Kallie Falandays is the author of Dovetail Down the House, forthcoming from Burnside Review. Her work appears in Black Warrior Review, Puerto del Sol, CutBank, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Philadelphia.
from ALL THE WATER ALL THE WAVES
When woman was monster she loved no body. She struggled with tiny movements. Was invited to a dance but didn't know how to shimmy. Was invited to karaoke but only knew how to howl, and everyone and even her mother couldn't hold her and so she rocked herself in her own doorway and sang herself her own songs which she made up on the way to the bus stop. She could barely sit at the table, and anyway, even if she could, everyone else would leave because think about it, would you sit next to rolling thunder? Mountains becoming leveled like sheets being shaken. And who would touch her? I mean, all that leg? All that beautifully dark wonder? What's the song again? Something about the world as crevice, the world in splitting, the world coming open like a monster mouth, like an object with veins: you can almost see it breaking, and then it explodes into tiny patterns.