She was running out of reality quick. She was kissing him at the clown mouth—the entrance to a funhouse they’d put upside-down by accident. So she had to step over his eyes, step over his jagged teeth. Had to enter under the tongue, like a pill. She was navigating a new fear. He was half-erect in candy stripes, a carnival tarp going up between his legs. You don’t know how hard it is to stay in this world with you, she thought. She was all body then, the rest of her lost in the house of mirrors. They bent her eyes. They tilted her throat back like a new bird. They sucked up her song. He was inside her now. She was all body. She was running out of reality quick. She was running. The clown mouth spoke. Let yourself have it. He knew she’d never come alive before. She was running with shards in her feet. She was navigating a new fear. Let yourself have it. She heard his reflection, his voice multiplied in the mirrors she couldn’t break. Let yourself have it. She was all body. She was all body but it was all horror. It was all horror. It was all nothing. It was all fear. Let yourself have it. It was all body. It was all horror. Everything shook. Everything flashed white and clinical.

Emilia Rose Hamra studied Creative Writing at Arizona State University. She was the recipient of the Norman Mailer College Poetry Award as well as the Glendon and Kathryn Swarthout Award for Poetry. At present she lives and teaches in Mexico City.