Fall in Love

Genesis Lorenzo

I was observing you, I’ve never seen anything similar like you. Your bright leaves; your soft petals; your rough branches. I can see you.

You are a stunning design. Your delicate leaves make me feel peace. The peace that I only can feel when I’m near to you. The breeze is slamming to you and you keep firm. Always firm. How can you always look strong? Always in front of me, showing me your striking life.

I can see you. You are a power. That power to change from a broken person to an alive person. That you are.

Ode to Madeline the Modeline Sara Reed Wilson

Madeline I am in love with you Everything you say and everything you do Read me poetry ‘till I fall asleep Teach me how to be the best version of me Madeline I am in love with you

Your hair like embers and your eyes like dew Smile at me and I feel suddenly weak With the urge to put my lips to your cheek Madeline I am in love with you

Cool like the ocean, soft and blue Inviting and striking in any shade or hue It pains me to say, I wish it weren’t true but Madeline, I wish I were you.

Swimming Marian Russell

I’m getting something done. I scrub my skin with a loofah and break down the layers.

The epidermis slides off clear, the dermis takes a minute of determination, of true muscle. If I had Henry here, he would be able to break those layers down with ease.

By myself, it’s hard to get to the white off the bone, let alone the marrow my mother left me.

Fish flop near the drain, squirming and jumping between my toes. They slide under my soles, trying to make me lose balance, The deceitful grin of the flounder pressed into the white tiles. Slimy, squirmy, needing more water. The drops pelt down onto their glistening scales, onto my pale, scrubbed feet.

A figure walks slowly past the glass, looking beyond to the master bedroom.

I press my nose on the foggy screen, and there is Henry. His gray boxers cling to his thighs and the skin I had scrubbed away crawls back on once more.

Touch my skin, touch me. Touch me. My body cries. I’ve never seen him cry. A shiver rolls down my spine, The cold finds its way in. Slowly, I turn the lever to the left, towards the red side. The fish begin to shrivel into small fillets, without flavor or batter. Their eyes remain wide- horrified- glaring up at me.

Disordered Eating

Sara Reed Wilson

I eat until I make myself sick Not in a bulimic way

But in a i-dont-want-to-be-seen-as-an-ungrateful-child way I have been the ungrateful child

Back when I wouldn’t eat

It’s the war of the words

It’s finding alternatives because your daughter just. won’t. eat.

It’s the other PTA moms commenting on how thin I was

It’s hearing the word “anorexic” thrown at me by a classmate at ten years old

Not because I hated food

There’s the family story of a trip to Olive Garden, six year old me, and six bowls of pasta

But food was new Food was texture

Food was taste and smell and touch and too many senses all at once

I knew what I liked

Ice cream and mashed potatoes

Chicken nuggets and mac n’ cheese I knew everything else, I didn’t

And now in front of me

I eat as if I haven’t since childhood

Bite after bite

Devouring

Savoring

Relishing

I find myself enjoying fast food less

In my twenty second year

The novelty has not yet worn off completely But now I understand

The woman pushing her son in a cart at Target

“Can we eat on the way home?”

“We’ll eat at home.”

I should call my mom

What did I love, with thanks to Ellen Bass

Katie Watkins

What did I love about his funeral? Let me start with the peeling off of my rain-soaked coat at the door, the cornflower blue satin, the viewing of the lifeless body, waxy skin, soulless countenance, his cheeks painted like some kind of sick clown. I loved the strange sense of comfort in having outlived him. I loved my grandmother’s scratchy white blouse and the way she rested her chin on my shoulder, her silver tears, running through her smile lines, as her quivering hand grasped for mine.

I loved the stiff-backed pew, listening to the obnoxious trill of the organ as John, the organist, plucked- out Abide With Me. After the service, the crowds lingered, his good old boys, his sons of the American Revolution, patting one another on their hunched backs. What a strong, Christian man Earl was! they’d say and I loved their rotten teeth and dull eyes; they too were dead to me.

I loved my false smile of agreeance the simple solace in my clenched jaw.

X asked me, “Can you describe a sunset to someone who was born blind?” I said, “I’ll try.”

X asked me, “Can you explain death to a five-year-old?”

I said, “It’s the easiest thing in the world.”

X finally asked me, “Can you find the end of the night?” I said, “It will never be possible.”

Describe a sunset to someone who was born blind

I don’t have to take him to the mountains. I don’t have to take him to the sea. I want to tell him that people don’t chase the sunset because it’s beautiful, they chase their own vision of something beautiful. He must understand, therefore, that these statements of mine are nothing more than an illusion. Think of it as a normal day. He has daily chores to deal with: fixing the microwave, feeding the fish, calling his sick mother, listening to the news, the boring items on his work schedule, and so on. He rarely thinks about what that means when he does it, and committing to life means the absence of meaning. That’s how his time passes. He lives in life itself. Follow sounds, smells, memories of space, habits formed in time.

Soon it will be dusk, and he will know the time by watch or intuition. He opens the window, feels the temperature, and makes sure it’s not raining. He feels the wind, and the wind sends him a pleasant invitation. It’s spring or autumn.

Then the phone rang. He has been informed of an unfortunate event. It seems too dramatic to say it’s unfortunate, because it’s not a disaster, and it doesn’t affect anyone else. However, it means that some of his past efforts have been wasted. It’s the most common thing that happens to almost everyone in life, and we should all get used to it as soon as possible, but his mind does feel some real unhappiness.

So he sits for a while, five minutes, 50 minutes. When he accepts this misfortune ----as you eventually accept all the others in your life he opens the door and slowly descend eight flights of stairs. There are nine steps like this. Take a walk in his neighborhood or in a park with trees a block away. All journeys without a destination are not too far off. On the road he hears the voice of his lover behind him. He heard his name. He stops and waits for the other person to catch up with him. He walks and sits down on the bench where he usually rests. He brings up the subject -- and then gradually bring up a heavy topic that he would not normally talk about. He talks back and forth, as if exchanging gifts, almost like a lifetime. Such talk is more precious in itself. than any kind of fate.

Suddenly, in the middle of the conversation, the words are cut off; sud- denly, the air is drawn up somewhere high; suddenly, a great silence descends: like a ghost, a disaster, a beauty. Then he hears, “What a beautiful sunset.”

He is waiting. As usual, the other person begins to try to describe the scene in his eyes: how red spreads in the deep blue sky, how broken clouds are stained, how the sun sinks, and how the birch trees in the distance covered it all. His lover is serious and clumsy, changing word after word, but he still doesn’t know the difference between red and blue, how the clouds look like cotton wool, if the sun is an eternal star, how does it fall.

But he hears the words, the chaos and the calm between red and blue, the little rise and fall in each other’s breath at the end of the sentence about the falling sun was itself a sigh.

His skin is gradually cooled by the wind, but his heart has welcomed the great calm-this is a person facing the sunset feeling.

Explain to a five-year-old what death is

“Cry and no one will ever hear you.”

“Ask and no one will ever give you.”

I told X that maybe the night would never end

Now he could make out the outline of the opposite sofa, its melancholy depression, always waiting for someone to sit down. Open to the ancestors of the page, a blank, word of dust, struggling to enter your breath. The nocturnal wander- er sings love songs, as if he could look up and find a mate, as if he had been singing since the end of the last century, while the moon is always overhead, hunched over his waist. Awakened, weightless, thrown out of the gates of the night; found the second hand circling the heart, dozens of cycles. But the spirit of time stayed up all night practicing the dive along the rubber tube wall.

“The night is too long,” he sighed.

As long as a meteorite, the night falls into the sea. And one time he got dumped and drunk. “I’m so relieved to think that one day I’m going to die.” When he cried, it’s like he’s standing in the glow of a dark pond. And before that, the taste of tea at blue house, four friends, embracing one another, heading into the future. Raise a dog, know a thrush, learn the alphabet, recognize himself in the mirror for the first time-and night and day, so quietly run.

1:00 in the morning, he is in bed. People at 2:00a.m. is easy to sweat. At 2:50, the temperature drops, and winter arrives throughout the night; the temperature finally becomes comfortable, and the bed becomes a lighted hut in a snowcovered jungle.

The dressing-gown, too, was at last calm, with one end touching the skin and the other the flickering fire: “let’s sing, fire.” Light every candle in the hut, make the candle jump like a dragonfly, make us chase and catch it clumsily. At 3:30, the flame finally rose from the bottom of his trousers (too slow for a fire, really) , burning his knees and a heart-sized memory of a hard candy, a seedbearing reed, a slope, where some people are crying, some people are running. At 4:05, the hair was completely dry. The hair is like a traveling sponge, passing through the rain forest, full of a year of warm and wet, waiting for the wind and the sun. White blood cells swim and sing poetry, viruses laugh and shout triumphantly, and they die together in the shallows. Everything in the world makes sense, and there are unexpected little things that help it. At 5:20, the female ghost who has been sitting at the head of the bed is about to go. But before she left, she felt uneasy, and again blew a cool breeze over our shoulders and necks to urge us to tuck ourselves in or close the door. She always thought humans were too hot.

At six o’clock, the moon dispelled the surrounding clouds, and the stars began to fall, one by one, on a spot in space. At forty-three, he suddenly opened his eyes, as if a lake had suddenly opened up in the desert in the early morning; his ear was a huge hill, on which were hairy trees, and where a hunter was driving the wild beasts, and before him the day, the night is behind us. At 7:15, he realized the lake and the mountain were a dream. Fifty-five, press the alarm clock ahead of time, the real wind is pouring into every corner, sunlight is beating on the clothes rack.

The Spring

Katie Watkins

unravelling my tangled limbs from scratchy cotton sheets, I strain, pushing myself from the bed carefully fondling the bitter floor with raw heels, I picture the sheen of vibrant blossoms from my sunny window. two floors up, their balm washes over me, as if reverberating off each wall the trilling of birds, their wistful song: the melody carried by a chilling breeze, which floats into my room, dispersing its freshness and bringing goosebumps to my legs I shrug off the night and welcome a world I long to touch then, from my sunny window, I look down I see the trees I stood under yesterday. They are naked. their pink petals spoilt coating the bright grass in a film like rotting banana peels and I remember that spring brings death to these.

Gridlines 1

Katie Watkins

Equinoctial Madison Freeman

As the thunder rolls through the air and the rain trickles down the win- dow, I can’t help but glance at the tattered burgundy umbrella leaning beside the front door. Do you remember it? The bright umbrella that you purchased from the gas station on the corner of Vincent Avenue. It was our third date. The rain soaked through my coat as you drug me behind you into the store. Tossing a wad of ones on the counter with a sodden splat, you grabbed the nearest umbrella from the rack. Heading back out of the store you huddled close, heaving a sigh as you prepared yourself to face the storm.

We strolled elbows locked through the streams of water trailing down E.L. Street. Each step leaving spiraling ripples in its wake as gentle splashes echoed the watery rings. You grumbled as the passing cars sent waves of water across our bodies, rendering the little umbrella useless. You always hated the rain. The bitter chill of being soaked to the bone and the sloshing of soggy socks made the wet weather rather unappealing to most. I’ll admit that being drenched was rather irritating but the heavy smell of autumn raindrops made our walk a bit more enjoyable. The precipitation drove the population indoors and left only idiots like ourselves wandering through the downpour. While the typical Thursday nightlife stayed dry, the rain made visible the plethora of nature’s eve- ning hosts. As I looked through the crystal-like sheet of water, I noticed how the golden glow of the street lights had stolen the youthful hues of the August trees and left the limbs painted in shades of rusty reds and honey yellows. The distant Ferris wheel continued to rotate as the dim blue wheel carts rose like pearls from the sea. We continued our stroll until we reached the bottom of the hill that over- looked the city. Do you remember the view?

When we reached the top of the hill, the rain had finally stopped. The air instead was filled with falling drops of liquid light. The glittering orbs and rippling ribbons illuminated the night sky. You stood shaking the water from the umbrella’s burgundy polyester as I gazed upward, basking in the glow of the heavens. The sleepy city below was slumbering in ignorance to the spectacle above it. The street lights floated up until they were captured by the eternal abyss of night. Hung from invisible lamps, the spheres of light joined the celestial bod- ies in their cosmic waltz. Cassiopeia swirled around the bow of Orion as the stars softly spiraled in time with the melodious chirps from the symphony of crickets. The bashful moon sat center stage on her throne and graced the galaxy with only a quarter of her face as Venus lead the luminaries through each turn. I grabbed your hand in excitement and pleaded for a dance which you declined, pulling me downwards toward the apartment instead. As I glanced back, I saw the sturdy cypris reach for the stars, longing, as I was, to join in their supernal dance.

The downpour continues outside the window. Rain coming down in slanted angles, much like it did that night. The night that the stars danced. Glancing at the time I hurriedly lace up my boots and button my coat. The moon waits for no one. Grasping the broken burgundy umbrella, I begin my rainy walk toward the hill in the park. The damp autumn air fills my lungs as I climb upward, drawing nearer to the melodies of the equinoctial waltz, burgundy umbrella in hand. Tell me, why did you always hate the rain?

Holding On Hannah Bowman

For a long time, I used to go to bed early. You had to, at that age. Everyone was always telling you what time it was, and you certainly couldn’t tell them any different. It was time for lunch, time for recess, time for a nap (yes you have to sit on the cot and be quiet), time to go home, time for dinner (yes you have to eat everything on the plate), time to go to bed no later than eight o’clock. Funny how now that there’s no one to tell me to do those things, I wish that there was. I don’t like miss- ing meals or sleeping for sixteen hours straight or staying up till four a.m. Okay, maybe I do like that last one. But it’s not good for me is it? Not good to be barely hanging onto a schedule by my pinky nails, not good to wish that someone would just take over my body and run it better than I ever could.

My memory has always been odd, latching onto random things and holding them closer than anything else. One time my family pulled into the driveway and noticed that a praying mantis had affixed itself to the back windshield. We didn’t know where we had picked it up, where it had come from. I wonder if it was scared. I wonder how tightly it had to hold onto the rubber seal around the glass, if it even knew what it was holding onto or why. I wonder what it was thinking when we set it down in the grass, in a place lifetimes of travel away from its home. I wonder if it twiddled it’s elongated arms, praying for whatever otherworldly force brought it here to take it back?

I wake up many times, only getting out of bed once my mouth tastes rancid and my limbs are sore from sleeping. I have missed at least two meals, so I fish a breakfast sandwich out of the fridge and heat it up in the microwave. The cheese melts out from between the layers, ruining the bottom of the biscuit. I eat it with a fork. The computer sits ominously in the other room. I ignore it. It is late afternoon, or dusk, or midnight, or later. Does it matter? I have certainly slept through some- thing.

I feel my limbs being drawn into thin, segmented appendages. I feel my always-been-too-large eyes grow larger still, lenses breaking into fragments. I feel my bloated middle becoming thoracic, wings I never had sprouting from a pimpled back. And I feel myself holding on, holding on so, so tightly, borne away to someplace I do not know where, for reasons I do not know why.

What I Still Don’t Understand

Katie Watkins

Why pennies were the only love you’d give – not nickels or dimes but cold copper to bite at our skin.

Why you made us sing to earn them Or hand us a Christmas present and remind us how much it cost you.

Why we couldn’t shout or run in the hallway or jump off of plushy beds. Why you’d unload and reload the dirty dishes to your exact specifica- tions.

Why no one touched your record player, not even you. And each charcoal-colored disc lay nestled in layers of cellophane.

songs unsung, kitchen dance parties forbade that I knew, even then, that to love something was to use it, to breathe it in, to share it.

But that there was always a creeping shadow in your words, a bitter thorn behind the “mercy” you taught.

But that I also enjoyed being the favorite loved that you liked me more.

I used to go fishing with you –You taught me how to bait a hook, to peel the skin from a catfish, to love ice-cold Root Beer

That when you talked about the good ole days, you meant the days when others would obey you without question.

That you were blind to the suffering you caused. That I was blind to the suffering you caused.

That my mother should’ve put a stop to it, but she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t know how to

That I loved you in spite of it all.