BPR 47 | 2020
In the dark, the records were turning
dead wax into static—its fine blue
light, the music below its hiss.
The basement curled
into itself like a segmented worm.
Once my body was a room for rent:
one word and then another
burrowed in the hollow stomach.
The children were asleep;
the stereo turned low.
The basement wavered before
retracting its unmeasurable body into the night’s
wet sand. It had been months. It had
been years. How many?
I could not count. But still,
this body within a body—
a fish tank and a ragworm.
In the basement, I turned as if a metal spindle
were lodged within. The dark,
like a needle, dragged
across me—its diamond tip,
barbarous. Static seeped
out of the speakers like a tail, no,
an entire body. It curled around me.