Marbled

Callie Crouch

And if you were to peel back my sun-scorched
skin – moving my tough flesh to the side and
picking at the tender meat nearly falling off the
bones of my ribcage and into your hands –
what would I look like to you?
Would you lick your lips, humming like a
cicada at the sight of my inner soul exposed,
wild-eyed and hungry for the first time?
Or would you merely gawk, mouth open and
drooling, paralyzed and stuck like the bug’s
empty shell instead?
As whole of a human being as you’ve always
known me to be, a working nervous
system of blood glue and clothespins, I’ll
keep myself together. But if I decide to unravel
one day, melting myself down into China plates
of carved meat and teacups of tears, please,
dig in.

---

Callie Crouch (she/her) is an English major at Saint Joseph's University and Editor-in-Chief of the university's literary magazine, the Crimson and Gray. Her work appears or is upcoming in Olit Magazine, Wingless Dreamer’s anthology Dulce Poetica, Quarter After Eight, Red Noise Collective, LEVITATE Magazine, RockPaperPoem, Coffin Bell, 300 Days of Sun, new word press, and New Note Poetry. Callie is originally from Florida but lives and writes in Philadelphia