Ravneet K. Sandhu

She cuts off her finger and puts it in her sandwich for lunch and doesn’t realize it’s not bleeding until her coworker points it out. Where do you feel hurt? They want her to place emotions in her body, but it’s been so long since she stopped noticing and naming that she cannot pinpoint it, the emotions run all over organs and therefore live nowhere at all. Their displacement is so huge that it disrupts the chain of significance, like cutlery laid out on placemats in a maze that traps ants. Later, when she sees the night sky after her shift, she wishes the distance between the stars would lessen so everything will always be bright. She gives up trying to sleep around three and waddles out of her bed, her movements thick with exhaustion. Dipping her toes in the shallow fountain her neighbors built of an ornate siren, she wonders if the displacers will finally come to take her. They often ask people like her to map where they’ve come from, especially if they don’t have documentation. To cope, she’s made her anger so small it’s disappeared into all the objects around her, like a mist that always clouds her vision. She looks down at her feet that have a flip-flop tan. She can hack them off, and they would never be able to find all of her, only the pieces she’s left behind.