Alligator by Salena Casha

On By steve cIn flash fictionLeave a comment

I say to him, it’s been a year, and he looks at me across the table with its fake spider plant and starts talking about how he’s found a simple way to make lemon trees grow in the shade, like he didn’t text me an hour ago after 371 days of no contact, asking me to drop everything and meet him at Roast, and of course I did because I know through a friend of a friend that his mom just died. And so, I skipped a weekly meeting with my department head and took a Blue Bike in the wrong shoes to witness him in mourning because it’s what I deserve, to see him low, lower than I was when he left me on read, and be given the choice of whether to help him stand again or leave him as he was, but I’d never imagine lemon trees so, of course, it throws me. There’s a bit of egg hanging on to a mole on his cheek, just out of reach of his tongue, and I don’t tell him to get it, and I don’t wipe it off myself, even though I’d be absolutely annihilated if I knew that someone I was once in awe of saw it and did nothing. This is not because I’m in awe of him anymore, but rather, because I’ve experienced that sort of epiphany firsthand: how all the seriousness and subject matter expertise in the world on second-wave feminism can be diminished by a bit of spinach or a sesame seed or, in this case, egg and so I let it diminish him. There’s a woman next to us who’s seen the egg though, I know she’s seen it, and a part of me worries this witness will say something, but we’re on the same page and she returns to her Anna Karenina. He keeps talking about how he spliced a lemon tree with a fern and thickened its skin with alligator genes, for a moment, I wish that I had the sort of palate that craved lemon slices beneath chicken skin so I could say he did all that work in his little white coat for me, that he loves a metaphor as a substitute for feeling, but I don’t like lemons and I’m annoyed that I’m here again, unpacking his symbolism for free and that I still have his number memorized even though I deleted it and couldn’t even text sorry who is this when his message first came through like I’d rehearsed but that was also because he actually used the word emergency. My tired fantasy of an ending I deserve, like all the others before it (sending a love letter to me in the mail or asking for forgiveness in an overlong voice note and begging for me back just so I could have a choice in it all), is not coming true. I will not get the chance to say, I’m sorry your mom died but you made sure I never met her, and so, yeah, we’re not getting back together, because the emergency he mentioned is not, in fact, about her or us or, maybe even, about him. The bit of egg wags on his face and he asks me, So, can you take them? And I say, Take what? And he’s like, the lemon trees, they don’t need much, just water once every two weeks, just until Fall. Did you bring your car? and I see sparks on Roast’s stained-wood walls and I can picture a forest of them, fragrant and oily, ready to be scraped raw, and my voice catches on something sharp in my chest because he thinks I’m still in the same place that he left me, that he thinks I’ve already said yes, that the part of his brain that plays God with vegetation saw nothing wrong with reaching out to someone who couldn’t keep a plant alive to save her life, a someone he discarded, with an open-ended babysitting opportunity. Even in our play-pretend world that was alive and well 380 days ago, I was never that person and all the imagination I wasted on him since he stopped talking to me vibrates through my nailbeds. Maybe I should take those useless plants and burn them in effigy for closure and inhale their fragrant crisping wood to cleanse me of him like good sage. I exhale hard enough for both him and the woman with her Russian literature to notice and lean away and I think about this man who, last August, would still not have called me first about his mom, and it’s then and there that I decide I need something to survive me, a sign of life after all of this that is also an ending I deserve, and so I say, carefully, slowly, I’ll think about it. But, you know, I’ll probably kill them and the second I say it, death is at the table and something around his eyebrows crumples and he leans forward, the egg on his cheek just in swiping distance and my stomach swells because yes, this is the way I did picture it at last, him reaching for me as I walk away, and as I press my hands down to stand up, to leave him here at last, he grabs my fingers in his clammy palm, and says, I‘ll solve for that next. I promise, I just need more time. 

Salena Casha’s work has appeared in over 180 publications in the last decade. Recent pieces can be found with HAD, F(r)iction, and The Forge. She survives New England winters on good beer and black coffee. Subscribe to her substack at salenacasha.substack.com

I Belong Hair by Shivani Mutneja

On By okaydonkey7In poetryLeave a comment

Long arm hair is slowly longer arm hair is winding into prolonged arm hair is dreaming into sticky wet arm hair is only thinking of itself on the left arm soaped arm hair waiting to be rinsed so that it can go back to slightly tangled arm hair, having been forgotten beneath the woolens even by the judgmental eyes of mothers is the growing forestry of arm hair only imagining the future when a wax strip will uproot it into the dustbin or a razor will will it into the drain, till the longing of the arm hair makes it sentient into wanting to be seen by a stranger whose long stare may fabulate it into a savannah for cows to graze at.

Long pubic hair is longish pubic hair is longer pubic hair till the husband says, “I will trim those for you,” doesn’t say “I am tired of those on you,” because he knows better than long pubic hair is the longing to lick without indigestion, so he stands on the bedside while pubic hair wires gape, the scissor gently trims, long pubic hair trembling to the cold air is not a gripping story for the husband, razor takes away a bunch of narrative wires leaving deep inside the folds a long day of growing intimacy, tangled in the oblong gap between legs is the forest for one man to walk in till he can’t find himself.

Long armpit hair is crusted at the end with soap, what desirable lushness for the mousy parlour girl who wants to see it succumb to golden hot wax, to look at the black mat of it over the dirty cream of the strip is the hairy satisfaction she lives for, shows the strip to the bearer of the armpit expecting similar enthusiasm if not triumph, the stretched thin flesh of armpit, tenderness subdued to repeated pressure from palms, singed, betrayed that the once lush landscape is now naked folds, tongues might come for it, sweat will trickle down easy, beating close to the heart will be the resilient hair follicles till they sprout.

SHIVANI MUTNEJA is a writer from Delhi. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems and prose have appeared in Nether Quarterly, Jellyfish Review, Two Serious Ladies, and decomp Journal among others. She is also the Associate Fiction Editor at The Bombay Literary Magazine.

All Our Furniture by Jimmy Kindree

On By steve cIn flash fictionLeave a comment

A Sunny Day

Can you hear me? Rachel? Rachel, why aren’t you saying anything?

Yeah, I’m still here.

—

Wait, Mom? Now all I hear is rustling. Is the phone by your ear?

Oh, yes, sorry. I’m just outside with Dad on the porch.

Okay.

—

Mom, I’m just thinking about what you said. That’s why I was quiet.

—

I just—I can make that payment for you this month. Of course I can do that—I just—

Oh, but honey—okay. Here, I’m going inside. Just—yes, yes if you really could, that would be—.

No, of course.

You know, I’m just going to send you a picture. The fence, after that windstorm. Did I tell you it crashed that old table right into the fence? It went through it.

—

Rachel?

But—hey, did you say Dad was there? Can all three of us talk about things?

—

Mom? 

—

Mom, I get that you’re mad at him. But I need—

If we can’t make that payment, I’m just not sure, honey. I’m—well.

—

—

It’s okay.

I’ll try to get him on. But you know he won’t have much to say. 

Okay. 

—

What are you doing—are you crying?

No, I’m fine. I’ve just stepped back outside. But there are acorns everywhere. They fall onto the porch all the time. They’ve been scaring me at night—they sound like there’s a person there. 

Hmm.

—

—

Honey, can I call you back when Dad’s chattier? I’ve been saying to him—oh, he’s got a few of the acorns on him. Let me go brush those off. 

Sure, Mom.

—

No, but, Mom, I’m sorry I couldn’t get to the phone yesterday. I didn’t see you’d called until late.

—

Mom, are you still there? 

I’m here. But it’s just the sunniest day here, Rachel. Sun, sun, sun.

Armchair     

At the end of the day, I leave essays ungraded, the plans for my lessons unfinished and dry. I stumble up when the night cleaners look in—they flicker, aggravated, away down the hall, chatting together, leaving delicate silence. One more glance at my desk, swimming with disemboweled stories I’m trying to help these young people find something true in. Today each one seems blank as an unwritten page. I blink, cross the room to the chair, press my spine into its cushions until I feel the buttons that cinch in its upholstery. I hold my body there, squeezed against the chairback till my breath suspends, suck my ribs back so my front and back fold together, like I’m contentless paper, without air or organs in me. Arms crease over chest. Legs hunch in. When another person sits down in the armchair I have emptied of myself, I brace my toes. Their back flattens against my knees, their scalp my whole vision. They complain about upholstery wearing thin, the bony arms. And it’s something I should mind, but I no longer do. They shift for comfort, pinch the fat of my belly, press back and back until another person sits in us now, folding together like butter in dough. On my neck, I feel breath, someone I have sat down on too. Thin layers. Leather skin, scalps thinly threaded. I feel light and so warm, the most beautiful thing, unexpectedly so, and I let out the breath I’ve been clenching. A little dust spouts into the air. Light flashes through it.

Lamp      

Sometimes my mother drives up to see me at work, wanders in along the tall, brimming shelves with her duffel and her scavenging eyes. She asks about the week’s acquisitions, and we wander together through unclaimed things from estate sales, consigned furniture in great piles, castoffs from office renovations north in the city, those kinds of things.

Today, she rapped her knuckles on an old table—“Skinny little legs,” she said. “Are you eating enough?” Warped veneer on an armoire—“I’ll just peel that off.” It slid into her bag. She opened drawers, felt into the corners, and sly questions eased in, just like each time she comes, about dating, about old friends she seemed to remember better than I did. I parried, asked her prying things in return, till her hand shot out, lifted my wrist as if checking for cracks, and I stiffened. 

I stalked back to my desk, while deep in the warehouse she kept shuffling and poking. I heard her hefting things down and turning them over. Then a gasp. A call of my name. I found her with an old armchair, whose upholstery she had begun snipping off. Somehow, it had started to bleed. Red was seeping through cloth, and inside my chest, something fractured. Looking embarrassed, my mother stitched the fabric back closed. She whispered apologies out there to no one until her voice blended into the HVAC. I completed an incident report on my phone. When she had gone, I crouched next to the chair, and I felt the new seam, softly as I could. My eyes somehow were wet. I spent a while rubbing the fabric over its back.

I thought a long time. At home I flipped on the lamp, and I listened closer than I had before. It started to sing. I tightened the bulb, and a pocket of memory sprouted out from that little gap at the edge of the switch, which I dabbed up with a towel and brought to my nose. It smelled sweet. And I called a friend I hadn’t talked to in a long time. I told her the story of the long, swollen day, and my mom, what things meant, until the sharp things in my chest unlatched, like many opening hinges. My friend said she also had found something like that once—it was a French press coffee maker, whose handle had a pulse like the skin over a person’s inner wrist.

This Morning     

This morning it was supposed to be rainy. When I woke up it was sunny instead. The colors all brightened, gem-green and sky-brimming. I had eyes where yesterday I’d had upholstery buttons. I blinked them, and I liked how that felt. I stretched out my legs. They’d been coiled before into little scrolls. I leaned forward then just to look at them, like a chair never does, and the stretch was wonderful—it unkinked that ache in my frame. It straightened my fabric in a way no one has ever been able to before now. And I found I could see so many things better this way, the trees out the window spreading and blending in waves, and a sea of new acorns that squirrels were harvesting up into nests. Then I made a little tea, which I’d always wanted to try, and I sat on the floor for a while just looking. Yesterday, I don’t think I knew. Moments like that, I’ve never told anyone, or never thought about them too much myself—just that, I wasn’t expecting to be who I am, or a person, a live thing. The teapot yawned a little. It let out some steam and it whispered, “Excuse me” to no one. The springs in me creaked. A heart somewhere was beating, and I had new little hands, wriggling in the carpet. 

Jimmy Kindree (he/him) is a queer writer and teacher. He comes from Minnesota and now lives with his husband and daughter in western Norway. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ecotone, Electric Literature, Raritan, The Hopkins Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. He also spins yarn and knits with it, makes pottery, cheese, and bread, and plays the banjo. 

NO OFFENSE TAKEN by Bennett Rine

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                                                     NO OFFENSE TAKEN
                                                                         or
  SHORT FILM OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PROJECTED ON GREEN BRICKS                                                                     (2007)
                                                                         or
    WHY DOES NOBODY TALK ABOUT HOW DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY                                                   CAN GIVE YOU MEMORY LOSS
                                                                         or
                          BLANK PAGES IN A CHILDHOOD SCRAPBOOK
                                                                         or
          DAILY MENTAL EXERCISE PRESCRIBED BY WELLNESS EXPERT
                                                                         or
                                                 THE FOG OF LOST SOULS
                                                                         or
             WHEN I LEARNED MY SIGNATURE COULD BE GRAFFITTI
                                                                         or
                                                      GENESIS 7:24-8:11
                                                                         or
   PLASTIC COMMEMORATIVE MEDAL FOR FIELD DAY PARTICIPATION
                                                                         or
                                 WHY I HAVEN’T LEFT MY BED YET TODAY
                                                                         or
                                     NOAH IF YOU READ THIS I’M SORRY
                                                                         or
                          YELLOW ONION ROTTING BEHIND MY EYES

___________________________
1.The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days. But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. (NIV)

BENNETT RINE is a writer from New Orleans currently residing in Los Angeles. Their work can be found in Palaver Arts Magazine and Fruitslice.

Mr. Mayor by Sarah Bess Jaffe

On By steve cIn flash fictionLeave a comment

Dear Mr. Mayor,

I write to you today not because of your many scandals — you must be sick to death of your many scandals, and you must, like me, wish to move beyond that which you have done with the left hand of your conscience. Yes, Mr. Mayor, I am angry about the lying and the cheating and the misappropriation of public funds and the sudden violent disappearances of friends and neighbors from our city’s streets, but all that is for another letter. Let us put anger aside, Mr. Mayor. This letter, if I may be so bold, is about redemption. As cans may be redeemed, so may we all. 

Mr. Mayor, something simply must be done about the subway. This is your chance to turn it around. The subway must be fixed. Let me explain. Last night, quite late, I needed to get home. I had tied a few on, you might say, with a friend. Out of nerves only — I’m not a drinker, Mr. Mayor. I tipple, sure, but that’s different. You understand. Nerves might be the wrong word. I was with a friend, you see — a good friend. A good man, my friend is. Good, and strapping. Enough about his straps. We stayed out late. Our other friends had all gone home — they walked, or biked, or were suddenly and violently disappeared. I only know that I was laughing with my friend, and when I looked away my glass was empty and our friends were gone. 

It was late, as I said, and I’d chosen the wrong shoes by any metric but how long they made my legs look. But because my man is a good friend — my friend is a good man, that is — he offered to ensure I got home safe. As you know, Mr. Mayor, these streets are encrusted with danger. You campaigned on this danger — I need not explain. Offers like this are what make my friend so good to the bone, all beam and burr. Down the street he held my elbow, a gentleman. His hands are strong, my friend’s. In a different life, he could have been my shampoo girl, and then his touch would have meant nothing; I could have known it for a tip. I had the sudden, violent urge to lay my head down and feel those hands in my hair. Mr. Mayor, I’m not too proud to admit that I tried. Get up, he said, that’s a good girl, we’re almost there. The heavy ring a golden warning on his finger. But then, across the mouth of the subway, do you know what we saw? Tape, Mr. Mayor! It was taped up, shut. No warning at all, and no trains home. 

Mr. Mayor, do you remember when all the drivers organized a strike until they got what they wanted? Well, it’s a good thing they did, or I’d have gotten no ride home. The wait was too long, and the price was too high. You have simply got to do something about the prices, Mr. Mayor, and the waiting around. These nights are so long and so dark. Have you thought about doing something, Mr. Mayor, about the long, dark nights, at least? My friend, being good, said he’d wait until the driver arrived. I got cold, in the waiting and the darkness. My friend tugged my collar up around my chin. I won’t tell you what happened next, out of respect for your office. 

Dark times, Mr. Mayor, call for brave and original solutions. I ask you, is there anything less brave than having a beautiful wife? Is there anything less original than finding her lacking? I admit, Mr. Mayor, that for a moment I violently wished that she would suddenly disappear and leave my friend alone with me. I’m not proud of it. To make things worse, I wanted it. But you understand, Mr. Mayor, about wanting things, about being full to the brim with desires. You know how to cut deals. You want things, and you find a willing party to give them to you. We both know, Mr. Mayor, that this is called bribery — but no, I did tell you this letter is not about your many scandals. I understand, Mr. Mayor. We are not so different, you and I. I want things all the time. I want a sandwich, a hot bath, affordable healthcare, to be touched in love and reverence. Most of all, Mr. Mayor, I want you to do something about the subways. 

None of this would have happened, Mr. Mayor, if the transport in our city could only run on time. I implore you, Mr. Mayor, to do your job. Citizens like me depend on you.

Most cordially,

Claire Delacroix

Sarah Bess Jaffe is a writer, translator, visual artist, and award-winning audiobook producer with 15 years of experience at Penguin Random House. She is a current MFA candidate at St. Joseph’s University where she is a two-time Barbara Germack Foundry Fellow, undergraduate lecturer, and co-editor of the Writer’s Foundry Review. She is also a translations reader for The Adroit Journal, a 2025 writer-in-residence at La Porte Peinte Centre pour les Arts in Burgundy, France, and co-founder of TBR, a monthly reading series for emerging writers. Her work has been featured in Electric Literature, Peatsmoke, and elsewhere. She is currently working on too many things, including a hand-watercolored graphic novel about the rise of the far-right in the US and Europe, and a regular novel with no pictures at all.

From there we came outside and saw the stars by Lane Devers

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― Dante, Inferno

Text of Lane's poem.

Link to PDF: From there we came outside and saw the stars by Lane Devers

LANE DEVERS regrets to inform you he is from Carbondale, Colorado. His work has appeared in places like The Offing, Peatsmoke Journal, and The New Ohio Review. His collection I wish you had married an astronaut, was selected by Hieu Minh Nguyen as the winner of the 2024 Quarter After Eight chapbook contest. He is an MFA student at Columbia University. 

Join The Dots by Nora Nadjarian

On By steve cIn flash fictionLeave a comment

Start with 1, 2, 3, the way you’ve been taught, and keep going. Something shows up, a picture. Of the house you live in or a birthday cake or a car. The numbers which follow are the numbers you know should follow but somehow your pencil zigzags. In this memory you’re only four or five, your hand a bit unsteady. Things are going on in your head which are not neatly numbered, no straight lines, and the teacher asks What’s this? And you say A tree. Then you say It’s me. The teacher looks at the picture again. There are no numbers any more, just lines joining the dots and no matter how you look at it, the picture is jagged, on fire. The teacher asks about home, what shows up there, and you tell her one thing after another, dot to dot, how yell is yellow and blue is bruise.

Start again with 1, 2, 3 and keep going until something takes shape from when you were a child. A pebble, a shard of glass, a secret memory, but find it, join the dots and see. It’s a birthday cake with candles and little flames, it’s the lit-up face of your older brother, who was Mom’s favourite, and his teeth always smiled. It’s Mom’s blue mouth that time you asked her who she loved best. You both, of course, she replied, and your heart rattled with pebbles. Join the dots for emptiness. You grew and grew up, and one night your brother smiled at you, all teeth, took the car keys and you both got in. There were no more numbers, just dots, a crash in the dark, shards, a tree aflame, a burnt field. Finally you see the picture, and when the therapist asks Who was driving? you say I don’t remember and then she asks Who’s this, you say It’s me, then you say My brother. But that was twenty years ago, when your brother was, twenty years ago, your brother.

Nora Nadjarian is an author from Cyprus. Her short fiction has been published in various journals including Milk Candy Review, Ghost Parachute, Fractured Lit, CRAFT and was chosen for Wigleaf‘s Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2022 (selected by Kathy Fish). She placed third in the Welkin Writing Prize in 2025. She is also a widely published poet and her latest poetry collection Iktsuarpok is available from Broken Sleep Books.

The Farmer by Andrew Doll

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Behind the glowing screen the doctor nods. Terminal, yes,
she says. The farmer tugs a small notebook from his shirt
pocket. Will you sign this? he asks. The doctor snakes a
stethoscope around her neck. Applies a daub of lip balm.
You could write anything, he says. Like, thanks for being my
patient. Or, gosh, I love your knees. At home there’s a sack of
potatoes on the counter. The farmer invites the neighbors
to a party. They play Hot Potato in a field. Toss the little
guys late into the night. The wind rattles the windows.
Then there’s just two men left throwing a burning hand.

ANDREW DOLL is a queer poet and collage artist living in Portland, Oregon. His poems live (or are soon to live) in The Buckman Journal, HAD, Painted Bride Quarterly, Lurch, Sugar House Review, and Ink in Thirds. 

Family Double-Dare, “The Lima Beings vs. Toledo TNT,” June 1991 by T.J. Martinson

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A succubus visits Marc Summers each night. He knows her only as Why. For hours at a time, she writhes atop him, her long hair curtaining her face like black corn fleece, saying, “Why, Why, Why.” Only stopping once he reaches orgasm, an act that requires a willing forfeiture of his soul. 

He hasn’t slept more than four hours this week, and all four of those came between tapings. In his makeup chair, snoring, the fear of Why’s return permeates even the most insensate of snoozes such that he wakes sweating and screaming, “Why, Why, Why.” The makeup team rushes in with foundation at the ready, a bottle of cold water, a mug of hot coffee, a bowl of room-temp oatmeal.

Just today, faces have begun to change. They all look the same or everyone looks like nobody. He eats only oatmeal. Everything else comes up instantly. The PA rushes him onto the soundstage, hands him his cards and his microphone. He coifs his hair and looks out across the studio audience. They are here to remind him of Why. 

The cameras are on and Marc reads from the cards. Two families battling for bragging rights from the great state of Ohio right here in sunny Los Angeles. The Jensen family from Lima wearing red, the Waters family from Toledo wearing blue. Are we ready to have some wild fun? Today’s game: Baby Bird. Dad will suck slime from a garden hose and pass it to Mom without using hands. Mom will ferry a mouthful of slime to Child, on the other side of the stage, and carefully but quickly spit it into their open mouth. Child will mouth the slime to the top of the Booger Pyramid and spit the contents into the Nasal Chalice. First team to fill the chalice adds a hundred dollars to their score. 

Protective eyewear is distributed. Marc Summers fades into the background as the fathers suck slime, veins in their forehead slithering. The studio audience cheers but beneath their cheering lies a univocal chant, a woman’s timbre. “Why, Why, Why.” He shakes his head like a dog to get it out. 

The Lima Beings are way ahead of Toledo TNT. Toledo mother is having misgivings about spitting into her daughter’s mouth. Toledo father shouts, aggressively, from the other side of the stage. Curse words are spoken and then shouted. There’ll be hell to pay in the editing bay later, but by then Marc will be home with a glass of chilled white wine and a palmful of caffeine pills that drum his heart into a laugh track. They won’t keep her away forever, but that’s not the point. The point is to buy some time.

The days are getting longer and it will be light outside yet. Light enough to see the smoke from a northern wildfire crawl down the hills. He’ll kiss his children’s heads and pray these walls are thick. But his children are not why. He’s offered them before, but the succubus shook her head as she grinded atop him. Wrong answer, try again. If there is a reward at the end of this, he’d be shocked.

He watches The Brady Bunch and wakes to the succubus atop him, saying, “Why, Why, Why.” He answers with almost everything he knows—the names of National Parks, World Series winners since 1973, his mother’s favorite hymns—but she shakes her head and continues until he orgasms. He convulses like a salted snail, gripping the leather arms of the recliner, only opening his eyes once he’s finished in whimpering victory. She’s gone. But she leaves a trace. The smell of a rotting orchard, the sense of having misplaced something. The semen drips down his thigh and he believes, for a moment, The Brady Bunch closing theme to be her humming. One day, he will not be able to orgasm and Why will kill him. It’s beginning to feel as preferable as it does unthinkable.

T.J. Martinson is the author of The Reign of the Kingfisher (Macmillan, 2019), Her New Eyes (Clash Books, May 2025), and Blood River Witch (Counterpoint Press, June 2026). His shorter work has appeared in Passages North, Lithub, CRAFT, [PANK], JMWW, The Offing, LIT Magazine, Permafrost Magazine, Heavy Feather Review, Pithead Chapel, and others. He is an assistant professor of English at Murray State University.

Gettysburg 2019 by Allie Hoback

On By okaydonkey7In poetryLeave a comment
I met him at the Heartbreak Motel. A thirty-five-dollars-a-night
no-nonsense no-thrills motel. Hours before he materialized,
I threw the key cards & myself to the edge of the bed,

thought of the split roadkill I saw up I-70. Gettysburg:
weird tourist trap, war junk store, cold cider
in a cold November getting colder. Dirty ice

from a dirty ice machine. He made fun of the TV
bolted to the dresser. We play-stabbed each other
with imaginary bayonets, walked through empty

battlefields & got soaked in rain. We smelled of damp
grass & I wondered how long we could possibly
keep doing this. The cheap sheets seemed clean

when I kissed him––the kind of kissing
that only comes at the end of distance. In the morning
when he left me, I watched him walk across the motel

parking lot. I drove home north into a snowstorm.
My love for him glacier, moving downhill under its own weight.

ALLIE HOBACK is a poet from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Poetry Northwest, and Salamander, among others. She lives in Washington, DC, where she professionally keeps houseplants alive.