Atavism

MYKAYLA CASTLE | CREATIVES

I never pictured my heart with jaws of a fish

a deep sea spiny thing, found too far down to be

familiar.

i think it had wings once—

No. I pictured it

a box, an egg, a pomegranate. I held my empty hand

to my chest and clutched at

my silly heart, too soft

to start with, and so it floated, algae in the ocean,

and subsisted off sunlight and—

nothing, really, except

the shadow of the viper that curled around the core

of me, like I could pluck only the pit which sucked

my chest in with promises, and

the edges are blurry on how i

grew my legs and struggled to land, how did i grow

hungry, grow teeth inside a mouth—

I look again, spy

in rib bone coral the blind, swimming thing that hides

with frilled fins and flinches away, unfamiliar

with how life goes outside the palaeozoic era

is the thing i was

at the very beginning still me?