There’s only so much you can change about yourself.
Like this morning, I dreamt I dropped a baby down the stairs and trumpets started playing
As it stared through me with my own eyes like I’d just suicided.
Flavors of trauma come with malleable parts.
Today, I ate an entire bag of chips and painted a watercolor octopus. I thought I had cancer.
I took my blood pressure three times. I told everyone of my fear… to practice saying cancer.
In public places, my neck strains like a dried sunflower curling down, looking for the stairs.
The brass.
Hell is a dream full of music.
Brandyce Ingram is a writer, tutor, and jazz-head in Seattle, WA. Her work has appeared in High Shelf Press, Willowdown Books, Sand Hills Lit Mag, Wildroof Journal, An Evening with Emily Dickinson (via Wingless Dreamer), and elsewhere. Her latest search history includes “20th-century lunatic asylums women” and “how to use a crap ton of fresh mint pesto chimichurri sauces or soju cocktails.”
