Self-Isolation Saturninity

by Shelby Rice

Dayton, Ohio

the only friends i have left are the ants which currently inhabit my laptop computer

i don’t know how they got there, if i’m being completelyhonestthough i

                have

eaten crackers while i marathoned star trek and

                perhaps

the crumbs shook down and the ants followed and burrowed and nested and built in the warm

and i don’t begrudge them that (at least someone is creating

around here) but now when i’m typing i feel the 

                    creep 

of something up my leg and it shakes and i mistype so

please-please-please forgive the miscommunications all i can offer is the knowledge that i 

got distracted trying to get my friend to crawl back to his clavier home

Shelby Rice often finds her fiction blowing in the wind. She won the Montaine Award for Creative Nonfiction in 2020, and has stories in the Femmellectual, Inklings Arts & Letters, Happy Captive, and more. Originally from Dayton, Ohio, she is biding her time until Starfleet is established; in the meantime, you can find her in any nearby library, worrying over whether or not the necklace she bought from Goodwill for three dollars is cursed.