[One day the world’s operations]

One day the world’s operations
became confused in her mind
and so to save those she loved
she performed the daily rituals.
Touch the banister before going in,
wash only the left hand, etc.
How someone washes one hand
without washing the other I didn’t ask.
And when it rained, don’t get me started.
All the world depending on this ability
to execute, what terrible pressure.
She was losing her hearing from it,
going so many nights without sleep.
Without touch from another person.
I felt it, her body, she was right —
it radiated with cold. I became scared.
I turned away from the mirror —

[In those moments I pretended I was some demon]

In those moments I pretended I was some demon
protected by my own large evil —
nothing could get to my evil except
what was good, good, with which I was secretly aligned —
and by this logic I went along, charmed,
cycling through cities with my barbed tail hooked
over my shoulder so it wouldn’t catch in the spokes,
and nothing came for me in the night, no dark figure
followed me home, I was left to my solitary badness
as I brewed my tea, wrote my novel, bothered
by no man. The world’s tragedies mounting around me,
and I was safe, of course, because I was one of them.

Christine Marella is a writer from California. She is an MFA candidate at NYU where she is a Jan Gabriel Fellow. Her most recent work appears in/is forthcoming from American Chordata, SAND Journal, and Copenhagen.