Hal Y. Zhang is a lapsed physicist who splits her time between the east coast of the United States and the Internet, where she writes at halyzhang.com. Her speculative poetry and prose is in Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Fireside. Aqueduct Press published her women-with-sharp-things collection, Goddess Bandit of the Thousand Arms.
It starts with the patch of skin behind her right ear, where her too-large turquoise glasses frame sits awkwardly, an unbalanced seesaw upon her nose. While finishing a requisition report, she scratches there unconsciously, and her nails catch on something hard and thin, coming back with a flimsy yellow patch the size of her nail, translucent and slightly elastic.
I am standing next to / the unsunken earth, / not yet a part of it / though I wonder—
