She moves through the galactic playground like a bulldozer

in a sleepy seaside villages Waterford and Mikasa outlet.

She leaves a trail of bodies and the bitter haze of yuzu.

This lady of the night(skies) and growing light

trails razor neon trails behind her like a chapel length

train of lost midnights and full fry up brekkies.

a wake of luminescence (beat) from her liminal footsteps.

She has thifted and stolen from laundromat dryers

across several M-class planets not yet found

to assemble the ensemble of her entire existence.

She is 3D printed 316LVM stainless steel,

shape curvilinear and DMLS machined.

She doesn’t sizzle, she simply sinters

burning just under the melting point until particles

join joyously by atomic fusion.

She is pure zest, pith and vinegar

demanding that life where the juice is always, in all ways,

always worth the cosmos candy crushing damn squeeze.

___

PIXIE BRUNER (SFPA/Dread Writers Society) is a writer and cancer survivor. She lives in Atlanta, GA, with her doppelgänger and deranged cats. Her (twice) Elgin-nominated poetry book The Body As Haunted was published in 2024. (Authortunities Press). Her words are in Space & Time Magazine, Amazing Stories, Weird Fiction Quarterly, Strange Horizons, Spectral Realms, and many more. She wrote for White Wolf Gaming Studio. Werespiders ruining LARPs were all her fault. 2025 Rhysling Award Chair. 2025 Kay Snow Prize Winner. Find her at https://pixiebruner.substack.com