Written by Kate Choi
You don’t look like it, she said. Looked me up and down. Fish on a pole. Person of interest.
You know what I think?
What do you think. —what do you think the end of the world has for breakfast what do you think seeing God’s nightmares is like what do you think Sigmund Freud would say about this—
She said, I think you’re lying. Her hair drank the fluorescent light greedily.
I thought of nullification. Therapists asking do you still struggle with—? The time I almost gave myself tetanus. Blanched faces of diary pages. Naming myself podium trash. The smooth stone this conversation was forming in my stomach.
Don’t say that about yourself, hun, she said. Real bipolars, they go around punching walls.
A plastered lizard crawled out from under the stone. My skin crackled, palms banging like bass beats. They remembered. Oh, they remembered. My mouth sewed itself shut with shame.
Have you watched Shutter Island, I asked.
I waited for her answer, but the shower was empty, and the door closed tight.
.
Kate Choi is a creative writer from South Korea. She is an alumna of Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, Kenyon Writers Workshop, and an Adroit Journal Poetry Mentee. She is a poetry reader for Twin Bird Review. Her work is published or forthcoming in Rust & Moth, Bending Genres, The Marbled Sigh, Eunoia Review, The WEIGHT Journal, and more.