bedroom chocolate milk daylight

Maryna Sokolyan

bedroom

Zoe Cunniffe

i get goosebumps in your bedroom, even when you aren’t around. it’s the cracker crumbs on your desk, swept into neat piles. the creases in your comforter, the sound of your pillow when i press my palm against it. it smells of silence in here, and i flick the lights off, stumble through your sheets with my arms outstretched, grasping at walls. knock on plaster, and the sound muffles itself. tip over a glass of ice water and feel it seep through the carpet until the soles of my feet freeze solid.

we lie on top of the covers, ceiling fan whirring. this must be how you sleep at night: listening to the white noise, waving your arms through the blackness. your thoughts beat through your skull, ringing loud and clear. you are scared that i can see you: your posters on the walls, your stains in the carpet. you are everywhere, here: feet padding across the floor, legs up on the desk, private moments bleeding from between the floorboards.

you lay a hand on my stomach to check if i am breathing, but i am not. i leak from the furnace now, swimming between cracks in the ceiling. i am spilled down the curtains, burned into the lamplight, carved into your dresser drawer. i brushed your hand once, and you heard my name in your head like an intrusive thought. now i am part of you, stitched into your shoelaces, reflected in your mirror.

Zoe Cunniffe is a poet, singer-songwriter, and college student from Washington, DC. She has previously been published in literary journals such as the Trouvaille Review, Love Letters Magazine, Ice Lolly Review, Meniscus, and The Showbear Family Circus, and she can be found on Instagram at @there.are.stillbeautifulthings.

chocolate milk

Zoe Cunniffe

it’s delicate at least once a day: foolish, silky hours where i melt like water, like chocolate milk. rich and creamy, hearty and lush. flower petals on the underside of my skin, and i know myself again.

but then— i think your voice coaxes it out: fever under my fingernails, forehead steaming. crawl through my muscles until they ache like they’re not mine. red hot panic, rough around the edges, rough around the middle. creep towards my brain, dance like fumbling fire, mimic its elegance. it singes me until i call it mine, mine, mine.

the smoke will never know velvet, but it has its feet up on the coffee table and i stutter as i deliver it sloshing glasses of chocolate milk.

Maryna Sokolyan

Maryna Sokolyan

daylight

Zoe Cunniffe

when i was eleven, i noticed that i always walked with my head pointed downwards, memorizing the outline of my white sneakers against the blacktop. i floated between cracks of tangibility, everything tainted a murky mustang yellow. i couldn’t have told you what color the sky was; i couldn’t even see through the smog.

tonight, it’s lavender. i’m on the trail, breath foggy, cold air settling on my skin as i pause to peer up into the clouds. i swear someone crept up onto a rooftop and painted these chemicals across the horizon. these days i wake up and forget all my dreams, because my mind has lost its ability to invent something more sublime than the broad daylight of reality, a periwinkle masterpiece streaked across the sky.