Death and Déjà vu

I visit myself in a dream
and clasp my hands around my clone’s neck
squeezing so hard my muscles cramp, nails
digging in until her head pops clean off.

I don’t see where it rolls. I’m too busy
staring at the eggs spilling from her throat—
spiders bursting from their elastic sacs
scurrying out of my double’s trachea.

A swamp surges upward and the arachnids swarm,
drown themselves in the bog—
press their exoskeletons into moss
leaving spindly negatives,
black cutouts against green.

They burrow beneath their brackish afterbirth
and I am left alone
with the me that has been invaded, evacuated.
But no version of me will empty.

The skin of my forearm shifts, a crawling.

***

Chelsea Jackson is a writer, editor, and consultant, and author of the forthcoming collection All Things Holy and Heathen (April Gloaming, April 2024). They use their poetry to ask hard questions, interrogate inherited social narratives, and explore what it means to be human. Chelsea has an MFA in Poetry from Drew University and is published Beyond Queer Words, Hearth and Coffin, Passengers Journal, Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, Coffin Bell Journal, and Riverfeet Press, among other publications. They were also a finalist in the 2020 Driftwood Press In-House Poetry Contest and the 2022 Animal Heart Poetry Collection Contest. You can find them on Instagram, X, and TikTok @sea_c_j or at their website at chelsea-jackson.com.