I removed my belly button and paid attention to the healing process. No one believed I could feel the hole closing over, that it reminded me of being born. My mother was laid out on the kitchen table for a week. Formaldehyde high, you never noticed when my skin blackened. I felt undesirable. You called me a perpetual victim. I plucked out my eyelashes and pencil curled my hair so you wouldn’t know how to find my edges. I watched them dig holes for all the women. Your only comment was that dress is too tight for a funeral put something else on for the love of God. My watery silhouette messed the tombstone. I swallowed dirt by the fistful. I found a worm and fed it crabapples for a calendar year. I got off on the cleanup. I pocketed ones all over town. I never bought the flowers after all this time.
Katherine Alexandra Harvey is the author of Quiet Time. Her work has appeared in Grain, Existere Journal of Arts and Literature, The Malahat Review, Exile Quarterly, Quill and Quire, 49th Shelf, Riddle Fence, and The Newfoundland Quarterly, among others. She has been nominated for the Governor General’s History Award, the Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Award, and WANL’s Fresh Fish Award.
