Olivia Best

My shirt claws into the back of my neck and my pants pinch at my waist, folding and creasing the skin. Invisible spiders crawl into my ears and the glasses I always wear

Staring at the mirror, I see a slimy something wearing broken pieces of a rotten ribcage, calcified skin clinging to the curves and the grooves and the cracks. Flesh sags off the face

Nomad— wandering the regions of my mind, holding your shifting, fluttering skirt close to your legs, and wading through a swamp of half-remembered dreams, like colorful garments glinting through the brine. Floating fragile

My lover grows, twisting dark roots into my hair and under my arms like a broken embrace. False affection snakes ’round my ankles and smiling, whispers, “isn’t it nice to be held?

I take long walks beneath the gently sprawling limbs of trees I did not plant myself, arm-in-arm with friends I did not plan to find, and know, and love. In between planning what

I drove by the house where I used to live and looked at the red door my mother painted, bleeding through the blistered, peeling white the new people used. I stopped the car

Each day I fight because I am alive. You cannot fight, if dead—you cannot see the gleaming beetle’s silky wings display the quiet beauty of each transparent cell, crafted like the

I’ve heard about weeds that spring up where the dirt is disturbed, so watch out, just in case. Last year, they tore out my favorite tree, churning and scarring the ground with