Graft Versus Host

By Georgia Bowan

Light hitting the water, reflecting off of surfaces. And the rain, oh that rain, trickles down my forearm.

I don’t feel lonely at all. I stayed home and picked off specks of residue off of my carpet. I got naked in the mirror and sunk my teeth into my fist. I pretended you were watching me all the while.

When your body rejects a transplant, the limb goes grey and falls off. But when the grafted limb is strong, it can reject its host, slowly but surely poisoning the living thing it has attached itself to. The parasite sickens its mother. And then the host dies, and the limb is all alone once more.

There was something in the way you walked with your feet outstretched and your long arms dangling down. Glasses slipped down the nose, nails grown too long, that crescent moon at the pit of each, all white. There was something about you but I can’t put a finger on it now, can’t track it down from all the black dampening my thoughts and recollections. Only a dream, or a memory of my own burial.

I’m in Limbo. I’m walking around and I have no shoes on. My hair is tangled and sticking to my skin, there is salt in the air but no sea in sight. All the things around me are made of that feeling, the zap in your fingers when your eye pricks with water. All of the things around me aren’t tangible, aren’t salvageable, but still, they follow me around for the rest of time.