STRAWBERRY MOON
June 18
Polly was such a precious gem. Timid lipped, frail gait, her legs clopped on Mary Janes with bone-on-bone rhythm, her knees creaked and her wrists popped when she twisted them. Her fingers stretched farther than they should; a large wave, the webbing between each finger was so see-through it was easy to count every vein running through her hand. In golden hour, god rays shined through it with the ease of vellum, held up to the sun. She was spry, halfway there, barely to the ground before carried off by a gust of pollen. The prettiest girl to have hid behind her hair, to have sunk into her stockings, to have worn the fluffiest sleeves even when it’s 90 out and she must be sweltering in this weather.
June 19
Polly was a little unclean. Her hair was wires, discharging collagen and falling in piles, coagulated on her rug. Brushing it under her bed, she kept her door locked and for hours there was no noise. The travel of light and sound was snuffed out by the bite of Nothing, her room was a void in every way. All anyone could smell from under the crack was copper, like coins fell from her pursed lips and melted into the hinges. Sealed as tight as possible, not a speck of dust, or a bead of sweat, or a fly’s wing made its way in or out of its slit.
June 20
Polly was inside. She wrote and wrote and wrote about a fountain by the creek. Soft brick rim, coated in a blanket of moss that was so smooth to trace the fingers around. It was big and beautiful and she had dreams it sprays crystalline water over and over, hour on hour, but it only exists for one day. Its one day ends, and it sucks itself back into the earth. Puckers itself back into the dirt and doesn’t come back until the heat makes the grass wet and the dirt loose and the ground quivering and squelching. She writes and writes and writes and writes about it and she wants it, and she’s going to see it, and she’s leaving tomorrow and nobody will be watching.
June 21
Polly was jaw first in the fountain. A little speck of rainbow in every saliva drop. It sprayed and sprayed and it quivered like a woman, ate. And it speckled her eyelids and it had veins that flailed like hail marys. Her fingers were tired, pushed back to her wrist bone the harder she pushed her face in, but the rest of her was still twisting with the dance of a beast under moonlight, and when her arms finally gave out, she sat up with The Thing in her mouth. It rested under her tongue and it felt like liver, and she gagged. Wiped her mouth with leaves, covered the spot in branches and picked herself up to trembling knees. Pollen specked the corners of her mouth, strings sat clumped between her gap teeth. She was no longer hungry.
June 22
Polly was awake in bed and she was normal and clean. Last night was fine and she was clean. She pried her hair out of the mattress, it cracked as loud as snapped chitin but she was clean and there was nothing there. She did nothing last night. She didn’t do anything, and her mouth was empty, and her eyes were licked clean of blood, and her hair was pretty and her nails smoothed. She did nothing last night. She woke up fine. She was the prettiest, there was such hunger in her stomach, she was young and pretty and wanted So Much to eat because she wasn’t fed. She didn’t do anything last night. Polly was fine. Her teeth felt loose but she was fine. Polly was the prettiest, her skin was blotchless. Her eyelashes fluttered and she was fine. She was fine and she knew it. The Fountain Was The Prettiest Thing She Ever Put Her Lips On. She Knew It Was. Her Stomach Was Empty. She Didn’t Eat. She Didn’t Eat. She Didn’t Eat. She Didn’t Eat. She Didn’t Eat.
Elizabeth Pfister, 21, Tallahassee, Florida - USA ✯ IG: @punchdrunklizzy
“My name is Elizabeth Pfister and I am a writer out of Tallahassee, Florida. I'm 21 physically but mentally in vampiric arrested development, and I gravitate towards bizarre, grotesque, uncomfortable, and phantasmic art.”