Two Blind Eyes// Elizabeth Dawdry

I am stealing my mother’s face.

My sister can’t recall my age.
Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven.

A magpie stole three of my teeth and I shouted into the sun:

I saw you! I saw you!

My mother is sad and my sister is angry.
I look at them with my Grandmother’s eyes.

I’ve only had one cavity. My mother, four.
We bare our teeth in the mirror and fall back laughing.

My sister shakes the magpie and out come three pearls.
She casts them on the ground.

A feather is in my hair. My eyes are in my sister’s head.
She sees only rotten teeth.

I swallow them down, they are mine.

Elizabeth Dawdry is a writer originally from North Carolina now living in Scotland. Her work can be found in Analogies & Allegories Literary Magazine and Nymphs. You can find her @elizabethdrawdy on twitter.