Owen Elphick
Self-Portrait as Egg Shell Your emptiness, your cartilaginous fragments of a life before life. Papyrus-thin, you crumble at the touch. You were made to come apart. Yellowed by the dirty air, purple spots pepper you, a chicken-pox pattern, a dull speckling. Your insides crusted with sand. Your curve. Your collapse. Your folding into yourself like paper half-charred, yanked from the fireplace before total incineration. Flecking at the ashy edges and twisting into a fine, congealed dust. Left on the edge
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