By: Gabby Mijalski-Fahim
Our lease is up at noon and I should probably pack
Instead I watch her play Jenga with six cardboard boxes
as the June sun beams through our blinds and mazes through the spears of her potted plants
riding her corkscrew curls and landing on the shallowest ponds of her face
She scrapes tack residue from the wall
and my heartbeat competes with her metronomic scratches
I listen to her silently recite the move-out checklist
until it starts to sound like wedding vows or maybe a eulogy
I try to speak but my mouth is lined with soil and excavated for coffins
carrying words I will come to grieve in a month’s time
I want to tell her it’s been two weeks since I last felt her hands
so I feast on my own
sinking my teeth into peeled cuticles and tugging at raw skin until
blood fills the crevices on my fingertips like
Oregon rain floods potholes at dusk
The door slams behind her, stealing all the air from the apartment and
I run my bloodied hand under the sink, emptying what is left of me down the drain
wringing myself dry
Gabby Mijalski-Fahim is a queer poet, recent graduate and cat mother who lives and breathes in Oregon. Her work is featured in The Siren Magazine, a feminist digest at the University of Oregon.