More on: Holly Welker

You lie like a comma in the sentence of your bed. Your legs stack like planks; each hand steadies the opposite shoulder. It’s a position you assume when assailed by dreams or sleepless longing, or on nights you feel you’re breathing broken glass. Tonight you buckle into yourself and mourn two vocabularies, a moldy discourse…

Someone removes the horses and unicorns and stations the carousel in a hotel lobby. Barstools mark the wheel’s perimeter so you can still go for a ride, watching the room orbit slowly around you and the other raw languid girls likewise drinking martinis on a Thursday afternoon. It takes less time to finish a drink…

I’ve always felt I’m someone who could approach her own beheading with unvarnished resignation, no sprees of weeping or remorse; dressed, if I were lucky, in a murky red gown newly made by a servant who would miss me; if not, in a muslin shift worn fine and bleached by countless afternoons drying on mothy…