Sophia Carroll

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Poem after you block me on Instagram

The flowers you sent me were still alive when you decided our friendship was over. I watched
them die and scatter themselves over my shelves, dry as the cicada shells I’d find on tree trunks
growing up—and, once, the insect itself molting, writhing out of the old self it had cracked open.
I watched it shed its skin for hours, until its wings were hard enough to fly. So am I to be your
old skin left clinging to the bark? The memory of flowers? The wasp that died inside a fig to
make the fruit? Goodbye, my friend. To the end I would have stood and watched you changing.

Sophia Carroll (she/they) is an analytical chemist and writer. Her work appears in wildness, SmokeLong Quarterly, Luna Luna, and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook, I think we should be louder at Dyke March, is available from Bottlecap Press. She is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of M E N A C E, a magazine for the literary weird. Find her on Substack at Torpor Chamber and on Bluesky @torpor-chamber.bsky.social.