shameful ovenbird “Where should I put this?” she asks, tilting her head towards an eight foot long…something…wrapped in a white garbage bag, tucked under her arm. I gesture towards the gallery where the portraits hang in their dusty gilt frames, their eyes following movement, making me feel that I’m starring in an episode of Scooby-Doo. As she struggles in that direction I use my x-ray vision to peer beneath the opaque plastic: a sunken shark skin stares back at me, its hollow hide shellacked and glistening, its face collapsed around a jaw full of missing teeth. Its eyes are deflated and dull, leaking aqueous humor, yet seeing me, despite a dangling optic nerve that tickles the inside of its skull. Someone who isn’t me pulled this beast from the ocean, climbed down its throat and scraped its last meal from its belly, followed by all the flesh that made it whole. Now it’s a husk of bad taxidermy, ready to be mounted above the fireplace, so guests can peer down its collapsing gullet and laugh at the remains of its humiliation. Its neck twists in my direction as its body is lugged away. “I am you,” it rasps. And I know it’s true. I am a body on display, and there’s nothing inside but shame. 261001 what's it to you? who go blather from