Hatching
Alice Tecotzky read "Hatching" on Sunday, August 24th at the Rudolf Steiner Bookstore.
It’s dark in here. Hazy coils of gray and cream and, one time, a pastel yellow, a film of light that filled the whole world, no, my whole world. Or at least I think, I don’t know yet. Tight arms (are these my arms?) dusted with remnants of my home, shards of my own weary making, triangles of destruction but I am not destructive, no, I am just tired and blinded by this new shard, bright white warm on my sore mouth. Hours, I will later learn, but it feels like days, histories, sharp snow falling on my wet head, bigger flakes, let me out, please, I did not know how dark it was. My mouth is a blunted knife I do not even know what I am cutting help me. The sky is falling, more triangles of bright, edges dissolving into a balmy sheet, the veins on my ceiling gone, what is this the sky is growing. Blue — not the blue they know but something between azure and cerulean I stretch my arms and it’s like this new sky is pulling me up with strings I feel myself from the inside out. Oh, hello, I know you, somehow, know you well. Help me, yes, thank you, light maybe you were that light, help me in this place, I am new here.
Alice Bean Tecotzky is a reporter at Business Insider, but, in her spare time and more tender moments, a writer and lover of literature. She is from the Upper West Side, lives in Brooklyn, and is working hard to not panic, but enjoy.