
WELKIN PRIZE 2026 - SHORTLISTED
When you take a bite
by Robin Zlotnick

of my apple, my cheese stick, my breast, my French fry, my toast, my shoulder, my banana, my omelet, my heart, I glow. I want to chop my fingers into bite-sized pieces, quarter my eyeballs, flay my lobes so you won’t choke. They say retain! Protect! Create! But instead I long to live inside feeding you, to curl up under your scrunched nose, beneath your wet mouth, a suction cup, your smooth teeth seeping into my flesh, until warm light oozes through the holes from your bites, and they swell, becoming bright and hot and white and everything.
Robin Zlotnick is a Best American Short Stories- and Best of the Net-nominated writer with fiction published in places like Gone Lawn, X-R-A-Y, and Brilliant Flash Fiction, and humor published in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The Belladonna, Slackjaw, and elsewhere. She lives in New England with her family. You can check out her work at robinzlotnick.com.



