monochrome

it starts with the bed / crosscurrents, tidelines / my wrists nailed to the pillow / strangled under
the curtains / i am / too feeble to turn on the lights / the laundry sweats in the hamper / rubber
bands snap, unsnap / my body becomes aware that it is a body / it knocks on the window / and
turns on its side / everything tastes like pennies and i / clutch my stomach cover my mouth i / try
to blink the color back into my eyes i / fall asleep in my car by price lake / we used to go on
picnics here / the moon is wailing / the ground is wailing / i am wailing and / when i say i am
wailing i / mean i am sleeping i / mean i have fallen asleep again i / mean i am possessed by
monochrome i / mean i am chronically absent i / mean you must forgive me for this you / must
witness this wasteland you / must beg / and beg / for water

Kelsey Day is a writer, environmental activist, and mental health advocate from southern Appalachia. Her work is urgent, timely, and relentlessly vulnerable, and has been published in literary journals such as Stork Magazine, Catfish Creek Literary, and Our Shared Memory Collective. She is a recipient of the University of Chicago’s Young Memory Fellowship and is an honors student at Emerson College. She works with women from across the globe with the International Women’s Writing Guild, is a staff writer for Two Story Melody, and serves as the head poetry editor for the Emerson Review.