I Travel for Love

Sydney Muench

water feels funny to drink and I don’t think I can stomach it like I can my grief grief feels old fashioned, — warm and terrible tip the glass to the back of my throat where I keep the — warm and terrible words I cannot say, like maraschino cherries stain my tongue and I hate them, but I think I love you raindrops speckle the pub window and it’s cold and grey, but I still love you and if love wasn’t so addictive maybe this would all be bearable if love wasn’t so addictive maybe we wouldn’t all be — so warm, so terrible something’s gone wrong in that we contort our bodies so much to fit into this bitter world we built for ourselves, — a world ever-warming and all the more terrible except for you if by healing, what is meant is rest, come back, lie next to me, press — your warm heart closer to this terrible chest

Warm and Terrible

Annika Rennaker

Vishwa Bhatt

The end of that summer found me sitting in a field with grief sitting heavily in me

Knowing the ending had come to spoil the entire story

An August epilogue

And a last sentence already written

And the kind of gentle tragedy that simmers in the stillness of the night air

No hot breeze could stop the gooseflesh prickling at my skin

Making an understudy of your fingers

Nor could the crickets drown out the chirping of my own busy heart

An unskilled substitute for the symphony you orchestrated

Every lazy morning of thin blankets and thinner promises

Found itself facing that evening’s sunset in the reflection of the tarp-covered pool

Only fools resist a death that beautiful

And only fools believe in the forevers of summer lovers

I never waited for you but

I never wore the yellow sundress again

And I mourn 28th August with the melancholy of a last warm wind knobby knees and a pointy spine hard hip bones that are easy to grab, hollow on the inside ribs that undulate and make ripples in my skin shoulder blades that stick out when i raise my hand i am no longer plump, i am no longer ripe. my body is decaying. my skeletal frame symbolizes my inevitable death, rather than my current life. i have begun to rot; my sweet, juicy fruit has been dried by the sun and i am now taut. when you bite into me you no longer taste the fresh juices, the blood, the sweat. i am just bones. you press your teeth into my shoulder and you gasp because i crunch in your mouth. my shoulder disintegrates into powder and you cough me up. once they see my body as what it is, a skeleton, they no longer want me. my features are beautiful, but on closer inspection they are merely pieces of plastic disguised as human. the only creature that could want me is a vulture, so desperate for nutrients that it will continue to pick and pick and pick at my bones, long after any remaining flesh is gone. they poke and prod at my body, wanting more, always wanting more. they’re just like everyone else. but, at least they appreciate my bones. the vulture is the only animal that feeds almost entirely on bone. they drop the bones from grand heights, swooping down to feast once they break on the rocks below. my body should be offered up to them. the vultures are waiting to pick my bones. they circle around me, counting the days until they can feast. in my final days, they will be the only ones who desire my body. i will be pushed away by all those who love and care for me, ashamed by my illness, my body, my skin and bones. but the vultures, they will worship me.