I lied, she said Saturdays in Madison Losing Me

Ekaterina Arkhangelskaia

I lied, she said

LEA ANGELICA KARL

Though not of loving you.

Remember the worn tread beneath us And a four-cylinder lull igniting The idling air between You and me; just like little fires Lighting dark; I never told you how That night I began to breathe A sky not like the one we knew.

To be honest, it was not real When a pothole pavement met my feet On that tested Midwest road Where the seasons charged a toll And a brazen girl stepped in retreat Of you; it was but a fallacy, my dear.

In a sapphire shutter Victorian, a boy Into a shallow glass, poured a blue gin. But to say I indulged without reason— For not your touch wistful on the bottle Nor an us reborn amid whimsy Nor even a nostalgic us yet unborn, Would be a wild insincerity. A decade closing and I still could not Stop; behind the driver’s seat to you I lied about living during our time apart. Did you believe that my lungs did not Shake; when between you and me The air abandoned the sky that we knew.

I lied and I lied and I lied, my love, When I spoke of your heart And wished for it whole. Truth be told I wanted it broken and split apart So I could build it back better For you; using pieces of my own.

It was untrue when I asked for a lifetime With you; when I felt that enough was An ending beside you. To be honest, I dream Of unticking clocks and a sun ever setting And unsetting; between you and me, I do confess that I have lied,

Though never of loving you.

Ekaterina Arkhangelskaia

Saturdays in Madison

LEA ANGELICA KARL

Waffles strawberries blueberries A syrup medley The flavors heavy Not unlike the confident rattle Of my headphones this morning Beyond the State Street scuttle The sensory stimuli simulate a simplicity To set my mind alight Today my hair is golden yellow In the right light So maybe you will say hi to me And I will say hello Your speckled spaniel will lick its lips As if to concur or beget The space to trot between us With a wily spring in its step. On the narrowing isthmus We water down souls will seek Refuge on Mendota A secondhand sailboat wallow In the deep The Muskellunge will cackle And call us shallow.

Ekaterina Arkhangelskaia

Losing Me

LEA ANGELICA KARL

I relate to unrelating. The obligate oxymoron— Sporting a stapled-on smile like I can stomach your consumption Of my cannibalized heart like I am made of good intention. But I am unmade like the bed Upon which we pretend to sleep.

My little shapeshifter, watch as I work the wheel like you worked me. My world spinning beneath your grasp— I was mesmerized by the mold You set ablaze where now a tired Wildflower bends and wilts inside.

I will die for the undying Death of a girl with my old name Who wears my striped socks and dried tears And reads recycled words aloud.

So I sleep under the spring grass Where it will never grow again.

Lea Angelica Karl is a hobbyist writer born and rooted in the rural Northwoods of Wisconsin where she was raised upon the back of a horse. Currently located in Madison, Wisconsin, she is a biomedical research specialist by profession and attends the University of Wisconsin-Madison for creative writing. She finds artistic inspiration through empathetic introspection and examination of the natural world.