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                                  Wilda                               Ella Engel-Snow

Wilda rolled herself flat on the ground, spread out her organs, and meticulously arranged them in order of want. The doctors and wireless-ghosts gasped in unison, as she lay her brain down just underneath her heart. “They go together,” she said. “but if they make me choose...I’ll keep my heart.” She knew some important organs would have to be offered. Deliveries, it seemed, were the only thing preventing the 7th world war. 

 

Wireless-ghosts weren’t always so sanguinary. They had been human once. After the wars, love and imagination were outlawed. Some went years without intimacy. Eventually, after suffering such theocave they lost their willingness to be fully seen. 

 

Wilda imagined the Doctors would cook her brain down into emotidium - a compound used in smart device manufacturing.  Or maybe they would dry her out into something smokeable. 

 

She wasn't afraid of what would happen to her body after the loss of major organs, but she mourned the story she would leave. She wanted to understand the experience of wireless-ghosts, how long did it take to become invisible? Could it really happen to anyone? 

 

Wilda had never prayed on purpose and wasn’t sure about anything having to do with the word god. But she got down on her knees anyway - making herself sote - out of desperation. 

 

She rose in prayer,  humming. It seemed impossible for that tone to come out of her small body, but it was; the sound of the ocean. The sound of wilda summoning her gods, lady oxygen. God, who held her, in dreams, on the shore- feeding her raw clams, combing seaweed into her hair, kneading tendons out of salt.  

 

Wilda could no longer tell if she was here. She felt a state of cosmovor. The wireless ghosts were still standing around, waiting for her to deliver. She began swaying over her organs like broomcorn in wind. Her gestures- millions of tiny vibrations. She was a chorus of life and bacteria, unified as one body. 

 

She hovered over her heart and began rubbing it gently. It felt good. 

 

Without knowing what, or why, her other hand slid down between her legs. Wilda cupped her right hand over her vagina making slow circular motions, pressing into her bone, invoking the sea, moaning her song. The boundaries between Wilda’s body, and the wireless-ghosts, and the doctors, and all the passersby- were lost in an ancient swirl of love and wilderness. She no longer had conscious control over her movement. All she could do was hum and throb. All she could know was god. 

 

One of the wireless ghosts twitched. 

 

“Shoot her” a doctor ordered. “She is making evil.”

 

But each of the wireless-ghosts began wasaring;  one after the other. 

 

“A dance” one ghost blurted. “I think...I remember … voram......”

 

“Pleasure”, another ghost shouted.

*click the lavender words to see their definitions

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