automatic doors which lead to the fluorescent innards of the plaster building. In the parking lot, littered with cigarette butts and discarded receipts, damp and pressed against pavement, I feel myself walking and it is as if I move, both from and towards, the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. The in and out, those lights lit angrily against the darkening rain. The woman beside me leans against the shopping carts, pulling from her damp cigarette, watching the parking lot turn from grey to black. Her sides are thick with fat, but her fingers are steady against the stream of smoke which blows towards route seven. I am aware of the smell of her, and the dryness of her mouth, the sallow patches between her eyes and on the skin under her neck. I am aware of the tattoo on her wrist which reads, “SERENITY” in large, purple, cursive letters, curving slightly up her forearm where the tail of the ‘Y’ bends downward. I wonder which serenity is hers, where she finds it, if it is here, beside me, as I look for my car? Or was it found only with a boyfriend long gone, or a mother long gone, or the remembrance of a childhood, long gone, a large, cursive reminder of loss. WILLA NEUBAUER
SHADOW IRIS JIACHEN CAI
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