Rachel E Dohner

FELTGIRLWORLD

Two eyes, a nose, a mouth stitched in red. I looked down at myself, laying on the table: not me, but a figure that easily morphed into me as the clock struck three A.M. and my eyes grew heavy from exhaustion. I’d come up with the idea while working my retail job the summer before college started––I wanted to make myself out of felt. I was in limbo between the end of school and the start of it, feeling weird about my age and the way that it made me feel both incredibly young and strangely old, and I decided to do something about it: to make a felt version of myself in eighteen hours, carry her around for eighteen more, and then say goodbye to her forever.