Hannah Ahn
Ophelia wrings her wet hair in the shower and asks Hamlet if he can turn the TV down. She shakes when she takes her pills, memorizes a rhyme: small one, red one, blue one, new one. At night she dreams of something in her throat, something climbing out of it like a ledge. People tell her it is a metaphor for a child or sadness or maybe Hamlet. She pays out of pocket to go to therapists who tell her she is not well or alternatively is perfectly fine just the way she is. I need to be saved from myself, she thinks. The blue light of her phone is beginning to kill her slowly. She thinks about microwaved dinners more often than she should, coming home to just a dog slowly licking her feet, sniffing for the ghostly scent of meat. She has a father she doesn’t call enough. She wants to know what is wrong with her and, alternatively, what is only a part of herself. She reads books and takes night classes. She thinks she would be happy if she were anyone else. She takes long baths, admiring the stillness of the water, the way it goes taut when she climbs out. She dries herself carefully. A lonely ritual. She understands “control” as something that can be lost or possessed, but she has never heard it used in a sentence.
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Hannah Ahn is a writer of fiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in Wigleaf, Narrative Magazine, and America Media, among other publications.