The Hoax by Amy Devine

I am 12 years old and I have a whistle for a front tooth. I am 12 years old and I learn about two girls who tricked the world into thinking fairies were real and I wonder how they kept their dresses so white. Young girls are strange things and young women are even stranger. I am 12 years old and I am a young woman. Two girls put pictures of fairies on hatpins and someone calls them a miracle. Two young women claim to commune with paper cut outs and someone calls them a “mental disturbance.” I am 12 years old and I am a mental disturbance. I am 12 years old and I begin to hope that the growing pains are just like coming home in a white dress with wet feet, that I am on the cusp of evolutionary perfection and my theosophical burgeoning is nothing but a lazy skipping of stones until something better happens to me. Two girls make a product of their potential, print it on glass plates and hold their tongues. I am 12 years old and there are grooves in my tongue for fingernails. I am 12 years old and I am learning to affix the smallest wings to my biggest lies. I am 12 years old and I am just doing what my foresisters did before me. I am 12 years old and two girls teach me how to replicate the prettiest parts of myself for maximum consumption.

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Amy Devine is an artist from a lineage of artists whose work has been featured in several publications including Orange Peel, Gems, and Beyond the Veil Press. She is based in Sydney, Australia and she is inspired by history and the narrative of humanity. Follow her on Instagram: @devineinspirational