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Ghost Parachute

A Literary Magazine

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Animal Brain

November 1, 2020 By Sabrina Hicks

Animal Brain

My eye snags on your ghost, detected in moonlight, along the throat of an ocean, shells rolling like teeth in a seafoam spit. Or a cabin buried in the woods, pine needles dipped in clouds to line the spongy steps of earth, a reminder of where we’re from, where we return, where we’ll meet again.

I lose focus of what’s in front of me waiting for you, the peripheral taking over so that I feel less human every day.

I don’t seek sadness, but it’s woven in the breeze, in the way snow bends a branch, or how the yoke of sun breaks day. In the flight of hummingbirds, my eyes follow feathered motions. A beckon. A disappearance. An echo.

I am always tracking sound, investigating sources, trying to recreate the pitch, the timbre to return me to the land of the living, wondering if you haunt the spaces I cannot see. I sense you everywhere and nowhere, and I am tired of the chase, your inhale pulling on the lace curtains, your exhale a fog spilling into the fields, a hum below the surface. I close my eyes, letting my animal brain turn feral, picking up the scent of you inside me, feeling more myself, more at home.

About Sabrina Hicks

Sabrina Hicks lives in Arizona. Her work has appeared in Milk Candy Review, Cheap Pop, Split Lip, Lost Balloon, Matchbook, Barren Magazine, Wigleaf Top 50 List, and other publications. More of her work can be found at sabrinahicks.com.

Artist Credit:

Orlando native Kaylan Stedman is an illustrator out of Torrance, California. With a Master’s in TESOL, she teaches English by day and pursues her passion for art and illustration at all other waking moments. For more art, peruse past Ghost Parachute issues, follow her Instagram, @naryakal (K. S. Illustrations), or support her on Etsy at www.etsy.com/shop/ksillustrationsstore.

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