Charlyn Arellano

Etching

Her pliant fingers traced the ink-black epitaph on her left forearm; carefully, conscientiously. Hesitantly? After all was said and done (ironically, not much activity on either front—she was consistently paralyzed by characteristic indecision), she was a creature animated by pure hesitation. Her anxiety palpable and daring enough to ambush her ever-frayed nerves and send them dancing. Dancing perhaps too kind and kinetic a concept; her flayed psyche so adjusted to this timeless choreography of stutter-stepping toward the edge of oblivion but always, and this was damn key ladies and gents of the jury, stopping before the fall. The bondage of lethargy, the weight of inertia, prevented her from advancing from what was and towards what could be.