Kaitlyn Gaffney is a north Jersey poet and senior Writing major at Rowan University. She serves as a poetry editor for Glassworks Magazine. Her work is published in Avant Literary Magazine, The Rising Phoenix Review, and forthcoming in Gone Lawn. She has produced two original plays through Rowan.

Rest-less

She pulls at herself every day, with
thumb and forefinger. She sits and
seethes at the fold-roll of body. She

is left to swallow her scowls, seize her
breath tremoring captive and just sit.
Sit and sweat and squirm, trying all the

cross-legs and fold-arms to find the best
way to vanish. Melt into chair, flat and
cool, aching to be more skeleton than spill.

She pulls, tears, peeling back skin to serenade
the nothing she craves there. She is a gaggle of
selective-self, all teeth and eyes and ankles.

No torso, no softness. She doesn’t know how soft she is.