Russian Doll

The seam isn’t literal, but you can try anyway.
Try it, split her open. All she has is ghosts, one 
ghost, a little girl drowning in a sheet. If you 
separate her and the sheet, her head from her 
legs, you’ll have to reckon with what you’ve made:
the center a question, a crescent moon, the moon
a mouth crooning a song without words. When
she wakes, her body recoils. The future is moving
swiftly through her as her body creates a past from
it. Daybreak, another seam, a seeping golden line
that separates what she was from what she will be.
Now pull. What is lost to time doesn’t become her.
Remove the girl from the ghost and put the doll back
together. What’s left?

Ella Rous has recently graduated from the Westwood High School in Dallas, Texas, and will be attending the University of Texas at Austin in fall of 2021. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in High Shelf PressEmerge Literary Journal, and the notes app on her phone. Today, her favorite words are sand, cherry, and silk.