The Render Ghost

by Kelsey Sucena

She was flight- less, her heart the kind of locket you couldn’t keep from slamming shut. Remember the way she looked at 18. Shadows in eyeshadow, eyes in the shade of palm trees, palms beating against the backs of broken seas, seas with their salt and silver halide. Allied breathes between lungs. Remember how she breathed when she swam through space. Her face of broken pixels, a render ghost of possibility. The kind of thing you could spend days dreaming up but only moments tearing down. Down like the feathers on the bellies of birds, tossing lightly in the breeze. See these seas. The way she saw these seas and knew that it was self evident what they were knew that it was self evident what she was. She never could breathe lightly, never could just sink or swim. She isn’t swimming now so much as drowning, isn’t flying now so much as sleeping on the ground. Grounding light like lampposts flickering off with the break of dawn. It is getting hard to see her anymore, her eyes all rife with pixels. It is getting hard to see her anymore, her heart is slamming shut.