Scratch/Open/Breathe
By Erin Dawkins
You regret wishing for quiet during the years when you functioned on fatigue. Now, you sleep but you don't rest. You remove your mug of soup from the microwave, but it's not food your body craves.
You miss her today, so you go into her bedroom. You enter inconspicuously, the way you did when she rolled her eyes at you as a teenager. You inhale her fragrance that lingers.
On her bed, you lift the fold of skin on your abdomen. You trace the hidden scar. Her first home. Her opening to the world, twenty years ago today, closed immediately after her arrival. The emptiness of her, sealed airtight inside you as if your body has been since holding its breath.
Your breaths are shallow. Airways blocked. Your body, incapable of releasing the stagnant air trapped within.
You scratch it. The dormant protrusion awakens from the friction of your nails between it and the meadow of silver pubic hair.
You apply pressure, tracing the jagged line with the tip of your nail, filed to a point. Pale liquid, marbled with jelly, escapes from the close-lipped smiling abrasion, now wide open.
Warmth coats your fingers and you raise them to your face. Crimson tips make you think of the two of you baking thumbprint cookies with cherry filling at Christmas.
Steps echo in the hallway.
"Meredith?" your neighbor calls. Every year she visits on this day with a candy bar for your daughter's birthday.
Air escapes. Your body deflates like a tired balloon.
She appears in the doorway. No candy bar. She lunges toward you and mashes her hand into your skin, the fluid lubricating the dryness between her fingers.
"Oh honey," she blinks a tear. "What did you do?"
You blink dreamily and exhale. You can finally breathe.
THE END
Author Bio: Erin Dawkins (she/her) is a Michigan-based writer. Her work has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine, Sky Island Journal, The Orange Rose, and Cetera Magazine, among others. Her fiction has been nominated for Best of the Net, and her novel-in-progress was a finalist for the Unleash Press' 2026 WIP Prize.