A Thousand Voices
Avra Margariti
Oxidized from swallowing bleach on white bathroom floors
rough from chain-smoking Marlboros scavenged from gutters
& soft from reading poetry to lovers who couldn’t get dressed fast enough.
Our voices, rarely heard, stuffed inside locked drawers,
cracked teapots & tissue boxes.
We used to be the rings of Jupiter, singing.
Did you know? We once spent three years in a little girl’s pocket,
a pink plastic phone barking, mewing & humming tinny lullabies
at the push of a button.
Before that, we were an enchanted street organ in a stone piazza.
We were made of carved wood & adorned with carnations,
stringed avian puppets flying above our boxy body.
Did you know? Everyone used to stop & listen to us
turn our tragedies into symphonies.
Avra Margariti is a queer Social Work undergrad from Greece. She enjoys storytelling in all its forms and writes about diverse identities and experiences. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, The Forge Literary, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Argot Magazine, The Arcanist, and other venues. You can find her on twitter @avramargariti.