notdeermag
Echidna in the Bathroom, Phoebe Kalid
Updated: Dec 6, 2021
The girl in the bathroom has a tail—
candlewick tip tapering out
to pearlescent length, an ink-black fishing net
tangled in the sink.
‘Who are you?’
‘A denizen of male delusion, mother
of monsters, Typhon’s whore.’
I've never loved a stranger
so wholly before,
& although piss permeates the air I find myself unable to go back
out there, where
crumbs are trodden into tufted pile,
laps are climbed like fence stiles,
where, sometime
between 01:00 and 02:00am,
I’ll crave the sleight of reptiles.
Phoebe Kalid is a writer from London. She spends most of her time gnawing on the bones of folklore under the intense scrutiny of her three-legged cat, Mosca. Currently, she is writing her first novel.