The eye doctor calls them floaters, but I know they are ghosts. Of things I saw and ignored. Of things I refused to see at all. Of her weeping hair. Of her spitting teeth. Of her fleeing fire. Of her shaking bones. Of her splitting nails. Of her sucking sand through straws and swallowing while I stood and shrunk. Of the dark. Of the stink. Of the sounds I didn’t make.
They dart or scatter or linger screaming in my vision, they flutter or spiral or shudder for now. But soon each one will settle, each one will creep and seep and show me what I will not see
I will not see
I will not see.
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Robin Zlotnick is a writer, editor, and fledgling potter who lives in New England with her husband and the most perfect dog in the world. She has fiction published in places like X-R-A-Y, Peach Mag, and After the Pause, and she has humor published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Belladonna, Slackjaw, and elsewhere. You can check out her work at robinzlotnick.com.
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image: MM Kaufman
Rejection Letters 