Samsara

Five-Day Panic Attack

ErikMoyer

My chest knocks like the police. I jangle awake four hours before my alarm. I dreamt of you again. Now, you greet me. Every hour of every day,

you greet me. A ghost, a grandfather clock. I retch the night’ s stomach acid into my cat’ s litterbox. The dawn air is wet with heat, yet I shiver like a chihuahua

without its striped sweater. I haven ’t eaten in two days, my gut a raisin. I down another triple dose of SSRIs and baby aspirin. I haven ’t achieved an erection in six days. I crawl to the balcony for a drag. The flame trembles in my hands

like a sinner. My heart is a woodpecker egg hatching. I want you out but need you in. I can see the Barcelona sun

sprout from the sea like a golden turnip. The orchids reach skyward in morning prayer. I step outside myself and drive a hatchet through my skull. This calms me.

The Wayne Literary Review: Escapism

Samsara

Emersyn Li

I lived in a field of wheat I lived in a red barn, in the bonfire, & in the wind

the sadness will never end,

my aged hands splattered in paint guide my new self’ s small fingers along a page,

“ please love something other than painting ” I whisper as she writes what she cannot see in our letters to each other

I feel myselves converging when we paint with words from our mind together between the same lines I made alone, before her

the sadness will last forever

I feel everything constricting the flow of blood to my brain when I think of a woman ’ s touch her fingers caressing

The Wayne Literary Review: Escapism