Mae Andrews
1. As in every day of your life you are mundane. You do the same things millions of other people do every day and you will die like them, buried in the dirt for maggots to lick your eyeballs or burned and scattered at what will inevitably be another Walmart entrance. The words that you etch onto the glass when you take a shower; dinner last night; your body when you look at it in the mirror at 6am; the lightning strike that once again doesn’t hit you as you stand out in the storm. 2. What keeps you here. A life that is not mundane is separatist, outside the bounds of what society will allow you to be. Example: Denise wanted to conjure her grandmother from the dead, to become a necromancer gifting loved ones back to their families but her father took her to a Kensington neighborhood. Necromancy led to fentanyl delusions and zombification, so her father said. 3. Acceptance. The Strid is known for looking calm but having a 100 percent fatality rate. That is its state of being, unchangeable. 4. A chthonic nihilism built into the undercurrent of every neutron rolling around in your body. I exist but why?
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MAE ANDREWS is a writer from Georgia, who currently resides in Shenzhen. She has her MFA from Lindenwood University and is still trying to learn how to make writing profitable. Her work has appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Gutter Magazine, Orca, Rappahannock Review, and The Bombay Literary Magazine among others. You can find more at https://sites.google.com/view/meas-publications/home.
