The Horror - (Brenna Alyssa Mahn

The Horror - (Brenna Alyssa Mahn - New Orleans, LA)

How do I describe this?

It’s the surprising moment when you hold a two foot alligator in your hands and you realize how soft their skin is and you feel the gentle expansion of their breath against your fingers and somehow it shakes you to your core and you don’t know why. And you start to question how you once laughed at that German documentary maker with his albino crocodiles staring into the abyss.

It’s the reverence you hold for Saint Lucy who plucked out her own eyes with the same nonchalance that you plucked wildflowers as a kid. You consider her your patron Saint. But then one night your partner mumbles in their sleep: My eyes! They’re refusing!

It is the moment in the dream where a man you can’t see but you know is there gives you a sheet of paper blank except for the five words: I hold ominous omniscience obscurely. And then you slide it back onto the slick dark surface.

It’s when you toss feverishly in bed for hours and wake up to find all the walls and ceilings are collapsing in around you. But then you really wake up and your roommates want you to take out the garbage.

But what isn’t it? If nothing else, I know it’s not that night I dreamed the word crepuscular and it brought back memories of sitting on docks just past sunset and listening to the birds that love the waning light most of all.

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