Emma’s only worthwhile memory was tattooed on her forearm. She had done it herself, on the floor of her apartment bathroom, with a needle she had bought at the convenience store, the day her mother had passed. It was one word, etched carefully with a steady hand, in blocked letters, that read, Cicada. 

Her place was on the edge of the city, an insignificant brick building that slotted itself between two identical looking insignificant brick buildings on either side. It barely looked livable from the outside, as though it was moments from descending to rubble. Emma's apartment was on the corner of the second floor, covered by neglected and overgrown greenery, which meant light barely made it through the windows. Though, it never really bothered Emma. The wood was rotting, breaking away at the edges where the walls met the floor, and the entire apartment seemed to sag. It was the only place she could afford without an actual job, as she had been doing small commission work on the side, and slowly eating through her savings. 

Emma and her mother had never been close. She was taken in by her uncle and grew up on his farm after her mother had lost custody of her. They had stayed in contact as Emma grew up, and they had gotten into a fight just before Emma had left for Chicago. She had said some things she regretted. Some things that could not be taken back. The words spilled out of her mouth before her brain could stop her. Like ink, covering everything, staining it forever. Marking it forever, no matter what efforts are taken to cover it up.

Beneath the apartment a set of stairs led to a small store that mostly carried food and household items, but also the ink that Emma used for her art. It was darker than anything she had ever seen, and came in small vials tucked away on a shelf in the back of the store. Whatever it touched left a stain, so she was always extra careful when dipping her pen in, making sure not to let any drip off or down the sides. As of late, though, she hardly noticed when it spilled. Sometimes she even went so far as to hold the vials above the floor and drop them, letting the ink spill out of the shattered glass over sheets of paper she’d lay down, just to see what it would do. Would it spread to the edge? Fill in every possible inch, suffocating the page? Or would it splatter, randomly, insignificantly? Another piece of “art” by another person, neither of which would ever be seen. 

Emma lay with her back along the hardwood floor, surrounded by the ink-stained pages around her, some containing recurring sketches of the same woman, her mother. Or at least what she could remember of her. Her eyes drifted to the window, where the curtain floated aimlessly in the wind, and the moon cut through the dark sky just above the skyline of buildings. Her radiator buzzed, soft and consistently, just enough to fill up the space from wall to wall with noise. Just enough to fill up her head, and bring her thoughts away from it all. To a place where she’d never have to face the burden of memory. Of loss. Of being. Emma turned onto her side.

She took what was left of her ink, while lying there, and dipped the needle deep into the vial, changing its silvery shine to something of a dark, somber liquid. She pressed the needle against her forearm, feeling the pain begin to shoot up and into her chest, before simmering out. She moved delicately, keeping her arm close to her face so that she could see it in the darkness of the apartment. Very carefully, she pushed the needle in again and again, moving it along her arm slowly, engrossing herself in her work. Every few moments, she’d use a sheet of empty paper to wipe away the blood that she drew. She forgot about the pain she had felt. But she remembered it in other ways. 

When she finished, she let her arm fall to her side, and laid her head back against the ground. Her mind shifted back to the present, and away from her work. The moon, the radiator, the breeze from under the loose door frame, her mind was back to where she thought she wanted it to be. Away from what could hurt her. Back to the very still present. There, now written on her forearm in the same, pitch-black blocked letters, was the word “art.”

On the edge of her uncle’s wheat farm in rural Tennessee ran an old fence, one that had been there long before Emma, and long before her uncle. It was along that fence that Emma used to find the shells of cicadas, bugs that came from rooted deep within the earth every seventeen years. What they left was what they once were, but what they became was something more. They grew. Emma wanted to grow too. That summer, Emma sat on the back screened porch and listened to them sing, all in unison, the smell of honeysuckle in the air. She thought about how her mother had abandoned her. She thought about how she never knew her father. Like the cicadas, coming from a place that's dark, breaking herself open a little. Leaving a little bit of herself behind. But after a while, Emma too burrowed herself back into the earth.

  She rose from the ground where she had fallen asleep, the light now pushing itself through her lone window. The noise of the radiator had now gone, replaced by the traffic that moved along the street beneath. Emma dressed herself, looking in the mirror, running her hands over each of her forearms, her fingers lightly brushing against each letter. Her bathroom was just as messy as the rest of her apartment, with more art sitting on the counter and the back of the toilet, the same image of her mother, drawn again and again. She reached out to touch the warm water that flowed out of the sink, letting it run over her hands. They too were covered in ink, which had sunk deeply into the cracks of her skin. She scrubbed lightly, trying to practice being delicate with herself. After a moment, the water became too hot, and she had to pull her hands away. The delicateness was gone. The ink wasn’t.

Her mother had tried to push her way back into Emma’s life just before Emma left for Chicago. Her mother would show up at her uncle’s farm, stoned beyond her mind. Her clothes would be tattered, smelling thickly of alcohol. Her words would slur, and cut, deep into Emma’s skin, leaving marks like the needle she used on herself. Emma’s chest would burn and she could feel her heartbeat resonating throughout her body. In a moment she’d be gone, on the back porch, with the cicadas, humming. In a moment she’d be back. Burrow, resurface. 

She stepped out of her window and onto the fire escape, lighting a cigarette as she made her descent down the stairs. Beneath her, cars passed slowly by, and a couple walked hand in hand down the street. She felt her breath steady, and she stepped out onto the sidewalk, and towards the stairs that led down to the store. A small bell above the door jingled as she pushed it open, a faint smell of coffee meeting her nose. The store remained in a perpetual image engrained in her head, always being the same. The shelves were lined with the same cans of food they had when she moved in, and the fluorescent overhead lights emitted the same hum they always had. Years of her life, looped, blurring together as one. She brushed past the aisles towards the back of the store, where the vials usually sat, lined up one by one, around waist level and out of sight, usually accompanied by some surrounding art supplies. Emma’s hand brushed along the shelf, passing by where the ink should have been. 

“Sorry,” the clerk’s voice was gravelly, distant. “Shipment never came in.”

Her hand remained on the shelf, brushing past the area again, as though this time it would collide with a vial. “Do you know when the next shipment will be?” she asked, again running her hand along the shelf. 

“Could be a week, could be a month. Art supplies have never been very high on the list, I’ll be honest with you.” he replied. She nodded, making her way back to the door, pulling her sleeves down to cover her arms. 

Emma let herself back into her apartment through the window, staring at the disarray that surrounded her. Shattered glass from the vials was scattered across the floor, ink staining surrounding pages, sinking into the hardwood beneath. Nothing in the apartment was untouched by the ink. It seemed to be everywhere, on the walls, on the radiator, on her bedsheets. On her.

Emma now stood over her kitchen sink, holding her last vial of ink that had just run out. She had looked at how deeply it had marked the pages, how deeply it had marked her own skin. How harsh it had been on both. 

She walked through her apartment, collecting all of the sprawled out sketches of her mother, stacking them all on the counter. She brushed the shards of glass into a dustpan, and scrubbed at the ink on the floor, even though she knew it wouldn’t come out. 

Emma first remembered feeling pain when she had just turned twelve. She’d often find herself playing out behind the barn while her uncle worked inside, running around barefoot, feeling the dirt and the grass dance between her toes. That morning, she came bolting around the corner, and her foot landed directly on a piece of shattered glass, pointed upright in the dirt. A piece that had fallen from a broken light above. She remembered that silent moment, just after the glass had cut her, where the whole world stood still. Where she watched the blood flow delicately from her foot, staining the grass beneath it. How harsh the contrast of the colors had been. The red on the pale skin of her foot. The red on the deep green of the earth. Then it all shattered, and the pain overwhelmed her. Emma yelled for her uncle, who came running out to help her. As the pain came to the forefront of her mind, the reality of the blood did too. It spewed from her foot like rain from the gutters during a storm. She remembered she could see herself, staring back, in the reflection of her uncle's glasses. 

The drawings piled high, and she ran her fingers through them, looking at the different ways she had tried to capture her mother from memory. Some of them focused so heavily on her face, in some she was smiling, in others she wasn’t. In most, the image of her mother was blurry, incomplete. 

She turned the knob, letting water flow from the sink and moved the vial beneath to fill it to the brim, watching the ink’s slow dance to mix with the warm water, making it a dark, murky color. But unlike the vials before it, this color was soft, almost delicate. Emma dipped her pen into the mixture, and began to sketch along the far wall across from her bed. There she drew a woman. Herself. Sitting on the steps of the back porch. And across from her, humming, a cicada.