Entropy by Andrea Rinard

I need to make myself smaller. I need to not take up so much room. I suck the oxygen out of the house, this family. I’m busy shrinking myself when she comes into the only room in the house with empty hinges.

​Mom has those eyes, and I know she’s about to say again (and again, and again) “Did you take your meds?”

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Yes. It’s always yes. I swallow the pills every morning, round like a buoy. I do what I’m supposed to do even though nothing keeps me afloat.

​Those eyes walk away, but they’ve rent my skin, and I seep, the blood rising. I try to unfurl my wings to fly away because the window still works, but my wings are sticky, and I can’t rise. A single feather falls. More will follow unless I’m very still, so I fold in on myself and try not to look up.

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I need to make myself smaller. I need to not take up so much room. There’s not enough space, enough air for me in this house, in this family. Mom walks through the doorway to the open portal to where I live, the only room without a door.

Her eyes swallow me, and she digests me at a glance; I’m getting better at being small. 

​“Did you take your meds?” she asks. I nod because I need to take away the sadness, a darkness over the hope and the love. If I’m smaller, I won’t cast a shadow.​

​Besides, it’s always yes. I swallow the pills every morning, but I’m still the heaviest thing in the house, in the world. I will sink us all, and Mom’s eyes say she knows that, but she will always reach out her hand and let me drown her.

​Mom’s eyes walk away, and I look at my window. I will be able to fly away, far, far, far, and Mom’s eyes won’t see me. I imagine I have wings, but I’m not a bird. I’m an anchor. My only view is the bottom, and I will sink down, down, down. 

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I need to make myself smaller. I need to not take up so much room. I am a vacuum that takes every breath meant for others. Mom pauses where my door used to be. 

​They all stop when they pass, but Mom is the one whose eyes hurt. She asks me in the only language we now speak, “Did you take your meds?”

​Yes. It’s always yes. The pills are round like a seashell, but I can’t hear my own voice no matter what I press my ear to.

​Mom walks away, and I’m tired. So, so tired. I think of sun. The beach. A single gull that circles the sky. I want to find that child who collected shells, holding them out to her mother who put them in a bucket like treasure. It’s too far away to see clearly, but I keep looking out the window.

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Andrea Rinard is a native Floridian who wears shoes against her will and has mastered the art of hurricane preparation. She has work in Cease, Cows; The Jellyfish Review; Lost Balloon, and Spelk among others and has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net. Her first novel, a YA manuscript that won the Key West Literary Society’s 2020 Marianne Russo Award for a novel-in-progress, is currently on submission. Andrea lives in Tampa with her three adult kids and her 1988 Prom date. You can find her at www.writerinard.com.