Mouth Matters by Abbie Doll

I once dated this girl who only ever moved half her mouth. She hadn’t had a stroke or anything, no weird neurological disorder, nothing like that; those were the mechanics, plain and simple. Half stiff for whatever odd biological reason: a marionette string that had snapped, perhaps. It was cute. Darling, even. The left half of her lips would hang there—neglected-houseplant limp—cognizant of their own futility, their persistent inability to partake. Whenever she smiled, the right side would curl into this Grinch-inspired smirk: a lopsided, one-sided grin that always, always caught me off guard. In a good way. I found the lack of symmetry endearing; all those half-kisses, enticing. Irresistibly so. I had no problem loving her, but in her mind, we never quite fit—like two jigsaw pieces that could never align, no matter how many rotations we tried. 

Abbie Doll is a Columbus, OH writer with an MFA from Lindenwood University. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in places such as Door Is a Jar Magazine, The Journal, and 3:AM Magazine, and has been nominated for The Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and the Pushcart Prize, as well as longlisted for The Wigleaf Top 50. She serves as a Fiction Editor at Identity Theory. Connect on socials @abbiedollwrites.bsky.social

Photo by Shiny Diamond

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