea for breakfast,

the sea, the sky for dinner. The wide


right eye of a storm out of family lore. 

Gears forfeiting baby teeth among


flowerbed hailstones. Bolts, their 

unspooled threads. Fear is how


the past keeps in touch. A message

of cerebral chemicals like a postcard


from the Oregon Dunes, adorning

my desk decades later. It doesn’t 


feel so long ago, my palms 

salt-stained daily by seashells 


and tide stones. My ears stuffed 

with teddy bear guts when I didn’t 


want to listen. Silence, the sound 

of dancing blood. We weren’t us


then. Now? Three colors of

carpet to cover the living room. 


The dish drying rack, glued to

the counter, drains in the wrong


direction. Beside the bathroom mirrors,

I drape red rust-scented curtains.


Like the tack of a clotting cut.

Instincts treading in the sharpest 


of places. Conditions of aftermath,

tenuous. I want you to close your 


fist around me the same way 

you forget: unaware of what’s


happening inside your own body.

I’ll count backwards from the static


end of the tape and sway out of

time with the floorboards’ rattling.





Alix Perry is a trans writer from the Pacific Northwest. Their work has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and can be found in Kissing Dynamite, The B’K, beestung, and elsewhere. Their chapbook, Tomatoes Beverly, is due out in May 2024. More at alixperrywriting.com.


Twitter: @_AlixPerry_

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