how i came (after eve ewing) – ellie sharp

1.
in the pistachio-shell hours of some thousand grassy nights.
innumerable like feet on street corners
and all their destinations.

my mom’s new car belonged to someone’s old son,
its duct-tape flapping as she speeds, the bumper banging along,
happily and in disruption, mile after mile afterrrr

2.
i walked from one city to the next and found them the same.
a rusty gate groans its lonesome and is kept closed
but never shut. i look at the face of something silent and viscous
and see only interruption.

3.
i came from a snail’s shell

from its goo too.

4.
and there are you
like a moth intrudes on light, like light.

and here is me
and we in the ways hips flutter like wings
or other things that don’t know what to do with themselves.

5.
like a flooded bathtub. towel up against the door.
left there long after.

ellie sharp is a college student in portland, oregon studying comparative literature. they’ve been published by Blue Marble Review and Bitch Media. they are also editor in chief of their college’s literary magazine, The Reed College Creative Review.

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