✷
I pull it out of my throat. A clean shaven coconut, an oversized avocado pit with stubby brown hair. I cradle it like a newborn, stroking its soft skin and curls.
I can’t believe it came from me.
I pull it out of my throat. Like unclogging a drain, a knotted hairball sticking to wet fingers. A bundle of silent stories tucked into shallow breaths, stinging like papercuts, bitter on my tongue.
I know it came from me.
I can bury it deep in the dirt.
I can hide its swallowed sounds.
I can whisper a final goodbye.
Goodbye.
A pale empty beach opens up, stretches out in all directions. I fall into it, rolling down the velvety hill, sleeves of sunlit water and freedom lapping at my fingertips.
✷
Sam Marrah’s work has appeared in Pigeon Review and is forthcoming in Oratoria Magazine and Folly Journal. She is a reader at Epiphany Literary Journal. She studied Literature at UC Santa Barbara's College of Creative Studies and European Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge. She was previously an editor for Spectrum Literary Journal and The Mays Anthology.
