Emulsified

The night is dim and blue. A moonbeam on a flat wall. An escape through a gap between the windowsill and the glass encased in its wooden frame. I feel mercurial, my soft body made of phosphorescence and time and held together by bedsheets. For a moment, my skin is reflective, a moon and its sun, sustaining myself. Whole galaxies alive inside me. My blood is liquid silver. I am precious. But the silver turns heavy, sticking to my lungs and bones and feet. I become my own poisoner. It is so hard to breathe when stars are dying inside you. The night is blinding. I am adrift, a celestial body floating through space with no path, no grasp of time, nothing to anchor me. No place to call home. A candle guttering against the howling ether. I melt and reform, smaller every lifetime. No orbit to draw me back. All darkness. I am a black hole. I swallow everything up, the explosions, the iron and the lead and the silver, but the oxygen and hydrogen, too. I return to my carbon self. My lungs chase the lightness of air. The door is open, the window cracked, and I can hear birds promising another dawn from beyond the hidden moon.

Hana Kelly lives in Atlanta and recently graduated from Georgia State University with a B.A. in English. Her work is forthcoming in Instant Noodles, The Five-Two, and Ellie Magazine. When she is not creating speculative or surreal fiction/poetry/art, she’s consuming it. Catch up with her on Instagram @hanamkelly. 

A Song for Hana