a spring that never came my womb meant to be your spring became your winter flowers that meant to grow withered and rotted away i wanted so badly to hold you in my arms, and know your face; wanted to be more than these wounds-- i will never understand why heaven needed you more than i did, all i know is i never needed your father but you i needed as much as the breath inhaled into my lungs never got to feel the life nor the kick within as i always wanted to; i never got to hold or feel your love. Linda M. Crate's poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has five published chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017), and splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018), and one micro-chapbook Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project, May 2018). She is also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018).
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3/1/2019 0 Comments Poetry by Samuel GuestQuiet Song her life a quiet song that only i care to sing so that i may immortalize her forever and ever it is the least i can do she inspires me to be better do better, and that is priceless Outpouring pour over her with the intensity of ink spilling over a page stipple your precious love everywhere that there is bare skin or hair let her know your heartstrings intimately worship her, for tomorrow may never come Samuel Guest is a Jewish/Canadian poet, author, and educator. Some of his poems have appeared in Half a Grapefruit Magazine, Montreal Writes, and Peeking Cat Poetry. More of his poems are set to come out later this year. His book "The Radical Dreams" was published back in April of 2018. He lives in Toronto, Ontario with his cats Archie and China. That’s Not My Boyfriend Today was a good day filled with self care but still his thoughts overwhelm him more than he can bear I see his point when he tells me life isn't fair it's a burden he can't shake to share with a friend as his mother tells me that's not like her son and that's not my boyfriend. When he calls me in tears with his anxious fears thinking nobody hears how alone he thinks he is he's been like this for months he's worried he'll be like this for years till his head will feel clear in the end but right now that's not my boyfriend. He's sliced through his arm he's covered in scars he's on a path of destruction intent to do himself harm he puts himself down and pulls himself apart lost sight of the talent in the beauty of his art to his bruised heart I keep trying to mend but my love that's not my boyfriend. Last Thursday police found him stood on the edge of a bridge after he'd pledged his intent to work on his head and I know mental health is far from easy to mend but he deserves better, because that's not my boyfriend. Roz is a poet and spoken word performer from the North of England. She has been published in Catalogue of Failure, Dear Damsels, Whisper and the Roar, Morality Park, Yellow Arrow Journal, Persephone’s Daughters, as well as the poetry anthologies ‘Persona Non Grata’, 'Further Within Darkness and Light' and ‘Essential Existentialism - The Meaning of Life’. In 2018, her work was displayed at the annual Rape Crisis UK Conference, as well being displayed and performed at two further exhibitions in London – ‘The Sunlight Project’ and ‘Testimony’. To my daughter You fly so near the sun, your wax wings drip unnoticed into hungry seas. I nudge you towards the shadows. Don’t fear fading light, be here with me, give darkness what it needs. Grant harvest just enough so it will leave without consuming all of you. Heartbreak, Cascadia shifts, failure: there will be this dimming. When ignored, it swallows more. Acknowledge it is there and train your eyes by moving through it. Clarity will come. Let me teach you one more small lesson now before you have to go. Please hold my hand, I’ll show you how my eyes will soon adjust to skies less bright. I know you must take flight. Karen Shepherd lives with her husband and two teenagers in the Pacific Northwest where she enjoys walking in forests and listening to the rain. Her poetry and flash fiction have been published in various journals online and in print, but most of her work just lives on her laptop. Follow her at https://twitter.com/karkarneenee Resurrection Death is always near, they say, and I believe it. I’d rather attend a funeral than a wedding: one I can believe in, the other: too deceptive, too expensive, too pensive to think about it all ending in divorce – not at the tiered cakewalk. Think about it: I had to stay for the kids, my granny said so, and I believed her, but you can’t make that choice when death comes, inks a permanent period at the end of your sentence regardless of how it’s structured, how many guests attend you can multiply by the number of times you tried to leave and come up with the years you donated to a son who, at thirteen, told you to fuck all the way off. Amanda J. Forrester received her MFA from the University of Tampa. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Indolent Books’ What Rough Beast, Collective Unrest, Trailer Park Quarterly, and Indie Blu(e) Publishing’s anthology We Will Not Be Silenced, among others. She is a founder and Production Manager of Critical Sun Press and snuggles with her fur babies when she isn’t working long hours as a data analyst at Saint Leo University. Follow her on Twitter @ajforrester75. Susanne Nilsson CC Among the Wildflowers Sunflowers have bright, golden petals exploding from their brown centers. I could swim in that deep, dark center. They can grow taller than most humans, usually with their faces towards the sun — hence the name. They shine bright and grow in plentiful groups. They are rarely lonesome. ----- I am not a person filled with sunshine. I don’t tend to wear bright colors. I have a temper, a sadness that rests in the pit of my stomach. I enjoy fucked up endings instead of happily-ever-afters. But for some reason, sunflowers fill my head. I draw them in the margins of my notes when I should be paying attention in class. I dream of running through a field of yellow petals. When I see a sunflower, I have an urge to stick my nose deep into the center in the same way I used to stick my nose into other people’s business when I was a child. I connect with them in a way I don’t think I will ever want to understand. ----- The scientific name for the sunflower genus is Helianthus. All helianthus species, except for three, grow in North America. I learn that the sunflower that has planted itself in my mind is actually called Helianthus annuus. Maybe one of these 70 species of sunflowers that exist has some spot of anger or discomfort within itself like me. ----- My obsession with sunflowers began at age 18. I came to college and subsequently fell apart – only temporarily though, I need to give myself some credit. Sitting in a crowded lecture hall, my mind would wander from “why can’t I stop gaining weight?” to “how long until my boyfriend gets tired of my brokenness and leaves me?” (Two more years by the way, then I would learn that he never saw the sunflowers in the same way I did). I learned that sunflowers were the only thing I could successfully doodle in my notebook and not have them look like they came from the hand of a four-year-old. Sometimes I’d flip through my notes and just see pages and pages of round flowers—some big, some small, all looking at me like they desperately wanted to comfort me. Sunflowers were the only reason I could pay attention in class anymore. They saved me that year. ----- The Perennial species of sunflowers aren’t welcomed in gardens because they are invasive, controlling, smothering. They command space from the other flowers, push them out. I did not know this until I sat down to write this essay, but it makes me sad. The sunflower wants to love us, brighten our day and make us stop and appreciate a little piece of beauty. And we just tell it no, please stop taking up so much space. Maybe I am more sunflower than I thought. ----- I’ve had a plan for a gigantic sunflower tattoo on my thigh for the last two years. I filled up a Pinterest board with ideas. I reached out to a friend to ask if she’d draw it for me. I look through my notebooks to find the magically drawn sunflower I would put on my body forever. I can see it in my mind, how others might look at me when they see a sunflower peeking out from beneath my shorts while I walk down the street. How they might see it and think that I am bleeding sunshine, even when I’m not. I have told myself these last two years that “one day, I’ll treat myself.” When I save up the money, I will spend it all on my sunflower thigh tattoo and not give a damn what my grandmother has to say about it. The money always ends up going somewhere else. Today, I went to the mall. I bought clothes for my niece on the way. I splurged on a purse and a new pair of shoes for myself. Maybe I don’t deserve sunflowers. ----- Sunflowers have a natural symmetry based on the Fibonacci sequence. I am a writer — I have no clue what that means. But I do know that I am not wrong in finding such beauty in the plant. Scientifically, I’d be wrong not to. I don’t have a choice. ----- I want my “father-daughter” dance at my wedding to be Wildflowers by Tom Petty. I’ve pondered the idea of my wedding theme being sunflowers, but I’m not sure if it’s too much. If people will walk in and realize the decorations are too “me.” In Wildflowers Tom Petty sings, “You belong among the wildflowers/you belong in a boat out at sea/sail away, kill off the hours/you belong somewhere you feel free.” It became my favorite song the second I heard this first verse. When I listen to it, I can see myself in a field of sunflowers with my eyes closed. I can feel a light breeze, and I inhale greatly. I don’t know if sunflowers have a strong scent, because despite my obsession I somehow have never stopped to smell them, but I do know just being there will let me experience a positive energy in a way I’ve never seem to have been able to before. I hear the joyful, playful guitar sounds from Tom Petty playing in the distance. I’d give anything to feel that free. Macey Spensley is a fourth year student at the University of Iowa, striving for a double major in English and Creative Writing and Journalism and Mass Communication with a minor in Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies. She was born and raised in Iowa and loves it with her whole heart. When she's not doodling sunflowers in her notebooks, she enjoys reading, going to the gym, chugging Dunkin' Donuts coffee, and obsessing about the cat she wants to adopt after she graduates. 3/1/2019 0 Comments Photography by Juliana Tattoli3/1/2019 0 Comments Air Mattress by Sophie PanzerJames Blann CC Air Mattress I am bleeding when we meet and I am bleeding when he leaves. One month. The sheer effort involved makes it feel like more. On the night of Emily and Kai’s party I wear a white lace crop top and a black mini skirt. When I arrive I fill a solo cup with cheap warm beer and find myself staring at a man sitting on the couch with Kai. I wait a few moments before making my way over to say hello, careful not to appear too interested. Kai introduces us. “This is my roommate,” he tells me, and we shake hands. He has full lips and dark eyes and glossy hair and a sturdy build, like it would take a lot to knock him over. Something primal twists in my stomach. It is as if my ovaries are saying this one could give you babies that would survive plagues and wars and wild beasts. I make a gentle joke about Kai’s new haircut and he laughs and I am mesmerized by the white glint of his teeth. My pulse pounds a single syllable of desire in my neck, my wrists, my thighs: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Not tonight, though. I am not the kind of person to do anything without a plan. The rest of the party is an exercise in appearing effortlessly beautiful and charming and interesting, which involves controlling the energy of my gestures, the intensity of my eye contact, the tone of my words, the pitch of my laughter. It is exhausting. When I arrive home at midnight I fall into bed and sleep for ten hours. The next day I text Kai. Kai I don’t mean to alarm you But your roommate is very attractive LOL yeah he’s a good-looking guy are you interested? Yes. Is he single? Yep His ex broke up with him like 3 months ago so I don’t think he’s looking for anything serious. In fact I know he isn’t. lol that’s fine I’m in my last year so I’m not either DOES THIS MEAN I’M YOUR WINGMAN?? I laugh out loud in the café I’m working in, all exposed brick and overpriced scones. A hipster in a black turtleneck glares at me. Yes! And your first job as my wingman is to tell me if you have an air mattress I do why? because my friend is coming to visit next weekend and I need something for her to sleep on oh ok yeah you can borrow ours I also need you to find out when Your roommate will be around Tell him I can only come by to pick up the air mattress at the exact time he is there. Can you do this? Yeah! He tells me his roommate’s schedule and we settle on a time the following week. When I knock on the door of their apartment, the roommate answers. “Hey! Kai told me I could borrow the air mattress for the weekend.” He smiles. Those teeth. “Sure, come on in.” I step inside. The foyer is cool and damp, a relief from the late September sun. “Here it is,” he says, handing me a large bag that weighs much more than I expected. It must be king-sized. “Are you going camping?” I laugh, trying to maintain my composure while calculating how the fuck I am going to carry this mattress all the way back to my apartment. “No, I just have a friend coming to visit and I don’t want her to sleep on the floor.” “You’re a good friend.” “Yes, I’m great. When should I return this?” He tilts his head, considering. “Any time next week is fine, just message me and let me know.” I smile. Kai is no longer our go-between. This is promising. Less promising is the journey back to my apartment. I carry the mattress several blocks to the metro stop, onto the platform, through the station, and up the hill until I reach my building. By the time I get there, my back is damp with sweat and my arms are burning. But it doesn’t matter, because phase one is complete and my friend has somewhere to sleep. She arrives on an outrageously late Amtrak on Friday night. I meet her at the train station and we crash into each other when we embrace. Moments like these, when we physically occupy the same space, have become increasingly rare since we graduated from high school. Tiny details – the smell of her hair, the texture of her sweater, the exact timbre of her voice unadulterated by fizzy video chat connections – have become precious. We make our way to my apartment so she can drop off her backpack and then head to China Town for dinner, where we slick plump greasy dumplings with chili oil and soy sauce. “So do you know what you want to do when you graduate?” she asks around a mouthful of chicken and coriander. After spending the past summer angsting over this question, I am proud to finally have an answer. “I think I want to teach English abroad,” I say. “Somewhere is South America, maybe Chile or Colombia. I don’t want to lose my Spanish. What about you?” She beams. “That’s so cool! I have a few ideas, but I think I want to work for a TV studio out in LA. My school has connections out there, might just work the alumni network for all it’s worth.” My eyes widen. “That’s so far away!” She snorts. “You’re the one who’s moving to a different continent.” “But that’s only for a year or two,” I protest. “Until I figure out grad school stuff. That’s, like, an actual job that could lead to you settling there permanently.” She shrugs. “We’ll see what happens. My plans will probably change a million times before the year is over, anyway.” “True,” I concede. “Speaking of plans, have I told you about the man I’m chasing?” Her eyes light up, hungry for gossip. “No! Spill!” “I have a scheme,” I say. “It involves an air mattress and ice cream.” She eyes me suspiciously. “Are you going to lure him onto the air mattress with the ice cream?” “No,” I laugh. “I’m going to ask him out for ice cream when I return this air mattress.” “Just to be clear, no fucking has taken place on the air mattress I am using tonight. Like I won’t be sleeping on semen?” “Correct. For now,” I eye her mischievously and she makes a grab for my nose with her chopsticks. Then her expression changes, becomes serious. “So is this the first guy since……?” She trails off. I nod, grateful that my mouth is full and I don’t have to speak. I remember the last time we had a conversation like this, the way my lungs constricted and left me gasping for air as the words tumbled out and she looked on in helpless fury. “I hope it goes well. You deserve it.” I swallow. “Thanks. It’s just a casual thing, I don’t want to start a relationship in my last year of school.” She pinches a dumpling with her chopsticks. “If he hurts you, I’ll poke out his eyes and feed them to crows.” “How imaginative.” She pops the dumpling in her mouth, chews. “And then I’ll strangle him with his own intestines and hang him from a tree.” “You’re sweet.” The weekend is full of laughter and late nights. We go to bars and museums and bookstores and parks, stalk our old high school crushes on Facebook, complain about our parents. But Monday morning comes too soon and she is gone as quickly as she came. The next day, I call an Uber to take the air mattress back. My palms sweat as I walk up to the door of the apartment. He answers and I try not to get distracted by his teeth again. “Thanks for letting me borrow this,” I say, handing him the bag. “No problem. Did you have fun with your friend?” “I did! Also,” I take a deep breath. “Kai is really overinvested in your love life and when I told him I thought you were cute after Emily’s party he told me to ask you out.” I figure I can throw Kai under the bus for this one, since he volunteered to be my wingman in the first place. Two unbearable seconds. Then a smile. “Sure. What were you thinking?” I rattle off details immediately. “Ice cream? At Ripples. On Thursday. At seven.” If he is disturbed by the amount of thought I have put into this, he doesn’t show it. “Sounds great. I’ll see you there.” “See you!” I take the metro home and feel my heart pounding triumph and terror into my throat. Thursday evening arrives. I wear a denim jacket over a peach-colored dress that I found in a thrift store in New Orleans. He taps me on the shoulder outside the ice cream place, a tiny nondescript shopfront sporting a faded purple sign. We walk in and gaze at the creamy pinks and blues and greens. “What kind should I get?” he asks, eyes wide. I purse my lips, considering. “My favorite is rosewater. But the chocolate raspberry is amazing.” I get the former and he gets the latter and we sit down on a bench to eat. “I’m excited for Kai and Emily’s wedding,” I say around a mouthful. They are not engaged, but everyone expects them to be soon. “Same,” he says, wiping chocolate from his face. “I’m kind of relying on them to be the first of my friends to get married. You know they’ve been together for eight years?” I can’t imagine being with anyone for that long. But I don’t say this. “Wow. Their relationship is an elementary schooler. It should be playing jump-rope at recess and watching Phineas and Ferb.” “Hey,” he protests. “I still love Phineas and Ferb.” I raise my eyebrows. “But have you memorized all of the songs?” “Well, no.” I shake my head. “Fake fan.” We finish too quickly and decide to go for a walk. We pass greystone walkups and bright murals and trees that are just starting to change their leaves. We browse in a comic book shop and a record store, talk about our favorite books and songs. The conversations flows without pauses or awkwardness. We are still talking by the time we have come full circle and are back at the ice cream store, closed now, so we decide to go back to my place and watch Brooklyn 99. During the first episode, we lie next to each other on our stomachs. During the second episode, we lean back on my bed and he puts his arms around my shoulders. We are about to watch the third episode when I whisper, “We can either keep watching or start making out. Your pick.” He turns towards me. “Making out sounds nice.” His kisses are open and sloppy and too fast, but there is something endearing about his urgency. Like a puppy. We start undressing and he is quickly frustrated by the lacing of my dress, the tightness of my leggings. “Why is everything you’re wearing so hard to take off?” he asks. “You didn’t strike me as the kind of person who had sex on a first date!” Kai’s words, not mine. “I’m not,” he admits. “I never do this.” Soon I’m wearing nothing but a pair of black cotton boy shorts. Once he takes off his shirt I can see that he’s built like a teddy bear, warm and solid and broad-chested. He gazes in awe at me. “You have a really nice body,” he murmurs. We go back to kissing. He bites my neck and I moan and I feel him harden against my leg. I guide his hands over my breasts and he breathes how beautiful I am into my ear. It’s been a while since anyone has done that. Not since that guy last year who took me home from a bar, drunk, and did things to me as I drifted in and out of consciousness. I don’t remember much, but I remember the noise of his breath in my ear as pain stabbed under my skirt. “Should I get a condom?” I whisper. “Sure. But. Um. Before we go any further – “ Oh god oh god you have herpes holy fuck how do I get you out of my house……. “I’ve never done this before. I’m a virgin.” I exhale so hard I collapse against him. “Didn’t you have a girlfriend?” I ask. He shrugs. “She wasn’t ready for sex. She’s a pretty religious Catholic.” Something about his use of the present tense makes me flinch. I don’t want to be reminded that this person still exists, not in this moment. “So are you ok with us doing this?” “Oh, yeah. Here, lie down.” I lie back and he trails kisses down my throat, my collarbone, my stomach. A gentleman. He gives head like someone who has been honing his technique due to a lack of other options and I have very few complaints. The sex itself involves a lot of awkward thrusting and grunting. I feel some pleasure, but I spend most of those minutes stifling laughter at the ludicrousness of it all. After a while he’s worked up a sweat and still hasn’t finished so I stop him and ease myself down his stomach. I use my hands and my mouth and enjoy watching him writhe, loving the sound of his groans and the feel of his hands gripping my hair. “You’re really good at that,” he gasps when I finally come up for air. I stretch contentedly like a cat. “I know.” I curl up in his arms. My mind feels cloudy and electric, like the aftermath of a thunderstorm. I wonder if the oxytocin is going to make me say something I don’t mean, chase something I don’t want. “So how did things end? With your ex,” I ask casually. “We’re still friends. We play on a soccer team together.” Charming. He leaves at midnight and I jump into the shower. The next morning I rummage for a scarf to hide an enormous hickey. I tell myself I won’t stalk his ex. That I don’t care enough to stalk his ex. Then my friend Rebecca and I get drunk on Saturday night and stalk his ex. Rebecca wants to be a lawyer but I think she should join the FBI because she can find anything on anyone. The ex has beautiful smooth skin and long dark hair. We find her high school, a local paper’s take on one of her field hockey matches, a picture of her house with Japanese maples in the front yard on Google Maps. Her feminist blog is riddled with typos but I respect the righteous anger seething in her posts about sexual assaults and the intersections of racism and sexism she faces as a woman of color. “I think we could be friends,” I declare after we polish off the bottle of red wine. I message him about nothing for the next few days – funny gifs, pictures of cats – and he asks if I want to hang out again next Thursday. We end up going to a dessert café and talking about the family reunion he went to over the weekend while Rebecca and I were internet-stalking. “I have this uncle who I hadn’t seen since I was seven and he got super drunk and kept telling me how handsome I was,” he relates over an oozing chocolate lava cake. “Definitely one of the most awkward family gatherings of all time.” I shake my head. “Amateur hour. My family reunions consist of my uncles telling me how much I look like a supermodel AND my grandmother trying to set me up with my step cousin.” He laughs. “Are you serious?” “Every. Damn. Time.” We lick chocolate sauce from our spoons and go back to my place again. We briefly consider starting Riverdale but decide it’s too much of a time commitment and opt for The Office episode where Michael and Dwight and Andy decide to do parkour. We barely make it through before our clothes start coming off. The breeze wafting through my open window is chilly, so I squirm out from under him to close it. I pause to take in the city illuminated against the night sky. “Nice view,” he says from the bed. “Right?” I turn around to look at him. “It’s beautiful. I love my room.” He gestures to the lacy pink underwear stretched over my ass. “I meant you.” I stick out my tongue. I like how easy it is to be naked in front of him, how he has no subtlety and so obviously doesn’t care about the knifelike edge of my nose or the bulge of my belly or the smallness of my breasts. I ride him so I can look down on him. This is what I love the most, watching their faces contort, hearing the yeah yeah yeah fucks. When we get tired we stop and cuddle for a while. Then I whisper some of the things I like, what I want him to do to me. He grabs my hands and pins them above my head, pulls my hair back so my throat is bared to his mouth. Then, when he hears me gasp, he releases me abruptly. “That was a preview,” he whispers. “For next time.” I smile. There is going to be a next time. At two in the morning he starts putting his clothes back on. He kisses my hands, my nose, my cheek, and it does not occur to me to be anything but happy. I wrap a towel around my body and walk him to the door. “I have a crazy few days coming up,” he murmurs, pulling me towards him. “But I’ll message you at the end of the week.” I stumble, laughing, trying not to wake my roommates, and we kiss goodbye. On Monday, I buy a new box of condoms from the pharmacy. On Tuesday, I check my cycle tracking app to make sure I’m not ovulating. On Wednesday, I pretend to do my homework while idly Googling new sex positions. On Thursday, I do laundry so I have all my outfit options open. On Friday morning, I shave. Everywhere. On Friday night, I stare at my phone during a party, drumming my nails on a table top and thinking, Tick, tock, bastard. “How are things going with you guys?” Emily asks. I shrug, trying to seem nonchalant. “He said he would text me at the end of this week, but he hasn’t.” “I haven’t seen him all week,” Kai chimes in. “I don’t think he’s slept. Not at home, at least.” A few minutes later, my phone buzzes. He asks me if I want to get coffee over the weekend. “He just messaged me.” “Good,” says Emily. “I texted him to tell him he has to be nice to you because you’re my friend.” My stomach twists and I laugh mirthlessly. “Thanks, now I know he really wants to see me.” “Oh, no,” she stammers. “I didn’t mean – he probably – ” “Don’t worry,” I soothe. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine.” I finish my drink. And another. And another. Eventually I stop thinking. On Sunday morning I pull down my underwear in the bathroom and see red. Every part of my body feels swollen and sore. I worry about looking tired and bloated when I meet him at the coffee shop, but he looks worse – pale and drawn, with deep shadows under his eyes. I order a black coffee and sit at a table, reading a play for English. He joins me a few minutes later, holding something sweet and milky-looking. “Sorry it took me such a long time to get back to you,” he apologizes. “I think I’ve slept for a total of ten hours this week.” “Quit flexing,” I quip, but my voice cracks. He smiles and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I wanted to tell you something.” I am outrageously proud of my ability to raise a single eyebrow and do so. “Ok.” “So I know we’ve just been seeing each other casually,” he begins. My stomach drops. “And it’s been really fun, but I’m still not over my ex.” I say nothing. I should have expected this; moving from dessert and sex to coffee is not an upgrade. "So I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do….what we’ve been doing.” Still nothing. I feel like I have been kicked in the stomach but it gives me grim pleasure to watch him squirm in his own awkward silence, a grub skewered on a fishing hook. “I’m sorry,” he stutters. “It’s just…… too many long hours in the library, you know? Alone, thinking about my relationship…….” Jesus. “I still love her. I can’t get her out of my head.” Does this man have an off button? “But we can still be friends.” My eyebrow is still raised. “I have to go, actually,” he blurts out. “I have a soccer game. Our team could be the second-worst in intramurals instead of the worst-worst if we win.” “Impressive,” I say coolly, willing my voice not to shake. I take every book out of my bag and spread them over the tabletop, asserting my dominance over the space. I put my earbuds in and start reading the same line of my textbook over and over. I don’t see him leave, but when I look up he is gone. I count to thirty. Then I shove everything back in my bag and walk out the door, towards home. Even though I didn’t want to be his girlfriend or his lover or his anything, really, even though all I wanted was a next time, I find myself crying. I feel a cramp that is more than a cramp because suddenly my entire body remembers the compounded pains of the past few weeks: The throb in my arms from carrying that stupid air mattress all the way to my apartment from the metro stop. The burn in my thighs from riding him. The ache in my jaw from going down on him. The realization that I have spent an entire month working and hurting for something that was never going to be anything. That I have spent the entire week being rejected without even knowing it. I spend most of the day in my room trying to work. Words swim across my gaze, meaningless. I make myself pasta for dinner and FaceTime my best friend. She takes one look at my swollen eyes and brandishes a pen menacingly at the camera. “What happened? Who am I murdering? Is it that guy?” I tell her what happened. When I get to the part about him saying he spent too much time in the library thinking about his feelings for his ex she actually shrieks. “I will mail bees to his house!” “You can’t, he’s my friend’s roommate.” “I will mail bees to just his room! “Fine.” She shakes her head vehemently. “That’s like the worst kind of fuckboy. The one who wants to believe he’s the ‘nice guy’ but who still acts like an emotional leech without any respect for other people’s feelings or time or anything.” “A softboy. He’s a softboy.” “Exactly. Fucker.” Her voice softens. “You deserve so much better. Even for just sex. Did he….?“ I shake my head but something feels wrong, because even though it’s not the same thing as the guy who did things when I was drunk I feel the same way I felt then, like some kind of toy that’s been used and tossed aside and left to slump in a corner with all its seams unraveling. “Did you like him?” I shrug. “He just said there would be a next time and now there’s not going to be a next time and he sat there dumping all his emotions on me when he clearly didn’t care about mine and I feel like I’m not even allowed to be angry at him but I am just so sick of being treated like I don’t matter.” My voice trembles. “Hey,” she says sternly. “You matter to me. You matter to your friends and your family. And one day you will matter to someone romantically if that is what you want. You deserve to be treated like you matter all the time. Do you have to see him again?” I shake my head. “No. He said he wanted to be friends, but he’s not going to talk to me again.” “If he sees you again he’d better run the other fucking way,” she growls. I laugh at the bulldoggishness of her expression. It reminds me of the time Jessica Mason called her a bitch on the first day of middle school. Jessica left that encounter with a black eye and a bruised ego, too embarrassed to tell any adults who the culprit was. Together, we decide to erase him. I delete all his messages and unfriend him on Facebook and immediately feel lighter. We talk about her for a while, how her roommate tried to kick her out of their dorm so she could have phone sex with her boyfriend. How her mother is going back to school now that she and her little brother are out of the house. How her dad is dating again for the first time since the divorce. “It’s weird to think of them starting over at that age, you know?” she muses. “I mean, people think you’re supposed to have it all figured out by then. With the house and the career and the kids and everything.” “Except for the midlife crisis,” I point out. “Fair. It definitely takes some of the pressure off, though. One mistake doesn’t mean the end of everything. And the world is just starting to open up to us, after all.” We talk about our favorite queens on Rupaul’s Drag Race for a while. By the time we say goodnight the moon is high in the sky outside my window. Before I shut my computer, I log onto Facebook for a final ex-stalking session. He is nowhere to be found on her timeline, at least nowhere publicly visible. I look through her summer vacation albums and old prom photos and feel oddly soothed by the sight of her face looking out across the ocean, the shimmering coral pink satin of her gown. By the knowledge that she is just a person, with a life and memories and friends of her own, not defined by her past or looming as an ominous symbol of my own inadequacy. Midterms hit, and I spend the next few weeks buried in papers and projects. The pain dims quickly from the distraction. I am sitting on a bench in a hallway charging my phone between classes when the face that I have seen so many times on my laptop screen drifts into my line of sight. “Hi!” the ex chirps nervously. “I’m running for VP Internal for the Arts Undergraduate Society and I need a hundred student signatures, would you mind signing my sheet?” She holds out a clipboard. Her big dark eyes are so apologetic, like she’s sorry for daring to enter my breathing space. “Sure!” I respond. I like your blog. She beams and points to where I should sign my name. “Sorry to take up your time, it’s just so they know you’re, like, a real person.” “No worries! Best to be on the safe side and make sure I’m not a bot.” I have Japanese maples in my yard at home too. I sign the paper with a flourish and hand it back to her. “Good luck!” Did you win your soccer game? She smiles as she takes the paper back. “Thank you, you’re so nice!” I want to call after her as she walks away, tell her not to be nervous, that nobody minds signing her sheet and anyone who does is obviously an ass. I catch myself preparing to shout at her retreating form and the words dissolve on my tongue like waves crashing against a shore. You can do so much better than him. Sophie Panzer grew up in New Jersey, completed her BA at McGill University, and currently teaches English in Prague, Czech Republic. She is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks Survive July (Red Bird Chapbooks 2019) and Mothers of the Apocalypse (Ethel Press 2019). She has edited prose for Inklette and Scrivener Creative Review. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Josephine Quarterly, Lavender Review, Gingerbread House, and Pulp Literature. 3/1/2019 5 Comments Glow Worm by Ty HallDarin Barry CC Glow Worm It was a fling until her sister flung herself off a hotel balcony in Mexico. Then it was cemented. That was the night she told me she loved me. She told me she loved me like it was an accident, caught up in the moment, tangled together on the couch. She never let me in her bed, not at first anyway. She said she didn’t let any men in her bed. I didn’t believe her, seeing from the hallway purple velvet Velcro hand restraints wrapped around her headboard’s posts. She said with a wink that those were for girls (it turns out we share one in common, just not at the same time) and I believed her. I believed her when she said she loved me, too, like a conqueror who believes those he subdued are loyal to the new throne. I believed her when she whispered it and covered her mouth as if in politeness after a faux pas, lying exposed on her back. She grinned with duper’s delight. She’d said she didn’t love anyone anymore. She’d spoken of love the day before. She had a habit of being seasonally obsessive. In February, for example, she’d ornamented the house with hearts, and in March she’d adorned the halls with shamrocks. This month it was pumpkins. There were at least 30 pumpkins on the back porch of her house. We were sitting out there smoking cigarettes when she said she thinks love is like a pumpkin, as smoke escaped her nostrils like souls from inverted crematorium smokestacks. “Why’s that?” “Just look at them,” she said, gesturing across the gourd-pocked landscape with her cigarette. “They’ve got a tough, rind-y exterior which, when it’s cut, gets all messy and everything falls out. And people give them nasty faces to scare everyone away. But despite all that, when they cut it open and spill the seeds all over the place, and carve the scary faces to keep other people or demons at bay, they feel the need to light a fire in them until they’re eventually left out to rot. Oh!” she added as an afterthought, “Those potential pumpkins that are seeds get literally chewed up and spit out, sometimes. Love, and those in it, are like a pumpkin.” She told me about a time she was five, soon after her dad had disappeared. She was standing on the balcony of a motel in San Antonio, looking out over the railing at the illuminated pool with shadows of floating leaves and bandages and cans. She held in her tiny hands her favorite toy—a little green Playskool glow worm. It looked like a green bean or pea pod with a cherub’s head and nightcap on top, and when you squeezed it, it lit up. She squeezed it and wanted a better look over the railing, so she stepped her little foot up on the rail three inches off the ground and slipped and grabbed the railing to stabilize herself. That’s when she dropped the glow worm. She watched it fall, bounce, and ricochet all the way down the cement. Its light when out. There were tears in her eyes when she said, “And it never lit up again.” She instantly threw herself into me, sobbing and kissing simultaneously, and asked if I’d choke her. And slap her around a little. I didn’t want to, but that’s exactly what I did. She found out about her sister’s apparent suicide when the two-day husband called her up and very matter-of-factly laid out the details. He said that she'd been acting strange. That she left dinner early to go back to the hotel room. There was something about screaming, or shouting, and maybe the husband was there or he wasn’t but the downstairs tenants sure heard something—at least that was in the policía report. That, and her body was flat on the pavement. There was no autopsy. Mexican hospital. The body would be repatriated in an urn. This roused her suspicions even further, and she was sure the husband had drugged her. None of it added up, she said. It was nothing like her sister to jump off a building. Her sister was the good one. She told me about the nights their dad would come into their room when she was four and close the door and crawl into bed with her sister, smelling like booze. We got drunk that night on Canadian whiskey. About two hours in she took a photo album out and showed me pictures of her and her sister that she said she’d never shown anybody else. I didn’t believe her. She told me she loved me again and told her I loved her too because that’s what she needed to hear, and for the first time since I’d known her I saw her soften. Not give in or succumb like she was accustomed to doing, but brighten and collapse at the same time. But then over time she began to become all the anger and angst and uncertainty of the 90s. She’d smoke weed until she was hoarse and then ask me to get rougher, sometimes make tacos or whiskey runs, or to go down to the train tracks with her to hop the train and see where it took us. The night I accidentally gave her a black eye she said she’d be getting off on it for days. After a while, she either forgot or didn’t care about the conspiracy surrounding her sister’s death, and wanted to go out somewhere. “You wanna do something?” “Like what?” She stood up and walked out to the porch where all the pumpkins were. “I hate these things,” she said. “Let’s go to the bridge. Let’s load up your truck bed and take them down to the bridge and throw them off the bridge and smash them to pieces. Every last one.” And that’s exactly what we did. Ty Hall Lives in Texas, makes up stories, and tries to be good. He has been published in multiple literary journals, and has won the "English Faculty Prize for Best Fiction" (McLennan College, "A Story"), Swaggerfest Film's "Best In Show" (script, "9 Words"), and an ADDY for commercial copywriting. Antoine Pintout CC
Here Are Your Heroines The two girls trace index fingers through their hair, curling strands up to a peculiar climax of habit. This is the fifth motel in eight days. Four motels ago, there were three girls. The third girl, a skinny one from Florida, fought like an animal. The man was surprised at first, lost a step and had to regroup. But it ended the same way it always ended. This had been in Ohio, ten miles or so outside of Cincinnati at a gas station. All the girls were excited to be out of the vehicle, to feel sunlight warming their skin, to hear the rip-speed of trucks from the nearby interstate. Inside the gas station a man with gray hair and thick, black glasses filled two cups with ice from the fountain drink stand, two boys picked Gatorade from the back cooler and then switched them for two cans of Pepsi. The world turned. Back in the van, heading west now, they tore into the bags of chips, the cold drinks fizzed to life. But somewhere about fifty miles out from Cincinnati the man grew angry all at once. The skinny girl from Florida had started pulling food away from the others. He stopped the van and had her come to the front. Then he made her eat all the food while the rest watched, drink all the pop and juice. He told her if she threw up she’d have to eat her mess off the floarboards. After something like that, after what he eventually did to the girl from Florida, whose name was Beth, the last two girls now told each other stories to help forgot the last two weeks, their decision to stay late at softball practice, for example. Stories that changed time and history. In this way, morning, noon, and night could almost feel normal. *** In some stories they’re on a long, exciting vacation. The motel ice machine is full and it’s another beautiful day. But closing their eyes against the poolside sunlight, they know he can see the lavender veins across their eyelids, his attention clean and focused through the window. Later, after the pool, there’s the room. He has to force them inside in the hushed way a parent will try to scold a child in public, waving them to go in, watching everything around them, mindful of curious, fellow travelers. The nervousness was electric shock, moving from the man to everything around him. Lights appeared to blink on and off, cars started and then stopped and started up again all across the parking lot. Even a custodian, who appeared from the stairs with a broom, shuffled to a halt, staring blankly at the man outside Room 211. Six motels ago, if you can believe it, there were seven girls. One for each day of the week. *** The last two girls sit on each side of the single bed. They’ve become close while helping each other forget their circumstances for short periods of time, such as poolside, when a pool is available. In the sun, reclined, wearing sunglasses and spreading lotion, they even find themselves humming songs they enjoyed before this new life. This new life, the problem with it is simple: it’s too short. Or, in the end, it will have been too short. Luckily, both girls are still teenagers and are mostly incapable of conceiving of a darkness such as death. Their world is one of stories, imagined moments of escape or of the man falling dead with a heart attack, a janitor or some cleaning personnel showing up unannounced and all the possibilities that could result. They comfort themselves with these stories and have done so for such a long time now that if any small opportunity did present itself, the chances they might daydream right through it had become the likely outcome. *** During the first hour after they are all in the motel room he ties them to the bed and busies himself with his recreation. Small punishments, nothing they can’t shake off and bounce back from when he desires more play. The girls imagine police cars pulling in, knives hidden under pillows, knots loosening after the man has gone to sleep. They are building a world inside their heads while he works their bodies and breathes fire. But the two girls didn’t live in fairy tales for long. The next evening, skin warmed from poolside sunning, they decided to charge and attack the man together. They overtook him, and, breathing fire of their own, beat him to death with the motel phone. Because you will need to know for the retelling, their names were Pamela and Tiffany. The man will always be nothing more than the man. Sheldon Lee Compton is a short story writer, poet, and novelist from Kentucky. He is the author of three books of fiction and an upcoming collaborative chapbook of poetry. His most recent fiction and poetry has appeared in Wigleaf, BULL, Mannequin Haus, and Vending Machine Press. You can find him @bentcountry on Twitter and by visiting bentcountry.blogspot.com. |
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