Tag: fiction

Me when I can have a girl dinner without a boyfriend screaming in my ear… like, it’s just noodles and butter!

Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 5:30PM, 2/5/2025

when the earth was born it appeared purple in the sky, like a blood clot against the skin, a bruise never fully healed. in an instant, an element so volatile it recolored the planet’s iris. an oxygen holocaust. do plants remember? violet fades to verdigris, the seed a photograph, the stamen a scar. lavender grows in my backyard as a gentle reminder of the transgressions i’ve accumulated. act the saint, so you can turn me into the sinner–

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She used to stay with me ever since I was born, I mean, like, I’ve stayed with her for the past nineteen years…

Science Learning Center, 2:30PM, 2/5/2025

millions will die in this false spring, in the eye of storm and shadow. with the grace of a twig contorting in a wildfire, the passage from person to thing, a frozen pipeline, a burst eardrum. even after a flood, the water reconfigures itself. in a thousand years there will be villages of coral nested in your ribcage and schools of salmon swimming through your skull. in a thousand years man will marvel at the atlantis you have created, a legacy beyond flesh and bone.

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Go ahead…

No, I could talk about it for hours—

—and I want to hear it!

Michigan Union, 11:00AM, 2/20/2025

the diary of a lover is filled with ellipses–it hurts too much to end even a sentence about you. we are dust mites floating together and the sunbeam is our domain. in this world, a glimpse of the heavens: what guides us also restrains us, but this is a good restraint, this fusion of you and me… consider the weight of the world in one hand and your fingers clasped in the other. if nothing lasts forever, maybe i can be nothing with you…

Where are you from?

Virginia. DC area, Arlington.

I’m sure you get this question a lot, but do you live close to the cemetery?

Uh, yeah I’d say it’s about a ten minute drive…

EECS Building, 3:30PM, 11/21/2024

i met you for the first time as a stranger. we talked about the weather and your father and the new prodigy and the death of our favorite restaurant, like we were seventeen again and you had crawled through my bedroom window and into my arms. as if the world had not stopped spinning, a planet so big and full it hurt to laugh. as if i am not sitting on your gravestone, a quiver in my lip and a tremor in my chest, whispering to the soil to keep you warm in place of me.

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You’re gonna be the best—oh look! The sun is out!

AADL Downtown, 12:00PM, 11/12/2024

it was a weed. i wanted to call it pretty but it was a weed, a dandelion beaming with the blush of the sun. quick to bloom, quicker to rot. against all odds it has conquered the impossible, leaves outstretched in heavenly embrace. what wouldn’t a flower give to be appreciated? if i had the chance, i would sit on the cobblestone and watch it grow. if i had the chance, i would name it after you.

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There are a bunch of spots down there, it’s like Hogwarts!

Nickels Arcade, 2:00PM, 2/2/2025

after Marty Rubin: “lies bewitch us, if we want to be bewitched”–

i have inherited an incurable insomnia from you, in the way your absence keeps me up at night. sleep is a luxury you have stolen–you leave me with nothing more than pity, a memory woven in moonlight and encased in spider’s silk: i closed my eyes and breathed a prayer and you were there, my voice a siren, your mouth a shipwreck. there are ninety-nine names for God and yours is not one of them.