The Lavender Issue 19: THEMELESS by route9wesleyan

Letter from the Editors

What is a theme? Why do we need less of it? Over here at the Lavender headquarters, we’ve experienced many sleepless nights pacing the Shapiro halls as the names of past editions Haunted us Up Close. But when our Ritual of titling each issue Perished, we realized they all had one thing in common: a letter from the editor.

So, faced with the difficult task of defining the indefinable, our editors in chief, Mia and Mel, did what they were supposed to do: delegated. Thus, we now present to you a tapestry woven entirely of loose ends. A poetic, aesthetic, and prosaic mosaic. The beauty of a themeless issue is that there is no wrong way to read it. Flip through it backwards, read only titles, make up a theme retroactively (maybe there is a super secret theme and you have to try reeaallyy hard to figure it out).

So please read the issue, enjoy the issue, take issue with the issue, it rules that there are no rules, in fact nothing is factual and namely there is no name that matters in the matter of lines to be read in between the lines, as the pieces cannot be pieced together and together we can make sense of nonsense. While this issue has been titled themeless we do not actually have less theme but rather more theme. Endless theme. So many themes there are no themes. This may send us on a nihilistic kick.

But, even when the theme desists, it reveals what truly holds this magazine together: the wonderful people! To our aforementioned editors in chief, Mia and Mel, we wish to thank you for bearing with us, making cohesion out of chaos, and guiding us fearlessly through this new landscape. To our lovely prose twins, George and Eli, thank you for bringing vivacity and joy to the prose room at every meeting, and for your endless dedication and humor. To Eve and Stella, your design prowess is extremely impressive, and we are thankful for you ever-so-politely pretending that our vibes-based instructions are real instructions. Sarann and Elva, our wonderful managing editors, thank you for helping everything run seamlessly behind the scenes, and keeping us simultaneously on track and on our toes. To our copy editors, wE tank ewe Emenslee 4 all ur hard werk. Thxxxxx Maisie, Grey, & Ben 4 bein awEsum!!! Thank you to our authors. It seems you all enjoyed the lack of theme as we received the most poetry submissions of all time!! This edition would literally be a blank book without you.

Lastly, to our readers: thank you for trusting us. Thank you for picking up an issue with no thesis, no roadmap, and no promise beyond “there will be words inside.” We hope you enjoy its unpredictability. It’s anti-conceptness. It’s genre-agnostic, free-flowing, hippy-dippy, hoity-toity, hokey-pokey, hanky-panky, willy-nilly, Miaey-Melly, Wesleyan-esque nature.

This is not a magazine; this is a misadventure in print. This is not a theme; this is the Lavender. We love you all with all our love.

Your Poetry Editors, Isaiah and Fae

Sunfish by Suz Blatter

The Bachelor by Yael Ezry

Carlo Delezene

Rolling-Cloud Cities by Daniel Stolzfus

Hyman by Elias Tobisman Pearl

Trust Tears by Kashvi Gera

Widow Lee and Billy Clark by Georgia Kelly-Marshall

Escape by Kiran Schatz

Blood Suckers by Maisie Wrubel

Lucy Mezey

Elm Sestina by Clara Lewis-Jenkins

Power circuit by Ibby Newland

Hanyue Wang

Funhouse by Shanti Hinkin

fantaisie (Backsliding) by Kai Paik

Root Rot by Amelie Creten

Miller Ontiveros

Nora Ephron, Take the Wheel by Ella Kramer

Stella Ross-Gray

Nail Clippings by S

TREMENDOUSLY SORRY by Claire

Katia Michals

In Case of Zombies by Liv Rubenstein

How I Made My Millions by Jordana Treisman

Dinah Landsman

Please Don’t Cut Off My Toes by Nadia Moosa

The Scent of Food by Vyom Tiwari

I do, I do, I do. by Eliana Goldstein

NEW PATIENT INTAKE FORM by Jasmine Jhun

How I feel by Eli Goldman

Hundsmiserabel by George Manes

The Drummer has aphantasia by Mia Alexander

Duaa Taweel

Less by Gray Sansom-Chasin

Aya Stern

Guess Again by Susie Nakash

Unwritten Rain by Feyza Horuz

Lowtide by Lily Turner

Granny Panty by Sarann Spiegel

Sunfish

Suz Blattner

My brother dangles the orange-bellied fish with glee. Dragged onto the boat, the fish by the jaw and me the shoulder, lake water rolls down our glistening cheeks. I am made still to wait for the fish who struggles in my brother’s grip as he twists the hook, rips it from the lip, and tosses the fish to the tin floor.

The fish flops only once, already suffocating at my feet, its eyes and mine, glassed over and pleading to my brother who turns, casting his line once more. Fish after fish join the first at my feet.

Now, walking an asphalt path the scent of trampled, dried worms soaking up new rain staggers my feet, for I am in that tin boat once more, unable to bend over and slip my fingers under the fish’s scaly side. I watch the life dry away.

The Bachelor

Yael Ezry

My grandparents live in a stone house at the top of a hill. And far more important than my grandparents, down the right hallway, there is my aunt’s old bedroom. And there, sitting in a glass case, live her Barbie dolls.

Behind the glass cases of Barbies, visitors will find red-rimmed doilies, vases, platters of plastic fruit and flowers, piles of Tamagotchis, Beanie Babies, two Furbies, Polly Pockets, mountains of troll dolls, a broken but massive CD boombox, and a clock with a black-and-white picture of a girl and her boyfriend smoking a cigarette. All of my aunt’s old clothes are regularly washed, crisply refolded, and placed back in her closet every two weeks.

As a kid, I loved everything. And most of all, shining above all the clothes and all the toys, I loved the Barbies.

At home, my mother had outlawed all Barbies because their perky breasts were anti-feminist. But on trips to see my grandparents, everyone’s minds seemed to sink to the back of their heads, cleaving over the sticky heat and stone floors. I played happily to my heart’s content.

My favorite game above all to play with the Barbies was what I called “The Bachelor.” The Bachelor was a made-up game inspired by the only male doll my aunt ever owned.

The 1992 Glitter Beach Ken was later recalled because parents believed he was indoctrinating their children into homosexuality. He wore a cropped purple mesh top, an oversized surfer necklace, and purple-and-pink glitter shorts with a vaginal pattern. In my game, the thirty other female Barbies would compete over several rounds for his attention and marriage. At eight, nine, and ten years old, I had, of course, never seen The Bachelor, but like any American child I was aware of it as a concept. My version of it was something like a perverted, low-budget mash-up of Disney’s Cinderella, Netflix’s Squid Game, and the hazy premise of the original ABC franchise.

I would order the Barbies to compete, and Glitter Beach Ken would eliminate them

one by one. These elimination trials began relatively innocuously: talents, dance contests, interviews.

As the competition went on, trials would become more intense. Towards the end of the game, Ken would order all the Barbies to strip naked and stand in line for his judgment, like a pageant. The closest inspiration I probably had for this particular trial was from the Holocaust books my mother had given to me – I had read Wiesel and Maus by eight years old. Like in the cattle cars, the unwilling Barbies would huddle close to each other while completely naked, their identical plastic bodies gleaming for Judgement Day. The 1992 Glitter Beach Ken would walk down the line, murmuring things like “too fat” or “too skinny,” eliminating them with an imagined wave of his sculpted upper body.

Even as a kid, I knew this game was somehow wrong to play. I always did that round as quickly as possible.

My last time playing The Bachelor, I heard the wind chimes outside the door ring during the Sex Test. I panicked and threw a blanket over all the naked Barbies. I turned over in my mind what could possibly excuse this game to my father.

But I was shocked when I saw that it was in fact my savta, my grandmother, who was perched outside the entrance with her walker. Based on her hunch and curious, wild expression, it looked like she had been watching me for a long time. Had she seen the whole thing?

I made eye contact with her, trying my best to look defiant. She held my gaze, saying nothing. We didn’t speak each other’s language. Glitter Beach Ken’s blond head was hidden under my lower thigh, unsuccessfully.

I didn’t know if she, in theory a religious woman, would report me. I didn’t know if she recognized what I was doing at all. She had the empty, ill look of a woman who still washed and refolded the clothing of her daughter every week, even though twenty years had passed since her daughter had moved to the big city. It had been thirty years since her son had moved to America and had taken two consecutive American wives with whom he had American children like me.

But somewhere in her gaze, I recognized that at least she wasn’t judging me. I let

the Barbies lie awkwardly free from my thighs, and she closed the door.

One year after she caught me playing The Bachelor, my grandmother surprised me with a present. She had never remembered any birthday before. I opened a box to find a prairie doll with a thousand red petticoats, so large it was almost the size of my small body. She beamed yellow teeth at me. I hoped the new doll was a symbol of acknowledgement that she’d allow me to keep on playing. It wouldn’t fit in a suitcase.

The very last time I saw my grandmother was four years ago. She came with no presents and her memory had deteriorated. “Avigail?” she murmured when she saw me, still wild in the eyes, calling me by her daughter’s name.

On that trip, I saw everything in a different light. The squat lemon trees outside bore no fruit. The wall plaster had cracked. The basement had become flooded with fat cockroaches. My grandfather’s attack dog, who he had named Ares, howled thin with starvation from lack of food or water. The flag hanging from the second-floor porch had become faded and torn from the wind, my grandmother’s room reeked of shit, and the fridges that had once been full of survival food were now empty. The blue bathtub smelled like dust and expired soap.

Worst of all, from my playing over the years, the Barbies that I had once found in pristine condition had been destroyed by my own hands, put back sloppily by me during The Bachelor. They were all now missing all their shoes, their hair was tangled, and their outfits were mixed-up. They were all too homely for the imperious Glitter Beach Ken now.

I tried my best to look at my savta in her recliner bed without judgment, as she had once done for me during The Bachelor. I found myself unable to. We locked eyes in the doorway, and I let our silence hang in the air.

I went home and mourned her like she was dead. When I had given her a hug, her hair had been as rigid as plastic.

Rolling-Cloud Cities

Daniel Stoltzfus

→

Cirrus. and Cumulus

As seen from ground below The citizens of Cumulus

All draped in their sunset-colored best

Spiral towards their city’s center, their Democritus, Their white steeple to their all-powerful God.

As seen from sky above

The raceways of Cirrus, Hermes’ path for commerce, and the driving people locked in wingless, metal chariots speeding along, only to return home in the evening.

The young man walking beneath the sky; The numerous pilots and passengers of the air; the sunlight

Casting shadows on the clouds, within them and beneath them—

These are all for your own glory.

Hyman

Elias Tobisman Pearl

Turned right on Powerline Road and waited for the blood to stop. Again and over and out and again and again and again. Sunblind today. Green. Clarice wants me off the road. So paternal. I’m 30 years her senior. I’ll be fine. Should’ve seen how we whipped Frankie’s Camaro down 18th Ave. Should’ve seen.

Pulled into Via Rosa with a hankering for whitefish salad. Who am I kidding; I want to get laid. Out of the car, quick nod. Inside it smells of citrus. Not real. Green-carpeted floors, suede-gold walls, a quiet buzz of respiratory machines. No in-between. Grandkids in town Sunday.

Tried my keycard three times before I could open the door. Bed. Muddy. Pulling shoulder. Burning leg. Cocooned. Smaller and smaller. Turned on the Mets game. We’re losing 7-2.

Trust Tears

Kashvi Gera

Salty sand underneath the Egyptian pyramids churned in her eyes. Stretching her lids open, her dreams evaporating with each tear. A mirage of a mermaid lagoon beaten into her consciousness: she remembered drowning under an active wave.

Bodily fluids that we classify as sorrow, as if our lenses weren’t themselves fogged by the condensation. Aren’t you drenched? We can fix that!

Tears of a god are rain. Her tears dance and collapse on her cheek. A waterfall of passion plastered and leaves only rosy blush and crisp lashes. Women and their emotions, keep your waterfall locked away. Don’t manipulate me with your salty dewdrops.

Maybe her femininity has plagued this bathtub, flooding it with her saline bubbles. Cleanse your mind. Cover your peripheral vision. Remind yourself to stay clean when she walks by.

Watch her float away, a woman who nobody believed. Sail a ship to the sea. Her tears meet the Atlantic ocean in comfort. Safe from the ashes that tried cementing themselves.

The whales love her, take her in, and conceal her in trust. They trust her tears.

Widow Lee and Billy Clark

A True Story

Georgia Kelly-Marshall

Say! He’s in a fix, a mighty fix: What’s the trouble with Billy Clark? That ev’ry hour his tongue does lick, Lick and lick at its dry mark. Of vittles Billy has plenty, Moonshine clear and good beer in May; Sure, his glasses they are many, But still his tongue licks night and day!

Young Billy was an upright cowpoke, His strength unmatched in all the land; Lord my witness, his were sturdy folk: Who could out-drink that iron man?

Old Widow Lee was like the dirt: Old as, and just as poor, they said; She could not see to mend her skirt, And like Christ’s grave her empty bed.

By God, it was a hard time for all, But harder still for Widow Lee

Who had no kinfolk to call: Of sister and son she was free.

On chickens she lived, and sold their eggs

But Lord knows no cash was there; Sure she had half a mind to beg But who in Woodville had coins to spare?

In spring and fall, she could get by For then her well was a-plenty

But in the dev’lish hot July

Her well was as good as empty. The dew she sucked and pond she drank; She grew sick, but sickly lived

With only God himself to thank, As thirst was then her only friend.

Now, when her well was wrung up dry And her mouth like a sealess fish, Could you blame a widow’s lie Or blame a widow’s thirsty wish? So, now and then, it must be said, When her poor lips were desert-stark, She left her chickens, left her bed, To seek the well of Billy Clark.

Now Billy had been long aware Of this well-side thievery And swore to catch her in a snare That justice be brought on Widow Lee. So oft from his whiskey he’d make And ride his horse on down through trees, And there, at night, among ratsnakes, He waited for old Widow Lee.

And once, behind a tall oak tree, With hunting eyes Billy scanned: The moon was full and clouds were free, And relieved from sun the dry land. – He hears a sound – he’s in a rile –Out from the snakes, soft as a lark He steals to see the widow’s guile –She’s at the well of Billy Clark!

Lord! Wasn’t he just glad to see her Filling her pail and drinking it up: He sat astride a seat of leather Far behind while she drank her cup. When with full pail she turned around, Homeward-bound alone to be, He dismounted, and on the ground Grabbed ahold of poor Widow Lee.

And might’ly by the arm he took her, And with his hand he held her tight, And might’ly with his strength he shook her, And cried, “I’ve caughtcha now, all right!”

Old Widow Lee spoke not a word, But dropped her pail down on the grass, And knelt on the wet; so God heard Her plea which was as clear as glass.

She prayed, her eyes upward turning, While Bill held her lest she should burst –“Lord! who keeps the good from burning, May he always be kept in thirst!”

The bloody moon above them burned, Just as the throat of Billy ached: He knew that he was on high spurned, And from his well turned thirsting away.

He told all men who’d lend an ear That he was parched as desert land God bless his heart! No help was near Nor remedy at his own hand. Though he drank both scotch and bourbon And drank water both cold and hot, Still by Sunday he was serving That sentence the widow had wrought.

Heed me now, and see Billy Clark Who drinks and drinks and all in vain

See how his tongue licks at its mark, At those poor lips which ne’er touch rain. By moon or sun, by night or day, From his thirst he is never free. Now, think all you folk, I pray, Of Billy Clark and Widow Lee!

Escape

Kiran Schatz

On a cold winter night, I walked into the wood At the whim of some strange new compulsion I felt; A faint light from above, guiding me out of Hell.

Through the trees I did walk, knowing not where I went, In the shadowy dark, lit by only the moon With its faint silver beams, and I hummed out a tune

So my mind would not wander to thoughts of my home, Where I’d sat, warm and comforted, but unfulfilled, With a hole in my heart, like my soul had been killed

By some mystical power of which I knew not, Or perhaps my disguises that brought me despair, Made my face a facade, hiding mind’s disrepair.

As I walked, the light strengthened, and certainty grew: Once I found that bright clearing within this dark wood, All my troubles would flee from existence for good.

Then I entered that glade doused in silvery light, And could no longer feel the deep chill of the night. So I let the moon take me, to its glow I did soar; All the pain I had felt, it could hurt me no more

Blood Suckers

Maisie Wrubel

Did you know that if you pinch the skin on either side of where a mosquito is biting you, you can make it explode? The feather-light, spindly black creature becomes a slash of blood on your arm or leg. Google will tell you that this is a myth, but I can say for certain – let’s call it first-hand empiricism – that Google is wrong.

I love telling people this fun fact. They are always horrified. Then I realize I hate telling people this fun fact, and I’m horrified by the cruelty of it – of myself – the violence that only became apparent upon utterance. Instead of being showered in laughter, their faces are mirrors which reflect a monster staring back at me. I swear this is not who I am. I suddenly feel the need to defend myself. You haven’t been through what I’ve been through.

Another fun fact: mosquitoes in different parts of the world – even different parts of the United States – produce different kinds of bites. Again, I don’t care what Google tells you (though I haven’t checked this time) – from my life experience, I can guarantee that this is true. In California bites are raised red bumps. They have about a 15% chance of swelling significantly. In the mid-Atlantic region of the East coast, bites usually ooze a clear, yellow-ish liquid if you scratch at them too much. Same in Hawaii; I remember coming back after a trip in elementary school and a boy asking why my legs were covered in scabs. In certain parts of South America, mosquitoes can carry Malaria. The look of my back after returning from the Amazon had me grateful that I’d already been popping those malaria pills for the past week.

At this point I could write a whole encyclopedia on mosquitos. I’ve spent oh so much of my life subject to their torture. So many sleepless nights tormented by bites. Bitten while traveling, in summer, in spring, bitten even in my own house – how dare they! – but bitten mostly at summer camp. Back when I was thirteen, I collected 23 bites within my first couple days in King’s Canyon National Park. Two years before that, I’d been called chipmunk for a week after a bite on my cheek had become swollen. The next year, my right calf could have rivaled the muscles on the world’s greatest sprinter. I would bet all of my life’s savings on being blood type O... or at least I’d bet a significant amount. I spent the past June hanging cotton balls soaked in citronella oil all around my apartment in New

York. My roommates probably thought I was crazy. I don’t know whether my chicken pox-looking face and arms helped or hurt my case.

I’d love to be able to see all the blood that’s been sucked out of my poor, sweet body by those damned little monsters. I imagine it would serve as some sort of consolation prize for the pain – the itching – I’ve been subjected to. In reality, though, the sight of it would probably just make me faint. Then I would be totally defenseless against the demonic mosquitos, unconscious and thus unable to swat or slap or pinch or squeeze them into oblivion. They always win, don’t they?

LUCIA MEZEY

Elm Sestina Clara Lewis-Jenkins

Running lightly over spongy ground, Past the pasture of flat stones, The three elms, The sheep strewn on a field, Over a rickety bridge toward the water, wrinkling and rippling.

The kind of rippling Made when coffee drips, grounds disintegrating into the bridge between seven and eight. Light cast on stones telling time and field of morning dew, still wet under the elm.

Bluebirds chirp from the elms, Sweet sound waves rippling, Hawk climbs high over the field. Two horses watch from the ground, Clicking hooves and kicking stones down under the bridge.

In the barrel of a bridge, Covered, nestled by the elm leaves, a man sits stoned.

In the end, our final fates set in stone, And a million beautiful things growing up in the fields again. One drop can create a ripple, One Aspen can create a family. A bridge To the living, to humanity, to elms. The hawk lies watching from the ground.

Voices arrive to him rippling like waves across the pond. He is more grounded than he’ll ever be. Every emotion feeled.

Like that for every field in Kansas, there is a bridge in Amsterdam. A dream up off the ground, To a world where the elms all die in the winter. For what beauty is there in the rippling of life if we didn’t all fall like stones

Power circuit

Ibby Newland

Quick, one-two, up girl! latch yourself to those muscled flanks terror is only a separation.

* Did Europa flinch as the bull conveyed her into the blustering spray? If she trembled, was it the coldsalted flicks of foam or the terror of departure or the thick animal heart pumping under her thighs?

Imagine the chariot pulled by lady horses, watch them escape the celestial thrall and course foaming, fearless flayed by light.

Imagine the lip of the universe: clam-shell blue, needles of light, rocking as you stitch yourself to the back of something wild.

HANYUE WANG

Funhouse

Shanti Hinkin

What a fun house...

With its sheet of a door, Paper beds, and plates

Always dry, But it kept me off the guardrails.

“Down”, the street sloped. Chanting “city” in the Chorus Zone.. A song I could not sing. But a tempo, I could keep.

I give a clown’s acting job In my long black satin drags. Ugly lady, lovely dress

Hanging limply like a flag.

A poet saves the yolk for last, For his momentary pleasure. He eats rice pudding in a glass, And slams my head into cement.

I know one song on strings, He can play a one-string song. My dear-one plucks at arteries, And stares at the maestro like God.

He scratched my hair (Unplayable violin)

I, his contemporary (Bring the organ in)

It turned me crooked –The side of my face crooked, My neck crooked, Mouth seed-sized, Whistling poor, poor, poor.

fantaisie (Backsliding)

Kai Paik

my dear darling motorman let me ease you from your sunken shirt and suspend your con-quest of the overland; I’d wonder if you’d be one with me tomorrow, if it hurts.

we’ll lay a cloth on the rooftop terrace between ducts vents and fuse boxes letting the breeze run rivulets through our hair; I’d draw intricate houses in the sky.

would you build me a four-square window on the edge of Lake Calumet we’ll look on and see swallows dropping their wings; I’d give you the world in my hands wretching mold me memnoniella – give it all up.

my conductor drives two trains from one side of Sydney and on the fourth go-around we overlap; I’d known you were one of two people and the other was for myself if the day comes where I cannot reach any more drown me in burlap and amberglass; I’d want only for you to mend me a new color, thin houses the color of a new sky.

Root Rot

Amelie Creten

I think I killed it:

Moonshine, Laurentii, Blackjack: D r a c a e n a

Beginning from a pod, her legs stretched outward forging a triple bond with the nitrogen. She is strong, stable. And for $11.99?

Sold!

And now...

Confined to cheap speckled linoleum floors. A view of “sanctuary-white” lead paint. Mmmmmm, the warm touch of cement. Stuck in a plastic pot.

OH!

The once sturdy emerald spires are yowling y e l l o w, melting into droop, b r o w n: Is it an easy fix?

HA! How did you even manage to kill it!?

Built to withstand neglect in a hollow room: you, Giver, you gave it everything... water.

...except for what it needed.

Compressed in mold folds; oxygen is a luxury.

Roots r i O t g T n

Damp spores festering in its decrepit footing: The plague spreads.

The balance: healthy dermis ravished by decay. OH! It is all-consuming, engorging tear ducts: we are blind.

Fighting for a smell; flicking out a slit M O T H E R ‘ S T O N G U E. It is all wrong, and the skin won’t molt away.

NO.

Innards decaying, all squelched back into the black muck, their sour stench soiling fertile earth. They did much more than shed.

But, I mean, at least the tomato plant outside looks nice.

Five weeks prior to the grasses’ final petrification in a frigid dendritic lattice, my thumb punched out a hole for their home: two seeds, paired together, bloomed a sapling

who kissed the morning chill, extending ripples through the dirt.

Why yes, she grew.

Her roots solidly in the earth, boasting her thick vines to the heavenly skies, lapping up luscious drops of dew, harboring bright bursts of Y E L L O W O R A N G E R E D

SHE IS WHOOPING AND HOLLERING!

SHE IS CRYING HER BLISS!

SHE IS SCREECHING HER JOY!

Tendrils twisting high around the tomato cage.

Bearing sweet orbs calling your fingers to pluck— bite.

It’ll ease the stress: masseter tense, cheeks chewed-out, lips skinned away. Teeth grinding to calcified dust.

(Hang on little tomato, We would hate to have your skin split, burst; revealing your corroded structure as your sinew puddles in the earth.)

Let it pop under the mandibular pressure.

Nora Ephron, Take the Wheel

Ella Kramer

My therapist told me to romanticize more, which might be the first time a therapist has ever told a patient that. I guess she thought I had become too void of hope, too much of a realist. Perhaps she just found this new scene of my life depressing.

I had a habit of contextualizing my life through movies, confusing it for one where nothing too sour-tasting or haunting could occur, as if there was a screenwriter protecting me from too much harm. I’d neutralize bad situations by leaving my body and watching from the other side of the silver screen. I suppose this routine was a product of trying to control my life, but the protection it offered was hollow.

So after one too many Blue Valentines, I found a new form of control. I stopped searching for the paintball-covered hay bales and hand-scribbled mixtapes and New Year’s Eve love confessions, and focused instead on locking bathroom doors with strangers and free beers and not returning text messages and an unshakeable aversion to anyone sleeping in my bed. This kept many at arms length, which I did not mind. I was in control. And it did not feel sad or jaded or empty; it felt strategic and honest and necessary.

Emotional detachment to prevent destructive attachment. A prognosis for those of us who need the safety of independence but still crave comfort from another’s body. I got very good at Intimacy Lite. This is how it works:

Draw them in, flirt and toy and tease and oblige. Bring them to your bed and accept their praise but never return the compliment. Allow 30 minutes of chatter afterwards, even cuddling as long as neither of you begin to doze off. Ignore any hints they will inevitably drop about staying over, i.e: comments on how cold it is outside or how sleepy they’re geting.

Try to get them out by 3am to spare their pride, and your sleep. Kicking them out any later leaves them feeling like a walk of shamer and you feeling guilty. Do not offer or accept borrowed sweatshirts. When

the door shuts behind them – slightly too forcefully – you will feel an enormous wave of relief. Then you will assure yourself that you got your fix and won’t need another for a little while. This will be disproven the following weekend.

This routine methodology will work for up to 2 years. The slut-shaming won’t bother you, you grew immune to it in the 8th grade. You will laud yourself for having become a master. Then, you will realize you haven’t truly cared about someone sexually or romantically in a very long time. Your friends will joke about your coldness, and your rules will start to seem cruel. Your sister will mockingly tell you it must be nice not having to worry about people leaving you, since you always leave them first. You will reluctantly accept this perpetual theme in your life.

You will start to worry that you are no longer capable of the hope and infatuation that others seem to so voraciously revel in. It is so far in your teenage rearview that you struggle to recall the feeling of it. This will make you feel much older than you are, a sense you’re quite used to. Next, you will try to force yourself to care. You will romanticize people that are ordinary and details that are meaningless. You will tell your friends the sex was more exciting than it felt and the conversation was longer than you let it be and the connection is deeper than it is. You will still feel nothing.

You’ll wonder what primed you for this profound numbness: your ex, your dad, your trauma? The usual suspects. Eventually you’ll resolve that it’s no one’s fault but your own.

Finally, you will feel broken.

You will decide to stop dragging unsuspecting dreamgirl-seeking innocents into your mess, and instead accept a soft loneliness. This solitude is aided by everpresent friends and lots of exercise and weed and a new vibrator. You will settle into it. It will feel strangely peaceful.

That is when you will be disrupted.

When you’re least expecting it, someone will take your baggage under their arm and load it onto a train. You will not know where that train is ‘ going but you won’t mind, you will get on anyway. The two of you will slide into a window seat and share headphones for the ride. The train will veer and instead of jumping off you will trust its course. The sparks of the steel and the agitation of the horn and the obscurity of the smoke and the lack of control will not trap you but excite you. And that person next to you will open like a flower and you will drink up the nectar. And you will care.

I’m actually not sure if that last part will happen – it hasn’t to me – but the budding romantic in me hopes it will.

STELLA ROSS-GRAY

Nail Clippings

S

i’m at the sink scraping last night from a pan scrubbing sordid-red soot with dirtied fingernails and hands still soft but frail like home is under my chin curled or enfolded by mother’s silk palm

i pry the desire for warm arms to round my crumpled shoulders even if later bitter from under my nails

i pull skin from skin to free once, soil kept safe under nail meant only tree climbing and worm digging

now i paint them deep green

cracked and reddened hands i dip into scorching water let dish soap scald open wound and gaze at eyes nose mouth fragmented in the pooled suds bubbles to cleanse reflect my face warped and i wonder how many layers of skin need to be stripped from next to deep green for last night to disappear for hands to feel belonging to their owner again

TREMENDOUSLY SORRY

Claire

I hoped your dog would die but here I am. Spit pools on canine tongue, enamel unlatched. Sandstone grinding. Creek dripping. Private wells of want rest between folds of parted hands. Sex conceptions constructed, unacted, become nature. Your throat moves in the rearview. I am future-bound with my finger on your gums. The base of the bite. The last spot you left me.

Thank God for September and virgins. Grinding into a sharper self for the first time. Swallows perch in the mouth of the cavernous morning and ask me to stay. Domestic flight. Distance grants you greatness. Writhing on twin mattresses, our bodies greet abstract absence. I only know the way you look in the light. Imagining coming up empty. The promise of fuller summers. Fonder shears. Forsaken, I want you. Barefoot, I am worse off.

KATIA MICHALS

In Case of Zombies

Liv Rubenstein

Do not kill yourself. A daily practice, or at least something to practice from time to time, staying alive and saying you will stay alive on this leather couch in our college study, I am watching my college friends pretend to study, pretend it’s a hypothetical.

Pretend there is no trench coat rain flooding the sidewalks, no blue terror of smoke from the border, no news pulsing from our turned over phones.

Pretend when she sweeps boney fingers through sheep wool hair and he cracks the knuckles of his sore back, when we all look out the window and worry at the snow, that we are just playing a game. When I ask her to promise to stick around, even if the rest of us rot, when he says honestly, I would, out of sheer curiosity, for FOMO, maybe, when his hand finds mine and we disappear and push jeans down the bedspread, push thinking into the rain, I have an evil thought — I hope the end doesn’t take me alone.

How I Made My Millions

Jordana Treisman

I signed up to do the nude modeling for Jared in his studio, which I’m pretty sure is just his parents’ house. The post technically says “nude participant, preferably fit and able-bodied, no sexual deeds involved” but I prefer an artsier description.

Jared (an ex-boyfriend of an ex-friend of my roommate) will have me naked for 45 minutes and he will give me sixty all-American dollars in return. It seems a little cheap for me – but I like to think of it as charity, because I don’t know if Jared’s seen a single breast in his life that wasn’t on VHS, Playboy, or his own mother’s nursing teet.

My roommate asked me yesterday if I’d ever done modeling before, because she did an ad for JCPenney in high school and is therefore a professional. The truth is I hadn’t, but I went to this art museum one time and I liked the way the girls bent and twisted so much that the thought of being stared at in a gallery hadn’t left my mind since. Jared’s probably a shit photographer or painter or whatever he’s trying to do, but at least the canvas is all mine to stretch out on.

The address is to a Victorian-looking thing – big painted lady with fancy shutters, wraparound porch. A wrinkly man (a fermented Jared) opens the front door and looks down at me, wordlessly pointing to the detached garage next to the house. As I approach, Jared opens up the door. We might be the same age, but he’s balding in a way that screams pushing thirty. He’s got very yellow, tiny teeth.

I look in the garage. The walls and floor are covered with blue tarp, except for one wall with some shelving and a little pedestal. The center of the room has a folding table and two of those plastic chairs that make your back hurt. I go to sit down but Jared stops me.

“You’ll be standing,” he says. Straight to business.

“So,” I ask, fidgeting with my robe, “what exactly is this?”

“It’s kind of like performance art,” he says, and then he hands me a rubber mask with the face of disgraced former president Richard Nixon.

“Yeah, okay,” I say.

Jared explains to me that my job is to stand on the pedestal by the wall while he has some sort of conversation with a dude he’s going to sell his Pokemon trading cards to. He hands me a sleek black thing that looks military grade to me. Every minute or so, I need to shoot the guy with this paintball gun.

“Try it.” Jared points to the wall and I shoot. Yellow splatters across the blue, piss in the pool.

“Why do I need to be naked, though?”

Jared turns to me.

“Because it has to be provocative.”

I try on the mask. It feels moist against my face, instantly hot and wet from my own breath. My line of sight is about half of what it normally is, blocked out by the holes that barely resemble eyes. Richard Nixon would never have A-cups, I decide.

Jared sits in one of the spinal torture chairs and I decide what position to take on the pedestal. It’s surprisingly easy to take off the robe – I can’t really see much of the room, let alone my body. For all I know, my own privates might now be Richard’s Richard.

We wait a couple of minutes, Jared checking his phone constantly. Finally I hear the creak of his chair and the rattle of the garage door. A guy shuffles in. They start chatting. Glad to see I got the address right, that you’re legit, etcetera, etcetera. I wonder how much money is in the Pokemon trading card business.

“Um, who’s the girl with the gun?” the guy finally asks. I bet he’s more stunned by the tits than the weapon.

“Modern art installment,” Jared says, and then the diplomatic negotiations begin. “I’ll do forty...are you fucking with me...rare finds...worth three hundred... shit stains on the Charizard.” My arms and legs are getting kind of sore.

I decide it’s been enough time, and aim and fire at Mr. Lowballer. There’s a sharp inhale and something that I don’t hear but Jared tells him to calm down.

“What the fuck?” says the guy, and his voice is an octave higher than before.

“Okay, I’d do seventy...Forty, or I’m out of here.”

I aim again after more of this idiocracy and miss. I see yellow on the floor by the chair. “Tell that bitch to stop,” he says. Jared says nothing. The geeks continue.

“I’ll do forty-five.” I aim.

“Sixty.” I fire.

“That fucking bitch!”

Chair scraping, stomping footsteps and a blur of mustard approaching me. I feel the gun go out of my hands and something hard hits me on my left side and takes all the wind out of my lungs. Down I go, my ankle still caught on the top of the pedestal. The mask moves around a bit, and all I can see are the hollow insides of Richard Nixon’s head. I hear the other chair move.

“Alright,” says the disembodied voice of Jared, “two hundred or I call the cops and say you beat her up, just like–”

“Fine, okay? Fuck you.”

I hear the woman-hitter shuffle through his wallet. It sounds like he’s trembling. My ribs hurt like hell, and I’m not sure if I’m about to throw up, pass out, or start laughing. Provocative, my ass.

I hear more stomping, the swinging slam of the garage door going up and down. Then quiet. Slowly, I peel Nixon’s face off mine and look up. Backlit like an angel, Jared stands over me and counts out the bills. Six tens and a fiver flutter down next to me like autumn leaves.

“Check it if you want. And put some ice on that.” He tosses me my robe and is gone. The joke’s on me, because why would I let my roommate (who works for a Ponzi scheme) talk me into taking an odd job? And what universe am I in that such a moronic plan actually worked out? I scoop up the money and put my robe back on.

Outside, the sprinklers are on, spraying me as I cross through the grass. Tight-legging ladies are walking their bloodhounds on the pavement. The air reeks of mulch.

The bruise on my side is already blooming, a dark violet and greenish tint in a shape that might resemble a flower. I am the canvas, I decide. The pinnacle of modern art.

DINAH LANDSMAN

Please Don’t Cut Off My Toes

Nadia Moosa

Last night I had a dream. Not quite sure what about.

A staircase at an outlet mall or the bathroom at an airport. I was falling, tumbling, tripping over nothing.

Faces, all too many faces, of people I knew or have never seen before in my life.

In this life.

They looked at the ground, trying to figure out what was making me spiral down and down and down and down. But couldn’t figure it out and looked away with a confused frown.

I tried to speak or scream or yelp to try and call out for some kind of help. But the walls were porcelain and the lights were fluorescent and I was merely a reflection of a reflection of a reflection.

Write them all down.

Right as I wake up.

When thought becomes reality and feelings are fragile.

Holding my breath from being drowned, crying from the death of someone I couldn’t save, staring at the mirror checking if my teeth are still there.

Search for some symbolism or meaning or theme.

Sometimes it’s sickeningly obvious and overdone.

Other times I’m strapped to the ground screaming at the Minecraft zombies to not cut off my toes.

Every night a fight for survival for safety, for clarity, for closure.

A ritual of public humiliation or apocalyptic warfare.

Did I make it out alive?

Are the wins and losses kept in check?

How do I go to sleep without waking up gasping for air?

But last night I had a dream. Still, not quite sure what about.

The Scent of Food

Vyom Tiwari

Growing up, my friends told me I smelled of food

“Why, because I’m Indian?” “No, not because you’re Indian, you simply smell like food.”

I still felt it must be related, because someone in my house was always cooking something, Whether it was my Father making chole, or my Mother making dosa, or Nani making dal and roti, There was always food cooking, and the food was always Indian

It didn’t matter that I did not make the food, the scent still managed to cling to me, and I could not hide its traces

It always made me feel odd, when the people I loved most told me I smelled like food

I did not smell like vanilla, I did not smell like lavender, I did not smell like anything distinctly “nice”, I simply smelled like vague and undefined “food”

I wondered if they were too afraid to tell me what “food” really meant: garlic, onions, spices, “curry”

Now, my dorm room once again smells like “food”

My new home, my chance to change my scent, yet the smell a lingers, clinging to me as my only companion

Because it no longer comes from the warmth of my family, cooking for each other and for me

Rather, it is the product of myself, with an electric kettle, no protein, and a dream making ramen in my dorm room, alone

With no one to even tell me I smell

I do, I do, I do.

Eliana Goldstein

The first time I learned about how to avoid an ear infection, I learned that you should not let your tipsy mother shove tightly coiled toilet paper into your ear in the ladies’ restroom, while the fifth replay of the Electric Slide echoes from the wedding reception dance floor. Because you might then find yourself in your pediatrician’s office three weeks later with a throbbing left ear looking at the doctor holding an ear-wax covered piece of toilet paper at the end of his long tweezers, and you might see your mom with her hand to her mouth in horrified recollection.

The first time I learned about a didgeridoo, I learned that it should not be blown into the butt of a white woman from Los Angeles. Because, once it is, she will lift her arms into the air and dig her bare toes into the concrete slabs of a backdoor patio as if it were a wet and lush forest floor. And she will call out to Anjea, the spirit of fertility, with sporadic grunts and moans while sensually moving her hips around the tip of the instrument to prolong the surge of its buzzing bassiness through her body, soul, and uterus. She will not care if eight-year old me is watching, mouth agape. The first time I learned about a didgeridoo, I learned that my Uncle Denis has weird friends, and I learned that weddings can be romantic but they can also be a shroom fest where the vow recitation is preceded by a shabby knife-throwing performance and where unhygienic adults will get frisky with a bit of alcohol and play grab ass with one another.

The first time I learned about my love for Jesus, I learned that weddings should have a strict no-children policy if they intend to invite a Michael Jackson impersonator. Because underneath his bejeweled lapels will be an I <3 Jesus t-shirt that he will reveal to the crowd of Jewish children and adults after the bride thanks him for his time, but admits that they’d like to dance the Horah now. And after he goes on anyways to perform a damning number of “Smooth Criminal,” he will poorly moon-walk off stage and take a seat at your table as his patchy white face paint drips and melts off his face. And when your brothers leave you alone at the table with him because cake can’t wait!, he will hold your tiny hand in his and profess his love to his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and he will not leave until you say it back. The first time I learned about my love for Jesus, my parents learned that they had not harped on my brothers’ enough about being careful to not leave their little sister alone with strange men who have a weird religious superiority complex. So if I have any wisdom to impart it is to be careful of DIY earplugs and that maybe you should just shell out five measly bucks for a real pair, never let white people from Los Angeles around aboriginal instruments, and to be careful ordering impersonators of pedophilic celebrities because they just might end up being one too.

if I’ve recalibrated what pain is supposed to feel like.

I circle 4.

The nurse writes something down. “That’s moderate pain. Are you managing okay?” I nod. I’ve gotten very good at managing.

4. MEDICAL HISTORY

Please check any symptoms you have experienced in the past 6 months:

□ Memory problems ( )

□ Sleep disturbances (2-3 hours per night)

□ Changes in appetite (down 12 pounds)

□ Migraines/headaches (persistent for 2 weeks now)

□ Difficulty breathing/chest tightness (severe at night)

5. SOCIAL HISTORY

Relationship Status: ☒ Single □ Partnered ☒ Married ☒ Divorced ☒ Widowed

Do you feel safe in your current relationship? □ Yes ☒ No

Because the times he holds me after feel safer than the times before. Some days, he holds me and cries and promises it won’t happen again.

There was once a time when

he was too shy to hold my hand.

He’d ask me, “Can I kiss you?”

6. SEXUAL HISTORY

7. PATIENT SIGNATURE

I certify that the information provided above is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge.

Signature: ____________________

Date: ____________________

I sign my name. The nurse takes the clipboard. “The doctor will be with you shortly.”

I nod. I’ve gotten very good at waiting. at sitting still. at taking up exactly the amount of space I’m allowed.

But today, I called this appointment myself, and the doctor will be with me shortly.

When they ask, “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

I might say yes.

PROVIDER NOTES:

How I feel Eli Goldman

To journal is to bore and in it is no future

There is no fame no gain in the journaling game

Name your favorite journalist You just thought of an articler

A Headlining story finding letter grinding –Reporter

Journaling is so gloryless its noun was stolen by newspapers. So instead I’ll write whatever and call it a poem even if it’s not

Because while poets become laureates the most glory you can get from journaling is a posthumous publication of a tragedy.

Hundsmiserabel

George Manes

I bump into a guy eating ass on my way to get a beer. Earlier today, my mom told me that her new gay best friend got a months-long, nasty case of E. coli from doing so. Perhaps she imparted this to me because she knew I was going out and thought it was something I might be tempted into, and should be advised against.

The line for the bar is too long, so we go to the one in the basement. Past the Day-Glo paintings of the Jetsons engaging in heterosexual copulation, avoiding the fleshy pale man blocking the stairs to the smoking area with his hand in his underwear and his eyes on the young women in bondage gear (despite the signs prohibiting “solo-wanking”). Like Cask of Amontillado, Luke and I and the muscle queens in ugly harnesses are lured down the stone steps by the promise of a cold beer, or a provocatively named shot. The bar off the stairs is crowded, low-ceilinged, and hot. I shout over the music at Luke, “Do you think any cis fag is brave enough to earnestly admit he would like a Pink Pussy?” He says he felt something drip on him.

We leave and descend further. We go through the shockingly well-lit room, really more of a wide hallway, in which two guys blow each other on a fuchsia daybed. Men stand around the walls looking bored, desperate, and completely uninterested in each other. A man sits nervously on a gynecological chair in the corner, waiting for someone to pick him out of the meager crowd.

Luke and I, and many others, are just here to dance and bear witness. Which isn’t hard to do, if not impossible to avoid. Darkrooms don’t suit the communitarian ethos; it’s all out in the open. This place believes that “anonymous groping in a dark corner is, to us, too ‘unspiritual,’” according to a press release following an assault on the premises.

Finally, we reach a bar without a line or sweat dripping from the ceiling. This room is so hot and this beer is so cold and I can’t tell if the stern Santa in a latex apron is staring at me because he wants to fuck me or finds me disgusting. We sit on a couch, where an Australian guy asks us to keep an eye on him, because he thinks someone dosed him. After his friend comes, we wish him well and go to the nearby dance floor where those sober enough size each other up and those high or drunk enough writhe solipsistically. We aren’t with each other, but with anonymous flesh. The novelty of skin is starting to fade. I don’t really want to be thinking about the atomization of the queer community, or if such a

community even exists, right now. My feet hurt. I need another beer.

We go back to the bar, then back upstairs to sit by the pool. There are no seats left, so we settle down on one of the moist rugs surrounding the water. It’s sort of refreshing. Luke strikes up a conversation with a gorgeous man sitting nearby, and I know that in a few minutes, once I feel sufficiently rejuvenated, I should probably excuse myself to the cigarette vending machine so they can make out.

I turn to face the heavily chlorinated water. A man vomits on the already damp carpet a few feet away; no one does anything. A guy in a pleather pup mask is crawling around the edge of the pool. He doesn’t have an owner. How old is he under there? Who is he during the day? His name is probably Stefan, and he works for the government. His partner of many years recently revealed he has been sleeping with a younger man for quite some time, and suggested they open up the relationship. Stefan hesitantly accepted, and, encouraged by his partner to put himself out there, bought this mask. He has never done anything like this before. At home, he put on the hood in the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and said, “Jetzt bin ich ein Hund.” Now, I am a dog.

Here he is, on his knees, looking up expectantly at the beautiful men, waiting for one to scratch under his chin. He wants a nice man to take him home and put a fist up his ass, or simply allow him to curl up at the foot of his bed while they fall asleep to nature documentaries. He’s no different from any other person here. There’s a certain honesty to him. He trudges by, and I almost have to hold myself back from petting him behind the ears, just to ease the pathos of the situation. Before I can realize it, before I can think to stop him, he crawls through the spot where the man vomited. It’s what dogs do.

The Drummer has aphantasia

Mia Alexander

and a beard that makes me wince when I kiss him.

After an Annie Hall reference and two minutes kissed up against his refrigerator, he stops for a moment, leans back off-kilter. Our bodies form two sides of a scalene triangle.

I know that he is a physics and math double major, that he owns two brands of lavender scented soap, and a turquoise tea set handmade in Connecticut.

I know that he has aphantasia when he tells me he’s trying to convert my face into words, so that when he closes his eyes and leans back in, my shape remains fixed in his inner monologue.

It’s a corny sentiment, but I like it anyway, and the next time he comes up for air, I catch him staring intently at my breasts. I stand there, feminized. I picture her. I wince.

I am sorry.

DUAA TAWEEL

Less Gray Sansom-Chasin

is a quickening short, considering that it isn’t. Blue is braiding there, are strings involved making loving or stretching taut ten times the length of people taboo.

Suppose flashing and making have two places, supposing and there are strings involved. And they are empirically, actually, really (there is no place for yellow, or if not strings) this is true: remembering is well named, and the lengthening itself is not quickening, less. Considering that it is.

No, it isn’t. And if it were, there would be a cut. But no. Not from touching, not from places, not from clouds nor magnets, not the compact nor the affect, neither noon or groan not the lid not the floor.

And too shrinking, and too hands unmade, and too a thread, and too a one time, and too a twice, nor too and hurts said so keep it: remember to expect less.

Guess Again

Susie Nakash

We were in your car – we were always in your car – driving away from New Haven’s Union Station. It was the middle of summer, that sweet spot where time uncoils and collapses into something nearly malleable, like warm clay in the palm of my hand.

You put your hand on my thigh, said something charming, and I inhaled, trying to breathe you in like a drug. A song by The Fray – maybe “Look After You” – was humming through the speakers, filling the car to the brim. You used to play their music in the cafe, right up until it closed. I had, at first, mistaken them for the GooGoo Dolls.

“Close,” you said. “But guess again.”

I remember looking over at you, taking you all in, and finally, putting you into context.

The context was as follows:

You were twenty-seven; I was going into my senior year of undergrad. You were moving away to Rochester, which, I joked, is basically Canada. You were not mine.

So I wished the world away, discarded our surroundings and rid my body of all anticipation in the hope that time was really as mutable as I thought it was.

But time is not mutable. It takes and it takes and it rarely gives, like some selfish, unforgiving beast. I found myself holding my breath in sporadic bursts throughout the whole ordeal, catching the air right before the exhale, only letting it spill out once I could feel my heartbeat throb at the tips of my ears.

We had planned, that day, to go to the nearest beach, a small, ugly thing that sat behind a row of food trucks and another row of imported palm trees. If I reminisced in a better mood, I might have called it charming. It goes without saying that I am not in that mood.

For some inexplicable reason, I found myself feeling self-conscious in my bathing suit – a chronic insecurity that permeated past the bounds of those awkward pre-pubescent years, flooding harshly through the broken dams of young adulthood. So I sucked in my stomach, held it close and tight like something between a promise and a lie, hoping you wouldn’t notice.

I said your name.

“Yeah?”

“When did you know that you liked me?”

“Hm. Remember when I started making you your matchas for free?”

I nodded my head. You did it when the other baristas weren’t looking.

“Probably a month before then. What about you?”

I told you that I must’ve liked you since April, but that I didn’t let myself know it until June, when my commitments were left behind with the rest of the school year.

What I remember most vividly is the drive back to the station, that dreadful ride that loomed over the entire day until, finally, it fell and scattered like dust, filling up the car. Connecticut seemed sad and empty, like it was fighting to keep itself bright amidst nightfall. I looked over at you – at your blond eyelashes – and thought that I could have loved you one day if we had the time.

But we didn’t have the time.

In fact, I knew, somehow, that that day would mark the end of this mess that we carried through the summer. I could tell that you knew it too – I could see it in your stoicism, in the way you kept your eyes on the road and off of me. I wanted you to reach out for me, to hold my hand or my thigh or my grief as if to assure me that you felt it too, that horrible ache sitting right behind your sternum.

You didn’t say a word.

When we arrived at the station, I could feel the syllables folding over in my mouth, stuck somewhere between my back molars. I wanted to tell you that I knew we would not see each other again, that you had changed me, and I didn’t know how, but I know that you did.

You hugged me, held me with the unfaltering grip of a “goodbye” and not a “see you later” right before I ran to catch the last train to Grand Central. When you let go I threw myself into a frantic sprint to the terminal, half-hoping I would miss the train and that you might ask me to stay. But this burst of optimism was ultimately grounded in the more childish facets of my mind, not in any sense of reality because I knew that you would not ask me to stay. That you would have asked already if that’s what you really wanted.

I caught the train and then my breath, letting the air once again fill me while the light seeped out, my body’s odd attempt at achieving some sort of necessary equilibrium. I sat there, curled up against the window, once again trying to put you into context. The small logistical details differed, but the conclusion always remained the same.

You were not mine.

Unwritten Rain

Feyza Horuz

Open your hands. Palms to the sky. Raise your hands to your chest. Keep them separated or together. Open your heart. Make dua.

On the night my grandmother died, I asked Allah for rain.

Oh Allah, let it rain. Let my skin feel the small stings of hope. Let stars fall instead of my tears, for my grandmother has gone. Gone under the dirt that grows the most beautiful flowers because of your rain. Let it rain so I can see her lifted.

Allah, The Giver of Life, let flowers grow from each grain stuck underneath my shoe from her mound. Open the doors for her to enter and let the light become her.

Allah, The Most Merciful, put ease on her soul, for her legs shook when she walked with her crane, around the living room, to the kitchen, to pour some tea.

Allah, The Sustainer, water the trees from where she collected the husks of hazelnuts and gave it to me to take home to America. Water them so I can keep taking them home.

Allah, The Most Loving, let her heart beat like mine, and her hands stay warm. Never let her heavenly aroma fade.

Allah, The Creator of Death, when it is time, I wish to see my Nene in the heavens, with her hazel eyes, and beating heart.

Ameen

Around us, there is silence. The moon illuminates the night. The wind chimes sing into the darkness. The smoke from my mother and father’s cigarettes flows into the whispers of the air. They exhale what they cannot say and inhale longings of relief. I turn my head to avoid the smoke. I wish to smell rain.

We sit in the night, with news that all children dread to hear.

My heart sits at the bottom of my stomach. Every vein, every vessel, contracting, squeezing, suffocating. Pain. In 15 days, I will be in Türkiye. In my second home, where I would have sat next to my grandmother as she lays, fighting.

Death does not follow my timeline.

I look at my father’s blank expression. Is his heart whispering for rain? Does his heart wish to beat with his mother’s? Is his heart silent–like his silence?

He did not cry. He did not want his mother to be hurt. My father never wishes to bring sorrow to the hazel eyes he carries from her. He did not wish for my eyes to turn gray.

We never wait for death. We feel it, I feel her. I wait for rain. Will it come?

Where does my dua lie among the millions of stars? Will it be accepted or left for the hereafter?

The rain I desire may not be better than what is already planned. I still hope my dua can write rain into the sky. My next breath I could not hear.

If time stood still, it would rise tall, a column piercing the sky. I exhale and the column cracks against my breath, shattering. Its shards sting my skin and mix into my tears, glistening. Nothing could be more beautiful than this.

My palms to the sky. Within the silence of my hands, Allah hears my voice. My heart is open.

The cigarettes burn out. The silence burns out.

My parents stretch their hands out, with their hearts to the sky. I guess they asked for rain too.

Lowtide

Lily Turner

When the road gave out, the sea beganthat borderless hum. My fingers went searching: rocks, shells, the skeletons of barnacles left behind.

He didn’t answer when I asked why all the shells were empty, just pressed one to his ear like it could explain.

His pockets sagged with sea glass I kept handing over. He said, You can’t keep everything shiny and small, a statement I could not form, syntax swallowed by the salt air.

That night we drank his father’s wine from flowered mugs, knees touching like an old habit. A little drunk, we had stomach-down sex, held the limp animal between us hoping it would rest.

By morning, the air smelled of iron and low tide. The ferry had already gone, and we stood there, half-dressed, It meant nothing.

Later, I’d think of the shells, how hollow they were, how my hands were full anyway.

Granny Panty

Sarann Spiegel

“I had a vision,” I tell Simone as I topple into my seat at the bar. She stares at me over her sexy librarian glasses that she doesn’t actually need to read Giovanni’s Room. They symbolize her hot job at a curated vintage store on the Lower East Side. She’s just that en vogue. So en vogue that if “Vogue” by Madonna started playing, instead of dropping into a quick duckwalk she’d scoff and ask what IS this, because she only listens to cool jazz like Alice Coltrane, her life guru. She is the best audience for my vision.

I swipe my hand across the air in the universal sign for imagine this in lights! She stares. “Granny panties,” I say. I wait, leaning forward, a huge smile on my face. “Right?”

She blinks lazily behind her glasses. “Granny panties,” she repeats.

I shake my head and sigh. She doesn’t get it – yet. I pull a pair of white cotton underwear out of my bag, the waistband thick and bare of a brand name. The cotton sags a little bit in the ass, as is its wont. I hold the pair up for Simone to see. “Look. Really look.” She raises her eyebrows, so I gesture for her to lean in. She does after rolling her eyes. “Are you getting it? Do you see the vision? This is the next big thing, Simone. We have to tell Fashion Week.”

Her maroon lips turn down at the corners. “Just because you buy your underwear at CVS doesn’t mean that the rest of us should.”

“These aren’t from CVS,” I tell her, not disclosing that I bought them at the Duane Reade on Duane and Reade. “Simone-” I look her right in the eye so she knows I mean business- “forget Victoria’s Secret. Forget Calvin Klein. Who cares about Jeremy Allen White’s bulge on Houston? Not me. And not you after you get yourself a pair of granny panties.”

Simone squints at me. “Where is this coming from?”

I ignore the question. “People are wearing these. Celebrities. The foundation has been laid. Haven’t you seen Bones and All? Taylor Russell at the end?” I snap twice. “Is this ringing any bells?”

“You know I think cannibalism is ruining this country.”

I do. She listened to a true crime podcast on Jeffrey Dahmer too young and now takes any reference to cannibalism extremely personally. She won’t even engage with vampire media, no matter how much gay sex it includes. Perhaps I thought her boner for Timothée Chalamet would transcend emotional and physical blocks. “Simone, you’re the only friend I have in this business. My only ally on this front.” I reach across the table, clutch her wrist. “I think this could really be something. Don’t you see it?”

She takes the underwear from my hands, lays it on the bar. With a sharp black nail, she traces the seams, lining, ass sag. “What do you want me to do?”

Simone schedules a photoshoot for us in an old office building by Madison Square Park. We ransack a Walgreens on our way there. The brand we got has a little less sag to it, so while whatever NYU student Simone hired this time sets up his camera, we take turns pulling on each other’s underwear. We wear white Reformation tees and fuck-me-pumps. Simone is wearing a sunglass version of her librarian spectacles. Before the shoot, I called her asking if I should shave or go full bush, what did she think would be better for our image? She paused while eating her Pret A Manger salad to say, “Full bush. More natural that way. We’re selling... body positivity.”

NYU guy asks, “How do you guys know each other?”

How do you know Simone, I want to say. Simone steals the opportunity: “We worked together in high school.” We were two white girls in a sea of many working at Brandy Melville. I got fired for trying to shoplift stainless steel jewelry via my vagina. Simone got fired a week later for, and I quote, “having a personality.”

We lay out on the throw pillows arranged on the white backdrop. Simone starts out on her stomach so she can show off her tramp stamp – a small stick-n-poke arrow she got in tenth grade pointing just a little east of her ass. NYU guy starts taking photos, asks if we want to play music. I vote for Charli XCX, lord and savior. Simone votes for Miles Davis. We compromise on John Lennon. Neither of us enjoy it, but we can bemoan his abusive tendencies together.

Something sparkles in NYU guy’s eyes. “Why don’t you two...” He gets stuck on the word and, in turn, his political correctness. “Kiss. Or something.”

Simone turns to me, maroon mouth a grim line. “Only if you promise not to fall in love with me.” I cannot see her eyes through the tinted lenses, but I imagine them insincere, verging on mockery. I roll my eyes at her, wave her on.

We lean in at the same time, brush our lips together primly. The world flashes as NYU’s camera shutter clicks open and closed repeatedly. John Lennon moans in the background. He’s been my top artist on Spotify the last four years in a row.

As Simone predicted, the internet obsesses over our photoshoot. We get thousands of likes within hours on our Instagram account @grannypanty4eva with a bio reading, “COMING SOON.” Our most popular post contains two photos: in the first, our backs are to the camera, ass sag on display as Simone looks over her shoulder; in the second, we lay on the pillows and our lips brush. Simone thinks the former is the favorite. I don’t tell her how sure I am it’s the latter. Comments range from extremely gross (perverts) to extremely gross (coquette girls trying to make cocaine chic the new heroin chic, which is so misguided). One comment, however, is a standout: “Wait why am I kinda into the granny panties though...”

“They’re so vintage,” Simone’s voiceover announces in another viral clip of her slapping her own ass in slow motion, the slight cotton sag vibrating and, for a millisecond, appearing to float. “So, like... eighties. And seventies. And sixties, and fifties, and possibly even ancient. I’m talking Egypt, Mesopotamia. Indus Valley, even.”

We get so much interest from designers that the question, rather than being who wants us?, becomes who doesn’t? We agree Gucci is so over, Miu Miu and Loewe are too of the moment, but Chanel... Chanel just might be so back. Yeah, Coco was a Nazi, but we’re not and Simone thinks she was Jewish in a past life, so it all, like, evens out I think. Emails roll in. Vogue claims Anna Wintour asked for us personally. Simone deletes it: “If they’re going to lie, I won’t do it.” The Times calls to ask about our design. I say it’s entirely original hand sewn work and hang up before they can ask anything more, like who is doing the hand sewing. Simone dismisses my worries about a lawsuit, saying no granny panty producer cares to hunt us down for our crimes.

“Oh my God,” she says. I look up from where I’m embroidering “GYLF” into the saggy ass of my panties. GYLF with a Y, as in Granny You’d Like to Fuck. “Chanel is offering us front row seats at fashion week.”

I stab myself with the needle. So deep, in fact, that the needle is stuck in the flesh of my palm. “Really? Actually?”

She nods. “And they want one of their models to walk in a Granny Panty prototype.”

Waving my hand around does nothing to remove the needle. “Holy shit.”

“I know.”

“I think I need to go to the ER.”

Simone waves me off. “Help me write a response email first.” I hover over her shoulder, breathing in her Le Labo perfume as she types. After a half hour, we settle on, “Um, DUH?????” She sends it while we wait for the Uber that never comes. We can’t call a cab since neither of us carry our wallets and I don’t believe in Apple Pay – it’s like 1984 but real – so we walk the six blocks to the ER. Simone complains the whole way that her shoes are giving her blisters. The needle falls out on Greenwich. We shrug and walk back to her apartment. On the way in, her neighbor asks if we are the girls from the Granny Panty ads. We sign our first panties.

Fashion Week is kind of a snoozefest. We wait on a line to get in, wait in our seats once inside. I wear a Juicy Couture sweatshirt and, of course, my now-famous underwear. Simone wears a pair too, and a tank top made of Ziploc bags. Her nipples are hard in the air conditioned room. Normally I’d try not to look, but it’s hard when her shirt is Ziploc. I try to start a conversation to distract myself. “Are those, like, snack size or freezer quart?”

Simone looks at me like she did when I told her I was a klepto but that I wasn’t sneaking stuff out via vagina. She’s the one who taught me to do that, the reason I later got fired from our job of good, honest work. She also taught me how to insert tampons. “Do I look like I’m snack size? I’m a gallon at least.”

“If you say so,” I say, because what do I know about Ziploc fashion sizing? I poke at the needle-hole in my hand.

The main lights turn off and the stage lights go on. Models start strutting,

tall and slim. They all kind of blur together. I turn to Simone and whisper under my breath, “We wouldn’t be here if you never got the granny panties thing. Imagine that.”

Her mouth twists into a why are you talking right now shape. She’s honestly kind of really lovely. She glances back at the stage, shoves my shoulder. “It’s the Granny Panty model.”

I don’t look over. Simone hisses, “You’re missing it, you’re missing it,” but I can’t stop staring at her in her dumb Ziploc top.

I say, “I think I’m in love with you.”

Simone is incandescent with rage. “I know, you cunt.” For a moment it sounds like “I know you, cunt,” and I think it a love confession in return, but Simone’s eye roll clarifies it is not. I turn away, catching our Granny Panty girl as she disappears from the runway, then spare a glance at Simone’s breasts. Breasts are really more teardrop-shaped or triangular than anything. It is in this split second looking at Simone’s glorious rack that I realize: cone-shaped bras. That’s what’s next. I can hear the voices of the masses already: It’s just so retro.

After the show, a very ugly woman in an equally horrifying suit approaches us. She works for the company whose underwear we are pawning off as our own. The Times is publishing an article about it tomorrow. In her hand is a manila envelope. “You’ve been served.”

Simone slaps my hand away. “Don’t take that.” She glares at the woman, then leans down to unbuckle one of her fuck-me pumps. “The only thing I serve, lady, is fucking cunt.” The shoe comes undone; she lobs it at the woman.

The heel strikes her wrinkled forehead, toe crushing her nose. “That’s assault!” she yells, skin purpling and bent nose bleeding.

Simone grabs my hand and starts running down the street – or hobbling, since now one of her legs is five inches shorter than the other. I bend down to unbuckle her other shoe for her, and once I have it in hand, we take off. Sirens echo down the block. I doubt they’re for us, but my heart jumps and we speed up. Who knows how fast we’re even running – the last time I did any exercise was when I was a klepto, and I only did kegels then.

Simone may not love me back, but here, running down Fifth ave hand in hand, saggy GYLF asses blowing in the wind, I know I have her forever.

The Lavender Issue 19: THEMELESS

The Lavender Issue XVIII:

About Us

Why The Lavender?

Why Route 9?

The Lavender Team