Still Missing

by Chevy Stevens

I need to allow for the possibility I won’t always feel

the way I do now, and it’s important to take note of small signs of progress, no matter how insignificant they may seem.

I thought I’d worked past my childhood, past my family, past my pain, but when you’ve rolled around in manure long enough, there’s no getting away from the stench. You can buy every damn type of soap out there and scrub your skin until you’re raw, but then one day you’re out walking around and a fly lands on you. Then another one, then another—because they know. They know that underneath that fresh-scrubbed skin you’re just manure. Nothing but shit. You can clean it up all you want, but the flies always know where to land.

Little by little, day by day, the sky became green.