I pull myself out of bed
and it is slow
and painful
like a hand that pulls out hair,
ripping at the most stubborn of weeds.
It is day, they say,
though everything is dark and heavy–
I am walking through thick air.
I arrive at the kitchen. A kind of divine intervention.
Eggs shatter in my hands and fall as a slimy viscosity
into a dead woman’s bowl.
I don’t stop until it overflows–
A fishbowl full of perfectly round suns
each suspended in their own terrible gelatinous universe.
My fingernail accidentally punctures one of
the yolks’ invisible skins,
and the yellow spills and spreads
to its brothers and sisters, blameless.
It is awful. And I cry.
I whip them after they’ve had enough time to shame me,
and in my violence, I spill their watery bodies onto the counter.
I can blame it on their offensive shade of yellow,
or the snow in my hair,
but it was just me being careless with birth again.
I clean it up, and then
the salt won’t pour right and I add too much meat
and I keep spilling more and it’s starting to burn
and by the time I’m done
I’ve spilled so much egg that there’s none left in the pan.
It keeps being true.
***
Alorah Welti (she/her) is a nineteen-year-old Minnesota-born feminist, synesthete, poet, and artist. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Unstamatic, Diet Water, Cutbow Quarterly, Lit. 202, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the Daniel Manacher Prize for Young Artists. She lives on stolen Mohican and Wabanaki land, just north of North Adams, Massachusetts, with her family.
***
image: MM Kaufman
Rejection Letters 