Katy Haas
“worm girlfriend reprise”
in the apple of my eye lives my girlfriend who turned into a worm. the apple of my eye, i think, means love, means my whole world, means my heart. my girlfriend who turned into a worm (hereby known as my worm girlfriend) lives in my heart. she is always hungry. i am hopelessly in love so i tell her to eat, eat, keep eating, it’s okay.
i tell my therapist about how my worm girlfriend lives in a metaphorical apple and she eats my literal heart. i tell my psychiatrist about my worm girlfriend and how i love her so much it hurts, so much it’s eating me alive. i am put on a new medication but i don’t think it’s working. i can’t sleep and my heart is still being eaten.
my worm girlfriend lost all her human teeth and now i keep them in a jar that still vaguely smells like pickles. in another jar is her hair. in another her eyelashes. in one more are her fingernails. sometimes she takes a break from eating my heart and she looks into her jars. my worm girlfriend cries by the time she inches her way to her eyelashes.
when she returns to my heart she is voracious. my heart is her comfort food. my heart is her home. my heart is an apple and when all that’s left are the seeds, i will lie down in the dirt and grow an apple tree from my chest. my worm girlfriend will have my whole heart to live inside of. she will have all the apples. she’ll be able to eat until she finally finds fullness, until she forgets she once had feet that could carry her far away from me.
Katy Haas (they/them) is a queer non-binary writer, artist, and Furby enthusiast from mid-Michigan. Their work has been in JAKE, HAD, and elsewhere. Their debut chapbook the algorithm knows i never stopped loving you (Bullshit Lit) is rumored to be about their break-up with their true love, a white noise machine, although the rumors are probably, ultimately untrue. Find them on Twitter (@katyydidnt) & Insta (@mouthshroom).
