I wonder what I must look like to you:
naive (I hate that word) and low and rough around the edges (I’m sure).
Always on my second cup of coffee and still asleep. 

I am two weeks shy of 21 and have never been in love.
I always round up when they ask for the time because that’s what my mother does. 

Sometimes, I picture what it would be like to inhabit a body other than my own:
where the bones would creak like old floorboards and where the flesh would be unmarked.

It’s funny, I thought I would be someone entirely different by now.
(Funny, but sad; different, like less pathetic.)

I usually tuck a foot underneath me at the kitchen table because that’s what my mother does.
When I say we are all mirrors I mean yes, like a funhouse (but without the fun).

When I say like a funhouse, I mean there are masks – I mean –
there is skin that is shed and skin that is scab and skin that is forever.
When I say forever, I mean not nearly so long but long enough.

©

Yoana Tosheva is a student, an immigrant, and an artist. Her work has been published in Diminuendo, Wack Mag, Anser Journal, Sixty Inches From Center, Trampoline and elsewhere. She runs a blog about music which you may peruse at https://collectivecadence.home.blog/. Her visual art can be found on Instagram @yoana_art.