Stable Decay
by Yana Caoránach
A pile of detritus and dead wood collected against a bridge post in the water, ten or so feet below. I stared at it awhile, caught in a liminal state while wandering home. Lazy currents dragged at the branches. Just one breaking loose would tear the haphazard monument of decay asunder. No assortment of branches, no collection of timber, would quite create the same composition ever again.
​
I looked down at my hands, watched as skin rippled and boiled. Scales emerged. My reflection stared back up at me from the water. A skink? Bleeding orange hues from the setting sun lent a sparkle to my reflection incongruous with my dull finish. It then melted away to pale slick flesh, a drooping newt-like visage. Fur would be next. Always some rhythm when I was discordant. Reptile, amphibian, avian, mammal, human. Reptile, amphibian, avian, mammal, mammal. Could hardly call myself human, like this. Whenever I imagined a form, I became it—almost. Biped where I should be quadruped, scales reptilian when I meant them to be serpentine. Always, though, the pattern, my thoughts pulled from one form to another, then another. Me, torn into a new array of bone and keratin before long, nothing ever quite sticking. Always the draft, never the artwork.
​
Why couldn’t I be something stable, water-weathered and sun-worn like the branches? Why couldn’t I be happy with a single vision? Multiple futures stretched out in front of me, then collapsed. The cycle began again. Feathers pushed free and fledged from my skin, a pale blue-grey in the dusk. Perhaps this form would stay, find itself complete. Yet I knew this hope was as futile as the last. The cycle would renew; the body would find its rhythm. Again. And again. Perhaps the only constant was change. Was my comfort only to be found in embracing the new?
​
I watched a branch scatter my reflection and catch the edge of the driftwood tangle, holding fast. Its single leaf—still green—fluttered in the evening breeze. Added precarity or needed stability? I told myself that dusk made it too dark to tell.
​
As I stumbled home, feathers melting to fins, I had no answers. Maybe I’d find my own bridge post to tangle against some day. Something solid. Someone safe.
​
Maybe that would be enough.
​
BIO
​​
Yana (they/she/it) is a trans writer based in Washington, DC. Brought up on xenofiction and other fictive works in the realm of transformation, they're interested in exploring what it means to be a person. Its rudimentary website is found at wellspring.neocities.org.
​​​
​
WHY I WRITE
​
I've devoured stories since I could first remember, gulping down words considered above me to broaden my horizons. Eventually those words must spill back out. These are those words, those stories so tangled up inside me that have been aching to get out. I've too many words in my head. Sometimes I need to organize my thoughts in story, in metaphor, in characters. A college-level writing course in my teens over-prepared me and burnt me out on writing for over a decade. It's only just now that I'm returning to the medium.
​
I don't know that I have a singular goal with writing. I don't know whether I'll be able to stick with story writing or find myself fickle and drawn toward some other creative idea. I do know that these stories will always be in my head, though, and it's best to shake them loose every so often. One way or another, I'll be inhabiting characters and telling their tales until the day I die. I hope others find a similar solace in my words.
​
​
SOCIAL MEDIA
​​