Spinning in Imaginary Circles by Tara Isabel Zambrano

I am vacant and cold as an empty nest. No breath, only a threadbare sniffle. Air up the lungs, stuck in the throat, finally out the mouth with no human odor. My flesh is pushed inside an iron trunk two sizes too small. My hands, a pair of mismatched socks. There are missing buttons on my shirt. And I cannot find a smiley face or a wink to paste on my face.

There is no ink. Only poison to spit. The alabaster silence beneath the empty belly of my pen. A world spinning in imaginary circles hoping to take off but only resonating to noise.

I watch you walking away. The sun boiling behind the oblong clouds. Was our connection as quick as a Click? I wish it was like a letter mailed from a faraway continent, touched by hands and sweat, glued with your saliva and archived in a hardbound register. My heart stamped and marked as Delivered.

There is a sentence. The one that can be gestated. The one that takes root in our spine and grows pain on our backs, collate our imperfections. Let me write it down. Let me read it out loud. Let me bring love back even if it has gone rancid. I need its stench so I can look at the moon with the same fondness as before.

Tara Isabel Zambrano is an Electrical Engineer by profession. She lives in Texas with her husband and two teenage kids. Her work has been or will be published in Isthmus, SmokeLong Quarterly, Columbia Journal of Art and Lit. Online, Bop Dead City and others.