Room 18 Issue #7

LETTERS + STROKES

ROOM EIGHTEEN

ASIA ALSTON - MARCUS BROWN - ELLIE COHEN - ZOE GATTI \]GENNA KULES - TRESEAT LAWRENCE QUADAJA HERRIOTT - DANIELLE KENTIDIA LEIGH - KHAT PATRONG - EDGAR ALLEN POE - CELIA REILLY HELEN STEINECKE - BARRETT SMITH

QUADAJA HERRIOTT

THAT LADY Slurred words are song lyrics nestled in deep pastures of confusion The thought is trapped in an ocean of thoughts and they come out in jumbles of together, like the words the lady was talking on the train this morning That lady could not see and her eyes were crazy, couldn’t stay in one place Always them people who’s without searching She say she wasn’t always blind and still don’t call herself that She say she ain’t got proper eyes but she got her God and so she has spiritual vision and then she starts singing a tune mid-sentence about her appreciation and satisfaction that one day she can go home But now she’s on her way to the place she merely lives where she eats, sleeps and shits That ain’t home where she got all them pictures and all that family and all that food to fill her belly Don’t none of that food matter anyway That lady will always be hungry Never full until she goes home Then she starts singing again you won’t understand how sweet her voice tasted I won’t either I could only hear the sweet She knows though and the fruit on her tongue brought her pleasure especially since she was sharing her words They were slurred though and you had to be listening real close to hear the song when she wasn’t singing.

2

ROOM EIGHTEEN - ISSUE VII

CONTENTS QUADAJA HERRIOTT - 2 KHAT PATRONG - 4 HELEN STEINECKE - 6 IDIA LEIGH - 8 EDGAR ALLEN POE - 10 GENNA KULES - 12 DANIELLE KENT - 13 QUADAJA HERRIOTT - 14 ELLIE COHEN- 16 MARCUS BROWN - 17 TRESEAT LAWRENCE - 18 CELIA REILLY - 20 BARRETT SMITH - 22 ZOE GATTI - 25 COVER ART: celticfan34 (FIVERR.COM)

“Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.”

-JAMES BALDWIN

3

KHAT PATRONG

re:history of love 1. THE MEANING OF DREAMS THAT KEEP ME UP AT NIGHT. I was falling. The dark sky was empty but there I was falling through it. It had been a rough day and before I’d gone to bed I had swallowed two ibuprofen. The bottle warned against taking more than six in any twenty-four hour period. I had to resist the urge to disobey this. Yet I did resist, but here in this world, built by my imagination, I am falling and I don't know why.

2. I TRIED TO COMMIT SUICIDE ONCE. The note I left read: 'I've made many mistakes and this will be my last one. God forgive me.' But when my lungs were burning and I was about to release my last bubble of air to the surface of the water, the door opened and someone screamed.

3. I WAS YOUNG THEN And being older now you can say that I have a broader view of the world. Getting out of that hospital, and away from others like me, was simply a blessing my knees were too weak to thank God for. Before any of that, I would like to think I was well thought of, people called; asked to meet up. But now people are afraid to look in the eyes of a true sinner; this is something that never made sense to me because how are you ever able to look at yourself in the mirror? Or is it that people just don’t look hard enough?

4. MY MOTHER ALWAYS TOLD ME TO NEVER BE TOO NICE. But things changed. I know she can't shake that image of me in the bathtub. Skin a pale pink, like when I was first born.

I am her only child. Now she'll get me anything.

"Tea dear?"

"Another slice of cake? Let me get that for you".

I look away when she stands up, now she needs a table or anything around her for support. Her arthritis is only getting worse.

5. ONE TIME SHE ASKED ME WHY And I honestly didn't know.

6. EVERY SUNDAY I would put on my best shoes and we would go to church together. One sermon lingers in my memory. It was about Lucifer and his fallen angels, and how they choose the bad side. I've always wondered why.

4

7. FALLING After I awoke from a dreamless night in the hospital. I walked to the balcony in my room. I didn’t understand the point of it being there if it was going to have a large heavy duty lock on its sliding door. If you recollect a dream its supposed to mean something. I don't know why but, at that moment, I recalled a dream that I had experienced long ago. Looking out past the commercial greenery and black fencing, I realized that I am a fallen angel.

8. I MET AN ANGEL ONCE. In high school. Her name was Alma. People at school called her a loser because she was missing a finger on her left hand. I couldn't fathom why people could be so cruel to such a pretty girl. I talked to her and she became one of my best friends. And then she left, and every night while I lay awake, I question what it is I said wrong to make her go away.

9. THE FINGER SHE LOST WAS THE RING FINGER. We were both lying on her bed. Music was playing softly, a band she knew and that I also grew to like. Then suddenly she said: "It was a car accident. Many things were broken but my finger was unfixable. When I woke up and saw that they had removed it, I was furious to tears." I was silent. "From then on,” she said. “I hated doctors. It's their job to fix things the human heart can't and they failed. Now no one will marry me." "I'll marry you" I said, and I meant it. She did not respond, instead she just waved her left hand in my face. I took it and held on to it, kissing the gap between the pinky and middle finger.

10. NINE IS AN UNLUCKY NUMBER. It was the ninth month on the ninth day when she left.

I remember it so vividly I could paint it. Except I'm no painter. I didn't have to see her face. I know I didn't. But all I can remember is feeling this wave, the wave of something leaving me. And maybe the canvas can contain such an emotion but people might mistake it for a day at the beach, deep blues turning to black. I hated her now but even though nine is a bad luck number, I loved every one of her fingers.

11.

Nights later, I had a dream that I was falling. After I woke up I realized Alma wouldnt come back to me, that she couldn’t. That I had to go to her, even if it meant giving up my slot in heaven just to hold her hand in hell.

12. TRY AGAIN.

5

HELEN STEINECKE

MOLLY I think my lasting memory of my dog is from when she was maybe half a year old. It was around Christmas, which is when we got her, and she was just a little puppy the size of a softball. We kept her in a shoebox and named her Molly.

I must have been six or seven or eight or nine. Little, anyway.

I was sitting on the floor under the Christmas tree, in front of her shoebox. We had this ornament made of semi-opaque dark-green glass that had been blown into the shape of a 3D octagon. Or maybe it was like a demagon or an elevenagon or something.

But anyway, I was holding it over her shoebox and telling her it was an ornament. Like you tell a baby the word bottle, so they'll know for future reference.

That's my first and lasting memory of Molly.

She died maybe three weeks ago. We - well, my mom - had her put down. She must have been thirteen or fourteen or fifteen. In dog years that's, like, a billion years old.

I still haven't cried about it.

I remember the last day she and I were in the same house. My sister, Charlotte, was home from college for Spring Break. She was driving us over to our father's house, where we would spend the second week of her break. We used to alternate weeks with either parent, before she moved to Annapolis. Now only I do it.

I went down to the car and sat in the passenger's side, thinking. My sister forgot something and went back up to the house.

That's when it occurred to me that this was my last chance to see Molly, because it was a guarantee, now that my sister and I had spent time with her, that my mother would take her to the vet the next day. She was so old and sick.

It was Sunday.

I stayed in the car.

6

The next morning, as I was walking home from a very short school day, my phone rang. I dug it out of my pocket, my sister was calling.

Mom had taken Molly to the vet.

She was dead.

Charlotte sounded shaky. I leaned against one of the wrought iron street lamps of Georgetown, my voice even, I thought about the walk to Dupont Circle.

"I see."

Okay so I don't remember what I said, but it was something like that.

I take death badly, I think.

I tend to be stony, or even cold.

I hung up soon after that and walked to Dupont, dry-eyed.

Maybe it was wrong not to go up into the house that Sunday and pet Molly one last time. I hope it wasn't. I'm glad that I can remember her as a softball, not the senile bag of bones with the atrophied legs that she became.

I wanted her to remain a puppy.

My puppy.

Oh, sorry. Something in my eyes.

7

Photos: Zoe Gatti

IDIA LEIGH

ANNABEL LEE You always had a thing for the sea. I was always a bit jealous of that. I never really understood the way the ocean was mirrored in your eyes. You always looked good in the sun. I acted my age and stayed in the shadows. You laughed a chilling song. I growled a bit. You would only laugh harder. You were young and I was eager to watch you age. I had nowhere else to be. You had no other reason to be. We sat there in silence, or at least what seemed to be, as your words merged with the tide. You were warm. My arms cooled you. We sat there.

Your baby hands teased my end of the day stubble. I never did more than gurgle and coo. I worried about God. A lot. More than I should. You never teased me like he did. I was often scared, and you always saw that. You always had a thing for animals. I growled a bit. You never hated my feverish outbursts. I was never touched by how you giggled at them. We were always silent about God. You understood.

You always had a thing for the sea. I urged you to go back inside.

Soon I was too cold to touch. It never stopped you. Your skin was the color of mine. Your fits were the color of mine. They always seemed worse coming from you. We took walks. I carried you more than half way. Your eyes mirrored the clouds and I kissed their lids to keep them from staying closed. We talked about Satan. You were never scared. You said you believed in angels. I had my own conspiracies.

You wrote to me every day. I wrote once a week. You never seemed to mind. I tried to visit. You told me not to. I came as soon as I could. I looked like the ocean. You looked like me.

8

I cherished the ceremony, as much as possible. I was angered by the people and by the flowers. I was angry at the apologies. I loved the shadows and the smell of sand. You were cold, colder than you had ever been. I was happy that you would never know the feeling of reuniting with a rotting love. Prayers were given. We were always silent about God. You laughed at me when I woke up sweaty. You chuckled when I wrote down my words. I tried to trace your footsteps in the sand along the shore. I got frustrated at how I easily forgot the shape of each toe when the tide rushed in. I followed you into the water. They pulled me out when I was under. They talked too much about Jesus.

We never said a word. You never left the bedside at night, well, except to look outside the window. I moaned and you pretended it was the wind. It was better that way for the both of us. You laughed when I wrote down my words. The ones that kept you there.

Somehow the moon reflected your eyes and I never forgot. I could not count any stars in the sky, but the two that you owned shone as they mirrored the ocean. I lay down by the shore and said nothing of God. You always had a thing for the sea. I was always a bit jealous of that.

The tide was warm, even at night. You stayed still. From your feet in the sand, to your room looking out, from deep in your coffin, you always had a thing for the sea.

9

10

11

GENNA KULES

FRIGHTENED I feel my feet slip from under me and my hand slide against the rock. I drop a few feet until I lurch to a stop and swing around the corner of the large rock I am strapped to. I feel my feet above my head and the rough surface of the rock that my body slides across. I feel my skin tear. I hit my head and my body straightens.

The fear does not make sense. I know I am strapped to the rock, and that the person belaying me is there to take a hold of me in the event that I might fall, yet still the fear persists.

I imagine myself unconscious, on a hospital bed, the rope having slipped too fast and the inexperienced belayer not having paid enough attention to break my fall. I imagine my body as it hits the ground, landing contorted: upside down, backwards, limbs at unaccustomed angles.

And then it was over. I was upright. I could see the world and it made sense again. With sense came calm, and with calm came reason. I was still shaking as my belayer slowly lowered me to the ground. My counselor rushed over and I began to relax.

I realized then that there are different types of reason. The reason that only makes sense in the corridors of your imagination is very different to the reason that is derived from fear.

I have a single scar from this experience on my left upper arm. It’s in a place that I can’t see without looking funny because I’ll turn my head as far as I can over my shoulder and poke my elbow out to see the underside of my arm.

DANIELLE KENT

CIRCUS

Lights. Music. Excitement.

The animals. The people. The games. These are things that can never be explained. How you can never sense the thrill of victory when a game is set up with such ease. How people are able to do things that are physically beyond their limits, yet people continue to come, as though if they miss it just once it will never appear again. We will always be here, just as long the world still deems us as freaks. We will always be here. My trick is to feel no pain. Yet I feel the pain. The needles, the fire, the blades, and whatever else they decide to throw my way. My pain - the absence of pain, fuels their excitement. I am left to shrug it off and live another day knowing that there’s plenty more applause to come.

13

QUADAJA HERRIOTT

KELOID TREATMENT Rejected the option of scar removal. Transfixed by the beauty of built-up tissue. The crescent blemish on her right leg that’s shape is visible even through Sunday morning tights. She can’t remember when the mark was weld to her skin and doesn’t ask about it. She plays makebelieve as often as an only child can and comes up with stories to substitute the hollow space of not knowing.

She told herself God had kissed her skin, and the kiss had left a mark as a reminder of his presence in her life. Always she remembered he was real. Always she heard his voice, especially during nightly prayer. Always she regarded him for the tiny miracles, like when she didn’t step on sidewalk cracks and injure her mother. Always she felt excitement in preparing herself to formally address her saviour. He attached that scar to her skin, pressed his lips to her body so she could not recall the pain.

Or maybe the pain was absent to her memory because the mark was birthed so long ago.

And as it began to fade she thought maybe that God was part of her make believe games, because if he was real he wouldn’t want the precious gift of his acknowledgement to go away. “Mommy says I’m a big girl now, I can’t play games all the time.”

Today she rolls the fabric over her leg and doesn’t notice the faded mark. She takes a deep breath and decides this will be her last day of church. She looks in the mirror and says “I don’t got time for make believe” and fixes her coils of hair.

ELLIE COHEN

FOR LANGSTON

ALL THE BEST IN NEW YORK 16

MARCUS BROWN

HERE WE AREN’T, SO QUICKLY (A RESPONSE) I am a horrible dancer. I prefer the book to the movie. I find myself making a mess of my handshakes. You think that I am joking; I think that I am serious. I’m always tired, even when I’m not. When I ask what you think, I really want to know, though there are times when, really, I don’t want to know. I like smelling cigarettes. I don’t do things until I have to. I’m a philosopher at heart. I receive your text messages but have no intention of calling you back. You haven’t really read a book in years. You like the seasoning more than the food. Your hands shake because of bad nerves.

You are a great singer. You don’t listen to other people until you have to. It really isn’t me, it’s you. You don’t get your feet done. You want to mess everything up. You check your reflection all the time, it’s not because you’re vain, it’s because you’re scared. You are beautiful.

I’m out of shape but nobody can tell. You didn’t really want to meet my mom but you did because I asked. You want a dog but you know I’m a cat.

I’m sensitive about my weight. You think I’m close-minded. I think you’re going to cheat on me. I’m always scared to touch you. You love being looked at but you hate being seen. I like rooms filled with sunlight. I’m a control freak. You need to be held. People don’t like you. You love dance more than most people do. I wish eating wasn’t necessary. You’re going to travel the world. Everything is better than it is to you. I put my I-pod on shuffle. You handpick every song.

I’m not very good at fulfilling my potential. You work for everything you have. You aren’t good with money. Neither am I. I’m good for you. You are bad for me. You don’t think I’m attractive but you like me anyway. You want to be a stripper. I don’t know what to say. I hate my dad, but I love my uncle. You have no parents. I know you best, and know nothing at all. You don’t call me enough. You like wearing dark colors. Everything you own has a story behind it. I make you feel bad all the time. I hate you during the times when I’m not with you. You’re stronger than me. I try really hard not to be self-centered. You don’t care about school. You try to please, you don’t try to impress. You love people who don’t love you. Sometimes I think I was born with a broken heart. You were born with a broken heart.

We’ve spent hours under a tree talking about nothing. We are both spiritual. Every girl before you was practice. I’m scared to ask about your ex. I love your ugly hands. I do whatever you tell me. I wish you’d tell me what is wrong. You want to let me down easy. I can’t let you go. You are scared you aren’t good enough for anyone. We’ve never kissed. Perhaps we never will.

17

TRESEAT LAWRENCE

MY BARBIE DOLL

Mom, I’m in love No not a crush, not like not Something that goes away But this is love A lesbian, in fact, the definition of one.

However its defined.

I guess you can say I’m coming out the doll house but, I was never scared of society cracking my plastic.

But damn, she is beautiful, looks like you in a way.

Regretting giving me the Barbie dolls? Made perfectly for my hands ripping off their clothes and putting my lips in their special places.

But shit, I guess the word is out, tell uncle John, aunt Missy and cousin Pam that your baby girl is freaking it, out with the same sex.

And while you’re at it, remind yourself that you told me love was universal, and remember the time you told daddy ripping the clothes off my Barbie dolls was normal.

Think again.

18

CELIA REILLY

THE HUNCHBACK You would think that being called the “Hunchback of Notre Dame” for the hundredth time would hurt less than the first. But it didn’t. In elementary school I was scrawny, awkward, and I wore a back brace. When I was eight years-old I was diagnosed with juvenile scoliosis. My mom refused the surgery for it, so the other option was to give me a brace. The curve in my spine was already so large that the doctor said surgery was an option, that’s what I had wanted. I didn’t want this to turn into a bigger deal than it was already.

The doctor explained that bracing was making a plastic case, or mold, that I needed to wear under my clothes.

I would wear it a few years and when I finished growing the ordeal would be over. This sounded good to me. It sounded like a simple solution. But really it created more problems than it solved.

I wanted to believe the brace made me special, unique.

Instead, I was a target for kids that chose to tease others because they too were insecure enough about who they were. I wore the brace every day for five years. It made me a social leper. The kids delivered blow after blow to my self-esteem. I was a freak; they knew it and they made sure I knew it too.

I felt trapped. The brace felt more like a cage than anything else. After only a few months I was mentally exhausted. I hated explaining what the brace was to everyone I met. I hated my attempts to try and hide it under baggy clothes, and always without success because everyone still noticed. I hated the teasing, name calling, and straight up bullying. I hated the brace. I had so much hate for so many things, all of which were extensions of my hate towards the single 20

thing strapped to my back. I thought my hate levels would overflow and I would explode. I woke up every morning feeling the same hatred for everything and everyone around me. But the thing I hated most of all was having to hide that hate with a fake smile and false optimism.

During those five years I needed a great deal of emotional help. My friends would have to continue to remind me that I would not wear it forever, and that things would change. I wanted to believe them but I couldn’t. I felt hopeless. My parents would emphasis its significance, I needed the brace, it was ‘important to my health’. Everyone told me ‘keep going’ or ‘it’ll be over soon’. I put on my false smile when they said this. But I didn’t believe them.

The brace is gone but the memories aren’t. I remember the day of the diagnosis and my parents explaining juvenile scoliosis as best they could. I remember figuring out that I could not die from it and wondering why my parents were so worried. I go back to the day I got an x-ray, the day I realized just how bad it was, my spine was twisted, a sort of “C” shape. This is what scoliosis is. This is what the brace was there to correct. I miss it in a way. It was my shell, my suit of armor, and it was my cocoon. Sometimes, even though I don’t wear the brace anymore, I still see myself as a hunchback, a freak. But at other times I thank the bullies for thickening my skin. When kids insult me now all I can think is: ‘I’ve been called worse.’ The taunts helped make me who I am today and my friends and family helped me through those five years. Scoliosis is not just a spinal condition; it’s a mental challenge, a social obstacle. It is – was - the greatest obstacle that I had to face in my life.

21

BARRETT SMITH

re:history of love 1. I USED TO HAVE A COLLECTION OF THUMB DRIVES. One was a pig, one I had coloured myself, others had the names of organizations I knew nothing about. They were filled with homework assignments, pictures I thought I was great at editing, colouring pages, and anything else I wanted to print out. I had to take the thumb drive into my parents’ office and print things off from my dad’s computer. I didn’t mind doing this, because it meant I got to have a desktop in my room and that I could stay up past bedtime on chatrooms.

One time, I was waiting for my vocabulary list to print off and I picked a piece of paper up off the printer. It was addressed to Hawaii, which should have concerned me from the get-go since the only people we knew there were my dad’s son and exwife. It was addressed to a Buddhist monastery. I picked it up off the printer and under it was a picture of my brother. I read only the first paragraph of the letter, that Lee R Smith is being investigated as a missing persons in the state of Hawaii and that you [the weird buddhists] were the last people he was known to have been in contact with. At the bottom of the page I saw my father’s slim signature and his phone number. I thought that he wasn’t supposed to give his phone number to strangers.

2. THE WORD LOST... ...is so vague. I hate it. There are so many better things that provide context, explanation or just specific information: -I don’t know where I am -I don’t know where I’m going -I don’t understand -This doesn’t seem familiar -I misplaced something or left it somewhere 3. LEARNING ABOUT MY BROTHER WAS LIKE PUTTING TOGETHER PIECES OF PUZZLE. After the letter, I only had my memory and little pieces of conversation. My family was strange, they weren’t like the people in books or movies, they didn’t shut down and stop talking about him. But after the initial search, they stopped questioning where he was or when he would return. It was like he was still indefinitely away in Chicago, obtaining his PhD. My family still spoke about my brother but not about his being missing. No one ever came out and told me that he was missing, maybe because children have no filters so someone might have asked: Is he dead? No one ever said “Lee isn’t coming home tonight,” he just didn’t.

4. WAS AND IS ARE THE TWO MOST CONFUSING TENSES IN THE DICTIONARY. He was. He is.

5. I HAD THIS OBSESSION WITH MENTAL ILLNESS. One night at dinner, I started on a spiel of ‘did you know’: “Did you know bipolar disorder was originally called manic depression? Yea, ‘cause people who are bipolar go through periods of mania and then of depression.”

“Yes” My mother replied, my father nodded, “Lee has bipolar disorder” my mother said-as if it was hers to share.

My dad was always a teacher to me, so he explained to me things about bipolar disorder that I wouldn’t have read online. Like, during the mania, people with bipolar disorder can be a lot of fun and at times people will go off their meds to experience mania again, but it usually backfires when they start to feel depressed.

The information sounded like something more than a textbook response and I wondered who had put the implications there -me or him- because if it had been me, then I was certainly wrong but my father only lied about stupid stuff.

6. I AM SELF-DIAGNOSED WITH BIPOLAR DISORDER. Because I understand the reasoning, and I know I shouldn’t.

7. MY FATHER LIES ABOUT STUPID STUFF. When I was little he would make me memorize math problems and if, after a week, I knew the answer, he would give me a dollar. They were simple things, the hardest one for me was eight times seven. He taught me how to remember things with rhythm: eight - snap - times - snap - sev - snap - en - snap - equals - snap - fif snap - ty - snap - six. On Friday nights, before falling asleep to the sound of him reading, he would ask me the math problem and if I got it right we would go into the top drawer of his dresser where he kept all the cool stuff. He would ask me if I wanted a dollar bill or a dollar coin and I would always pick coins because they were prettier.

One day, I went to the school store to buy a scented pencil and a hedgehog shaped eraser and I handed the lady the coins I had earned. At first she laughed, then there was a look of understanding, she leaned in and very gently told me that my dollar coins were, in fact, poker chips.

8. MY FATHER IS DYSLEXIC. Sometimes he spells “chesapeake” “chespeke” or he asks me how to spell anniversary and I look at him like he is the stupidest man in the world. But really, I think my daddy is smarter than all my teachers and all the gurus. People talk about the moment they realise their fathers are simply men, but my daddy is the closest thing there is to God. In spite of it all, my father has the courage to sit down with me and help with my homework. Sometimes I wish it didn’t take him ten minutes to write a sentence so that I could read his story.

9. MY BROTHER IS LOST.

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10. AT SOME POINT, THEY STARTED CALLING HIS BEDROOM THE GUEST BEDROOM. I don’t know when exactly it started, but it quickly became consistent. Once I noticed, it bothered me. I started saying Lee’s bedroom with a purposeless sense of purpose. His paintings still hang on the walls, his graduation cap is still in the closet and the strange trinkets he brought from all over the world are in his nightstand.

Guest bedroom didn’t really stick, it negated his whole existence as anything other than a guest in our lives and so, with a lack of any somberness, we started to call it simply The Bedroom.

11. HIS EMAIL IS magicianofchange@gmail.com.

The last interaction I remember having with my brother was in my bedroom. I was on my bed and he was on the floor. His hair was long at the time and tinted red from dye that had faded. He had just read a poem I’d written about a girl who looks in the mirror and all she sees is blood; I don’t remember if he liked it or not but it inspired him to go through my books. He started going through the bookshelf under my window, he pulled out a book of poems by Edgar Allen Poe and read them to me. I’d read “The Raven” before on standardized tests and I was bored of it but my brother tried to convince me of its merits and when that failed (I can be stubborn) he read me another poem. Finishing that book of poems became my project for the month. Before he left that week, he gave me, at only 11 years old, a copy of Lord of the Flies. I started emailing him my poems and we would IM briefly at night, attempting to make up for the five hour time difference.

12. THERE WERE “KNOW THE SIGNS OF SUICIDE” POSTERS IN OUR HALLWAYS. So when we IM’d and he said things like “I felt today that I almost died, or kind of died. It was very strange. I died and did not die,” or he told me that he decided he was going to live on a farm to connect with the earth. I shouldn’t have replied simply with “oook”. I should have known, I should have asked him what happened, or why, or how. I should have gotten him to talk and told my parents.

13. HE’S JUST A WEIRD GUY14. HE DIDN’T KILL HIMSELF. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself.He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t kill himself.

15. I MISS HIM

ZOE GATTI

25

ASIA ALSTON

UNTITLED it was cold and the bus wouldn’t come for another thirty minutes. it was one of those winter nights where the snow slowed down transit, as if it didn’t take long enough without it. i blew into the icy air, watched my breathe appear and then dissolve. i hated waiting at this bus stop. strange people would walk by, attempting to start a conversation with me. i didn’t care to talk though. i would always put on my “don’t fuck with me tonight” face and they pretty much received the message. but tonight was different. it was quiet. i mean, it was still the usual back and forth of people rushing to get out of the cold and cars pacing down the street. but the air was quiet, almost motionless. i stood there, counting the red cars that drove by to kill time as well as my boredom.

1, 2, 3, 4 eww, she needs to wash her car, 5, 6, 7... seven red cars and only nine minutes had past. i could feel the frustration creeping onto my face because my cheeks felt a little warmer. i looked into my phone at my reflection. even though i was freezing, i still looked good. i smiled at that. i looked up from my phone and noticed a car slowly approaching the bus stop. at first i thought it was because it wanted to be careful, driving in the snow and all, but then it came to a complete stop. it was a 2012 Ford Mustang Boss 302, slick black. the sexiest thing created by man. i wondered what type of man it took to take care of a car like that. it had to be one with money, like with kingpin type money. i watched it with lustful eyes as the dark tinted window rolled down on the passenger side. the sweet sound of Erykah Badu harmonizing with Damian Marley poured out of the car, i’m in love with you. “hey sweetheart, where are you headed ?”, the deep voice behind the steering wheel questioned. it was dark inside the car but my instincts told me that the driver looked as good as the whip he was pushing. i looked around the bus stop and it became

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obvious that he was speaking to me. i put on my “don’t fuck with me” face, just when i was starting to think i wouldn’t have to use it today. but that only made him rephrase the question. “home” i said, faking irritation. he leaned over into the passenger side and pushed open the door. it was kind of like he didn’t expect an answer but he knew i would get in. he knew something i didn’t know, something that i wanted. i looked at the time. twenty more minutes until the bus would arrive, i would have to count eighteen more red cars. at that moment, everything my mother had told me about talking to strangers and all of the missing children posters, like my breathe, appeared and then dissolved. i walked towards the car. i thought about saying a quick prayer and then dismissed the idea. i didn’t mind having my own poster. i climbed into the car and closed the door tightly. it was warm, comfortable. i looked over at the driver and as i predicted, he was a work of art. probably the sexiest thing created by god. “where do you need to go ?” he asked. for some reason, this question confused me. i guess, i was expecting him to pull off and for me to ask him where we were going. he asked again.

“5200 glenarden ave, right beside the old wonder bread factory.” he nodded and turned the radio up, i’m in love with you. i rested my head against the back of my seat, somewhat relaxed and closed my eyes. i thought about what he might ask for in return for rescuing me from the bus stop. maybe he’ll ask me to do something nasty, i’ve heard about girls giving head in the front seat of a hummer, never a boss 302 though. or maybe he’ll just ask for my number. i probably should have hoped for something simple like that. but i wanted something more exciting. like him taking me to his house, locking me in his basement. and somehow i would escape, maybe through a cracked window. i would live to tell the story and revel in the memory. that’s what i really hoped for. i opened my eyes. i watched him as he mouthed the words flowing from the speaker, he opened up his lips and then said this poetry, i’m in love with you.

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ROOM 18 - ISSUE #7- MAY 2012

PRODUCED BY THE LITERARY MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT