INFESTATION -

Written by Romy Morreo

AWEDACITY | Artwork by Neha Sampat

Be fucking for real, I hurl at the silverfish corpse (molt husk who gives a fuck) on the crusted base of my only saucepan. I can clear the dead from cookware until my face is giving apoplectic beetroot and bits of bug burrow under my fingernails (chewed to buggery, but they find a fucking way even from the grave), and they’ll hit F5 overnight. Bodies in the tall corner vases (how in the name of sin) and nestled under withered satsumas. Multiplication, the perpetual nightmare of math (fuck you, Mr.Dennington), as if the plague wasn’t bad enough already, dusting me in rot while I vomit rage: if you’re gonna die in my home, pay some fucking rent first. Bristled bastards with stupid names, flashing their gunmetal backs like I’d say sure, the more the fucking merrier, stay a while in my thrifted baking trays. Close your eyes and wake up (blink panic drown) in my next casserole. Oh, that don’t sound so swell; well, my kitchen ain’t a hospice, and my gas range don’t have a bedside manner. Next time I see one of those pricks, I’ll look up its fucking protein content and ask Google if it crunches.

Awedacity
Oil pastel on paper with marker, neurographic art with cells covering the whole canvas in a broad range of colors. Some of the cells are monochromatic, while others blend and bend colors. Each cell maintains its own unique appearance of texture, some with more organic shading, with others containing gentle structure. Many of the cells appear to gather into one larger, circular cell. There is a meteor-like movement to the piece, with a horseshoe border around the larger cell, with its two fiery legs extending off the left side of the page. This work is called, "Awedacity," and was created in tandem with a speech the artist delivered as the patient advocate speaker at a migraine fundraiser event. The speech was fiery and meteoric and called out the failures in society and the medical system in supporting the chronically ill, as well as naming the impact of racial bias in the medical system. The organizers attempted to delete large and critical parts of the speech in their pre-review, yet the artist had the audacity to show up and deliver the speech as originally written, with this art piece printed on her shirt to symbolize the need for connection and community, the diverse beauty of those suffering from migraine, and the juxtaposition of the meteoric impact of the disease on the patient and the meteoric impact of the patient speaking their righteous rage. This piece helps us question what can be contained and what awe-inspiringly refuses to be.

Romy Morreo (she/they) completed her MA in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester. Her work has most recently been published inTwin Flame Literary and Full House Literary, with further pieces forthcoming in Divinations Magazine, Paraselene Lit, Moonday Mag, and Silcrow Press. She lives in the UK.