Pencilled in(digestion)

She lay on her side, half curled over. Wanting to excavate her abdomen. That dullachingpull. A tightness, and yet, a hand over stomach caught only slack loose skin.

Right eardrum traveling to ventricles, she heardfelt, instinctively, the settling into less than what she'd fought against hoping for. The pain starts where the line stops.

It's okay, she told herself. It's really okay.

Then and now, and still the capacity. She listens with the line of pain curled over in her mouth like a marble that won't go down her gullet, that she refuses to spit out. Happy as a clam, maybe saliva and time makes pearls.

Sunstorm in a teacup, swallow.

.
(words: Krystin Low, Australia; picture: Dorothee Lang, Germany)