I look to my hands, and remember when they were small. When they first changed, the palms thickening and spreading, the tight spring of fingertips curling over, newly bony knuckles revealing tendons too tight and fragile. Slice peppers, peel oranges, untangle the small chains my father could not, tie double, triple knots, rinse thin champagne … More hands
It’s a heartache, nothing but a heartache… … Three in the morning and it is a time of heartache. Nothing breaks. But there are nightmares, of seeing faces I know through windows that should be closed and curtained. They peer through open and bare glass, as surely and cold as the stares of tired children … More college heartache
One afternoon, when I was young, I found a swan’s feather by the shore of the boat pond, straight and white, the slight hard curve of a silhouette. I bought an ostrich feather in midtown, in a shop filled with buttons and ribbons, froth and tumble of extravagant curls. The peacocks running free at the … More feathers
This was a year ago, when things were very different. Suffice to say that one sunny September afternoon, after a friend knew that the Biology department needed someone, the professor led me down to the basement and the turtle room. A lab, rows and rows of vials, whirring machines, refrigerators, the scratches of mice at … More the ballad of ferdinand the turtle
For a reason, you leave. For a reason, they leave. … The space they filled has a sound. Do not wake with their name in your throat. Do not repeat it as an instinct as you drift to sleep. Repeat instead your own. … What is one night good for but a soft regret? … More the gentle haunting
The dachshund nestles in the hollow of your brother’s back, wheezing and snuffling to himself. The dog digs at the Persian carpet, pees in the corner, and occasionally bites people. Oscar is a holy terror. He sits in your lap, sweetly places his nose in the hollow of your chest, and violently elbows you in … More how to leave college
*discusses assault* … When I was young, I was nearly run over by a bicycle from behind. Asphalt-burnt knees and heavy breathing, the softest gust of air before it happened, the wind knocked out of me. How he kept on going, the retreating wheels in the distance. How my mother cursed him, the dogs shied … More footsteps & wheels & stairwells
If anyone asked me now what there was between us, I would swear it was nothing. The last time we fought was years ago, three in the morning, his eyes red from drink, mine from crying. The others are wickedly hilarious at the other end of the table, laughing off the alcohol. I trace the … More the nothing
We had left around nine that night for an eleven o’clock game, far from where I knew the roads even in daylight. The familiar cries, boys I didn’t recognize who piled bags in the back of pickup trucks, sticks in the cabin. Waiting in the wind while it was decided who would be burdened with … More a hockey game, two years ago
I remember that broken February when I read Augustine for the first time, and I knew that I would never believe in his pear tree, his mother or his faith. His agonies of ecstasy, his fear and trembling joy, his surrender to whatever it was that called him. How impossible his healing. … I … More broken febuary
anna-christina betekhtin 