On the back porch, where the walnut trees hung over the balcony and stained the railings in glorious, deep splotches, I played, and my parents warned me to not eat anything I saw, but I ate almost anything anyway—especially strange black seeds that tasted like licorice, chips of lead paint, and one time, a bug I’d never seen before; at first, it resembled a ladybug, yet tinier, and royal purple, and I thought to know it—to know what it was really like—I had to taste it—I swallowed it whole, and it tasted bitter, and then sweet, like the lead chips of paint, so I imagined it nestling in the pit of my stomach and growing wings—and that’s how I’ve thought about it, whenever my stomach rumbles, and as I’ve grown, it’s gotten worse, probably because it hasn’t developed wings yet, probably because I’m afraid it will and I won’t know what to do with it; the pain sneaks up on me when I’m in public, and we’re supposed to be quiet, like in church, or at the office, when there’s no music to block it out, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it, the rumblings tumbling further down my stomach, past the pit; when they threaten to escape, I punch my gut with my fist—and I think people notice, so I light candles, praying to it, feeding it things I think it would like: soil and plants and the bark from trees—and I read it stories at night and take warm baths in mint leaves and roses, but now I have pain as the rumblings move, and I’m starting to find blood where I shouldn’t, and I think about all the things I’ve accumulated and repressed and hoped would grow, in the light, in the office, in my own work, and now, in the glow of the bathroom light, I watch the veins in my wrists constrict and inflate as my pulse increases; the rumblings rattle—and I clutch at my throat because something is moving, stretching, pushing my mouth open; when I look up over the sink, into the mirror, I see a pair of red eyes poking out from behind my teeth, from deep within—and something else behind it; two purple wings pop into view, which tear through the chips of lead paint, the bark, the licorice seeds, its own purple flesh, and the body that’s been holding it back.

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Cecilia Kennedy (she/her) is a writer who taught English and Spanish in Ohio for 20 years before moving to Washington state with her family. Since 2017, she has published stories in international literary magazines and anthologies. Her work has appeared in Hearth & Coffin Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, Tiny Molecules, Rejection Letters, Meadowlark Review, Vast Chasm Literary Magazine, Kandisha Press, Ghost Orchid Press, and others. She currently works full time as a copywriter and does freelance work as a proofreader for Flash Fiction Magazine and as a concept editor for Running Wild Press, LLC. You can follow her on Twitter (@ckennedyhola).