a love letter from the mounted moose head in Ralph’s Diner
by Aparna Paul
i see you. i see you sitting at the bar. i see you stumbling to the bathroom. i don’t see the bathroom. i can’t turn to look, i’m literally a moose head mounted on the wall. i don’t have a body but i still have the dysmorphia. and worse, i don’t have the legs to walk away from the problem. i don’t have the too-big heart to beat out of the chest i don’t have either. i don’t have the spine but that’s nothing new, i’ve always been conflict avoidant. i don’t have wrists so i can’t think about opening them. i don’t have hands so i can’t hold the weapon that will hurt me. all i have is my mind, so i have the thing that will kill me. i don’t have anything except the eyes. i see you. i see you. i see you. & i will not blink.
Aparna Paul (she/her) is a writer, banana bread enthusiast, chemical engineer, and amateur crossword constructor based in Cambridge, MA. Her poetry & prose has appeared with Reckoning, DMQ Review, Gaining Ground, and she edited the anthology Reflections of the Land: Meditations on Environment & Industry (Literary Cleveland, 2021). She is a regular performer & occasional host at the Boston Poetry Slam. Her first full-length collection of poetry is forthcoming with Game Over Books in 2025. When not reading/writing, she's most likely calling to a stranger on the street and saying, "Look, the moon!"