Size / / /

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Sometime last night
in between
my after-dinner cigarette
and bedtime
I swallowed a galaxy.

I first felt it
as a glottal stop,
inhalation and exhalation paused,
while it inched, python-like,
past my pharynx, squeezed down my esophagus,
popping from the bottom like a cap gun,
swelling in my stomach like an overripe melon,
before lodging, creaking and expansive,
against the inside of my rib cage
stretching its spiral arms up the curve of my backbone,
halo tickling the tip of my uvula.

This astronomical invasion
pinned me breathless and wheezy
to the disheveled sheets of my queen bed,
gasses ballooning through my organs,
muscles bourgeoned by the gravity of
blue stars and red dwarfs, the orbits
of universes pinging against my skeleton,
nebulae oozing between my fascia,
mute and wild-eyed, blanched with a dread
only one whose body is being
endlessly expanded can fathom.

Witness to this dread and wonder,
I could no longer see the white fault lines
of my water-stained ceiling,
no longer hear the muted calling
of my family from the next room,
as I dissolved finally into the black-hole heart
of the galaxy that swallowed me from the inside out,
my vision filled with circumgalactic stardust

and the void.



R.B. Simon is a queer artist and writer of African/European-American descent. She has been published in multiple literary journals, and her chapbook, The Good Truth, was released by Finishing Line Press in July 2021. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her spouse, daughter, and four dogs. You can see more of her work at https://rene-simon.squarespace.com.
Current Issue
18 Mar 2024

Strange Horizons
We are very happy to welcome Dante Luiz as a new fiction editor on the team! Dante is a Ignyte Award winning author, and has been with Strange Horizons working as an Art Director for the past several years. We’re stoked to bring him on to the fiction side and have him bring his wonderful insight and skill to the fiction team.
Day in and day out, the rough waters of the Pacific slam themselves against the protrusion of sandstone the locals refer to as Morro Rock. White streaks of bird shit bleed down the rock, a testament to the rare birds of prey that nest in its pocked face overlooking the bay.
in my defence, juggling biological and artificial, i tripped over my shoelace, and spilled my lungs empty of the innocence that was, before guilt.
the birds, / who carry with them / the many names of the dead
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