Do you see that duck in the water?

You’re seeing things, they say. That duck is your losing mind.

No time for breathing into brown paper bags.
Here come the honeycombs. Flare ups of black
holes. My deadness in the hollows of circles and hexagons.
Do you want to eat me? I ask them.
Here comes the confirmation. Patterns of cavities emerge
in the midnight ripples. Mouths
of baby waves.

That water is an animal.

That water petting, pushing, brushing, disappearing that duck.
That water petting, pushing, brushing, disappearing that me.
That water petting, pushing, brushing, disappearing that—

That duck is losing my mind.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Good—

I see it! they say.

Gas diffuses for the honey like a love song. Oozing
out the hexagons, filling up the hollowness, covering
the combs, moistening my brain
folds, dripping down my face. Death
hides itself away.

I taste sugar.

Did you hear that?

Quack.

I was that animal.

JULLIETTE HOLLIDAY (she/her) is a Brooklyn based, Black, multi-hyphenate artist—writer, composer, director, producer and educator. She has collaborated with The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center,  NYU Tisch, La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, The Tank NYC, and Trusty Sidekick Theater Company, and more. Originally from Columbus, OH, and a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Julliette’s poetry and creative non-fiction has received support from Kenyon Review’s Adult Writers Workshop and VONA (Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation Workshop). She was awarded the Katharine Bakeless Nason Participant Scholarship in Nonfiction for Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference 2025.