My yoga teacher dims the lights for savasana. I keep my eyes open. The last few years had not been what I had hoped and, tired of chasing dreams that weren’t “meant” for me—whatever that means—, I had done the “smart thing” and settled down following the advice of well-meaning family members. Most days, it’s fine. I wash my dishes, make my bed, pretend I’m happy with my purchases from Kohls. But lying corpse-like on the bamboo floor, in the purple-blue hue of evening, it’s not fine. I’m paralyzed with the knowledge that I will soon return to a house and a life I had never wanted.

The windows catch a smattering of lights from the city outside—orange, yellow, and white—and refract them onto the ceiling. It’s galactic and, for a moment, I feel like I am on the edge of the world the way I had when I was eleven and reclining in the planetarium at the Franklin Institute. Under the dome of science I had felt alive, inspired. The skin on the back of my neck had prickled with heat. But I’m not eleven anymore. A dense spot forms in my sternum, pinning me to my yoga mat. Is this what it feels like to be a butterfly on display? Every breath airy, halved by a sharpness.

*****

I can see her through the black translucent box. She hisses and paws at the air holes, hair bristling. The pink of her mouth bright against her face as she screams and smashes her split body over and over: spit and venom, slick and vicious. She inches forward, the force of her frame propelling her prison in spontaneous bursts. Eight arms reaching toward me. She is raging. She is rage. She is not a butterfly.

When I open my eyes, I grab my phone.

Spider in dreams?

Spirit animals.

Meaning?

Femininity.

Patience.

Creativity.

Fear.

Your life may not align with your higher interests.

If current reality doesn’t suit you, change.

*****

At work, I bow to the corporate gods. Glowing screen bright with emails, our scripture. Buzzwords and bullshit tumbling from monitors like the word of the lord. Praise be the shareholders.

I can walk away, I tell myself from underneath the weight of timesheets, dress codes, and approved vacation time—but I don’t. Everyone says I’m overreacting. “It’s a good job.” As if they know. As if it’s a fact. The American dream. My dream.

I stand over my kitchen sink and break a glass. Then another, just to know I can. Scattered shards shimmer across the floor. I pool the pieces with my hands. Superficial cuts feel like control. Across the room, my computer casts a knowing glance.

At night, on my bed, on my body—my chest—she takes me in with her eight obsidian eyes. A single leg moves, a question raised. My little creator. I bring her close and let her climb my cheeks. Up and over she goes into the back of my head for safekeeping, free to weave and reweave reality in the darkest corner of my mind. Spun silk draped like lace across the walls of the prison I built for us. Fingers, restless like so many legs, find their way to the keyboard.

Fuck.

She is raging. She is rage. She is ready.

Jillian S. Benedict is a creative writer living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In her free time she enjoys yoga, reading, and listening to music while people watching from her stoop. Her work can be found in Feels Blind Literary and on instagram @writerwithoutacause

You cultivate negativity like it’s a fucking garden plant, I tell you. Not everyone can grow things, you say, calmly. Some people don’t have green thumbs at all. They can’t grow shit. You are addressing envelopes, stamping a return address, sticking forever stamps on the corners.

Soon after I lost the baby, you began to collect lint from the dryer in a shoebox. Then those balls of hair that look like desiccated spiders. On the windowsill, you lined them up with seashells and pieces of sea glass we had collected from trips in the before times. But now, you’re mailing the lint and hairballs to everyone on the spreadsheet entitled “wedding list B.” You say they didn’t send presents. I tell you we didn’t end up moving onto list B and they weren’t invited to the wedding; they didn’t have to give us gifts.

Still.

You’re angry, I say.

Should I not be?

I don’t look at you and spill into the couch. Swipe through my feed. Death, destruction, violence, bigotry, death again. Murder sprees again. Plagues still. My thumb fatigues from brushing over all the corpses. I click to another social media app. Congrats! I type on a post where a friend announces she is pregnant. I add three balloons, one red heart, and a big yellow smile.

I can feel your eyes boring into me. It is sunny out and it reflects in the blues and greens of the sea glass on the sill, I can see it in my peripheral vision. The color of lakes, the color of envy.

The sun hides behind a cloud, the sea glass grows opaque again. The light and the dark live so close together. You’ve rearranged the shells and sea glass and packaged up all the lint and all the hairballs. You are stuffing, sealing, stamping. These will be dispersed around the globe, these pieces of us.

I toss my phone aside and head upstairs. Step into the shower smelling that overripe peachy mildew smell. Pink splotches color the ceiling. I collect the hair clinging to the walls that I’d left there. Proof of life maybe. I bunch it up into a big brown lump, it’s so light, my dead cells. Downstairs, I hand it over to you and I grab a pen. Address the next envelope.

We are all beachcombing for something, you say.

Jennifer Fliss (she/her) is a Seattle-based writer whose writing has appeared in F(r)iction, The Rumpus, The Washington Post, and elsewhere, including the 2019 Best Short Fiction anthology. She can be found on Twitter at @writesforlife or via her website, www.jenniferflisscreative.com.