Uncovering Crystal Issue 1
Scars She overheard while dressing after gym class that the first time stained. Lying in bed that night with bare arms brushing her belly, she thought about thin lines of pink on white cotton, a pain much deeper than she was able to give herself. She had always inflicted her own pain so she could control taking it away. She couldn't cut; she didn't like to look inside. Burning, the threat but not assurance of her soft meat erupting at the flick of a lighter or the strike of a match, was usually enough. The idea that another could so easily bruise her soft, untouched creases left a dull thrill that kept her up half the night. She had played around with boys but had never gone too far. She wasn't a tease. She didn't want them to want that from her, but it was harder to keep them content the older they got. The steady stream of attention she had received from boys since junior high was dwindling. No longer happy with gazing, rubbing, and touching, they stopped waiting for her after school in the parking lot. No more rough kisses over the consoles of suped up Javelins and Mustangs. No more groping on sofas in the glow of MTV's Liquid Television. So on her third date with a man, not a boy, who picked her up in a car he owned and took her to dinner at a restaurant, not a buffet or pizza joint, she wore white cotton panties. He was easy. He talked to her in words not intended to coerce. Loved her without saying he did. He never mentioned the rush to take her home by curfew. And afterward, he turned on the shower, scalding and steamy as if he knew, and washed the scent of sex out of her hair. She wept quietly that night when he found her in the kitchen with a lighter in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. He kissed the burn, then smeared a glob of A & D ointment on her thigh before taking her home.
Liar I imagine the baby I killed had red hair. I can't say for certain since I was nineteen, and that was a long time ago. I only saw him on the monitor at the abortion clinic, and I didn't want to embarrass either of us by staring. Heath had red hair with ends that were split and curled from being whipped around in the wind. Always once during every motorcycle ride through the back roads, a lock of hair would catch the corner of my mouth. I'd spit it out and laugh in his ear, and we'd ride. Five years after I left him, I confessed my sin on a short line next to the question, 'is this your first pregnancy'. Sitting in the doctor's office, watching the receptionist eye The Price is Right while waiting for a copy of my insurance card to slide out of the printer, I felt certain that question was one of those true or false questions; otherwise, the line would have been longer. For the next six months, people I didn't know rubbed my swollen belly and asked if the baby was my first. I smiled, asked if they could feel the baby kicking, and lied like the Virgin Mary to save myself. I imagine the baby I killed had red hair like Heath's other baby. I saw her at Christmas one year. She jumped off the curb outside the mall, and the wind picked up a red curl, whipping it over her shoulder. I stood at the corner, holding hands with my blond-headed son, and watched them ride away.
Road Trip The sweetness of the corn mixes with musty soybeans and sticks to my skin. One-stop towns decorate open fields with marquee signs announcing births, engagements, and six piece chicken buckets for $4.99. Every town is my home. "Do you want that?" Heath nods. I turn the Billy Idol ‘Rebel Yell’ cassette over in my hand and think what a silly question. We haven’t had a cassette player in months. I’d have to stash it in the saddle bags for later. "That’s okay," I say, tossing the cassette case into the bin. The lady behind the counter smiles at him, at his thoughtfulness. "Ya’ll have a good night," she calls out. "Thanks. You do the same." Heath chucks a wave before guiding me out the door by my waist, inches away from the plastic cassette tucked into the band of my jeans. The bugs are violent outside of town, stinging my cheeks, but the darkness pushes us forward. I bury my head into Heath’s back, hunched over, the corner of the cassette jabbing my belly. Left hand on my thigh, shoulders spread broad, he windshields for me. He steers the bike onto a dirt path. I dismount and follow him a ways off the road. My legs, tired from the long ride, tremble as my boots shuffle over the rutted ground. The moon spots us from straight above. There’s no point in setting up the tent; farmers rise early. The first whir of pickups passing and Heath will wake. I climb into the sleeping bag with him, resting my head on the chest that has become my pillow. The scent of oil and wind is intoxicating. Lying together, the sleeping bag zipped tight, I ask the dreaded question, "Where are we going tomorrow?" My fingers play with the flesh hanging over his belt. "I don’t know. Keep heading south for a while. D.T. has a place for us in Florida. He has a buddy who owns a bike shop. I need to find some work. Our funds are getting low." "I could always dance somewhere. Just for one night." Saying those words coats the back of my tongue with bile. "I told you….never again. And I mean it." He sucks in his gut. The flesh disappears beneath my fingers. "Why do you even bring that up?" His eyes slit and he drops his arm to the ground, which is as far away as he can get in the confines of the flannel wrap. I fumble for the zipper on his blue jeans, letting the crickets speak for me. Their incessant, involuntary cries for companionship fill my ears and I know there isn’t any other language I know how to speak.
Mirrors Within the first hour of coming back to him, I knew it was only for the night. He didn't hand me the single helmet hanging on the handlebars of his motorcycle. Instead he pulled back his red hair and secured the strap behind his goatee. I unfolded the last dollars from my back pocket and wrote my name in the motel registry while he sat outside flipping his keys in the air. Stepping back into the night, I noticed the stars were prettier than I had been in a long time; I wished for tar clouds, or hurried rain, or a warm hand to cover my eyes. He turned on the porno channel and muted the volume. He fluffed a yellowed pillow and propped it up against the headboard, below the cigarette burns and next to the chipped wooden post, then relieved the top two buttons on his jeans. I saw all of this in the mirrors that lined the walls like a fancy department store dressing room, so I undressed. Eyes on the dirty television screen, one hand in his pants, he motioned for me. He was an arrow, wounding me then sealing his infection inside the wound. I stayed under the covers long past the cleaning lady's knock on the door, long after I heard the chrome shiver on his motorcycle. I climbed out once to look at the empty parking space and noticed myself in the mirrors. I was naked, smiling, pale as a star.
Pleasure Pleasure, a thought, then the slow drape of my leg over his belly. In the morning, physical pleasure isn't misused or attached to emotions charged by time, but passes lazily between us. We work in the garden throughout the afternoon. Side by side, we pull weeds and pinch herbs. We speak of bills or the kids. Because of love, because of time, we spend the rest of the day holding the morning under our tongues.
Tin Roof We hear him skulking in the backyard. He lingers over the snapped branch, and I imagine his eyes brittling like ice. We don't know when he will speak so we stand in the backyard with our fingers entwined, listening to his heavy breathing and the rain misting the treetops. It occurs to me that I haven't been this still for a very long time, and I think if I could reach out and touch them both, I could mold this moment like a piece of jewelry to wear a groove around my finger. Then the rain comes down hard and soaks the trees until they are black and wet like my insides, and I know I have to move or shake or let go of his hand. We walk up the hill together, one of them on each side of me, and I want us to keep walking past the parked cars outside the bar house, cross the road, and stop for a moment at the pond. There, we could stand beside each other and stare at our distorted reflections as the rain comes down and laughter leaks through the windows in the bar. We might be happy, the three of us, gawking at the smiling faces in the water. I know I would. Instead, we go inside and sit at a round table. They talk about the noise on the tin roof, and I buy the three of us double shots of whiskey. I should feel caught or busted but I don't. The waitress brings a shot of Jagermeister, compliments of the gentleman at the bar. They shake their heads as I drink it down. Cold, black, and wet, it coats my throat, feeling like victory inside. Then there's just us, the empty shot glasses, the last of the acorns pouncing on the tin roof, and the man at the bar patting the stool next to him.
Olive Water Some women have daddy complexes. Wedding pictures are taken; son-in-law stands head to head with father-in-law; professions, habits, religious affiliations are matched subconsciously, or not. We go to a bar, my husband and I. He is my height, five foot seven inches, three inches shy of my father, and weighs eighty pounds less than the man who taught me how to hunt. They like to hunt together. Sometimes we drive down to Kentucky on Saturday nights and wait for the hunt. My father always knocks before he comes into the room he built, the room where we sleep. I imagine he’s afraid of seeing me naked, bedsheets thrown aside during the night. But I’m not. I never am. I wear an old tee shirt of my husband’s; the name of his first band ironed above my left breast. My husband jerks at the knock - the kids don’t knock on our bedroom door at home - then says, “I’m up.” Why doesn’t he ever say that to me when I slip over him in the morning? At the bar, my husband is asked to sing. He looks at me and winks. His voice is what lured me. Never mind that he was small. Never mind that his thighs were the size of my biceps. He could sing. So he does. He sings one song after another. I think I’m forgotten. He’s stopped looking at me. He’s singing to the entire crowd; the men who wait until their cigarette ashes threaten to dirty the bar before tapping their smokes against tin ashtrays, the women who dance on the floor - pecking like chickens in a pen. A man sits down next to me. My husband points and smiles through the lyrics. The man nods to my husband. “Do you remember me?” he asks. “Not at all,” I say. He orders a whiskey sour and I laugh. A sour. Not straight. All sugared up. “What do you do now?” he asks. “I sit at home.” “I sit at home sometimes, too.” My father never sits at home. He always has something to do. He helped my brother build a cabin at his lake last year. He owns two autobody shops. He likes to hunt and fish. My husband goes outside during the band break. He’s part of the band now even though we showed up on the sly. “It’s better to talk now,” the man says. “Jared.” He touches my hand. “You’re Crystal. Crystal Gayle.” He smiles this big grin that puffs his cheeks and makes me look away. Even though years ago I grew tired of the tugs on my long hair, of my namesake, while my head is turned to the side, I laugh too. The next weekend we go camping. My husband and Jared have rekindled their old friendship. They’ve spoken on the phone for the past three nights, planned, called other friends, and my husband, for the first time in years, found a babysitter all on his own. “Have Crys look,” he says. Some guy I don’t know passes me a porno mag. “Are they real or fake?” my husband asks. “Crys knows,” he says. “She can spot them a mile away.” “I don’t want to look at this,” I say, tossing the magazine into the bonfire. “What the fuck?” The owner of the magazine stands up on the other side of the fire. He has on plastic flip flops from Walmart and is holding a can of Busch light.
“Grow up,” I say, before walking down to the lake. “Maybe she’s seen too much,” I hear my husband say. “Here’s five bucks. Sorry about the magazine.” No one comes down to me for a very long time. The sun has faded into the kind of orange that reminds me of the sherbert Push-Pops my dad used to buy at the local grocery when I was a kid. “I’d tell you they were childish but you’d think I was trying to make small talk,” Jared says, sitting on the sandstone rock below me. “Did you ever do this when you were a kid?” he asks. He takes a pocketknife from his pocket and scrapes against the rock, collecting bits of sand in the palm of his hand. He holds them out to me for inspection and I’m afraid to touch his hand. “Yes. When I was bored. Are you bored?” “Only slightly,” he says. “It’s wearing off.” “Why did you do that?” “Ditch the mag or storm off?” I ask. “Ditch the mag.” “Women are women are women,” I say. Jared gets off the rock and sits next to me. He stretches out his legs, that like mine, are thick; mine from dancing - I don’t ask about his. “It’s time to eat,” he says. “Is that why you came down here?” I ask. “Yes.” He sits across the fire. I sit beside my husband. “Try this,” my husband says, balancing a bite of coleslaw and Ramen noodles on his fork. “Didn’t you just cut your Brautwurst with that fork?” “Just eat it. You’ll like it.” “No thank you.” The only thing I have to eat is what I brought - pasta salad. I try not to look at Jared but notice, through the blue light of the fire, the curly noodles and dark bits of veggies that fill his plate. Someone brought two inflatable boats. They are tied off to a stake in the dirt on the bank of the deep. I know how to row a boat. The lake behind the house where I grew up had water moccasins, cattails, and dragonflies that skimmed across the algae. My dad taught me how to row. We used to fish together until my parents divorced and I read a PETA magazine which told me about the nerves in the mouths of fish. The lake is quiet except for the distant claps around the bonfire where my husband sits strumming a guitar. Out on the water, I float in a teal and yellow boat; my life dependent upon the lifejacket cinched around my chest and the strength in my legs. My husband made me bring the walkie-talkies. “Are you coming in?” he asks. “Sometime,” I say. “I’m trashed. I have to go to bed.” “I’ll be back soon.” Jared is waiting on the bank. “Are you in for the night?” he asks. “I’m tired of rowing,” I say. “May I?” My husband is asleep in the tent. Maybe not. It’s only been fifteen minutes. “Do you want me to come along?” “That’s the only reason I want to go out,” he says.
Jared doesn’t walk into the water to push off like I did. He climbs into the boat, sticks the oar into the mud, and thrusts us out into the deep olive water. “You still don’t remember me, do you?” Jared asks. I don’t know how I could have ever met someone so stunning and forgotten him. “No, I don’t.” “When your parents divorced, your dad rented a house down Asher road, way out in the cornfields. My parents owned those cornfields. You used to go 4wheeler riding with my younger brother. I helped him set up the tent where you used to sleep with him at night.” “I was only thirteen. That was nineteen years ago,” I reflect. “It was.” Jared’s hair was frizzy before he came onto the lake; a brown, uninspiring mess of split ends that touched his shoulders. I tried to picture him from twenty years ago but couldn’t. Maybe I never even saw him. Maybe he used to sit several yards away, behind a tree or a haybale, and watch his younger brother lift my shirt. One night my father drove his pickup truck up and down the gravel road looking for me. With the spotlight clamped to the driver’s window, he slowly churned through the gravel, bounced into ruts, and called my name. I know he heard the 4wheeler start, heard me speed away towards home. I couldn’t look at him, not with swollen red lips and wild eyes and hair twisted into knots. I didn’t ride through dark dusty cornfields in the middle of the night for several years afterward. The boat is small, intended for two people sitting in the same direction. Jared and I face each other, so I have to cross my ankles and lay them over the side of the boat. There is a cove, three hundred yards from our camp. Jared doesn’t row there. He stops rowing and lets the current take us closer to the cove. He reaches out with one finger and touches my ankle. I don’t move. I want to reach out and wrap his beard hair around my finger, twirl a piece where the brown thick hair begins to fade into red. I have a scar on my right foot. When I was seven I stepped on a piece of glass buried in the dirt in the barn. I knelt down and picked up the blue glass, a shard of a Mason jar. My dad came in from feeding the horses while I was standing there holding the glass. Paternal instinct? The quizzical look on my face? Maybe he was just looking down and saw the wet brown dirt under my foot? Regardless how he knew, he picked me up, and ran to the house. I heard him talking to my mother in the next room as I lay on the couch with one of his red bandannas wrapped around my foot. To the bone, he said. I undid the knot on the side of my foot and pulled one of the ends. I wanted to see the bone. How often do you get to see your insides from the outside? My mother fainted when I held up the foot and pulled back my middle toe, exposing my tiny pink bone. Jared found the scar. It’s a callous with a split now. It looks like a smiling mouth with thin white lips. He clicks it with his fingernail. He must know everything about me. “Are we supposed to talk?” I ask Jared. “Do you want to?” “Sort of.” “Ask me a question then.” “How do you know my husband?” “We used to work together several years ago. He was an apprentice and I was his journeyman. He’s a good worker. Quick and smart.”
“Why did you ask me to come out here with you?” I ask. He chuckles. His legs are so long that balancing them on the edge of the boat pushes them behind my head; so hairy that I can’t tell the color of the flesh beneath. “We should go back, then. I need to pee,” I say. “How badly do you need to go? We’re pretty far from camp. I could row you to the shore on the cove.” The walkie-talkie hadn’t beeped since I last talked to my husband. I couldn’t remember the communication range. I didn’t really care. The shore is strewn with plastic bottles and aluminum cans and beer bottles and rotten wood. Jared follows me to the bike trail several yards from shore. I pull down my panties and squat, reach behind me and bunch the thin cotton fabric in one hand. Pee splatters against the dirt and mists my ankles. Jared watches, stands five feet away with his arms crossed. There is a look on his face that I haven’t seen years. I stand up completely before reaching down for my panties. Lights pierce the tall thin trees that grow at the water’s edge. I notice them first and wonder if someone is lost or has drowned in a drunken stupor. Jared and I walk back to the boat. That is when I hear my name being called. We take the long way around the cove. Jared rows quickly and quietly, only a soft plunk escapes the water when he sinks the oars. A quarter mile from camp, Jared pulls the boat onto the shore. “I have to leave,” he says. “No one knows we were together.” “I can’t see you again.” “Why?” “Because I want to kiss you and it’s wrong.” Closer to camp, I call Cory on the walkie-talkie. I drifted out of range, I say. I was on the other side of the cove. No, I’m fine. I didn’t realize he was calling for me. I’ll be back before he will. I’m close to camp. I lean over the boat and dunk my face in the water. The olive water is fresh. It cleanses. It purifies. It rinses away the wild in my eyes.
No Fear My alter ego exhibits no fear. I wonder if she even knows it exists. Ten years ago I passed by New Orleans. There was this little bar that lit up on the weekends like lightning bugs in July. Conversation was loud, half the time filled with profanities and insults tossed in jest. These two cats were playing acoustic guitars this one night. The old man in a stained Sunday shirt thumped his guitar while the younger man's voice melted into the smoke. In between songs, the singer would reach up and tug on his short beard, probably some habit he started because he thought it made him look intriguing. This one time I caught his eye. He didn't smile at first, just nodded. So I waited until 'Sugar Mama' poured off his lips before I walked onto the dance floor. Anyway you look at it, it is performing, never me. On the stage I hide behind routines and makeup, and on the dance floor my alter ego takes over. She is confident. She has this way of making people want to be with her, lean into her, want to be close to her. And me? I do well to look people in the eye and speak without stumbling over my words. I like to converse without speaking. And that is what happened that night. He stopped singing, just played his guitar while I danced. The couples moved to the edge of the dance floor and the lone inebriated lady finally gave up and left too. It was his guitar and me and we controlled that room. When that smile moved his lips I knew that he knew. I caught a glimpse of her that night in a mirror. Underneath the red Budweiser paint this chick stared back at me, sweaty hair, eyes rushing like a summer crick. She winked at me. That part of me has no fear. I want to draw her out but she stays far away. Waiting for smoke filled bars with little lights that flicker like the lightening bugs in July.
Shallow Breath I lost my footing yesterday, and I thought this is it. This is how I will be found - sprawled on my back, skull denting the ground, looking up at the grackles flying overhead like they do everyday. My balance fought back just in time and gripped the earth. I survived with only a sore muscle in my back, one that hadn't been used in a while. Later, I ground the muscle into the cold rim on the claw foot tub and massaged the lump under my skin, slightly embarrassed by the fading agility of youth. There had been nothing foreseen to cause the unsteadiness; no branch on the ground to stumble upon, no stripped spiky corn stalk to grab hold of my skirt, only the earth changing expressions beneath me.
Midnight Fog She's finally gone. I deadbolt the front door so she can't get back in. If my mother returns, I'll tell her I didn't hear the door. I was afraid. I was sleeping. I'll never tell her I was lonely. I stand before my hazy bedroom mirror and check off my inventory: a Fuck the World poster, dead flowers in a dirty vase, and tiny strings of incense ash dangling off the bookshelf, dangerously hovering above thick red shag carpet. I unwrap the white towel, dingy and stained from the black dye fading out of my mohawk, and lie down on the bed. He always liked it when I got naked before I called. "Hello?" "Come see me tonight," I say into the phone. "Crystal?" "Come see me." "Where are you?" "Back at my mother's." "I'll be there in fifteen minutes." Anxiety awakens in my heart. I don't want to be like this. I don't want to know that I'll only have tonight, but I have to. I need a lump to rise in the back of my throat. I need a pain in my heart that draws up my stomach. I need to feel like I can never have him again. I lie to myself and say this will be the last time. I go to the mirror. I want him to see me and ache. I pull my hair over my shoulders so the freshly shaven sides of my head are covered. I want to look innocent and helpless - at first. But even under the cover of hair, the rings in my nipples catch the light of the lamp. He'll have to use his imagination. He'll stop at the park three blocks away. He'll trot down the sidewalk on the north side of the road where there are no streetlamps. He'll hold onto the latch on the gate, push the gate closed, then gently lower the latch, without raising sound or suspicion. I hear a grunt below my bedroom window as he climbs on top of the iron railing and grabs his key. He slips open the door. The deadbolt locks behind him. He doesn't say anything when he comes through my bedroom door. He slowly undresses, watching me,
searching my face. I smile, and he climbs into bed. Every midnight meeting with him is new now, despite the routine that brings us together. The moon reflects off his black hairless chest. I kiss it. He buries his nose in my hair, and I chew the end of a dreadlock. He is so sweet when he cries. A hint of heartbroken-induced wrinkles curl around his eyes and white teeth gnash between beautiful full lips. I wrap my arms around his body and feel for the long thin scars on his back, scars put there by me when I was young. My thumb brushes across the ripples and he grins through the tears, remembering that night at the park, in the backseat of the blue Lincoln, shadows of the trees dancing across my belly. Beautiful, white, perfect teeth in a grin I will never see again. We don't have sex or make love just yet. We remember emotions. Every sour word ever passed between us lies in the bed. We toss it back and forth. What made those words slip over our tongues? What caused us to separate in anger? How could we so easily tuck away our relationship - this relationship - and pretend as though we could go on forever without each other? When I was selfless, he used to pull me against his chest and surround me with his arms. I was completely dependent upon the steel cage he built around me. Tonight, I pull him to my chest. His breath fogs the metal rings in my nipples. He sobs. Without me, he says, life is lonely. But I know he is just like me. Without me isn't lonely, just as without him isn't lonely. Finality hurts. Finality is a song you've heard but only remember two words of the lyrics. You can't explain what you remember clearly enough so another can help you find it again. That final kiss, the lips you know you'll never feel again, the wet pillowcase, the rush, the anger, the hate, the absolute goodness of being out of control are why you look for it again and again. The newness of the first lingering kiss has worn off, and I know I'll never feel those emotions again until I convince myself it's the end.
Three Little Pigs Jake was the first to do everything. The first to steal a pack of Lucky Strikes. The first to smooth pot into a long slender line and lick the rolling paper. He liked to test the drugs before giving them to Emily and Allison, his girls. Tight, studded with the coolness of Anthony Kiedis and the angst of Eddie Vedder, Jake walked them down the hallway the first day of their freshman year and quickly became their in-between man. Jealousy only existed in relationships outside the trio, and jealousy often forced loyalty. He snorted for three months before inviting the girls into his bag. Emily giggled. Allison waited to see what happened to Emily before shocking her nose with the burn. Later, Jake pulled over into a gas station, and for the next hour snubbed one butt-less cigarette after another into the curb while Emily and Allison detailed his car. He only supplied them on the weekends; eventually starting the weekend on Friday morning so they could crash on Sunday, then adding a Thursday to make it a four day party. They didn't worry much at first, even after Emily's nose started running pink and Jake's tawny cheeks became flecked with scabs. They had each other and a loyalty to the bag. Allison was the first to find the smoke, the good stuff; the better quality, the less Jake would pick at the imaginary mites on his skin; the better quality in smokable form, meant the flesh in Emily's nose might have a chance to heal. She tried it first, a taste with the dealer, but unlike Jake, she was anxious to share, anxious to help her friends, and couldn't get over the fact that when she sucked the pipe, it felt like she was doing nothing more than smoking pot. She wasn't over the edge after all. She was slowly backing away. Allison spent all her money on the smoke. It was more expensive, but it was healthier, she told herself. If it had just been her, she would have kept it up the nose, but she had Emily and Jake to think about. Still, she couldn't afford a good pipe. And she didn't know the right people to tell her where to get one, besides the guy who told her she was too young to smoke but still sold her the bag after she said - while leaning against the door frame, all prettied up in a dull haired, crank sweating kind of way - that she was buying for her dad. Allison was always the smart one though. She unscrewed the bulb in the bathroom since it had a vanity light and an overhead, tapped and twisted until the silver bottom sat in her hand like a popped off button, sucked the smoke into her pink lungs, then offered it to her friends.
No Expectations We ran across the gravel and into the graveyard, leaping over the rounded headstones in a wild dash to the corner by the woods. Lindsey, drunk and high, stumbled into the briars that shielded the trees from knifebearing engravers like us. After we settled into a circle, Adam unrolled the flimsy cigarette wrapper and took out the joint. Legs tucked under him, balanced on one hip, he dug the lighter out of his pocket. The smoke popped and snapped as he inhaled. A spark disappeared above him. I took a big hit and laid my head in the middle of the circle. There she was, peeping out from behind the black clouds like a dancer's knees beneath her skirt. My eyelids fell. The cicadas were climbing out. I lay there, my body too alive to move, listening to their spiked legs rake against the bark at the base of the tree. A hand palmed my belly. My ribs rose in staccato under the perspired warmth. "What do you think?" Jenny asked, her black hair shining white under the moon. "Mmm, about what?" I mumbled. "Driving to the club. Do you want to go or not?" "I'm cool. Just pick me up later, okay?" "Whatever you want, chicky. Come on boys. She's staying." Feet shuffled. Mike Ness's croon faded away with the old chipped blue escort. Belly still warm from her touch, I thought about Jenny's room with the little pink flowered wallpaper, the vase of dead roses and moldy water sitting on her desk for at least the three years I'd known her. She was so naive, wanting to be what she wasn't‌.rich and thick, hurt and injured. She had a good life, a good family but wanted to come from destruction. "Taste?" Adam asked, extending the bottle. "I can't move," I grinned. "Open up." He poured it into my mouth, a warm trickle ran down my neck. I tried not to gag from laughing, letting it slowly fill my mouth before swallowing the two shots. "Why didn't you go with them?" I asked. He pushed me over to my belly, lying down next to me. "Why didn't you?" Blade of grass between his thumbs, whistling at the night creatures. "Didn't need to," I plucked the spear of grass from his fingers and gave it a toss. "Me neither." That closeness with no expectations. There isn't a word to describe it. The occasional innocent brush of skin on skin that we fear, hide from as adults but crave as teenagers. Locking eyes and not turning away. Heart pounding in your head knowing you won't dare move and ruin the moment. It isn't sex. It isn't love. It's intimacy. It's coming as close as you can to another living being with no expectations.
Many thanks to the editors of these online magazines who have published my writing over the past three months. No Fear in Gloom Cupboard Olive Water in Lit Up Magazine Pleasure in Six Sentences Tin Roof in The Guild of Outsider Writers Mirrors in The Guild of Outsider Writers Liar in Glossolalia Flash