The Discomfort of Evening

by Lucas Rijneveld

My heart was important for nine months inside my mother’s belly, but once I left the belly, everyone stopped caring whether it beat enough times per hour.

a mass grave of milk biscuits.

Suddenly I wonder whether Dad doesn’t only scratch the sticky stars from my ceiling but also from the sky.

I’ll either have to make myself bigger or smaller to be seen by him.

Are Mum and Dad the pests that keep eating away at us?

maybe a big girl would come out from inside me, freed of her fears, or someone who would be seen in any case, the girl who’d been hidden for too long beneath layers of skin and coat.

‘There’s a drowned butterfly inside me.’