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She opens the trunk of her car. Trash bags tumble down, coming untied. I glimpse girls’
clothes, probably juniors’ sizes, a flower-print backpack, sandals, and headphones. She crams the bags full again, her eyes narrowed, her face drawn. Her hair’s disheveled. Graying. She reeks of sweat. Seeing me staring at her, she flips the bird, rattling off a string of swearwords. Jerk. She climbs back into her car and peels out of the parking lot, her tires screeching on the hot pavement. I haul her crap inside, all twenty-eight bags of donations, muttering to myself. The job done, I grab today’s newspaper. Reckless driver kills seventeen-year-old girl, the headline shouts. There’s a picture of the victim. She looks just like that woman. I long to touch her but fear
the lash of rejection my touch may incite. Sometimes, she needs a mothers love, though to voice such a need would leave a soured scent on her skin no amount of perfume could erase. Occasionally, she emerges like a frightened rabbit from the grip of the unreliable narrator claiming squatters rights in a recess at the back of her head. And all I can do is wait. Wait on the sidelines in the hope one day she’ll throw the ball my way and I will still have it in me to catch it. ghosts
we are like ghosts in an old library. not quite knowing what we’re doing or what we’re looking for. searching for. if that is, in fact, what we are doing. a tether so forged in the fires of friendship. two sisters, not of the same blood but kin just the same. two apparitions, two spirits who know how to be alone together. feel that quaking sadness together, and still have no answers. no resolution, just an open desire to live, to experience more. there is something to the act of exploration that is healing. It is March again
with drowsy Dahlias on my terrace swaying to the tune of the gentle zephyr As I hide my face under my thick blanket I realize that the piercing winter is departing with wistful eyes that are moist with tears ruminating on what you put me through years ago This act of being a champion in forgiving and forgetting is slowly becoming difficult to continue how long can one hide? there is a limit to everything How can I conceal what is inside my heart: a fusion of brokenness and light this light has been suppressed for so long that it has started doubting its potency how can I hide that which has made my countenance perpetually grim? I so often ignore these things in a futile attempt for survival,
But I know they will erupt into something bigger. What will start as something so small, so miniscule, Will eventually erupt into something I cannot contain with any amount of perfection. It’s like waiting for a pot to boil, except you forget about it and leave and the house burns down. You still have to sleep in the house, though, because it’s your only house and you’re a child. So you lay down in the remains, where there are no walls, only boards, and try to sleep. Maybe one night it will storm and there won’t be a roof or walls to protect you. When this happens you will just let it hit you and freeze. You will welcome the numbness. The next day you will get up and start building the house again. It will not stand long, but what’s important is that you rebuild anyway. I like the girl dogs the most,
how they care so easily, licking and curling around their pups. I like their girl dog greetings, Wiggle your tooshie, honey, wag your tail! Is that what you mean when you call me a “bitch”? Because somewhere inside the smooth skin of my body, there beats a small but weighted howl flowing from life’s force. Don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to place your hand over my chest and feel the heavy beating affectionate creation that thinks, that knows, it will bond with the newborn. And yet after all I’ve done, you still snarl “bitch.” Fair Luna, paintress of the night,
Employs her brush with polished skill Upon our quadrate roof to fill It with the colours cream and white. Men viewing from skyscrapers might Deem it a pink sheet—such a thrill! Fair Luna, paintress of the night, Employs her brush with polished skill. This roof looks pocked to naked sight; Therefore, it takes the shielding spill Of moon-made hues (like man's strong will to paint his griefs with laughter bright). Fair Luna, paintress of the night, Employs her brush with polished skill. admissions from the book of love letters i bought when we first met by Tatiana Shpakow (Ohio, 21)4/7/2024
On the first day I can call you mine, I cocoon my arms around you in the heart of the kitchen. You envelop cellophane around our picnic foods––the homemade hand-touched bread loafs as soft as your lips, the chocolate strawberries made with as much carefulness as our desperate kisses in halogen-lit supermarket aisles, the Caprese sandwiches that peel back to reveal every beautiful piece my loving God made just for you. Pour the Peach Bellini down my throat, let it settle. My heart is full of you¹ as the drunken warmth swallows me and settles there, in this jackrabbit organ. On your birthday, lit by the quiet dark, we all stand shoulder to shoulder around the cake. You wear the party hat at a slight tilt, I wear my heart pinned to my jacket sleeve. I’m no drinks in, as you become legal age, grinning wolfishly, knowing already that there is something sweeter in this room than the vanilla frosting on my fingertips. You unpin that heart, and all the patchwork until this moment splits open. I cannot exist without you².
I don’t know, I don’t want to know who I was before I met you. Just a month before I turn 21, I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again. At the end of winter, a passport misses a stamp, a heartbreak like your face missing 27 lipstick marks. Liberty emerged from the ocean, flicked the deliciously salty sea off her eyes and thought: don’t
be scared. Two more days only. She turned to the beach. On the golden sand, the umbrellas looked like smarties on cookie dough, baked by the shining sun. I am not going to get stuck on this island, she reassured herself: I am not. I am going back home. The sea water, cool and transparent like liquid aquamarine, glazed her temples. She shivered. Nothing good came out of that island. It was a cruel island. You could not stay on that island. There was no work, no money, no legacy, on that island, where one struggled, died and was forgotten. That was the destiny of all the people she had ever met until the day she had left for the Mainland. It had been her mother’s destiny too. Why she had returned for the first time in ten years for that weekend, after she had denied her roots for a decade, she didn’t know. To show her native land how well she had escaped Her? How she had succeeded outside her domain and got her college degrees, life experiences, friends; her new house, her office in a skyscraper, her husband to be? She smiled, admiring the diamond on her ring finger. The plane tickets had been mysteriously cheap. The idea of going back to her hometown had made her feel uneasy, but she had convinced herself: three days only. Three days of sun, tasty food and relaxation: the only good things that land could offer a human being. If she wasn’t there to show off her new life to the island that had imprisoned her for almost two decades, she realized, then she was there for the short vacation she needed after all the hard work she had put in her job that year. A fresh breeze hit her face, awaking her from her stream of thoughts, and cooled the water around her. Liberty frowned. The mistral had left the island the night before: it never returned so quickly. She shivered again. She set her eyes on the sunbaked shore and pushed forward. A woman whimpers more than her child will even,
beaten by pushes of words piercing her heart to pieces, and fists quick to teach her the sign language of a beast. Her tears become the ink of this pen. Every morning, she shapeshifts from the beauty of the night into a mourner, For every breaking of the dawn kills the night’s beauty, and mocks how short the night that swallows her day’s grieving is. At noon, she is denied sunlight. Her skin becomes where fists carrying abuse land, and her mouth is a gagged voiceless thing. The night is where she tells the day’s experience. Her body caresses the serenity of darkness, and pray to stay there forever, for a new dawn is a nightmare. |