Alone in her room, Gladys traces the edge of the world, picturing a wall with a sign: “The End.” She watches herself climb to the top of the wall, staring into darkness. What lies beyond? Her mother tells her every ending leads to a new beginning. Gladys leans over the vast depths, calling “Hello?” No answer, only a faint “Oh” echoing off invisible walls.
These days her words shrink into monosyllabic tones - “ohs” and “eees” no one seems to notice. Her mother is too busy with Max, a possible stepfather. Gladys tells her mother that she doesn’t need a step anything. Her mother never stays in the room long enough to hear the rest of Gladys’ sentences. Most nights Gladys stands in the kitchen, mouth open as the front door slams shut.
Gladys was born butt first and her mother never forgave her. She heard her mother’s voice when she was still in the womb. Gladys likes the word “womb” - warm, full, the way a single-syllable word should be. Round, with room to crawl inside, like “home” or “tomb.” Gladys remembers another voice. A man. Loud and sharp, a knife cutting through the honey of her mother’s pleading. Each time Gladys asks her mother about the man, her mother tells her to hush, there was no man.
Gladys slips into the silent obsidian space, her arms stretched out, fingers touching air. Room enough for all her words. She shouts as she falls through the dark, and the final syllables tumble free, echoing above her head as she drops deeper into the well of her voice.
Phebe Jewell's work appears or is forthcoming in various journals, most recently Molotov Cocktail, Reckon Review,The Disappointed Housewife, JAKE, Does It Have Pockets?, and elsewhere. A teacher at Seattle Central College, she also volunteers for the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, a nonprofit providing college courses for incarcerated women, trans-identified and gender nonconforming people in Washington State. Read her at https://phebejewellwrites.com.
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