Monthly Archives: August 2020

Christmas Eve, all of my cousins sitting criss-cross applesauce on the basement floor, bodies covered in wrapping paper from a night of being spoiled to death. That’s just how it is in our family: we’re kids forever, even though most of us will probably marry this decade or have babies or both. I’m the youngestContinue reading “I Cried Today Because I Thought About”

a short story in short poems V. I know I romanticize it. But I wish you did, too. I wish you saw yourself there with me, in a one-bedroom loft in a highly overrated European city, where we’d only speak the language in broken pieces, where we’d go for morning walks just to find theContinue reading “When I Told You I Want to Live in a Studio Apartment in the City One Day”

a short story in short poems IV. I dream of a paint-splattered smock and a balcony for growing herbs and to live the kind of life others would deem pretentious. But I’d be doing everything but pretend: typing up my first novel criss-cross applesauce on the dining room floor, wearing colors I’d been too self-consciousContinue reading “When I Told You I Want to Live in a Studio Apartment in the City One Day”

a short story in short poems III. I used to roll down the window and watch you drive, grinding my teeth the whole way home. You didn’t see. You were too busy dreaming about what we’d name them.

a short story in short poems II.I didn’t bother waiting for your answer because you’d already told me, implicitly, within a thousand separate instances. Months ago at the home improvement store: That porch swing is to die for. One day I’ll get one just like that for us. And then again, driving through the upperContinue reading “When I Told You I Want to Live in a Studio Apartment in the City One Day”

a short story in short poems I. You raised your eyebrows and a soft oh trickled through your upturned lips.  What does that mean? I probed you.  What does what mean? you responded.  The look you gave me.

Washed in shades of gold under the sugar maples at sunset. Book in hand, probably a rented copy of something science fiction, you sat folded like an origami bird, knees tucked into your ribs.  I came closer. You didn’t notice and I had no intention of saying hello anyway.  Your hair reaches the cheekbones now.Continue reading “I Saw You Today”

I know you’re convinced this world would not miss you. But I’m sending you this letter through the space-time continuum equivalent of the USPS (sad story about that, actually, but we’ll get there) aiming to persuade you otherwise. One day you’ll be twenty (weird, right?) and you’ll have your own apartment where you’ll keep unlitContinue reading “Open Letter to Seventeen”

I am dreaming of a certain place and time and it is neither here nor now. Tonight, I am eighteen again. Lorde’s Melodrama overwhelms the wires of my headphones as I walk home from campus’s most hated dining hall with a carry-out box of lukewarm Chinese noodles. It’s October, and the leaves have yet toContinue reading “Still Walking Home”

for cradling my heart in your palms back when it would still hemorrhage with hate.  These days I do not rage at life anymore. I raise my hand before I am called upon.  I participate in the body electric.  And when you think of my body I bet you still think of brutality.  A fistContinue reading “You Deserve a Gold Medal”