A FUTURE YOU by Monica Lewis

An epiphany of the gut differs from those of the head or the heart; an epiphany of the gut gurgles up from every vein, tissue, organ, liquid in you saying, "no more, no more." It doesn't hurt when it happens, but it happens in the moments when you are not alone, when in strange company - a crowded supermarket deciding between ground chicken or cow. A kick to your gut and now your appetite is sickened and you realize, all you've ever been hungry for is a thing you can never actually chew then swallow down your throat. No, it's every cell in you lighting up, suddenly, to a future you you'd been so set on numbing to dull then to dust. It's each cell swim-struggling toward the heart and finally refusing the sink away, to back in and into itself. This kick inside is the best kind because it's the one that vomits up all the bullshit and gets you satiating on the creme de la creme, the yum, yum, yum, yum, not the cream puffs and donuts, not the dandy candy, the quick liquor - no, it's the first bite, then the gorging on days ahead, days that'll be gray and red and yellow and brown and green and sometimes mix ugly and sometimes too much, but the days of colors, the days of all the colors to which you'll only ever yell a hungry "yes".

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MONICA LEWIS lives in Brooklyn, New York and holds an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts. Both her fiction and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Apogee, AAWW's The Margins, and The James Franco Review, and her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, The Boiler Journal, Yes, Poetry, FLAPPERHOUSE, Breadcrumbs, and the anthology, TOUCHING: Poems of Love, Longing, and Desire by Fearless Books, among others. She is a VONA/Voices alumna and an assistant editor at NOON Annual. Her full collection of poetry, a collaboration with Joanna Valente, is forthcoming in 2017 by Unknown Press.

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