Who are you and who do you love?

I am: small in my body; taught carefully; sometimes thoughtful. I can: make a BuzzFeed listicle of people in my heart. But some people expecting to make the cut might not and then who am I? Some asshole?

What were you like as a child?

I was born a normal size, something I know because no one ever told me otherwise. “She’s a big one!” is something people like to say about babies. “She’s healthy!” All I know about my birth is where it happened, kind of. The city if not the hospital.

What are you looking forward to?

The aunts brought my mom Thanksgiving food in the delivery room because I am what they call a Turkey Baby who got lucky enough for her Thursday to be the last one in November, and this is how I began. How I begin, because everything from the past comes with me like it or not, a feeling like everything will happen again.

What is your body like?

I was a normal sized baby but now I am long and mostly made of bone. I have muscle and tendon and skin and hair and teeth and everything else I learned about in Biology 161 Principles of Human Physiology, but most of me is bone. You can feel it everywhere starting from the outside in.

What feelings do you have?

Sometimes the sun creeps into my bedroom because my roommate and I forget to close to the blinds. I cocoon myself at night, and if I have already gotten enough sleep for the night I can lie in bed for an hour feeling unafraid. To quote Queen Esther: Maybe I was born for such a time as this!

What is going to happen to you?

If I think about it for just a little bit of time—probably I am going to be cremated, held in a small box in an attic. If I think about it for longer, I am going to be turned into a tree. My kids can go to the park I grow in and be like, “That’s Mom! Hi, Mom!” I never think about kids most of the time, unless I’m wondering about concepts that feel tender and sick in my mouth, the feeling of eating a chicken sandwich an hour ago and the breading is still stuck under my teeth.

What was your last dream?

Sometimes my body is a city that has ladybeetles crawling over it as red beads on the pavement of skin. They find windows to invade, my ears and nostrils, crawlingly becoming non-corporeal when they meet a friend so they can pass through each other like ghosts. The sidewalks that I guess are my shins are as scavenged as possible. I wake up thinking of little bug wings.

After this the sun streams through and I fall asleep again. I dream that my roommate borrows a handful of my bobby pins. She loses some, and they are unable to find their way back.

 

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Meg Matthias is a multi-genre writer whose work can be found in Rookie, Indiana Review, and more. She is an only child, but asks that you not hold it against her. Find her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

 

Photo art by Miles Marsico: Having been born into an aristocratic Italian family, as a teenager Miles shunned his privileged upbringing to tour as a member of an elite European acrobatic circus. After deciding show business wasn’t for him, he settled in LA and now works as a lab technician at Caltech. Find him on IG  @sexyinternet (photos, life stuff) and @_newtechnology_ (music and video art) or on Twitter @ROTFASTER.

 

Thursday, November 29th 2018