Remkiashta Catherine Bailey
Now and then the world haunts our eardrums with its silence, so during adolescence I invented needed words. Renisive. Adjective. Resentfully resigned. Therystic. Adjective. Awed by unearned praise. Remkiashta. Noun. A platonic kind of lover. The thing I decided I wanted in place of the boy who thumbed my jeans. He told me on a bridge once how he longed to be my lover. I stared at the daisies he held in his hands and the way they all snagged on the wind. Our voices fluttered downward, apocalyptic arrows that brushed the backs of car roofs, reluctant in the rain. I told him if he wanted he could be my remkiashta. Our knowledge and our yearnings swerved, wet wheels across gold lines.