Eliza Souers Valle

it’s 8:34am, and I am back in high school, and the science teacher tells us that humans are just bags of water on sticks, and I wonder what really divides us from the animals and robots, how I certainly don’t believe that bags of water on sticks struggle with social anxiety and confusing sexualities. my best friend draws a picture of a bag of water on sticks and we laugh and laugh. that’s how we picture ourselves until we graduate. 

years later when we both understand that an analogy can only go so far, our friendship ends, and the robots keep my digital footprint intact so I can see exactly how many days ago I last talked to her, and occasionally the robots show me pictures of us when we were still bags of water on sticks, before all those emotions and attachments and jealousy and misunderstandings, those things that apparently make us human, fucked everything up. 

so we’re not really just bags of water on sticks. it’s not that simple. 

but it really is. 

Eliza Souers Valle is a writer living in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. She holds her MFA through the University of Akron. Her work has appeared in Dog Throat Journal, Gordon Square Review, The Primer, and elsewhere. When not writing, Eliza drinks coffee, watches birds, and plays piano.

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