Christie Louie

Jul 3, 2024 | joylandmagazine.com | Christie Louie |Kyle Lucia Wu

The night before her grandmother moves in, Holly soaks her tongue in vinegar. It floats in the clear liquid: pink, bumpy, unzipped at the frenulum. The fissures on her tongue are magnified by the glass it swims in, and when Holly holds the highball to her eye, she sees everything else bigger: the toilet bowl, the mottled brown tiles, the water-stained taps that are labeled backwards. Online, it said ten minutes in acid would make a tongue soft enough to re-mold.