I can leave my bones at the door
like wet boots. Pinwheel my body
backwards, flip inside out:
I won’t feel pain here.

On good days, I perform magic tricks.
Instead of dove feathers and ribbon
I coax illusions from my fingertips,
casting myself as a smokescreen.

I levitate my bones, stack heart
over center, and my ankle braces
disappear, gone like twisting
a loose tooth.

I’m the same as the showgirls,
our joints melted, warm plastic.
We can bend ourselves apart
until we’re a mix of scapula

and shins, pain pills melting
in our mouths like lozenges.
We won’t part the velvet
curtain to let anyone backstage.

We are paper-clipped together,
living underneath trap doors,
vanishing the parts
we thought were broken.

 

 

Aryanna Falkner is a writer originally from Buffalo, NY. She is currently an MFA candidate in Fiction at Bowling Green State University.