Listen to our audio presentation of “Waste” by Mary Elizabeth Burroughs. Narrated by Mahvesh Murad.
Mary Elizabeth Burroughs
Mary Elizabeth Burroughs is a graduate of Clarion Writers’ Workshop at UC San Diego and University of Mississippi’s MFA program. A native of Florida, she now lives in Sydney, Australia where she teaches English to high school students. Her published fiction has appeared in Black Static, Phantom Drift: A Journal of New Fabulism, and Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars (Aqueduct Press).
Waste
This is how it is: We who live on the edge of the Heap are different. Harper’s arms are no more than nimble flippers that sprout exposed bone. Zora’s skin blisters from the sunlight, while Ernest cannot raise his medicine ball sized head—he only lolls it. They cannot of course talk, so I talk for them, and I talk to them. We bronzer children of the golden class are a motley litter of rejects, everyone knows.