Just to Make the Title Seven Words

by Kathryn Reylado

I spent my life hunting for four leaf clovers. The phrase is skeletons in the closet, but turn the handle: my closet's full of rabbits' feet. I never learn; look, this is the scarab beetle I bought from the blind woman at the market in Cairo. I've taped my mirrors to the walls, made them shatter-proof; ladybugs rustle between my sheets in gardens of their own making; I prayed for all my bones to become wishbones, so perhaps then I could take them, clean from my body, break them, and fashion my own skeletons to hide and hide from, then leave behind. Then I'd run, start another life. One newer and shinier than a face-up copper penny.

6S

Kathryn Reylado is a dual citizen of Futility and Escapism.