by Rina Palumbo

Cream cheese and strawberry jelly, cut the crusts off, white bread into triangles, snap the lid, zip the backpack, this is here now, you can feed now, it all stops now, it all stops in the grainy black and white. Peanut butter and jelly, jelly roll, jelly belly, the ultrasound glides taut abdomen, and again, more jelly and again, then stop the grainy black and white, it all stops, it is all gone, cells and fluid, is that the picture? what can slide now? glide now? feed now? is that the picture?

Rina Palumbo (she/her) is working on a novel and two long-form nonfiction projects, alongside short fiction, creative nonfiction, and prose poetry. Her work appears in The Hopkins Review, Ghost Parachute, Milk Candy, Bending Genres, Boudin, Centaur Lit, Marrow, et al. rinapalumbowriter.com