RACHEL ALARCIO
cw – Fear of mental illness (nosomentophobia). Mention of colorism, racism, and school shootings.
the unknown is scary, so tell me brother: do you not know me?
i.
You fear me like a child
keeps their fingertips pressed
to their back in the Vanta black darkness.
You hear me talk about the whispering
shadows, dancing like Pepper’s Ghost,
translucent figments of my imagination on overdrive.
You fear me like Fox News
and their biased, colorist, racist reporters
calling my equally ill uncle a nutcase & laughing like hyenas
ii.
He’s mentally ill.
Do you think he’ll shoot up the school?
I don’t know, what do we do?
iii.
I mutter to myself about the Matrix and how
we are all just a piece of the mother
machine and you grab tighter to your bulletproof
backpack, like a mama cat picking up
her young by the scruff at the first sign
of societal collapse. Then I come to:
I’m in a paper towel-white room, a plastic
band on my wrist, grippy baby blue socks clinging
to my toes. A cordless home phone is in my right palm, I
dial the only other number
besides my mother’s that I
knew by heart: yours.
Ring-ring.
Ring-ring.
Silence, like
you saw the Unknown Number and dismissed it. Silence—
like you didn’t want to pick up. Silence—
like you were afraid to pick up—
Rachel Alarcio’s work is published or forthcoming in the winnow magazine, Rogue Agent, Wrongdoing Magazine, Exposition Review, at LAX’s Terminal 7-8, and elsewhere. They are a Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Silver Medalist in Short Story. She attends Kalamazoo College. They tweet @rachelalarcio. Their Instagram is @raechillout. Her website is rachelalarcio.com.