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The Archive
Volume 132 // Fall 2019
Established in 1887, the Archive is one of the oldest continuously published literary magazines in the United States and the oldest student publication at Duke University. The Archive is published once a year through the Undergraduate Publications Board of Duke University, Durham, N.C., and printing is by Chamblee Graphics. The Archive welcomes submissions from all undergraduates. All submissions received are read by the editorial staff, and authors’ names do not appear on manuscripts during the evaluation and selection process. The Archive is printed in Baskerville, Big Caslon, and Minion Pro typefaces, and designed using Adobe InDesign. All material Š 2019 by the Archive. All rights revert to the authors upon publication. dukearchive@gmail.com dukearchive.org Magazine Designed by Anthony Cardellini
Masthead Editors-in-Chief Avery Boltwood Daniel Egitto
Associate Literary Editors Jimmy Benjamin Anthony Cardellini Meg Hancock Arthi Kozhumam Annie Littlewood Brennan Neeley
Design Editor Anthony Cardellini
Poetry Jane Booth
The Ladder, 6 Umbrella Girl, 68
Avery Boltwood Twelve Months of May, 14
Omo Sanusi Yellow Icing, 16
Caroline Forster Back and Forth, 26
Sara Behn Disposable Cameras, 34
Anna Merryman Everywhere the light touches, 36
Anne Littlewood sorting through the storm, 44
Brooke Keene Dirty Monuments, 52
Ashley Manigo Dreams, 60
Daniel Egitto If I Were Jesus, 66
Theo Cai Unspoil, 74
Prose Keegan Trofatter
Brock Foreman
Tomato Juice, 8
No Refunds, No Exchanges, 48
Ray Baker
Ami Wong
Track and Field, 20
Gone Fishing, 54
Avery Boltwood
Anne Littlewood
A Night in Toronto, 30
Borrowed Words, 62
Kalley Huang
Arden Schraff
GOLD, 40
Hands, 72
The Ladder Jane Booth
She stands on the porch made of wooden slats, the window open behind her, its ivy creeping upwards like a ladder. She is about to leave from this place, about to find what is waiting for her when home is no longer a house with a front porch and white siding. I want to go up to her and say Stop, you aren’t ready, there are still goodbyes left to wish and boys down the street you haven’t yet kissed, and Easter eggs still hiding somewhere in the backyard, long forgotten. I want to remind her of how she used to gather fallen leaves for the friendly Giant who lived in the treehouse, so he would have kindling to keep warm in the winter frost. I want to send her off with a bundle of sticks in a knapsack tied with a checked bandana. And a map.
Fall 2019
Instead I will trace her footsteps from destination to starting point and show her that her mother really was right all along: You will walk in circles. The path will crisscross over itself so many times you will not know which way you came from. But there will be joy waiting on the other side, and you will find joy in the wading. Life will start when you leave from this place. So sprinkle breadcrumbs at every crossroads, gather postcards from the world and address them to your former self, pray with your dancing body and breathe in the smoke before your eyes begin to water. Don’t wait until you’re ready.
07
Tomato Juice Keegan Trofatter
Y
ou see Tomato Head before he sees you. You walk up to the house, the same it has always been: faded red bricks nestled in thick plaster, a cream-colored door layered with a glass one and a screen, a lawn that smells like it has been recently mowed and grass that is somehow still always overgrown. You see Tomato Head before he sees you because his belly sticks out half a second before his eyes do.
Tomato Head, most definitely, is all-parts tomato, and no vines. His belly is plump and sloshy, The sun crests rays of light upon it Before his feet round the corner, And enter the garden. His button-up shirt is pulled tightly across his middle Like thin skin. All the juice is kept inside. You look down and kick a piece of gravel that has maneuvered onto the smooth pavement of the driveway. You hear a car door slam, a jingle of keys, and a sigh: your mother. She moves towards him up the path to the house, her arms outstretched. She reminds you of an airplane landing, the way the wings sway in the thick atmosphere, the way the cabin hovers in the suspense of held breaths and silent prayers before touching down to hard earth. They hug.
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You’ve managed to kick the piece of gravel all the way from one side of the car to the other, successfully—twice. Your mother’s ringing voice calls out your name as you go for your third shot. You miss. Your sneaker skids the ground and knocks you off balance. You look down to see the bright blue rubber scraped to reveal the inner white. The piece of gravel stays where it’s at, laughing. You shuffle to the back of the car, shimmy your duffel bag out from between the seats, and make a big show of slinging it over one shoulder. It’s not really that heavy, but it’s heavier than you would’ve made it if you had packed for yourself. Granted, you’ll probably be grateful for the extra pair of sneakers when the ones you’re wearing get wet or muddy or your toes push the fabric thin. You are grateful for a mother who knows how quickly you can kill a pair of shoes, and who is right about most things. She helped you put your blonde hair into two French braids this morning and made you blueberry pancakes. You would be grateful for that, too, if you knew she wasn’t just buttering you up for what was to come. You try to make eye contact with her now in one last hope that she’ll change her mind. She’s kneeled over petting one of the cats. Last time you visited, you named him Little Brother. A month later, Little Brother had seven kittens. You watch her ringed fingers and manicured nails as they scratch behind Little Brother Mama’s ears. You think about the argument you had in the car, your feet kicking hard into the dashboard in front of you, sending pangs of instant guilt up your legs and into your stomach. You don’t want to move away from the car. Every step is just one closer to losing. You don’t want to make a “scene” because that would mean losing, too. You see no other option than to walk up the path and give Tomato Head a hug, to respond to his question of how you’ve been with a “pretty good.” You do these things. Your awkward shoulders are like bags of rocks tumbling downwards. It’s the weight of the duffel bag, and it’s something else. You decide that you dislike all greetings—formalities—people.
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When the “one last hug” and the “waving at the green Ford until it pulls completely out of the driveway, pivots, and bumps away down the gravel path forever” is over, you follow him inside. You make your first stop in your mother’s old bedroom—blue floral wallpaper and a matching blue toilet. The rug is plush, and blue, too. The room has two queen sized beds, a fact which used to blow your mind. There are two closets and space to spare. At least, you imagine there used to be space. Now every spare inch is full of books, dresses, shoe boxes, newspapers, and everything you could ever imagine ordering off of television commercials. There’s a little island of bare bed that seems like it’s been cleared away purposefully, which you assume is yours. You throw your bag down and head for the spiral staircase you just came up, pausing only to press on the electric keyboard in the hall. No sound comes out save for the drum of your fingers on the plastic. Down in the kitchen, he is waiting. “Cranberry or grape?” he asks, gesturing to the row of newlybought juices in the fridge. You think that you would have rather had apple. But at least it’s not prune. You always see other people’s grandparents on the TV trying to get people to drink the godawful stuff. You imagine what it must taste like, and your face shrivels up into a grimace. The ding of the plastic cup on the counter lets you know that he is disappointed. You look up and see that he has his very own frown buried within the wrinkles on his face. You think of explaining the face you made. The idea of prunes. The idea of grandparents. You don’t. “Grape!” you say, adding in some extra nodding to show him you are actually very excited about this option. Silence breaks. He pours it out, carton to cup, and throws in a bendy straw. In the living room, you cuddle up in your grandmother’s plush rocker and sip slowly. He puts on a Shirley Temple movie, and sinks into his La-Z-Boy with the newspaper. You keep one eye on Shirley’s feet as they fly across the screen. The other tries to catch him smile. Tomorrow, you will go outside. It is a promise.
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Tomato Head, most defiantly, lives in the garden. Roots break through the soles of rubber boots, Dirt finds home under fingernails. The backyard is not big, but some mornings you cannot find him. Clippers, shovel, and all, He has buried himself in freshly dewed soil. You yell “Grandpa” three times, running downhill past the apple trees and rows of muscadine plants. You catch him just barely sprouting up aside the rose bushes. You slow down when you see him, and become quiet. He is on his knees in what looks like prayer. When you are two feet away you see he is pulling out leaves among the tall grass.
“
You slow down when you see him, and become quiet. He is on his knees in what looks like prayer.” “See this? Great for bug bites.” he says, waving a bundle of the stuff around in the space that separates you. He goes into detail about the plant’s uses and how to spot it. You wonder how it is that everyone in this family knows everything, except you. It becomes hard to listen to him once you’ve realized where you’re standing. You’ve tried to steer clear of the rose bushes since you arrived. Peeking out behind the blossoms sit dozens of stone figures. They are placed in a semi-circle, facing east. When Nana showed you the stone angels last summer, you thought that you did not like them at all. Their wings were cracked
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and their faces were streaked vertically with moss and age. You pitied them in their creepiness, and wrote them off as just another one of her “manic” collections. Your mom had used that word a few times when describing your Nana. She had used “hoarder.” You thought of the piles of unopened shoe boxes in the bedroom. She had used “bipolar.” You remembered her sitting you down all serious and emphasizing your role in being understanding. Nana could always recognize when you were upset— or hungry. She could read your mind. She had looked from you, to the angels, and back. She’d explained that when a loved one dies, you have to do something to remember. Her gold ringed finger pointed to an especially small angel towards the center of the bunch. “That’s my cousin Rich,” Nana explained, “he was fifteen years younger than me, bless his heart. Died the winter me and Pop bought this place.” Your chest stirred, and you felt guilty. You couldn’t look the angels in the eyes. You looked at the roses. Pink, red, yellow, white, coral. You count out the colors again, now. They are the same. The leaves are green. Tomato Head’s palms beside you are dark brown. The back of his neck is red. You still can’t look them in the eyes. Tomato Head can. Sometimes you swear you can even hear him talk to the angels. They are his personal congregation. You think this makes sense as they must be really good listeners.
Tomato juice isn’t juice at all, When you think about it. You have to mush up the whole things. And bring them to a boil. Seeds and all. That’s why it’s thick like that. That’s what makes it real.
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“Is that hers?” your finger points out the newest addition to the tribe of winged stone. “No.”
Tomato Head turns red when he is lying.
“I don’t like the angels” you say.
Tomato Head turns redder when he is angry. His voice raises and pulp flies from his mouth, making contact with your forehead. You shrivel. You say that you only said that because of the wings. With wings of stone, how are they supposed to fly? It’s something to ask. It’s better than asking about her. It’s better than asking which angel is your Nana, now. The garden is quiet, again. Wind tapdances on leaves. Your throat is dry. You think that you will never open your mouth again. You swear it to God.
Tomato Head wipes hands on denim. His belly draws in and out of the shade. One eye watches boots kick a riff in dirt. The other watches his twitching cheeks, his trembling eyes As tomato juice drips down stubbled cheek. And drops into the soil.
Twelve Months of May Avery Boltwood
This month is a May of a May, abloom with flowering whimsies where men should have been, except for my seeing them, daily may-being them, wilting their skins into faux rosy fields, so I, the naked self-pity of April, may hope! understanding the flowers I grow— may doubt! standing under the gathering clouds— may chance my undoing by whimsical thorns: a chance of a chance a May of a May.
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Untitled // Kat Cottrell
Yellow Icing Omo Sanusi
Some yellow things Yellow things? Go unseen by the eyes But pass us by Grabbing our attention And flirting with our memory What yellow things? Cast moments of sweet sunrise Or just paint over the reticent days Put us in a trance I could never number the different ways How yellow things? Can be wrapped around us But I recall one particular Yellow thing? That did enamor Or did it send me to envy? I can’t recall But it shows, it’s how
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All yellow things? —some some! Can be fixed to an image Fixed to a shape And walk on two legs Leave my mouth agape and Thoughts asunder Are we still talking about yellow things? Fruitfalls You’re losing me. But I didn’t. You’re ruining my love story. About yellow things? The love of my Life? A yellow thing? The shape of my Dreams? You dream of yellow things? Or are you like me Who dreams of memories Who spins gold into straw To twist the truth to fit the lie? excuse me, we were talking about my —yellow thing. A fantasy of the mind That you’ve spun but I’ll make it mine You must be cut from my cloth
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But I never dream of yellow things I dream of What else but? Those that rise up every morning and remind me Another day has come Even through the fiery blaze of yesterday Those Yellow things? Have become my one memory That do not betray me I catch the truth like a fisherman catches Yellow things? This is more than just It has always been more But we impart it with The memories of yellow things That aren’t clear enough to be fact But could not just be imagined She was Not a yellow thing But she wore A yellow thing —dress dress It was the same dress she wore Before or after? Always after.
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After painful memories of things not Yellow But of black and blue and green Of days that slept over her heart Heaviness that drowned out the part Of her that could still stand nearest the sun Selfishly I painted her colors over My need to see the beauty But no single person Carries more fault Even I Just like me Can only guess What she wore And what that meant If summer dresses Addressed summer wounds We dream of yellow things So we won’t have to dream the truth
Track and Field Ray Baker
L
adies, take your marks. The world is still. Bodies tuck into themselves in folded paperclips wound with electric anticipation careful not to unfurl too early. Twenty-one hearts beat in sync in a rhythm that rings through my ears and down into the fanned fingertips supporting my weight. Swallow down the threat of my own pulsing heart to follow the gravitational pull beckoning it down to my tongue out of my mouth and onto the track and focus on the 1600 meters before me and the pulsating silence that always precedes the GUN
Legs
I hated Mr. Syty and he hated me right back, though I liked to think of it more as fear on his end. He was a gangly man who retained his wide boyish cross-country gait and inability to relate to hormonal girls from his own glory days on the gravel trail. He had the shared habit of all newly-balding men who rustle their hair the way you would a dimpled and dough-cheeked boy out of breath and rosy with pride. However his thinning straw blonde scalp had the effect of making him appear closer to this little-boy version of himself than an aging man. While he may not have understood what was happening below our sweat-slicked skin, he held the master key to the routines and regimens
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that would sculpt our malleable bodies. The mileage that put meat and muscle on our thighs calves asses and chiseled out our cheek and collar bones, at once harnessing and revealing our own power to ourselves. He wouldn’t hold our gaze when the August sun made our t-shirts cleave to the curves that he carved for us. The first lap was for legs—lesson number one. Legs are vulnerable in uncountable ways. Their pieces and parts can pull strain twist tear and break. That’s why we run hills drills sprints and stretch to form the cushioning muscles intended to protect and propel. We train them for this moment, to get out strong and get out fast from the tangle of ankles knees hips that would claim the patient with plans to conserve for the final four hundred and pull them down in a trample of merciless soles.
Arms When you pass a girl on the track you absorb her energy, Syty engrained this law of the race. It was true, I felt it. When I could see the glisten of sweat on her neck, hear the cadence of her breath, reach out and grip her hand-me-down uniform, I could feel the radius. The orbital energy that radiated and tested me to seize it. One two three pumps and it pulsed through my own veins recharging my strides and leaving her depleted as I lengthened the gap between myself and my prey. I felt the same charge run through me as I rounded a corner to a linoleum runway lined in lockers and packs of backpacks indefinitely on the prowl. This was my stage and my summer mileage side effects of newly sunken in cheeks, muscled tanned shoulders, and the jeans that loosely lay atop my dangerously sharp hipbones were the show. I dared their eyes to follow me and when they did I drank up the delicious victory in ravenous gulps. Syty prescribed forty miles per week whittled me into a woman.
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The second lap is for arms. Ninety-degree saws that swing in with opposing strides and reach for what they want. Forget about the vehicles that carry you and focus on the engine whose churning and pumping keeps the machine alive. Slice through the air and grab for the finish. Take it.
Head
Mr. Syty had a particular blind spot for girls with trajectories that didn’t include time trials. He trained us to be hard working, persevering, diligent‌on the track. Running came first and running came last, and also running came between all of that. College-related endeavors were an inexcusable reason to miss a meet; there is never a good reason to let your team down. I seethed as I sent my bags to the back of the trunk and slammed the passenger door. As I began to simmer my mother pounded back into the weight room, a lioness protecting her college-bound cub. Maybe this is where Syty’s fear stemmed from. I was the pup he trained and she was the wolf that would emerge once I grew my teeth. Her bark was much softer than her unyielding bite which warned in hushed and clenched tones of the repercussions that follow teaching budding women that what they can do with their bodies holds more weight than what they can do with their heads. Syty tucked his own head far into the comforts of his CHS Girls Track & Field windbreaker and receded in a way I can only imagine mirrored interactions with his own mother. The room gradually filled back up with the metallic chorus of dumbbells and thuds of medicine balls.
Slice through the air and grab for the finish. Take it.
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The third lap is for the head. Logical strategic calculated. Ten fast strides then coast, do this fifteen times, stride coast stride coast. At six minute pace I need a two minute split, first lap was fast so I have a thirty second bank to dig into, but don’t get greedy. One, two, three red uniforms in front of me with one and a half laps to pass. What’s 1.5 divided by 3? Half a lap each, that’s all I get to pick them off. For four hundred meters visualize the finish, crave the inhale that washes out the copper that now lines your mouth and the back of your throat.
Heart Sarah, Molly, Joy, Elizabeth, Baker, Lauren, MaryBeth, Heath-
er. Syty announced our events the evening before a meet, and he only ever called me by my last name. I don’t know why I loved that so much, but I did, I’d run a whole extra event just to hear my name called again. It sounded more respectable, less fragile than the other girls with their Catholic school names that didn’t sound like they belonged on a varsity roster or the back of uniform. Joy ran in strides that more closely resembled the way you’d tiptoe around something sleeping that you didn’t want to wake. For every stride I’d take she’d take three; I always wondered if she was burning more calories than the rest of us single-striders. Lauren didn’t speak much; she never contributed her senior boy crushes or descriptions of her homecoming dress that usually filled our time on Thursday afternoon stamina-building runs. She never complained in the locker room and I couldn’t tell you a single thing she hated. She had the kind of face that told you she’d make a good mother and that she hoped that day would come far sooner than the rest of us ever imagined for ourselves. Elizabeth had tissue paper skin that flashed in rosy splotches during cool-downs and revealed the course taken by every blue vein in her circulatory system. The kind of teammate who took practice too seriously and would breath hotly down your neck for the entirety of a mile trial so you wanted to let her pass you just to ease the torture. Sarah ran like she had just learned
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how to do it with arms that swung in unpatterned hinges across her body and knees facing outward like they were looking for an escape from her hobbling legs. She breathed through her mouth in heaves that warned of her gaining far before the patter of her spikes. She got a full-ride track scholarship to UVA. Final lap is driven by the heart. By now it beats with a ferocity that thuds in every nerve ending and threatens to rip at your breast from the inside out. Open mouth inhales and metallic exhales squeeze out everything left. Legs are incompetent now, they’re screaming sending emergency flares up and down your hamstrings in any attempt to pull the break. The arms once slicing now spiritless, you’ve pushed them harder than they’re meant to go and the lactic acid fights back making them leaden. The head won’t help you now; it begs to abandon the finish oxygen oxygen oxygen NOW! It’s a dig-deep lap a thisis-what-you’ve-been-working-for lap. Your body is howling numb but something drives you down the last straightaway that quivers in sun like a stretch of desert. This time around you hear nothing, the chorus of teammates coaches and overly invested parents silenced in a vacuum created by the blood in your ears that thud thud thuds you to the line the crisp white paint nearing nearing nearing TIME:00:00
Fall 2019
Untitled // Kayla Carlisle
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Back and Forth Caroline Forster
Porcelain shards glistening bright Tinged yellow in the jaundiced light Swing back and forth Back and forth Like pale little doves in flight Back and forth Back and forth Flitting through the eternal night Pretty specks of white Fly, little birdies, fly Take to the sky Fly away through the air Goodbye, take care Don’t ask why
Fall 2019
Don’t dare to pry Questions shrivel on the tongue and die Who and what and when and where Rest in peace next to how and why Let us pause for a moment in prayer Little birdies, please, my dears Let the answers remain unclear For how we came to be in this place It’s something I simply cannot face Little birdies, it’s my disgrace My shame, my shame, that we’re trapped here In the musty, dusky drear So fly, my dears Fly far from here
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Back and forth Back and forth The little birdies sway Back and forth Back and forth All the live long day But they never answer me And they never fly away Because they’re not birdies, free to flee But bits of bone of a man’s body I cannot hide, I cannot run Trapped in this closet with no one With only a single lightbulb as my sun The outside world unknown
Fall 2019
All alone But for the bits of bone Of a person dead and gone For the bones, they are my own And they know what I’ve done
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A Night in Toronto Avery Boltwood
T
hree friends are dancing in a Toronto gay club: Sarah, Curtis, and me. Sarah’s here for the dancing. She’s the straightest of our trio. And Curtis, too, is here for the dancing, but he wouldn’t mind a casual encounter. I’m not here for the dancing. (I won’t say I’m desperate. I’ll leave that up to you.) But focus on the club! Everything is happening here. It’s happening on stairs, around corners, behind pillars. Boys are mingling upstairs, pissing in the basement, snogging on the dance floor. The boys are ghosts—a mass of flailing shadows, divided into silhouettes by unnatural lights. Blue and green lasers. Flashes of strobe. Faces appear for moments. Lights flutter through the smoke. Tonight is a series of Polaroid snapshots. Things happen suddenly, but fade in slowly—from black, from nothing, for who knows what reason. Who knows where my friends are. Three people are dancing in a circle: a boy in suspenders, a boy in stripes, and me. Suspenders is attractive. Stripes and I are both aware. We look at each other. We both want to make a move. Neither does. Oh, look. There’s Curtis. He’s kissing a boy in polka-dots. Suspenders and Stripes are gone.
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I walk upstairs to the bar. “Can I get a vodka lemonade?” Back downstairs, back to the dance floor. Curtis is still with Polka-Dots. Jesus, look at their necks. Think of the bruises they’ll have in the morning. Back upstairs, back to the bar. “One shot of Fireball.” I glance downstairs. He’s still with Polka-Dots. “Make that two.” I turn around. I’m dancing with Suspenders. Tomorrow, Sarah and Curtis will tell me they were stunned. Tonight, I’m making out with Suspenders. We take turns pulling away. A breath of air. A bit of a dance break. It’s a queer sense of propriety. We can’t seem too interested in each other. God forbid anyone should think we’re kissing each other because we want to. We’re not kissing each other specifically. Anybody would do. (But not Stripes? Maybe I’m round two.) I dive back into the kiss. I’m sitting at Burger King, nursing a large Sprite. I vomited earlier. Twice. I vomited intentionally though—with dignity, I like to think. Sarah’s waiting on her order. She got off with a headache. Curtis is waiting in the car. He never mentions having a hangover. I don’t see any bruises on his neck either. I never got Suspenders’ name. But we’ll never see each other again. Sarah’s still waiting. When her order is ready, Sarah, Curtis, and I will hit the road again. We’re still a long way from North Carolina. It would be nice to know his name.
Here // Grace Tiger
Disposable Cameras Sara Behn
He glues pom-poms to a magazine page While I draw gardens on my hand in deep blue sharpie I can feel the ink, the toxins soaking down to my veins As the sun illuminates the decomposed ash floating, falling And I pick open a scab that will probably scar over I tell him that taking pictures with a disposable camera is wasteful It’s loud in this cafe, I imagine Several people around us are mimicking this conversation Waste, Art, Memory What else is there to discuss?
Fall 2019
It scares me—I don’t eat as much as I used to Half of my meal sits on my plate, scrambled and untouched My family used to call me a bottomless pit Used to look into my mouth like Krishna It scares me—I’m not a God, Not a Kodak, or a Kodak moment I keep time in fractures, in refractions What else is there to discuss? California is burning, don’t you know?
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Everywhere the light touches Anna Merryman
The Sun Rises Over The Plains Of New Jersey it never sets here
i wouldn’t know if it did
i see it winking across the tops of the alps melting the chocolate into drips like raclette over a bonfire water dribbles over boxes of butter and bags of obsessively large bunches of spinach DON’T touch the electric fence but i grab on to the coursing current in the shape of a tiny Graceful hand is that my head ringing? or the cow herd’s constant dialtone? Hang up. Leave a voicemail. Call again if you ever visit People are like telephones this one is temporarily out of order. Don’t break the connection. just hang up and try again.
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Sol flares up saluting the Queen Silent as her guard queued up round a vat of tea globally referred to as the crown jewels. i try making them crack, jolly as a beefeater wearing ol’ St. Nicholas on his jumper i stare at the sky full of stars playing in the cold planetarium dome If the comets war i’ll twist tea towels into buns sandwiching my head and join the rebellion
but until then i’ll stay in my spaceship made of leaves and
falcon feathers
Spying on Peter Rabbit and cabbage-murdering slugs.
The sun illuminates a lighthouse on the sound Waves tap beat against the blunt hull of my 420 Boots and cats and But if you’re from Africa…? For The Sun Also Rises Over Kilimanjaro, Bright against the tin can dala dalas Dented by slamming doors and butting bull horns and konyagi or Mama Pimas. The mzungu yells to her murder of white crowds A sanitary juxtapose to the mosaic of kangas and kitenges bedazzling the dusty market Four Maasai tug a mule bogged down in cotton mud Tufts pluck at the cart wheels, encasing the wood with a layer of the past.
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A plastic mountain formed of Kilimanjaro. The crator becomes the created But At Least Its Top Hasn’t Blown. yet. i watch the silhouette of Angkor Wat deepen Ants practice the dead-man’s-float in my soup cup, snaking their way through eel broth Have you had your rice today? The feeling of wind-propelled rain and leather on my skin as i waffle my hands around my dad Hold tight. legs loose on left. Avoiding speed bumps is a lesson tattooed on my mind.
video game driving.
i wonder whether to add this to the list of homes that seems to lengthen with every flight for 10 months? for 10 weeks? for 10 days? for 10 hours? numbers can never quantify a feeling
Fall 2019
Untitled // Kayla Carlise
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GOLD Kalley Huang
S
he came first after hitchhiking from china to the middle east to africa sometimes under a tarp in the back of a truck sometimes proudly in the front seat and then to france where she lived in a tiny apartment that was cheap because it faced the local garbage dump where she worked first as a waitress until she was tired of being called chinadoll and chink every day and then in a clothing factory and she worked and worked and worked until her fingers trembled and god knows how she got a visa to america and when she got to the airport she remembered how disappointed her father looked when she quit working in the lab that god knows how he pulled strings for especially during the immediate aftermath of the cultural revolution but parents always sacrifice for their children but she also remembered desiring new but somehow when she arrived in new york almost a day later because tickets with multiple stops were cheaper and minimum wage might have been a thing but she didn’t really know her hard green suitcases weren’t bursting anymore and she just felt tired which wasn’t so new he came second without the comfort of a twenty hour long economy flight just on a boat under a tarp the entire time until they got to canada and years later he remembered holding his breath when cbp stopped the truck on its way to america and trying to stop the deep trembling fear from showing and they had met in china through a mutual family friend and there was thankfully enough chemistry to warrant spending
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the rest of their lives together and when they declared their informal marriage her father breathed a sigh of relief because she was 22 and getting old but it wasn’t until america that they officially married and in their marriage photos that she thumbed through occasionally they were both as pale as the porcelain they couldn’t afford because he had stopped selling badly made counterfeit bags in the sunny streets of chinatown and instead they both worked in clothing factories with no windows where minimum wage was definitely a thing but under the table without worrying about taxes was easier and safer because they were undocumented and their status screamed like an alarm every time they saw a police officer who could’ve been an ice officer and every time they heard the doorbell ring for the second floor of his mother’s house not the apartment for two she pictured in her head on her way to america and whenever she thinks about the second floor she cries because she remembers the constant noise and the invasive smell of oil no matter how much she cleaned and she remembers working until she had no energy to tremble and she remembers the humiliation of paying for their honeymoon because his mother gave them only $1000 to celebrate their marriage in florida because his mother only cared about money and when she thumbs through their honeymoon photos she sees an awkward young couple trying to be happy because americans had honeymoons and then she remembers taking a bus that had ten too many passengers and seeing a street sign she couldn’t quite read and she remembers laughing and smiling and sunshine when they got off at that street and she remembers slowly writing the name of the street sign where it said first name on their first child’s birth certificate and her own last name where it said last name which was neither a chinese tradition nor an american one but she did not care this child was born in a land of jin meng xiang
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and how strange to be the child of immigrants who have neither a high school nor a college education to be the child of immigrants who only tell their stories when they are drunk to be the child of immigrants who sacrificed so much to just be disappointed to be the child of immigrants born in a land of golden dreams
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familiar // Kalley Huang
sorting through the storm Anne Littlewood
you can’t go backwards, but you can always come back. much needed words in a moment of rawness, a moment mended with a cup of chamomile, steaming on a sunday morning in the storm. lately it’s always storming: twenty seven degrees and espresso—but i don’t mind the pink-nose air, steaming cup of coffee nestled in knees on the back of the bus, headphones working to mend the morning into a memory, a moment.
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and we’re screaming, singing, smiling: these are the moments we live for, so go outside and leap in the storm -or lie on the floor and eat chocolate and mend those high school wounds, forget the boy but remember the love that you won’t ever get back … wrap your fingers round the mug. watch the steam. rain sounds different here in the east. it hisses, steams as it falls through humidity to bless the moment, spraying and spitting its chaotic cleanse on the backs of students who are not in the mood to get lost in the storm. i’ve learned there’s no better soundtrack than the rain but only if you’re looking to be unwound—not mended.
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do i want someone around to mend my seams, stitch my soul, steal my steaming thoughts in the predawn hours? (maybe.) but it’s pouring on someone new in this moment and i’m watching his sneakers get soaked in the storm too far gone. no turning back. so i’m chewing on a pen, scrawling words on the back of my biology exam. are they enough to mend the windy scribbles of thought in my storm? perhaps the right words. perhaps I’ll still be steaming next year, searching for the sensible way to use the moment, the perfect conjunction to add to my life (and, or, but?)
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glancing back, i can’t see you, but i don’t need your mending in this moment: the storm is coming. the chamomile is steaming.
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No Refunds, No Exchanges Brock Foreman
The bell over the door jingled. The boy placed his heart on the counter, right above the X in “No Refunds, No Exchanges.” The woman at the register, eyes fixed on her phone, said, “Did you see the sign?” “It doesn’t say No Exceptions,” the boy said. “It should.” If she glanced up at him while his eyes flickered across the empty shelves behind her, he didn’t see. “It doesn’t matter,” the boy said. “I’m not here to exchange, and I don’t need a refund.” “We don’t do repairs, either.” The woman still did not look up, had probably not even seen the heart beneath his hand on the plywood counter. “Not on those. Not anymore.” “I don’t need it repaired,” the boy said. She put her phone away and hopped off her stool. She did not meet his eyes. “No.” “Please,” the boy said. “I’ll pay you.” “We’re not allowed,” the woman said to the beaded curtain between the shelves. “Please,” the boy said. The woman returned with a roll of paper towels. She swept up
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the back of the counter, then scrubbed the puddle on the floor. It would leave a stain, she thought. It wouldn’t be the first. The boy made no move to pick up his heart. “Please,” he said. “I can’t,” she told the floor. The boy teetered, foot to foot. His heart fluttered between his fingers. “Then what should I do?” The woman placed things on the counter: a sewing needle, some pocket lint, two matches, a comb, a stubby pencil with the eraser torn out, a guitar string, and a plant in a cardboard pot. She placed them away from the heart, so they would stay dry. “How much?” the boy asked. “They’re yours.” “I can’t just take them,” the boy said. “They’re yours.” “What do I do with them?” the boy asked. “No instructions.” The beaded curtain rattled. “It doesn’t say that on the sign,” the boy said. The beaded curtain was silent. The bell over the door jingled. The woman returned with a fresh roll of paper towels. She swept up the back of the counter, then scrubbed the staining floor. She mopped the empty countertop clean.
WSP // Kalley Huang
Dirty Monuments Brooke Keane
9/5/2018 Students, faculty, and staff together at Duke University’s Carr Building, named for the white supremacist Julian Carr We gather at this event, more “grand and glorious� than any he remarked on. How can others hail a building, which burns with his white-hot sins, a history of hate? We stand strangled by the humidity and human indecency that hangs in the air, by the testimonies and trials, faced by those more tired than most can comprehend.
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We listen to the whispers of the enslaved whose backs this institution was built on—not those of the bigoted businessman who had them “horse-whipped”. His legacy should hang in shreds. We start to change this whitewashed narrative. After years of inaction, these stories of such filthy philanthropy must be told. We are ready to rewrite history. We are the pressure from underneath this foundation of prejudice—about to burst—seething over this sequence of dirty money, dirty monuments.
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Gone Fishing Ami Wong
T
here are few feelings more satisfying than that of a good cast. The fishing line glints in the sun for a moment, a silver stretch of light, until it hits the water and becomes invisible again. The swish and click of the reel settles in your hand, and you sit back with a wide-brimmed hat and a good book. Today I fish with only the company of my tackle box and bait. I’ve never enjoyed impaling the shrimp. I always avoid eye contact and cast the line as quickly as possible. The plop of the hook leaves only the bobber above the water line, dipping in and out of sight. I sit down and my thoughts wander. I think of you.
It was always summer at your home. Florida has many faults, but it really does deserve its nickname of the Sunshine State. Our family had the luxury to pick and choose when to go, so of course we chose the winter and spring (aka chill summer) when it was a cool and constant 73 degrees. We always visited your house. The drive down was filled with granola bars, fights over the music choice, and wrinkles on my face from sleeping on the leather seats. By the time we arrived eight hours later, we were dying to get out. “Say hello to Uncle and Auntie!” my parents would yell quickly, their voices hardly reaching our ears before you lifted us off the ground, rough callouses on your hands holding us tight, wrinkles on your face laughing.
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There was an inlet in the backyard which led to the sea. This is where you guided my hands, taught me how to bait, cast, reel. Beyond the garden, there were two prime fishing locations: the promontory and the dock. I loved to run between the two spots, too impatient to wait for the fish to bite. The hook usually only spent a minute or two in the water before I reeled it back up, hoping for a catch. This was the American Experience, I always thought. Fishing in the wild during the summer at my grandparents’ house, even if it wasn’t the wild, the summer, or my real grandparents. You adopted us for a week, and this was home. That was enough.
When I was 6, I caught an eel: a slimy, living leathery rope. We kept it in the bucket until it was time to go. I sat with it for almost a whole hour, playing with it and wondering whether it understood the concept of friendship. “I’ve eaten you in sushi before. Eel sushi is my second favorite type after salmon,” I offered. I didn’t mean it as a threat, I meant it as a friendly conversation starter. Note that I didn’t have many friends at the time. The eel, regardless of my intentions, simply stared blankly before continuing to wriggle around the bucket. I tried sticking my finger in to play with it, but luckily you saw me from the dock and stopped me, saying it could bite my finger off. I watched the eel as you walked back. Its sharp little teeth formed an underbite, two beady eyes glaring menacingly and helplessly. “You’re pretty ugly,” I ventured. It ignored me. When the sun set, you told me we couldn’t keep it. I cried, and you comforted me as you threw it back into the water. The ripples on the water receded quickly into the deep. “Will I ever see it again?” I asked. “Maybe,” you replied. I landed my biggest catch when I was 9. I was fishing over the
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cliff at the time, not the dock. The sun was high and I’d just been about to give up when I hooked something. I tried reeling in the line, but the rod began to bend so much I was afraid it would snap. It was time to try a new strategy. Zig-zagging the line, I felt the catch move slowly, but it seemed impossible to reel in. “Help me! I’ve got something big on the line!” You ran over and, seeing that the rod was already bent into a crook, you quickly took over. I thought about what it could be. A 1000-pound bluefin tuna, perhaps, which had accidentally strayed into the shallows of suburban Fort Lauderdale. They would hang it up in the center of the city, along with my picture and signature. Interviews would pour in, wondering how I did it. Fame and glory were only a thin fishing line away. “We don’t need to worry about dinner tonight if we land this one,” you joked. We fought with it for almost ten minutes, turning it this way and that. You were a hale and hearty Santiago, I was Manolin, eager to learn and ready to help. Sweat began to drip from your greyed hair like condensed smoke. Finally, the monster reared its head from the depths, knotted and misshapen. It was a large tree branch, broken off from a recent storm. I saw my dreams of becoming the world’s youngest fishing expert thaw at the edges, turning into tears in the corner of my eyes. Suddenly, you laughed. “It put up quite a fight, didn’t it?” You smiled at me until I returned the grin. We reeled it in and stuck it in the head of the promontory, a trophy commemorating our sweat-soaked struggle.
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I was 15 during our last visit with you. It was hot that day, and the fish weren’t biting. I’d been sitting there for two hours already, having set up an umbrella to block the sun. You came over. “How’s the fishing going?” I thought it was evident from the fact that the bucket was empty and the bobber was still on the surface that it wasn’t going well, but apparently you still had to rub it in (or so I thought through the haze of my dissatisfaction). I shrugged. “They aren’t biting today.” You looked across the water. It was noon and the sun glinted harshly, probably hurting your eyes. “They’ve probably already had lunch.” You smiled back at me. “What are you reading today?” I turned over the cover to show you, but I didn’t look up. I don’t remember what it was. I was too tired to respond. The fish weren’t biting and I was frustrated. You grinned. “At this rate you’ll be at Harvard in no time.” I smiled half-heartedly and went back to my book. When we left, you and Auntie waved from the porch. I didn’t wave back. I was too busy reading the book whose name I’ve forgotten, and I didn’t see your eyes follow our car out of the driveway. It’s okay, I thought, recalling (two hours down the road) the fact that I had forgotten to say goodbye. We’ll be back the next break anyway.
In the end, it was a parasite that did you in. You’d gone to Costa Rica to fish. Auntie said that you said it wasn’t serious until you were too sick to protest. We drove down again. Inappropriately, it was still summer despite it being spring, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I learned more about you from the funeral service than from your life. You were an immigrant, like my parents, once. Is that why you welcomed us so readily? You knew what it was like to try to shed your accent, to join the army and offer your life to be accepted into a country that you must learn
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to love. But I didn’t learn that from you. You were gone before I even knew. I wonder, sometimes, about how it may have happened. How did the fishing line look in the Southern sun? Did you catch anything before the parasite came in? How did it feel to have it there, leeching off of you, and you not protesting because maybe it needed your health more than you did? Or did you just not notice it because the sea breeze was as salty as it was back home, and the waves were lapping in their perpetual chant, and if you closed your eyes you were already in heaven anyway? They folded the flag and we left to make it back in time for Monday morning. We didn’t have time to fish.
The sun sets and the stars and mosquitoes come out. I reel in the line, the whir resting in a final click as the weight hits the end of the pole. Will I ever see you again? Maybe. In the warmth of the summer, perhaps, or the feeling of a good cast. But you were never really one for romance. You exist in my memories. Is that enough? Can you hear me? I’m ready to listen now, but all I’ve been hearing since you’ve been gone is the echo of waves or the chitter of a bird looking for food for its young. So tell me, please, because the only thing I’ve been catching is a drooping “too late” dangling at the end of the line. There’s never an answer. You were, and would only be, the man who taught me to fish. The shrimp is no longer squirming; it hangs limply on the pole, cold and grey. I toss it back into the water and the crabs quickly dispatch it. I head home. The fish aren’t biting today.
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Summer Sail // Katherine Nicholas
Dreams Ashley Manigo
Lush, green grasslands surround my desolate patch of dreams. Residing deep within the soft soil lay traces of nostalgia. Mineral-like and fossilized packed tightly under the flaky crust chalking between my fingertips as I conjure up long-forgotten memories. The dust slowly fades revealing burned bare feet trotting over the blazing asphalt
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Sundried mud pies baking on the back porch. Crisp, honey toast in my aunt’s parlor. Full-bellied strolls through the forest. Plum-stained lips littering porous seeds into the soft soil once again. Waning memories seep into embryos and gently pry them open. Such saccharine essences make for bittersweet bearings.
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Borrowed Words Anne Littlewood
The first story she told him was about a little girl with silver wings that didn’t work. Then she picked up a fistful of sand and sprinkled it on his head like pixie dust, cackling as she ran away up the slide. He frowned, and took up the chase on little legs. Once upon a time, she’d sing, running barefoot through her mother’s summer garden. Once upon a time the world was ruled by ladybugs. Winking at him, she plucked another cherry tomato from the vine, and popped it in her mouth. She always named the snowmen they decorated in December. Millie and Maya and Marcus came to life in her hands, twirling around the gingerbread houses. He watched, spellbound, as she pulled the strings on the puppets in her narrative. Frosty began to melt, and the rain fell on the vineyards. My grandfather was eaten by an alligator at the bottom of a lake, looking for his brother’s watch, she told him one day, on their walk home from school. Did you see that car that just drove by? Those were my real parents. They gave me up when I was born. He nodded
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seriously, eyes wide as crystal balls. When they were older, she covered her walls in ink, clinging to the words of others in an attempt to remember her own. He used to read the ceiling as she screamed at her mother, trying to learn her language. When she finally trudged upstairs wearing wet cheeks and a broken spirit, he would tell her the stories he had read, wiping her tears with the words that she loved. One July afternoon they sat on the edge of his pool, touching toes in the turquoise. He asked her, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” and she answered with a kiss, falling for his borrowed words. He sat beside her on the night she asked her father for a train ticket. The man finished his drink and slammed the glass down on the table, growling at her to shut her mouth. She didn’t speak for a week, but the wind howled for her. He wrote in pen on the back of her hand, “I always blame the moon,” and she knew that he knew the truth. On her sixteenth birthday he twirled her through the vineyards and they got tangled in the grapes. “I wish I could build a fire in you that would never go out,” he whispered in her ear. She gave him her lips, and the stars were jealous. Some nights she knocked on his window, and fell into his arms. Those were the nights she’d beg him for a story, the nights she couldn’t bear to be at home. Once upon a time there were two kids that fell in love. He always got stuck somewhere in the middle. It was winter the first time she didn’t want him. He reached for her, murmured, “Love, where are we now? Where did we begin?” She hugged her knees to her chest, whispered, I don’t know.
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One day she ran away for the city, leaving only a note, a line from her favorite poem: “You see, I woke up one night and I realized I was falling.� He placed her last words beneath his pillow, and dreamt only of endings.
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Untitled // Anne Littlewood
If I Were Jesus Daniel Egitto
If I were Jesus and you the cripple I’d wrap your frame in holy hands and with every touch I’d heal you. I’d brush your arms, your calves your skin beneath my palms and I’d take your waist and your thighs and their pounds of flesh invisible and I’d trace my fingers down your neck and cup your throat and breasts and ass and with every trembling breath I’d heal you.
Fall 2019
If I were Jesus and you the demoniac I’d brush your cheeks beneath my thumb and in your tears drown demons. I’d cast your fears out in that Legion and your insecurity and your uncertainty and your depression and your doubt— and if I were Jesus and if I were Jesus with every touch I’d heal you
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Umbrella Girl Jane Booth
I’m frightened by the word wonderful. I clasp my parasol protecting me from the things in this world that are its opposite
goodbyes, rainclouds, arithmetic, a cough that won’t go away and I think that if I never leave this spot of sacred ground then still I will have more than most. Sometimes this house is a stranger and sometimes it is a sanctuary, and I its steeple. The people around me and the spirits above me tell me that what is in front of me will be wonderful. A placeholder for what is unexplainable, unachievable, unfathomable. It may be anything but wonderful.
Fall 2019
Beneath the shade of my parasol I make room for the precious stillness to seep in below its towering steeple. God, or the gods, are leaving space in my life for me to fill in some worthy way, but may it be full of wandering instead of wonder.
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Untitled // Anne Littlewood
Hands Arden Schraff
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is index finger traces my swollen veins, following each branch across my weathered hand. I feel his chest rise and fall against my cheek. I hear our granddaughters’ muffled laughter spilling through their small hands from down the hall. I reach up from Sebastian’s sunburned chest to curl a piece of brown hair around my wrinkled finger. Slowly, I fall asleep to the symphony of breath and heartbeat. His hand hovers over mine, still tracing. When I met Sebastian, his hands were one of the first things I noticed about him. They were rough, dark, a stark contrast to the manicured white hands I’d known my whole life. “Migrant hands” he said. Strong and slightly toasted, traits passed down from his ancestors across the border. His calloused hands brushed mine, and in a flash I saw the story of our lives up until this point and just how different they were. My nails were always painted black when I was younger. Sebastian thought they were a “hint to my darker side, a rebellion from my strict Catholic school days.” I fidgeted with my hands when Sebastian and I fought; I couldn’t stand to look at him and see the fire behind his hazel eyes. Afterward, he wiped away my tears with his thick fingers and held my pale shaking hands against his chest. My fingernails now naked.
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The first time we held hands was when I snuck out to his beatup pickup truck senior year. He slid his long fingers down my forearm and intertwined his with mine. Sparks flew up my arm. I looked down and memorized how his hands consumed mine. That night he cupped my face in his hands, fingertips resting on my temples, his square thumbs petting my pink cheeks. Sebastian hated galas, but he escorted me anyway when my publisher told me I needed to network. He “felt out of place,” like he was supposed to be “serving, not being served.” He used to tighten his grip on my hand as we walked into the ballroom, often leaving white imprints around my fingers when he finally released. He switched to twirling the simple golden band around my ring finger; he was scared he would accidentally shatter my delicate “mittens.” When Sebastian laughed he had a tendency of clapping his hands together. When he thought something was really funny he clapped even harder, a steady thunder clap. He thinks I’m funny and that’s all that matters. After Sebastian’s father died he would disappear for days and come back bruised and battered, the stench of rum lingering on his breath. I never asked questions. His hands shook as I washed and wrapped his swollen knuckles. We still don’t talk about this time in our lives, but the small white scars stretching across his mountainous knuckles serve as reminders. When our first daughter was born, he tattooed two stars on the back of his hand, at the bottom of his thumb. One for our Sylvie and one for me. “I love you, I love you.”
Unspoil Theo Cai
soft peach riddled with thumbs just because it has scabbed doesn’t mean the knife is gone just because it has scabbed doesn’t mean the fingers will stop the smooth, familiar face of things hangs in tatters you live like this, knowing it could be worse it could be worse. it has been worse. the bruising is inevitable so is the spoiling if it is any consolation: peaches stay pink; they are flushed with blood.
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Untitled // Anne Littlewood