There is transaction in the closeness but

the closer you get to transaction the

further away you get from closeness—it’s

real and it’s not happening now it’s

unreal and it will happen.

There is a story inside the belly of

the beast, and I climb inside its mouth to

find any fragment of my reflection, and

I see tiny slivers of glass I

mistake for water.

I can feel the sun go down although I’m

already trapped and I know I have no

choice but to find it now by sight because I

can only hear it rattle when I move.

Margaret Marcum lives in Texas with her cats, Angel Clare, Alice, Adam, and Mazzy. She recently graduated from the MFA program in creative writing at Florida Atlantic University. Her poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Barzakh Magazine, Coffin Bell Journal, NonBinary Review, Scapegoat Review, The Islandia Journal, October Hill Magazine, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and Children, Churches, and Daddies, among others.