Category: Creative Writing

By Robertha Green Gonzalez

NOA.

The surrounding walls seemed to breathe; slow, patient, alive. For a moment she thought she was still inside a flower, but flowers didn’t hum like this. Flowers didn’t whisper. “You’re here,” said a voice, soft as ripened fruit. 

“Where is here?” Noa asked. 

“Inside,” said the fig. 

She tested her wings. The space was close; her movements left faint echoes in the sweetness around her. “I don’t remember coming here.” 

“You don’t have to,” murmured the fig. “Arrival is enough.” 

Noa tilted her head. “It’s dark.” 

“Light isn’t always kind,” said the fig. “Some things grow best in shadow.” The wasp tried to smile, for that was what Noa was. A wasp. Though she wasn’t sure if her face could still do that. “It smells like forever.” 

“That’s only ripening,” said the fig. “It feels endless when it begins.” 

She brushed her antennae against the inner wall. It was soft, almost trembling. “I was looking for something,” she said, but couldn’t recall what. A flicker of memory; open sky, the taste of air, a pulse of sun, and then it was gone. 

“You were looking for a place to belong,” the fig said. “And now you’ve found one.” Something inside Noa ached. Not pain exactly, but a slow turning inward, a folding of one thing into another. 

“Is it supposed to feel like this?” 

“Yes,” said the fig. “It’s the way joining feels.” 

She hesitated. “It’s hard to breathe.” 

“Breathe slower. You’re part of something larger now.” 

Noa’s wings brushed the walls again; they no longer sounded like wings. “Am I changing?” she asked. 

The fig’s voice deepened, distant. “As am I.” 

For a while, neither spoke. The warmth thickened, fragrant and heavy. She could feel her body soften, her thoughts growing drowsy, like syrup cooling. 

“I think I’m disappearing,” Noa whispered. 

“You’re becoming,” said the fig. 

“But I’m scared.” 

“I know,” said the fig. “So was I.” 

Her movements slowed. The sweetness pressed closer, gentle, inevitable. She thought she heard other voices, faint and humming, hidden in the fruit’s heart. Maybe they were memories. Maybe they were prayers. 

“Will you remember me?” she asked.

The fig pulsed once, tenderly. “Always. You’re the reason I can bear fruit at all.” The warmth deepened, and the fig closed around her, not as a tomb, but as a cradle. Outside, the world turned quietly toward autumn. Inside, everything that had been Noa drifted into the soft, patient rhythm of the fig; a rhythm that would feed the living, though she would never know it. 

And somewhere, far beyond her last thought, the air was still singing. 

THE FIG. 

And when all was quiet, the fig began to remember. 

It remembered the light that had once entered with her – brief, winged, trembling. It remembered her questions, her fear, the small pulse of her heart against its walls. In the slow language of roots and sap, memory is not a thought but a movement, a sweetness travelling outward. Noa became that sweetness. 

Inside its dark flesh, she was not gone. She was pattern. She was purpose. The fig felt her in every grain of itself, in every seed it now held a thousand small hearts waiting to be carried elsewhere. The fruit ripened not with time but with her. 

Sometimes, when the wind moved through the leaves, the fig imagined it could still hear her; that soft, uncertain voice asking what it meant to belong. It wanted to answer, but it had already spoken all it could: by holding her, by keeping her, by turning what was once fear into nourishment. 

Soon the skin would split, and the world would taste what they had become together. And no one would know her name, or her wings, or how gently she had asked to be remembered. But the sweetness would tell the story, in silence. 

And the fig, in its quiet fullness, would understand at last what death had meant: not ending, but the long patience of being carried forward; alive, inside everything that follows.

Featured Image: Honor Adams

By Matthew Dodd

It had been some years since I’d seen him. We’d last met in the early hours of the morning at opposite ends of a dining table in the house of a mutual friend neither of us knew particularly well. We didn’t talk about anything very substantial, though we must’ve been there for some few hours. We were just filling time and the air between us. I suppose, on some level, we both had a dim notion that we were unlikely to meet again, that these were the final verbs, nouns and infrequent adjectives that we’d ever share. We had, quite literally, run out of things to say to one another. These last few pleasantries were the aftershock of a friendship, eulogising a camaraderie that had meant something to us both for some years. We had nothing in common but circumstance. And yet, sat there, asking that man what his plans for the coming days were, how he was finding the weather, whether he envisioned a successful season for Arsenal, I wasn’t sure there was all that much to our little back and forth. Had I ever thought to ask what love meant to him? Or whether he had ever known grief? Or if he’d seen The Godfather? What did I really know of this man, or he of me, beyond vague likes, dislikes, phone numbers and shoe sizes? Cynically, I could conceive that this was, in fact, all there was to life, but as I left that house and nodded him farewell, I knew this couldn’t be true. There were too many songs on the radio for me to believe that life meant so little. And yet, still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the paintings of one another which existed, and would continue to exist, in each of our memories were nothing more than pencil sketches. It was a troubling notion. He beat me to hailing a taxi, so I was able to watch as he, in the animus of an Austin FX4, receded over the horizon and out of my life. I managed to get a cab about ten minutes later and was home in bed by five-thirty.

Once, when we were in our late teens – he 17, me 16 – I remember us trying to smuggle a crate of inexpensive lager his older brother, Stephen, had bought for us into the sixth form graduation dinner. It was the end of the summer term and, though we still had a year left, we fancied joining in on the older year’s celebrations. We’d planned the whole thing between a maths and geography lesson under two pushed-together desks in Mrs. Deacon’s old classroom. We would wait about an hour, so that the teachers would assume all the students had already gone in, and then go round the back entrance to the dining hall, as though we were working the catering. Then, so he said, all we had to do was act casual and hope nobody recognised us. He kept guessing at how certain teachers would react if they caught us, doing wholly unrecognisable impressions of each of them. As he went on, the impressions became more and more outrageous, and we descended further and further into hysterics. By the end, he was doing our English teacher like Bugs Bunny and our headmaster like Popeye. I don’t know if I ever laughed as hard as I did that day, screwed up under that desk making notes on half a dozen pages torn out of a textbook. It didn’t work, of course. Mr. Amersham – who incidentally did sound a little like Popeye in the moment – found us almost immediately as we left the kitchen, threw us out and placed us in detention for the remainder of the year. It didn’t matter to us: we spent those endless hours in detention suppressing laughter at the thought of Mr. Amersham back in his office eating copious amounts of spinach and getting into fights on the seven seas with various miscellaneous sailors.

It was an uncharacteristically warm morning at Moorgate tube station when I saw him next. If memory serves, it was a little after nine o’clock, putting me vaguely in the realm of lateness for a meeting the details of which I struggle to remember. Droves of conservatively clad big-city types piled through a woefully insufficient number of ticket barriers and out into the street. For my sins, I was one of them. The cavalcade splayed in a multifarious passage towards central London’s many large buildings and unreasonably priced coffee shops. I had long since given up on keenly observing my surroundings on these sorts of commutes so had my attention firmly pointed towards nothing more than an article I’d read in the Times that morning about the surprising health benefits of artichoke hearts. As I walked, I’d been faintly aware of a head popping out of a car window and a related arm springing out of it, waving incessantly, but I hadn’t thought much of it until that head started shouting my name. Turning around in an accidentally-quite-delicate half-pirouette, I caught sight of the upper half of a man who looked strangely similar to someone I had known years before, only with thinner hair and darker eyes. He called out again and I, realising that this was someone I’d known years before, walked up to the car. My preeminent thought at the time was bewilderment that he had recognised me after all these years. I liked to think that I had changed at least somewhat but, I suppose, we weren’t all that different: I was an awkward adolescent then and an awkward adult now. He excitedly told me how wonderful it was to see me, how unlikely it was that we’d bump into each other here of all places, how terrible it was that it had been so long, how – ah sorry! – he must get to a meeting himself but that – oh – we must meet, how did Finsbury Circus at six sound? I agreed with him on all points and nodded a cheerful goodbye as his car – a sensible Volkswagen – set off in the direction of Old Street.

A day’s work passed uneventfully and, ten minutes early, I was sat on a bench in Finsbury Circus waiting for my friend. On time, he arrived. This surprised me, frankly, as the man I knew in the hinterland years of our youth was anything but punctual. Quick-witted, stubborn, smart-arse – never punctual. It wasn’t a bad thing, but it certainly was a shock. We shook hands, alleviating the tension the decade’s silence had accrued, before he brought me into a suffocatingly long embrace. After about twenty seconds, he released most of my body but kept a firm grip on my respective arms. Holding me in place, he looked me up and down, measuring his thoughts before sharing his final judgement: ‘you look really well.’ I began to reciprocate the compliment but he cut me off before I’d a chance – ‘come on, there’s this great Chinese place near here I’ve been meaning to try out.’ Dropping my arms he began walking away out of the park. Immediately and without my having to say a word, we had fallen back into old rhythms.  

The ‘great Chinese place’ in question was a Korean restaurant about ten minutes from the park, positioned unassumingly between a newsagents and an upmarket shoe repair shop. The owner, a short man whose face was bifurcated by a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, led us to a table which, at the request of my dining-partner, was equidistant between the bar and the toilet. We took our seats and, while he went on a tangent about the colleague who’d recommended the restaurant, I had a chance to look, really look, at this man for the first time in years. It was him, certainly. And yet, there was something in his aspect which spoke to time-won wisdom, to a concerted difference in his nature. Wrinkles ran crevices along his forehead; silver hairs peppered his eyebrows at random. His earlobes sagged to nose-level – though I can’t say for sure this was a change or whether I’d simply never made a point of considering his earlobes.  

Eventually, his ramble ran out of steam and he relaxed into a placid smile. ‘It’s so great to see you mate’. I nodded and we sat with the thought. ‘So,’ he drummed the table, ‘what have you been up to?’ It’s an affronting prospect, trying to sum up one’s life and achievements within the confines of a convivial comment, but I tried my best. ‘I’m an English teacher, in the city.’ The explanation wasn’t quite finished, but this was enough to entertain him, somehow, and propel him out of his seat temporarily. ‘Do you remember Mrs Baxter in Year 10? I reckon the title of Macbeth was about all I learnt of it in two years with her.’ This made him chuckle. I remembered Mrs Baxter quite well, as it happened; she’d been a great help in directing me towards some University pre-reading. For an hour or so we proceeded in this way: I relaying some fact of my recent life and he returning with a remembrance from our far-flung history. Having got him started on the subject of sports, I managed to eat my starter of seafood Pajeon without once having to offer my opinion. Apparently, our old football team – whose scores I did not realise were publicly available – had been doing especially well that year. In those days I’d played left-wing defence and he striker. In practice, this usually meant that I stood about idly watching his frequent attempts to overdramatically punt the ball towards the boys’ changing rooms just west of the goal. Predominantly, I was just happy that he distracted any crowd of spectators – usually about seven old men none of us recognised and a handful of younger boys skiving off – from my, at that stage, severely awkward physical appearance; I hated how I looked in those shorts.

At some point, a squat waiter with a ruby tiepin came to deliver our main course. He’d gone for a cut of pork belly, rendering my kimchi somewhat dwarfed by comparison. ‘There’s a ring on your finger,’ he keenly observed, ‘who’s the lucky lady? Or is it just a statement?’ I considered the ring, an unintrusive gold band which had protected a sliver of my finger from tanning for nearly five years. ‘I don’t know if she’d call herself lucky.’ He scoffed. ‘We met on our postgrad, she – Annie – was a few doors down in halls. One night she fell into my room by accident and, in a way, I suppose she never left.’ He looked at me gormlessly as if this wasn’t a complete account. ‘We got married a few years ago.’ – and, in order to mitigate any potential awkwardness – ‘it was a small ceremony, just family’, I lied. A glass of wine by his hand had mysteriously emptied whilst I’d been talking. ‘No kids then?’, he asked. I shook my head: ‘not yet, but soon I hope.’ The squat waiter dropped a bottle of sparkling water at the adjoining table. ‘And you?’ I began, ‘kids, wife, etcetera?’ This wasn’t very tactfully put, I think in retrospect. ‘No, no.’ His eyes were fixed on my lapel. ‘I guess I never really had the time,’ he rubbed his temple roughly, ‘or the opportunity, if I’m honest.’ After our main courses were dispatched, the waiter returned to offer a dessert menu. I declined, citing a weight-loss routine I was at that point somewhat agnostically following, and he followed suit. I adjourned to the bathroom for a moment and returned to find two Old Fashioneds sat at our table. ‘I really shouldn’t’, I chuckled over-apologetically. He didn’t accept this and, invoking the same wanton vim with which I’d once watched him volley a football into the forehead of our chemistry teacher, passed the drink to me: ‘I’m sure Amy wouldn’t mind.’  Forgetful, that was another one.

While we drank – or rather, while I drank – he went into more depth on his earlier comment, explaining in gross detail the vast maze of divergent paths which had led him away from anything like a family. ‘There was a girl, I think, a few years ago. I really thought I loved her and, I guess, I think I thought she loved me too.’ There isn’t much to do but nod at times like these. ‘But I was wrong – typical me! Do you remember how everyone used to groan when I was called on to answer a question in maths? I never got any better at understanding the complicated things.’ I tried to steer us to safer shores by asking him about work and the meeting he’d had to rush off to earlier. ‘Oh,’ he paused, ‘that. Well, it pays the bills and I guess that’s all it needs to do.’ I didn’t question this, but he continued as though I had. ‘It’s not a bad life, you know, really. I drive a nice car, I eat nice meals,’ – he reached over and jostled my shoulder – ‘I see nice old pals!’ I smiled and touched his hand with a warmth I hope read as affectionate. He leant back in his chair and gripped his glass somewhat defensively – ‘not a bad life at all’, he said to the air beside him.

Our conversation had run dry, as had my glass. I ostentatiously sat it back on the table, attempting to project the image of a man about to leave a restaurant. This caught his attention. He simpered into the middle distance, laughed at something neither of us had said and turned back to me: ‘shall we have another, before they close?’ I smiled into my lap and shook my head. ‘Sorry,’ I was reaching for my wallet, ‘I really should be getting back.’ The waiter, who’d been wiping the same corner of the bar for about twenty minutes, looked up at us expectantly. He laughed once more, looked to his left twice, ran his hands through his hair and nodded, as if he didn’t really care either way. We both stood up, almost simultaneously, and produced our respective wallets. ‘No’, he said, thrusting his arm between my hand and the table, ‘let me, please’. There was a measured pause between those last two words, though I can’t say with any certainty that this meant anything. It would seem churlish to suggest I allowed him to pay for my meal, it was of course a great kindness on his part. Nevertheless, it seemed that depriving him of that little victory, that little reminder that I was still the gangly left-wing defender to his star striker, was an unnecessary cruelty. Besides, it had the added benefit of leaving me with enough cash on hand – I’d drawn just enough for my meal out of a cashpoint machine earlier that day – to treat myself to a taxi home.

He waited with me as I flapped my arm hopelessly into the street at a succession of unstopping cars. Eventually, after a hideously long wait, I attracted one’s attention. It veered alongside the pavement and I jogged, lightly, over to meet it, a definite spring present in my step. He laughed at my disproportionate joy in this minor success, ‘you never changed, did you?’ I turned back and smiled: ‘I yam what I yam!’ The weather had held firm throughout our dinner, so it was against the backdrop of a pleasantly clear sky that I saw him nod to me as my taxi joined an unceasing flow of traffic swimming upstream to Dalston. My driver was neither talkative nor the sort to make excessive use of the radio: it was a silent journey home and I was in bed by midnight.

The next I heard of him was a few years later, when news spread that, after a brief but consequential interaction with a Fiat Punto, he had shattered most every bone in his body. In time he made a full recovery. I sent some chocolates and a card to his hospital bed, I think. God, I hope I did.

Featured Image: Kenneth Josephson, Front Street, Rochester, NY 

By Charles Fitzgerald

“Oh bother”, said Winnie-the-Pooh.  

He lowered his bong, constructed from an empty honey pot. He saw Piglet shuddering, clinging  onto himself for dear life. Piglet recently developed a habit of greening out and becoming very  anxious. Rabbit warned him that skunk plays havoc with rationality and self-esteem. Piglet didn’t listen. 

“Y’alright mate?” sighed Pooh. 

“Yeah yeah, I’m… I’m just…” Piglet trailed off, his mind abuzz with self-loathing. “He tweaking for real”, Eeyore piped up. “Does he want some coke?” 

“Did someone say…” Tigger bounced in, his whiskers erect. “Coke?”. Tigger had been prescribed  medicinal cannabis for his ADHD. It worked for a while, until his cocaine habit reared its ugly head  again. 

“That’s the last thing anyone needs right now, mate”, said Pooh, as he set aside the bong.  “Especially you, Tigger. You’re hopped as a frog”. 

Piglet’s world was caving in on itself. The perpetual rush of humiliation, angst, regret, anxiety, isolation, sunken-costs, unfulfilled ambition. This was Piglet’s world. His everyday. 

“I wouldn’t mind some coke, to be fair”, Eeyore’s tail waggled. “Only thing that stops the voices”. Long ago, Eeyore promised himself to draw the line at any tooting. Now, his snout was in tatters – a rag of self-destruction. 

“Don’t be a dick, Eeyore”, Pooh sunk back into the floor. “I’m not cleaning up your piss and tears  again”. Pooh, despite appearances, was having an incredible time. The rotten wood panelling of  this decrepit tree-house was a bed of honey, welcoming him with open arms. Pooh, of all the  inhabitants of the hundred-acre wood, nursed the healthiest attitude towards drugs. Aside from  the odd bit of speed on birthdays and special occasions, Pooh reserved himself for weed and  weed only. Weed listened to Pooh. Pooh listened back. 

“The truth is…” Pooh would say. “Anything to take my mind off Christopher”. 

Christopher Robin moved to Balham, eighteen years prior, to pursue a career in artificial  insemination. He hadn’t returned once to play with his old friends, and now ran his own fertility  clinic in Milton Keynes. Pooh’s sadness wore off around six years in, steadily fermenting into bitter  resentment. 

Piglet had taken it the worst. Curled up in a small pink ball on the floor, he just couldn’t shake the  guilt. I should’ve been better. He’d given up all attempts to seek reassurance from his friends. A  futile endeavour. They knew it. He knew it. If only Christopher knew it, too. 

I just want to play with him, one last time. 

“Anyone seen Rabbit?” asked Pooh. “Not gonna lie, bloke’s really been getting on my tits lately”. “Mm”, mused Eeyore. 

“Thank you for that contribution”, Pooh sat up. 

“No no, I agree. Proper knob.” Eeyore was elsewhere – busy thinking about the afterlife. Tigger  sprung up.

“He’s off his tramadol. Said it made him dream of hurting us”. Tigger was, put simply,  educationally subnormal. Nice guy, by all accounts. Buys his round. Just thick as mince.  Disconnected. 

“There’s a surprise,” said Pooh, rolling his marble-eyes. “Anyway, look, if he swings by… Really  gonna fuck up my high”. 

“This calls for gear!” Tigger shrieked with excitement. 

“Simmer down, mate”, groaned Pooh. “This really doesn’t call for gear”. 

“It might do”, Eeyore shrugged. 

“Christopher”, squealed Piglet. His friends turned to him. “I’m… I’m sorry, Christopher”. “You what, mate?” Pooh inquired. 

“You… You never…” Piglet spluttered. “You never really know what you have… ‘Till it’s… ‘Till it’s  gone”. His friends stared at him, deathly silent. Pooh closed his eyes. Eeyore sniffled. Tigger didn’t know what day of the week it was. 

“Come on, mate” said Pooh. “Let’s just… I dunno, talk about QAnon conspiracy theories or  something… Something funny. I just wanna laugh.” 

“I haven’t laughed in years”, Eeyore sorrowed. 

“I have”, Tigger laughed. 

“Gone”, Piglet purred. “Gone.” 

Note: Surprisingly, this work is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by the estate of A.A. Milne, the estate of E.H. Shepard, The Walt Disney Company, or any other rights holders  associated with Winnie-the-Pooh.

Featured Image: Disney

By Charles FitzGerald

Thursday, 14:31  

Jonty:   Tell me. Why would a lady as enchanting as you be lurking on an app like this? A woman of your beauty is clearly Hinge-territory. 

Ella:    Does that normally work? 

Jonty:   It has been known.  

Ella:    Right. 

Chat Terminated.  

__________

Thursday, 17:53  

Jonty: Couldn’t help but notice something, RE: your profile picture. You appear to be holding a fork in your right hand, a steak-knife in your left. This is the wrong way round, Lucy – though, rest assured, I’m still interested. 

Lucy:    ? 

Jonty:   How’s about I take you to Côte Brasserie and show you how it’s properly done? I’m banned from the local one, so we’ll have to venture out.  

As of next Tuesday, I’ll be clean of all sexually-transmitted diseases. How does Monday evening work for you? I’m sure we can hold off until the morning, if you catch my drift. 

*MOST sexually-transmitted diseases. Apologies. 

Lucy:  Dying rn haha 

Original, i’ll give u that 

Jonty:   Always a gentleman, but never a gentle man. Ha! 

Lucy:    Why were u banned from Cote? 

Jonty:    I’d really rather not get into that right now, Lucy.  

    (seen) 

Thursday, 21:14  

Jonty:   Okay, I’ll bite. Last Valentine’s, Côte hosted a “smoked salmon challenge”. Pretty much as it sounds – if you consume an enormous (and I mean ENORMOUS) platter of smoked salmon within the hour, you and your party eat for free. 

I made a valiant effort, although needs must and I projectile shat. Coincidentally, James O’Brien (of LBC) was sitting behind me with his family, and took the brunt. 

He was commendably understanding about the whole thing (seemed to rather enjoy it, in fact!) and signed my napkin. The Côte stasi were much less sympathetic. The waiter actually ended up asking MY DATE for “Angela” – the balls! 

This probably won’t happen again Lucy. 

Chat Terminated.  

__________

Friday, 01:26  

Jonty:    Awooga. You bear a startling resemblance to my mother. Jonty likes.     (seen) 

Friday, 01:35  

Jonty:   Oh shit. Mum, what are you doing on Tinder? 

Chat Terminated.  

__________

Friday, 11:04  

Jonty:   Is that a copy of Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ in your hand, or are you just pleased to see me? 

Emma: What does that even mean? 

Jonty:   Let me break this down for you, Emma.  

In your profile picture, you appear to be brandishing a copy of Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’. 

The saying typically goes “is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?” – a reference to the male erection. 

I, in a play on words, have tailored the saying to your profile picture. Granted, it’s pretty high-brow. 

Emma: Yeah thanks for that. I understand the saying. 

Jonty:   Great, I’ll try again.  

Is that a copy of Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ in your hand, or are you just pleased to see me? 

Emma: It’s a copy of Crime and Punishment. 

Jonty:   Ah. 

    (seen) 

Friday, 13:44  

Jonty:   See, I really thought you were going to say “I’m just pleased to see you”. 

Conversation Terminated. 

__________

Saturday, 09:35  

Clarissa: Hi sexy do u like have some fun with me always? 

Jonty:   Crikey, I certainly would!  

I must say, I do appreciate a woman willing to take the first plunge. Thank you for that. 

Clarissa: I do make a video of myself when im bored sometime a do a nasty squirting video

I’m single with no kids 

Jonty:   I see. I’ve always been fascinated by the female orgasm. Seems utterly pointless to me. Is it true it’s 90% piss? 

As far as I’m aware, I have no children either. 

Clarissa:   How do you treat your women in time of fun? 

Jonty:   In the throws of passion? I have no objection to being slapped in the head. Clarissa: How much do you work in a day and how much you earning in a day ? 

Jonty:   I receive £500 sterling from my estranged father’s premium bonds every 3 days or so.  

And if by “work”, you mean “be an absolute fucking animal” – 5 days a week. 

Clarissa: Do you got cash with you in the moment Jonty ?

Jonty:   I always carry cash. During my travels in Thailand, I thought it wise to store some notes up my bottom (in case of police bribery et cetera) – though they’ve since become permanently lodged up there. 

Clarissa: Oh you have point 

What institution you bank with jonty? 

I wanna you send money i need to load my internet so i send nasty squirting video 

Jonty:   I bank with HSBC, though my savings are stored in an off-shore account (Equatorial Guinea). 

I’ll certainly wire over some internet cashola. What are your account details, Clarissa? 

Clarissa: Thank you jonty my love 

I have no internet as my bank institution not work 

send photo of you card 

Jonty:   I quite understand. 

    [photo attached]

Clarissa: and three number on behind 

Jonty:   [photo attached] 

Conversation Terminated.  

__________

Friday, 23:25  

Jonty:   Mum. You’re not responding to my WhatsApps. Can I have some money please? 

Conversation Terminated.

Featured Image: Unsplashed

By Matthew Dodd

Outside the Caffe Giulia, two old men barked at one another across a table gossamered by empty coffee cups. A russet awning cast a shadow, so long as to shade the pair completely, but short enough that it left Paolo, a sedentary streetcat, half-exposed to the shrinking sun of the early evening. Disjunct jazz floated across from the Via Dante Alighieri. Underscoring every few bars was the airy hum of laughter. Paolo stretched his two paws out, in one movement, and extended his body to its fullest length before compacting himself into a curled ball under the nascent twilight. One of the men reached down and scratched Paolo’s right ear, much to the cat’s evident displeasure.

Inside the caffe, the expatriate flaneur sat cross-legged against the back of his chair, squabbling over his cappuccino with the young gentleman at the counter, Dante – no relation. ‘You can’t be serious’, the expatriate squawked, ‘Donatello’s David over Michaelangelo’s?’ Dante threw his hands up defensively; ‘for me? No contest.’ The expatriate let out a scoff heavy enough to leave his saucer rattling for a matter of seconds until being silenced by his picking up the cup. Similar scenes had played out in the caffe most afternoons since the expatriate – William, a man with one-and-a-half working eyes, recently turned thirty despite his best efforts – had washed ashore in Genoa and taken temporary lodgings in the smallest town he could stumble to. After a one-sided battle with the Italian motorway network, he had slumped into a corner chair in the Caffe Giulia and, excluding irregular trips to the nearby pensione in which he had taken board, stayed largely put. On discovering the elevated tastes of this young barista, William had elected to devote much of his time to conversing with Dante on matters artistic, as though his company were a kind of spiritual patronage. In reality, Dante had been more of a patron to William, as the latter’s bar tab had, in the month since his arrival, been never more than half settled.

‘Have you been to the Uffizi, Dante?’, William asked, with no intention of waiting for an answer. ‘I went with my folks when I was a boy; I must go back; I’ve been on a total Botticelli kick as of late; it’s a real beauty.’ He considered what he had said and drummed the fingers of his right hand against the knuckles of his left. ‘So few galleries are themselves worthy of exhibition.’ He beamed noiselessly, an intermission allowing Dante a response: ‘I haven’t, signor.’ William was aghast. ‘Oh, you must! Perhaps we’ll go together.’ – this idea evidently pleased the expatriate. Dante rubbed a moistened rag against the counter, his eyes fixed away from William. ‘I must work, if I want to study. I can’t go to Florence on a whim.’ A muffled, septuagenarian growl and the sound of a hand slamming against a table reverberated through the half-shut door. Ears drawn to the noise, William noted the accelerated tempo of the music across the street. ‘Is Beatrice singing tonight?’, he asked with a coy half-smile to Dante. The counter grew ever cleaner. Dante shrugged. ‘She sings on a Saturday,’ the pace of his scrubbing quickened, ‘it is Saturday today.’ A quiet hung between them, punctured at intervals by a faint hiss from Paolo and a pronounced chuckle from the two old men. ‘Why don’t you go over there? I’m sure of so little, but I know she’d love to see you.’ No response; the counter practically squeaked. 

William stood and, under the pretence of returning his cup, strode over to the counter. ‘Look,’ he began, ‘I don’t pertain to have any great romantic insight that didn’t come from a magazine or a horoscope’ – he waited for a laugh that did not come – ‘but I think I know something or other about that ineffable intercourse between man and woman which we, colloquially, call love. Enough to know that that girl out there’ – he pointed exaggeratedly towards the street opposite – ‘is feeling something like that for you.’ Placing the cup on the counter, he sat a hand on Dante’s shoulder. ‘And I know that when you hear her sing misty, you think it’s you she’s getting misty over, and it makes you feel good. Makes you feel like someone people ought to be singing about.’ He had his eyes set on the base of Dante’s ears, where his gaze would be met should the young man feel so inclined. ‘So, what I don’t understand is why you don’t shake off this ratty old place and run over there right now!’ He kept his hand on Dante’s shoulder. The night had set in fully, denoted by the groans of the men outside as they attempted standing up to leave. Ever the pugilist, Paolo insisted on scratching at both of their oversized gabardine trouser legs before they could leave.  

Dante shrugged the hand off of him. ‘I have to work.’ He picked up the abandoned cup and began methodically working out the heavy staining around its rim. ‘I don’t work, I don’t earn. I don’t earn, I’ll never study.’ The stains were agitating him. He bore away at them like a bull at a toreador. With sudden vigour, his head snapped around towards William, who had set off back to his seat. ‘And what about you? Swanning around as though you have no cares?’ William interjected, though he knew Dante wasn’t done: ‘Swanning! I don’t swan! Gamble, perhaps.’ Dante ignored the jibe and continued. ‘When will you leave here?’ Seeing on William’s face he’d entered territory resolutely marked ‘no trespassing’, he pressed further. ‘When will you go back to your wife?’ The jazz outside had slowed to a waltz. In the street, the two old men were walking together in time. William receded into his seat. ‘She’s not my wife.’ His right leg bounced at a violent pace against the table. ‘She won’t be my wife until I go back. Hence, I am here; she is there.’ This last geographical distinction was marked by an accentuated movement of the hands: here on one side of the table, there on the other. ‘Why should I leave? Go back and take over the role of upstanding husband? Have a cup of coffee, work hard and come back home to baying housewife? Where’s the time to gamble there, where’s the time to swan? Here, you’ve got freedom.’ This point was important to him, it was clear. ‘Freedom, Dante.’ Behind the counter, he shook his head and brought out a scourer. ‘I think there are different kinds of freedom, signor.’ 

A faint smile leaked into William’s face. ‘I think you are a wise man Dante, and I think one day the world will know it.’ Standing up, he made his way to the stand in the corner. He collected a military style trench coat from the stand and flung it over his person theatrically. Paolo had come up to the door now, evidently endeared by the sound of argument. William knelt down to stroke his chin. Paolo purred and scurried back into the night. The music had picked back up. William got up, stepped towards the door, paused, spun on his heel and sighed. ‘I’ll see you there, Dante.’ Once more, the young man did not return his gaze. ‘I must work, signor.’ William shrugged and set out towards the Via Dante Alighieri, leaving the second Dante alone in the caffe. 

Dante closed up the caffe after a few hours, by which time the music had stopped, and, thirty years later, died three doors down from a bacterial infection of the stomach – having never seen either David.

Featured Image: Matthew Dodd

By Joanna Bergmann

Orange peel, placed carefully next to a stack of books – a pinteresty still life.  Dust floats in the warm air, visible in the beam of sunlight that breaks through the half-open shutters, and slowly settles on the window sill. In the half-darkness,  a hand, a back, a stroke, a shudder. It’s still early. Tiptoes, fetch a dress, white,  to match the summer day. And out, fingers touching, barely, two pairs of naked feet in soft green grass, and – no.  

No, that’s not how it goes. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I prop myself up against a pillow, dressed in a set of Christmas pyjamas – it is May. A May, for that matter, that can’t decide whether it wants to be summer or not and hence keeps giving me colds. I contemplate the bare walls of my room I never bothered to decorate following my one-year excuse which, by the way, is also to blame for my plants still sitting in kitchenware on the window sill and why, realistically, they will never see a proper pot. They don’t seem to mind too much. 

No, this is not pinteresty, this is no clean-girl aesthetic, this is … life? Content, a little messy, but not too much, seeing as  I can’t handle uneven numbers on my laptop volume. A little dust, well yeah, I got that right, but not peacefully floating in yellow sunlight, and there are no shutters either. A stack of books on the desk, but no orange peel, just a worn-out bookmark and, yes, a used tissue. 

I close my eyes again and the tissue becomes a cluster of fleecy clouds in the dawning pink morning sky. Soft light dances on the little pond and water striders flit across the calm surface, already busy in these early hours. I crouch down and the surface ruffles beneath my touch, little rings shyly running away where I  disturbed the sleeping water. I straighten back up, stretching my arms up high towards the sky, and take a deep breath, inhaling the smell of the woods, and the grass, and the earth, and you. I half turn and you give me a small smile, and then I run – as fast into the water as I can, before I topple and it swallows me, enshrouding me in a wet and tender embrace. 

I open my eyes and smile back at you.

By Lenna Suminski

In the backseat of this stranger’s car I found out what love was. You thought I was asleep but brushed my hair anyway. I kiss your hands. I don’t ever want to reach my house. My parents say I’ll look back at how much I fought them for you and laugh. Maybe. But right now I can’t imagine a time without you. 

How do we elucidate the ephemeral as eternal? I love you. You love me too. 

That may be clear as day, but up in Linkou the woods are foggy and this is my terrain and all of it is so simple and I never would’ve guessed: love is you stroking my hair when I sleep, I look up at you and we both smile. 

The first time you fall in love you understand what it all means. The lights at the park turning on at the same moment I talk about you to my best friend means something. The butterfly that looks like a moth on the hotel wall that my mother booked for our prom night meant something. Our grandmothers going to the same elementary school meant something. The first time you fall in love you put your ear to the conch shell I retrieved for you and the whole world sings. Nobody has ever heard all this symphony before. The first time you fall in love you cannot differentiate if you are discovering something or if the love you hold is merely materializing. 

The first time you fall in love you think it will last forever. The rawness of its purity is almost graphic. “Youth is hardly human: it can’t be, for the young never believe they will die…” At the parties we used to all use for any incident of celebration, you get drunk and messy. You never let me leave your side. I liked you best in those moments, where you’d unabashedly need me, need to touch me, need to hold me up from getting pushed, need to sing lyrics to a love song to me. Like it was necessary. The primitiveness and disparity of it was always undeniable, I loved feeling uncivilized. And if I left you’d look for me, reach for me from across the room. And if someone sprayed champagne on me and I got mad and wanted to leave you’d give me your shirt to wipe it off. If I left you’d always follow, and the party would be over because everyone followed you. You’d buy me midnight ramen and we never waited in any line. 

The first time you fall in love you feel it before you know it. You remember slices of time that won’t become significant until afterwards. When I climbed out of my bedroom window and down an ancient tree to meet you at a horrible after party. At 3am we left to go to a park to talk, anguished by teenage anxiety or what they call butterflies in stomachs. You didn’t know you could feel so alive without spending anything, I didn’t know it was possible for my mind to go quiet. On that picnic bench under a canopy of trees the soft rain doesn’t reach us. Your hands hover across mine for hours before you dare to hold them. I write about you. 

He feels like water. Is this real? Are we something? Do we dare Knead and mold potential and promise into legend? I feel undignified and brave, like a man who stole fire for some Lovely, O lovely creature–O, you are a lovely dove of a boy! If you want fire to move slow, I will pinch every pine needle, rip, dye Every willow or redwood and there Will be swirls of fog and clouds to eat. You can twirl my hair Away from my face. I’ll bite your Ear, ponder our demise, Wave at skateboarders tailing by and Tuck my virtue in the

concave of your shoulder and head. How do I tell you I’m in love with you like The Arctic’s gentle remembrance of diminishing ancient ice, Dissolving and returning back, To you. 

When I say you feel like water I mean: I love you. 

The first time you fall in love you describe it like an imagery you’ve never experienced. I tell everyone we feel like kids underwater. In a public swimming pool, suspended and submerged and surrounded by women’s polka dot two-pieces and neon swim trunks. In very juvenile terms, love feels like two kids looking at each other underwater, eyes open, bleached, swirling half-bodies all around. 

The first time you fall in love you don’t know any better but to hope. The night before you left for college, in your bedroom and its pitch-black, we have sex for the last time. I start crying when you’re in me. I asked you months ago, Can we just go everywhere together? Yes. Can we just do everything together? Yes. Can we just stay together until we can’t anymore? Yes. What does can’t anymore mean? I don’t know. This was when we can’t anymore. This is the last time, I kept repeating it like I couldn’t quite believe it. It’s not the last time, stop saying that. I feel the wet against my cheek, you’re on top of me and we’re crying together, static. No, but it’ll never be like this again. I stare at your eyes that I couldn’t see in that dark. 

The first time you fall out of love you do crazy things. I did coke in ball bathroom stalls and let a self-proclaimed Maoist prophet take polaroid nudes of me with roses. I smoked cigarettes out of car windows when “Killer Queen” blasts out of a stranger’s car. I almost married a man that likes mean sex. He’d write love poems that weren’t very good and make them about God and deliver them to me like he was bringing me salvation. I got a lower-back tattoo that made me sluttier than I ever was with you. You can always tell if a man loves you by the way he fucks you. 

Over coffee I tell a friend I’ve been going to church a lot. 

Why? 

Because I’ve been having too much sex. 

He spits out his matcha latte at the vulgarity of my bluntness and we burst out laughing. The first time you fall out of love you try to find God everywhere, kneeling before believing until your knees are dented and bruised, quoting lines from Nietzsche’s Aphorisms on Love and Hate and wonder why I’d ever think men would always be gentle. I tried to drown myself in Holy Water. 

The first time you fall out of love you do everything you can to reinvent yourself. You book 3-day stays at your college town’s best hotel and fuck the pornstar you flew in. Luxury Room, One King Bed, Two Adults. Then you wait for her to get dressed, some elegant blue dress probably, fake eyelashes, an Uber Black to your fraternity formal. Was it fun to wine-and-dine a woman your father would scorn at? Was it validating to present prettiness to your friends, proving that you weren’t just a one-hit-wonder?

There are distractions that you use to lobotomize yourself from those withdrawals. Double-vodka lime, double-gin and tonic, double glasses of wine at dinner, double the romance, divide the grief. None of anything I did was original. It’s nice to know heartbreak is universal. Too many first dates and after you fall out of love for the first time you need to explain yourself all over again. 

I blow at every dandelion I see. I like horses, I know the correct way to cut and dry every flower. My favorites are lilies of the valley. No, they are dif erent from lilies. My favorite place in the world is up the volcano-mountain near my old high school. They’d let you get in the mud with rainboots and pick the calla lilies yourself. 

I leave out the part where you’d drive me, Beach House blasting. The picture of my hair wild and head out the window from the passenger seat is the last slide on my Hinge. You were next to me. 

I used to dye my hair black every two weeks. I gave myself stick-and-pokes when I was 13. I was a bitch in high school. My dog’s name is Wolfy. No, I have no allergies. My dad was a writer. I am my grandmother’s favorite. The ritualistic determination ceremony said I would be a writer, too. No, not like in Divergent. Well, maybe kind of? I tried to kill myself twice. I like baking pies. 

I think with every line, every biometric fact I recited about myself I went a little further away from you. Its recreation, pattern recognition. All these things about me existed before you and they continue to live out after you. Plans carry on as they were supposed to. You fly over to the mountains to ski and watch the fireworks on New Year’s Eve. I imagine us both getting drunk, separately. Champagne or soju with family friends: the men you call uncle who cheat on their wives and the women you call auntie who collect Birkins and lorazepam. You were supposed to open the collage of flowers over our year together with my parents on Christmas, I bailed on your mother’s welcoming invites to go shopping with her below the slopes. 

The first time you fall out of love you think of it as something sudden, you lose sight of the deterioration, the rot. It hits me six months later, I text my best friend when my antidepressants stop working. The water is all I can remember. Even after all those fights, all those pockets of boredom, raised voices, unanswered phone calls. Every ending brings me back to the beginning. And I could’ve made it work. I wanted to see the world and I did I did my time I did my Odyssey but Claire I just want to go back underwater with him. I just want to go back underwater with him. I am absolutely depraved. But I wanted to be his wife I just wanted to stay underwater with him. 

I hug your dad when I see him again and apologize with my eyes for dumping his son. He liked me because I conducted every disastrous performance with well manners and pious politeness. And he always laughed at my jokes, I was always so good with dads–balancing youthful femininity like Old Hollywood starlets with copied stoicism from my own sophisticate scholar-father. Your mother liked me because I looked good next to you and I was a good cook, and kept any harlotry far away from her. I miss them both, I write them a letter, I text your sister on her Sweet Sixteen. 

The first time you fall out of love your family refuses to stop bringing it up. Christmas break was claustrophobic. I escape the family dinner parties where bored housewives tell me about your summer

internship, tell me they saw the pictures of us at prom that your mother proudly presented over brunch. We haven’t spoken in weeks and everytime we do we fight, nastily, like we’ve never done before. I give some sanitary explanations about people growing and well wishes and escape to the library or my bedroom with bottles of Bordeaux. Lying on my princess bed with the mesh drapes, four dried bouquets from you on each corner pole. Your clothes in an oversized Dior shopping bag in my walk-in closet, the purple walls that you helped me paint on my 18th birthday. I want you to die and I want to grow old with you. Nauseating, I give up trying to claw you out of my mind. 

The first time you fall out of love your friends can’t forget me. Sleeping on air mattresses with a girl none of them respect, you make faces when they bring up my name every two hours. You’re too lazy to even fake chivalry with her, she orders her own food at dinner. You smoke a cigarette with our mutual friend and tell her you’re focusing on yourself, she believes you but watches your face fall when you exhale the Marlboro Gold. You pretend the break-up was mutual, you pretend you didn’t send letters and flowers and beg for me back when it was too late. Cashing out on your dad’s American Express card for the only vein of masculinity you know how to give–to give. 

The first time you fall out of love you think it will linger forever. It doesn’t. The second time I fall in love I catch it coming. It happens in the National Gallery, over coffee in Covent Garden, she beats me at Scrabble in an Irish pub. I write letters. She sketches. I phone my mother on a random Wednesday and come out to her. The second time you fall in love you creep with hesitation, you remember the rot. You prolong the fall, I ruin it because I am no longer as brave as I was when I was 17. The first time you fall out of love will be tattooed on you like the seven-stich-scar on my left hand, or like my tramp-stamp you never got to see. 

The first time you fall out of love you let it dilute and fade, you know you’ll wade past it. You ignore my hair on both sides of the pillowcase, you get your dick sucked by someone who dyed their hair the same colour as mine and try not to think about the last time we were together. You stare at my letters in the black box in your closet, sighing with relief that the girl who always had more words will never make you feel so much ever again. But you’ll never throw the box away. I know what’s in there: a red ribbon, a candle, a conch shell, pressed-flowers, stacks of my scrawling cursive you learnt to be fluent in. They reek of the perfume I wear, Moonlight something, you’d recognize it on a storefront shelf but cannot recall the name right now. But you remember. You confess silently, you begrudgingly admit it: I was right. It’ll never be like that again. Kids underwater, nobody will ever be like us again.

By Lenna Suminski

I grew up around forests, things change when time passes and people get older and muddier. To the right of my house that my mother’s mother built on top of her mother’s bones, there used to be a road that led to nowhere. I learned to bike down that dead end, howling like wolves, armed with pink plush handlebars and not-so-flashy training wheels. They built a bridge across that 

valley and unrooted all my grandfather’s bamboos. Now teenagers do motorcycle tricks down my street and they had to build up a higher fence on the bridge because people kept taking their leaps of faith. Courage and solitude comes in many forms. I used to swim in the creek they decomposed in. 

I am not allowed to run barefoot across dandelions anymore. 

But before all this death, there had to be life. This is not a story about growing up, I’ve hardly ever grown. 

I want to tell you about a tree, before the bridge, before the fences. The tree was tall, expansive, wise, and giving. Just across from my window, it sprung white flowers over and over again every spring. My mother could not bake but she’d make tea from the fancy rose Earl Grey we’d get from the city every other Saturday. I made daisy chains and swung from its branches. The day before it was cut down–this older-than-any-bridge tree–I saw my mother and my father kiss for the very last time. 

Tree-climbing was a talent of mine, my first and only nickname was ‘xiao monkey’ (small monkey). I have never fallen. My feet will forever be rough and tough from my refusal to wear shoes. 

My ama, my mother’s mother, taught me everything I knew. She’d seen more death than me. The house across from ours used to be a pond to catch frogs and catfish in. Her tiny frame grew stubbornly, like the pink flower weeds she taught me how to peel and eat, when nothing but tea came from the red dirt of her mountain land. 

My agong, my mother’s father, was more like me than anyone would like to admit. He died when I was too young to understand his empathy. I used to detest holding his rough, tough hands. He planted a tree – well, many other trees too. But he planted a tree for my mother, Mayflower Tree. It was taller than my window. I’d learn to climb its ridges down and over the fence to see my high school boyfriend at a party many bridges away. 

He planted it for her, it’s been seven years since he was suffocated by cancer and the tube but his tree snowed white flowers across my home-built-on-bones for eternity. Only in May, he gave us

remembrance. In second grade we read a poem about mayflowers and I picked the most pristine ones from my yard and brought it to school. I’d never been more proud. 

These are my flowers. It came from my mother’s tree. Inhale their loveliness. 

I did not cry when he died, slowly and disgustingly. But I wallowed in agony the winter following the buddhist lotus-flower that we made and burned for him, when ama and mama cut down the Mayflower tree, and all the other trees. 

They will grow back, Lenna. 

No, it will never be the same. 

When I was nine, my classmates presented in excitement a dying baby black crow that had fallen from our school yard’s tree. They herded around it like vultures, gawking, squawking, overwhelmed by our pure biological voyeurism. Ponytails and buzzed heads and scraped knees crowding the crows body. When they all left I held the baby bird in my lavender-printed white dress. I banged on every door and skipped my classes, nobody really had the time to entertain my silliness of trying to save a dying thing. 

I laid against the tree of its nest and we looked at each other until it died. I whispered some lullaby, I’d never been a good singer so I told it the story of trees. Then I laid with its body, its hair as black as mine, listening to the tea trees and the red dirt that was never rich enough to grow anything but bamboo and weeds. 

It was the closest I’d ever been to death. I’ve hardly grown since. I talked about the mayflowers and crossed my heart like it was a prayer. In the name of memory and belief, the closest I’d ever been to God.

By Lenna Suminski

He stands there, clad in an armoury of French-pressed linen suits approved by Vogue just last month trying desperately to prove to himself he has now risen to be a man. His contradictions of mind and matter have always entertained me to a giggling slump and while he imitates this New York summer weather with his trickling yellow hair and drizzling dress, his tragic posture evokes a precise maternal instinct from me – peculiar strands of love not even summoned by my own daughter.

He forces me to speak: “I certainly am awfully glad to see you again.”

…

At this dusty time of the year the flowers and trees drifted from other summers. The peculiar scene of pine needles evoked memories of roads that cradled the happier suns of a long time ago. The road not taken taunts me with the precise incisions of surgeons or the delicate tuning-fork of a Swiss watchmaker.

As he stares across the water in a rare moment of stillness, I bade Jay to recall our wistful nights of a misty time in 1917, our demonstrations of romance disasterly vivid, now creeping around the edges of my mind and escaping the extensions of my fingertips. All of that seems more instant than this artificial carnival of love in this garden’s pungent perfumery and his purposeful delineation of the Fay family clock.

Do you remember…the night you gave me a birthday party and you were a young lieutenant and I was a fragrant phantom painted white? I ask him in a silly whisper in my imagination…it was a radiant night, a night of soft conspiracy and the trees agreed that it was all going to be for the best…I confessed and I confess now, that that was the first time I ever said that in my life.

We were walking down Pleasant 6th Street when the leaves were falling…the sidewalk that led up to my ivy-plagued back door was bleached with moonlight, below it lay my carefully placed ladder that stretched and slithered around the illumination of my father’s study and towards the dark window of my room. You eyed it with suspicion or with interest, I could not tell.

As you approached with alarming ease and confidence I shut my eyes to reduce my static heart and mind to just the sense of you…You smelled like new goods, being close to you, my face in the space between your ear and stiff army collar was like being initiated into the subterranean reserve of a fine fabric store exuding the delicacy of cambricks and linen and luxury bound in bales. You and your pale aloofness of yellow hair and lavender eyes, you were without a doubt the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I interrogated myself for days afterwards – I wonder if you ever realized my anxiety – your foolish bravery and selfish justice selected by you for just the two of us…You were a boy, an educational feature; an overture to romance which no young lady should be without.

Now I see that you are what you wanted us to become, and still I cannot untangle James from Jay. It would be unfair to blame you for fulfilling your own manifested destiny, the same as I did with Fay and Buchanan. But what are you trying to do now? Seeing me here, when we are already what we dreamed for each other?

The world offers men the possibility of carelessness and caricatured romance so they can zealously proclaim it to be ambition, one that is gracefully extended from the rusted palms of God himself – the majestic emergence of his creation designed to bless its creators with the emblem of immortality. It was exciting enough for me, in the summer of 1917, to be close to the ones that could devour all of our youth’s potential. I will admit, school was not the belle of my attention that year. There were too many soldiers in town and I passed my time going to dances – always in love with somebody, fast-pacing and slow-swaying all night, and carrying on my school work just with the idea of finishing it.

After that kiss, you were to me a nail in my palm, and that same bloodied flesh on a big blue book bound by braille. In that kiss the incarnation was complete. Though I will admit perhaps it is unfair to equate my sacrifices of femininity and chastity that summer all onto you, I still cling onto the life – of you and me far away on a rowboat in the middle of a stormy sea, bobbing with the pressure of nature instead of civilization and kept steady by your hands and my hair and our…dream? That vision of us and more importantly of Daisy Fay, whipping hair tucked behind my ear with hard-earned calloused palms, I will preserve with delusion in a third dimension.

…

At 23, I have done an excellent job at imitating my mother’s lifelessness, and glazed, impressionable eyes. I offer Tom as she had with my father, life, life, life, and ensuring Fay immortality in flesh and blood. Buchanan will live on forever while your Daisy Fay drifts away across the waters. Should I feel sorry that I wasted my tenderness for another name, for another man’s athanasia?

All of me, an Athenian temple, flying into the wind as pulverized specks from my wasted decaying acropolis, existing only to symbolize a light ahead for your Odyssey. Mothers and daughters alike, paralyzed by the abysmal pillar dug in the pit of our stomachs, striking through in between our ribs and reaching for the narrow keyhole up our throats and to our cherry pink always-agape mouths.

I spit out words but all that comes are tears. I tell you, I wanted to give you life, I promised you, I wanted…to give you an alms for your dreaming dazing self. What more of me is there to give now?

Don’t you think I was made for you? I used to feel like you had me carved out or sewn up—and I was plucked from the third dimension of your mind—to be worn, I still want you to wear me, like a watch-charm or a stitch on the inside of your fraying cufflinks. Do you still smell of pencils and sometimes of tweed? Of cigarettes, wedged way down between your fingers? Thumbs still fiddling and bloody from your unfulfilled knocking and picking…

I try and fight the dull pang of resentment that someone else closer to you knows all of your details, to think your rough sea-borne hands were now leading others than me into those cooler regions which you inhabited alone. I should feel happy for you, but you’re still sitting next to me, and I am only a girl equipped with only my meagre education of waltz and folding handkerchiefs. A handkerchief now being unfolded from your heart and directed by your thumbs to swipe away the rain and all its drizzling.

Nick peeks his head out in embarrassment and probably more out of boredom and breaks the moment all up apart: “It stopped raining.”

“Has it? What do you think of that? It stopped raining.” He repeats it back towards me.

“I’m glad, Jay.” I say to convince nobody.

While I mourn the loss of privacy and memory in the foams of the rain, I cover my tone in an upbeat song and promise him if he comes back, if we go back, I will make the jasmines bloom and all the trees come out in a dazzling flower. I will pinch every pine needle and rip and dye the willow leaves orange or red and in the rain’s shadowy shelter there will be clouds to eat and I will let you play with my hair while I trace back the roads along your palm.

Image credit: mymodernmet.ru

By Jiyan Sheppard 

It was in moments like these that I’d think of what I’d say to him if we were ever to speak, which we never did. Moments of empty space and feeling the dead, still European air. I’d think about cuckoos, how I’d watched them move on TV, how an unsuspecting warbler would watch their chick grow up prickly and monstrously hypertrophied and how the warbler’s children would be clumsily ejected from the nest to the forest floor, where their skeletal remains would rot slowly and gently turn to soil. I liked to watch TV in my head, around this time.

I committed myself to taking an inventory of all the things that he’d accumulated, at points like these, to catalogue the lost or given away, the borrowed and never given back. I supposed the bulk of it must’ve been purchased, though I could never figure how, or from where. Clothes and paper and books and jewellery formed strata, each layer corresponding to a day, each cavity corresponding to something lost, something rediscovered. He was missing a gold bracelet, which I’d been eyeing for some time and thinking about taking. I don’t know why I never did. I suppose I could never tell if it was real or fake – not that that would’ve made a difference, taking it.

– – –

He had curated a selection of bath soaps and shampoos that were organic and branded minimally and in rustic colours: the colour of mud, the colour of clay, speckled carefully with imperfections. I had followed him to the shop in Via Toledo that sold them in brown bamboo-paper baskets, and had surmised that they were worth more than the rent on the small room he and I occupied. 

If I lay a certain way in this bath, his bath, I can become convinced that my body is no longer here. 

Sometimes I lay and read things he’s written: poems, scraps of novella, manifestoes even. I find that they bore me. Art bores me. Books bore me. His grand gestures of futurity and ‘New Vision’ bore me especially. 

For every paper basket used, the shop pledged to save a square metre of endangered rainforest.

If I lay a certain way, amongst his words, I can become convinced that my mind is no longer here – that I’m just an empty thing, floating between grit and bubbles, filling up slowly with water as I sink to the river’s bottom. Fish carve tunnels inside me. Coral grows on my skin. My bones rot into soil.

– – –

That evening, he left the house and searched for a clearing in the Giardini del Molosiglio. He rolled a cigarette on some old Kerouacian novel as he walked, and smoked half before stubbing the rest out on the wooden slats of a public bin, flicking it inside. There were circles of bottle caps and discarded cigarettes in the gravel where others must have stood in communion after work, casually grinding their butts underfoot into a powder as they talked. They looked like the droppings of some pseudopodic, bonedead tree.

I watched him approach a complex of benches, where two girls already sat, talking with their heads close together, and I fell behind a palm tree.

He sat himself on a park bench with ‘mors’ written on its brown moiré pattern in blue ink, and carefully set his book’s spine so it dug into the flesh just above his folded knee, suddenly being struck, in the vaguely gold-tinged light, by how beautiful its distressed cover looked, its wrinkles and folds, nicotinic fingerprints and dirty patinas, the way he imagined an Italian grandfather to look, in one of those technicolour fishing villages inside his head, and he positioned the book’s cover so it faced the two girls, as if it were a dark spyglass, stealing light from them to him, a line of light like a reel of fishing twine, brown and dusk-coloured and tough and hard to break.

He carefully struck up a conversation, waiting for the girls to laugh before leaning in, deliberately casual and uninterested, to ask them something. They sounded Scandinavian. Dutch. He talked to one more than the other, and I watched her dwindle in conversation till she was no more than an audience, an onlooker like me. I began to feel as if I already knew her.

– – –

I smoked one of his Newports down to the filter as I waited for him to leave, stubbing it out on the tree before me and letting it fall into the already scorched shrubbery. Without planning on it, I found myself hovering towards the girl, now alone, and so I asked her about their conversation. I tried to emulate his mannerisms of indifference, but found I couldn’t.

Eventually, she began to talk of possessions.

“Then, I told him I liked his watch. He said it was a gift from his grandfather, a watch that had been passed down his family, from grandfather to grandson, in these kinds of leaps. He said he had another watch that would look good on my wrist, if I’d meet him here tomorrow morning.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him my flight was tomorrow afternoon, and that I wanted to spend the morning sightseeing with my friend before I left. I’ve been in Napoli for a week now, but I haven’t even seen Pompeii yet.”

To her it seemed too obvious to state whether she had lied, saying this, though I couldn’t read her in the slightest.

“What did you think of him?”

I don’t know why I asked her.

“He was a little annoying. Nothing more, I thought.” She eyed me. “At least he’s travelling, I suppose.”

I wondered if she was referring to his soul or Napoli’s tourist economy. I didn’t ask.

From the adjoining street I heard the sound of hard, bony sandals clacking against stone. They seemed to be a portent of something.

“Oh!” Her friend had come back. “It’s good to see you again.”

Her friend smiled and called me somebody else’s name. I stared blankly into her look of recognition. She thought that I was somebody else: perhaps the man I had been following. It didn’t seem likely. I was almost certain we looked nothing alike.

– – –

In his burrow the next morning, I rooted through his rut of stuff until I held it, balanced in my hand, delicate as an egg tipped on its edge, and as my fingers brushed against its gold patina, where other, older fingers before me had completed the self-same action, had lifted it to an illuminating light to survey their property, an old name engraved on its smooth case-back revealed itself, that might have read Lewin or Lewis when it had been new. It felt overwhelmingly like a prop from a TV show, so detailed it might be unreal.

I reevaluated his other belongings, taking inventory once more, deliberating whether I had taken enough for my time. But I didn’t want it to look like a robbery. I decided on the watch alone, hoping that he’d blame himself for losing it amongst the vague promises of the evening. It would be good to travel lightly, not to feel suffocated by the weight of his other possessions. I could wear the watch on my wrist without even noticing.

I imagined something this old ought to have some value. Somebody had thought it worth keeping from falling apart, rotting into its constituent parts. I pinched it between forefinger and thumb, and assured myself that this was what I had come here for, and yet I made no motion to leave.