The horsefly had a heartbeat and blood or something like blood but yellow. She died when I hit her. Can I show you her body?
June day, a Friday, the sun hanging dusty in the windows.
After you’d gone out—your slam-- hers the only sound in the house: her percussion against the glass.
An irregular heartbeat like a rattle, not a thud. Can I show you her body? It fell between two unhung photographs.
Then the room was silent.
Love is a response to unbearable pain. Love makes us bear it.
Molly Bess Rector lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas where she co-curates the Open Mouth Reading Series. She is the recipient of residencies from the Edward F. Albee Foundation and the Vermont Studio Center, as well as a grant by the Artists 360 program to write poems exploring human intersections with nuclear technology. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hayden's Ferry Review, The Collagist, Raleigh Review, SAND, and The Boiler, among others.