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Submitted to Contest #307
Pain. Some people say they enjoy it, some even pay for it. Save up their hard earned dollars to defy their primitive instincts for self-preservation, as if to remind themselves of the expiry date on their flesh, the precariousness of their body. It’s an arousal unlike anything else, or so they say. They like it, crave it. I couldn’t understand it that way. I woke up one day with a fat bruise on the flat of my shin. It stung tenderly, stood up against my skin, babbling, about to hatch from underneath. I thought nothing of it at first, bother...
Submitted to Contest #305
The lights go up and they warm my face. Blank as always, I measure a moment to let my heart exhaust itself of its beating. I’m not a nervous person. When I perform, it takes only a few seconds to feel the rehearsal leave me, to fall beyond memory into motion. Part of it is lying artfully, part of it is simply overfeeling—enacting drama– like waking up in the morning, milking the dread, burying it under obligation in the end. Contain yourself. A motto I’ve inherited and lived with. The lights go up and all that falls away. And I stand in fro...
Submitted to Contest #243
Besides collision, the most dangerous malfunction in airplane travel is engine failure. There’s nothing you can do. If the engines fail, you’re done. The plane goes down. For all modes of transportation really. No motor, no engine, no pump? It’s all over. Crashed, drowned, shattered, exploded. Maximum casualties. Before my first squeeze, this fact was ingrained. That everything rested on me. That others might rest, but I never would. Once you start, you don’t stop. And, if for some reason or another if you choose to end it, to just give...
Winner of Contest #241 🏆
…in…in this room…cursed room…loved?... cursed…. where she slept…half-grown in her hometown t-shirt…shorts…no shorts…t-shirt worn with holes…on the floor…he having thrown it…under the bed…dust collected and swept and settled again…. and again…who?... he… not she?...gracious!...there for the first time…assuredly last time…no boys in the room, father said…keep out!...nodded her head… but in the room…blue light hugging the window…scotch tape…peeling off the paint whether chipped or freshly laid or…exhumed…he found her in the— no, not found…held…...
Submitted to Contest #240
I sleep with my window open because I’m not afraid of spirits. When you stay in New Orleans, people say you’ve come to the city of haints. But, I think that’s superstitious bull. It’s just the breeze, just the breeze. Just an endless southern draft coasting through you, cream off the Mississippi. On Thursday night, I propped my window open and slipped into the pocket of my bed, bones crunching, exhausted. Two hours to witching hour and the winds were already picking up, waking spirits from their graves. This was expected in August when the h...
Shortlisted for Contest #238 ⭐️
A kids’ hospital playroom in Moscow. Crayons and board game boxes scattered on the floor. A plastic table flexed in the center, surprisingly in good shape. A male nurse and an adolescent girl sit across from each other at the table. There are papers and markers spread out in front of them. Neither of them want to be there. The girl, Dasha, is drawing. Nurse: …and where are you on this bridge? Dasha is silent, scribbling. She waits. Nurse: Draw yourself. You can be anywhere, in the middle or anywhere. Dasha: I’m not ready...
Submitted to Contest #237
Years later, I consider myself understood. Raw, unpurged; mapped in earnest fingertips. You went off to Chicago because you were always made for it. I stayed in New York, reaching for what you already had in the palm of your hand like a precocious stalk stretching from the dirt. Radio silence between us where harmony once swept. Still I beg for how rare it was. When we were young we had nothing but philosophers and parents telling us who to be and where to look. Even so, we looked at each other and then, in sour defeat, looked away. Sc...
Submitted to Contest #236
TW: Mentions body weight and dieting, body shaming, disordered eating.Mother had an affliction since I first started remembering things. She never said anything about it, but I saw the shadow whip behind her eyes. The stash packs of cigarettes on the counter didn’t alarm me until I graduated middle school and our citrus collection in the cupboard seemed like something all families had in case of off-chance nuclear warfare or sudden sanctions on Florida. What gave it away was the frenzied typing. Mother wasn’t a secretary. She was a lawy...
Submitted to Contest #235
They got it wrong. The Earth was flat all along. And moments after sinking into her overworn running shoes and stretching her calves like a cat shaking off sleep, Lori had the proof. It’s not that she was a maniac who liked running. The Morning Run was a longtime nemesis, the Moriarty to her Holmes. It proved rather unfortunate that this daily medieval torture provided the only cure to her abstinence. Three months. No boyfriend; dumped. Tear-soaked pillow cases and far too many empty Ben & Jerry’s pints. Real Housewives, ten pound...
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