I am three months out and six to go, stuffing my plastic Superball body with the salt & twang of crackers die-cut into the shapes of fish. God forsakes me when I forsake him but mostly he’s much kinder, as is his duty: I am radiant, people tell me, and have no hives, except the swarm of gold bombs biting its way into my sticky hollow. And I don’t mean sex. I am just a menagerie for bright orange creatures. Even my dreams are godless (and full of God): I dream I am guided by an elderly couple in a dim farmhouse to their morning radio and blackberry tea and then given the combs which I snap into my dry mouth where they fill and fill. Never, upon awaking, have I been so empty and wanted more a cracker. Never so suffused with the weekly, with time as another god passing through the many perfect crypts and ambers I house beneath my skin.
Copyright © Arielle Greenberg. Used with permission of the author.