by Aurora Montejo
I peek into the center
of the universe—
rectangular like my bedroom at home.
Now it’s too small
like jeans I’ve outgrown.
The air is thin with a lack of oxygen;
How did I breathe like this?
Dust flies like a flurry, it lacks the sparkle of a thousand stars;
it’s a half-hearted galaxy,
a wasteland planet
marred by my memories
from ages: bratty baby-face to anxiously aimless,
the room is walled by sediments of paint for all my phases,
the floors are bowed by the weight of ghost feet.
I hear what’s hidden in the crevices:
my own voice like teeth dragging on a fork,
Lana Del Rey imprisoned in wired headphones,
girlish giggles echoing in the dark,
screaming matches aglow,
whispers of promises lay limp like a Jane Doe, to be abandoned
in a rusty filing cabinet
buried six feet below
with no comets to wish on.
It’s all around me, the shining sacrifices to time:
everything these walls took—
stolen through a vortex,
slurped through a black hole.
I want more—
more than this boxy nebula
and in the middle of it all, flickering white hot like a dying sun,
cross-legged on the bed,
a diamond-shaped child fracturing
light like a telescope—and I know,
I just know
I don’t fit
between these walls anymore.
AURORA MONTEJO is a fiction writer who describes herself as a “noncommittal poet.” She studies creative writing at the University of Toronto. She adores all things pink and frilly, wishes she could have a dragon for a pet, and loves sad music. She is currently working on a fantasy novel.