Self-Folding Materials (disambiguation)
All day, I feel loosely assembled, maybe all original parts, but an unfamiliar slack in the joints. Walking home from the supermarket, I clock the not-quite time of my feet. My elbows at weird angles, my shoulders unaligned under the pull of the groceries in my backpack. And there, something’s off about my shirt. After the crossing, as the cars rush past, I check and see the small bulge, just bigger than a cherry pit, right on my breast. I think, Come on, body, don’t embarrass me. I just can’t.
The thing won’t soften under my hand. It feels brittle. It moves. I take a quick look around, but there’s only cars, and they pass, so I pull on my shirt and look down the front. It takes me a moment to process. A tiny dome, a bunch of scratchy legs. A beetle. I try to shake it off. It regroups on my skirt, and I see that it is darkly iridescent, like an oil slick. It unfolds itself and flies off. The traffic grows louder.
~
Attachment Theory (disambiguation)
My parents hate the widow whose yard borders ours, an old woman who shouts at her dog for barking, for shitting in the grass, for lying around, for not being within sight, for playing with his toy, Walter, stop that! Walter stop! Walter! all day long, and the dog, hoarse and gray like her, hiding in the hedge, sniffing, watching.
The magpies like the tall, ratty tree right by the fence. The one the neighbor won’t cut down. The staccato sounds they make cannot be tolerated. Every time they start, Dad hollers Shut up! Quiet!, shaking a coffee can filled with screws and nails.
Years later, when I move to the city, I set out peanuts on my third floor windowsill, watch them play on the garage roofs, calling and teasing each other, singing, some real tenderness.
~
Deimatic Behavior (disambiguation)
The neighborhood children have a new game. The usual running, coloring the sidewalk with chalks, hopscotch, chasing each other, all this has stopped. Their bright plastic toys lie unattended in the dusty street. Instead, there’s a new sound: the children howl, loud and wild, until the whole block reverberates. A single child begins, and her cry is answered across yards and windows by others, the quick slapping of sandals as the pack gathers.
There’s less laughter as they prowl the perimeter. I feel my hackles rise. Who knows what they are protecting us from.
~
Annette C. Boehm (she/her) is a queer, Autistic writer based in Germany. She is a graduate of the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and the author of two collections of poetry.