2,9418 by Rim Afana

Holes in his fingers. From trimming 1,400 hot plastic bottles (for $13 a day). Holes in diaries. Curated voids at times shield y’all (from elves or selves). Holes in my teapot. Diced ginger burning my lips (that lipless visage once subdued me). Holes in bark leaves. Caterpillars break their fast at dusk (bask in shrill neon lights). Holes in spacetime. Thyme oil to soothe bronchitis (our imminent rupture makes me cough). Clip my wings. You knew they can’t clip those wings (holes in their scissors). White hole in thorax, black one in cranium (Möbius strip wrapped around our necks). Hole in our sequel. “7:15: be there! (or alligators spontaneously combust).” The N and Y, and you and them, and the rectangular strangulator. Holes in gray. Pray gray matter turns crimson (patternicity ain’t synchronicity). Infelicity, cyclicity, cardiotoxicity (city agleam – flashforwards). Flashsplash, rearguard maneuvers. Holes (in different area codes).

Rim Afana is a foldable pangolin who recently concluded her doctorate in transitional justice. Romanian-Palestinian, both and neither; she encrypts rootlessness-transience-dissonance in words and visuals: poems, flash fiction, photography,
collage, drawing, painting, installations.