Poetry by Natasha Bredle

               ​ Nathalie CC



Plush

i remember when it went like this: 
             the boy in third grade 
gave me a plush dog for valentine’s day & i named it 
                              love, because how else 
             could it go? in the books: flip a page 
& there he is, applying the band-aid 
             with soft-gauze lips. like a breeze of liminality:
                              if there’s any smoke, it’s dispersed
                              gone, in a second, before a wanderlust 
             shade of febreeze floods the room 
& floating is real. 
             but close the book & poof, 
                              all that’s real is puncture
             hovering at the altar between my two temples, 
not my heart, whose space 
             is crowded with thumping, as if 
it recognizes i’m alive but not
                             breathing. how does this 
              happen? like this:        
                                                            he vanishes
like a glass slipper 
              & leaves & forgets, burdening me 
with the memory. can he blame me for asking
              where did the plush dog go?
                              & those clover crowns & the rings 
               we crafted from card paper on idle nights?
on my nails i trace 
               the outline of his hand & remember 
when it went like this: 
               alone at recess with a broken leg
until the boy sits down beside me & asks 
                              if he can draw a heart on my cast. 

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Natasha Bredle is a young (but fortunately not starving) artist based in Ohio. She writes about what she thinks about, which is really too much for her poor brain. You can find her work in Aster Lit, The Aurora Journal, and Second Chance Lit, to name a few. 
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