Netflix & Overcoming My Fear of Intimacy

by Julia Rapp

The nature documentary showed a black bird contorting into a disc on a bare limb and a British narrator described this behavior as unbirdlike. We agreed that it was quite unbirdlike, as are most things— take my dress, which had cutouts at the sides so you could see rib skin, covered in touches like quiet rain under a shared blanket while a frenzy of jungle flew across the screen. My neck was tugged by a siege of lips, you said tell me about your family. When life leapt from this mouth in a rushing tumble I didn’t pray for flight to propel me to any elsewhere, I wondered aloud to the prickled hairs at the sides of your head, who sculpted your ears? Heard your voice in my mind the next day when I saw a lady bite clear through a plastic bag to reach the cake donut inside: how birdlike

Julia Rapp is a writer living in San Francisco, CA. Her work has been featured in Angle Magazine, Foreign Lit, and Busan Beat. She received her MFA from Saint Mary’s College of California.