Moment by Emily Perina

I was the Daughter of Wands

Head held high, future unknown

How presumptuous to assume we are not like the tiny plastic toys from quarter machines outside our favorite bodegas

We get what we get

But don’t we always get upset?

Rubber Halloween rats make me nostalgic

Swirling down the bathtub drain

It’s the sharp ring of metal, screeching, soothing

Uncompromising

My bounty of the forest has been revealed

Muskrat skull, stuffed with leaves

Hollow eyes

If I could just go back to that moment to take better note of the how the light shined off the water

How my Father carried the dirt covered creature home

Instructing me to save this fragile reminder

Things do end

I’ve spent countless hours picking cat whiskers out of every carpet I’ve had

Did I really think I would notice the beginning of mourning my youth?

I am just a moment

A bodies memory of another time

Another home

A dead hermit crab with a shell perfectly spiraled

I am the Daughter of Bones

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Emily Perina (aka ESP) is a New York based artist. Her crafts range from mixed media sculpture, to poetry, to welding, and most recently, taxidermy. She often centers her work around attempting to accept her anxieties while pushing herself to adapt new practices to portray these feelings in her work.