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Poetry by Claire Meniktas

A Great Big Nothing

This is the unevent of my life where I learn to tell nobody nothing except the doctor an accurate rating of my pain on a scale of 1 to 10. They will throw the orange triangular rock at my knee from across the room, and instead of my lower leg flying up in a rockettes kick, it will simply fall off. I will pick it up, attach it back to the bigger piece of me with the neon green gauze they put on the outside of middle schoolers casts and tell nobody, nothing.

It’s the part in the movie where everybody is waiting to be told something, but you’re watching it with someone you don’t know very well, so it’s quiet. You just sit there and they sit there and you think, wow, it’s kinda nice not to tell everybody everything, it’s nice to know something is true without needing to say it out loud.”

Confirm or deny: You’re a pussy cat, you’re a rag doll, you’re a good wet kiss. Remember that one time I got so sick so fast I just threw up in my hands and flushed it down the toilet? I washed my paws real well, but I couldn’t get away from the fact that it happened, and that I was proud to care for myself in secret silence. A hidden surprise, the coin inside of the bread.

I wasn’t able to picture anything moving towards me in a way that was both soft and fast but then it did and from that moment on, I could imagine it quite well. It was sublime and explosive, I jumped up and down swirling one of those paper streamers in the air while blowing on a kazoo that spit glitter out of its bottom. I looked around and saw a big empty field, a long open road, a tunnel full of light, and there was nobody. And it was just perfect, because there was absolutely nothing to say.

Claire Meniktas

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