I
told my future roommate we have
to get out of the midwest before it buries us between the cornstalks, eaten
with our dreams picked to marrow. she said cup my tears in the
palms of my hands—fresh plums
for when my doubts starve me. an hour later, I got the call when I walked so far that
I forgot where I was going. my hands were
trembling when I tried for the fourth time to type the school’s name in
shorthand, telling you the mfa I got into is less than an hour from the
orange house next to yours in vancouver. ohio is an icebox,
and I still love you, but I bite my fist, the thin bones which
could snap not as painful as how, bright and distant, you
lacerate me, your maybes fishhooks caught in my left cheek. you were
a night sky I wanted to find the constellations in. I probably
will always be galatea, stone and silence and dried cement for a heart I’m saving
to break open for you. I cracked my ribcage on
new years, hoping it would cave-in, and my anxiety would feast on me during breakfast
instead of when the sun crumbles against the university buildings. Forgive
me, I say every day, my apologies grave dirt clumped inside me.
I taste like the chewed wad of gum she
spits out when I clutched her hand as we raced to pacific central station and were
shadows wilted on cigarette-cluttered pavement, my heart muscles delicious
to the rats scuttling over the tracks, pulse so
bird-like, wings splintered against cartilage, sweet
as the tissue and veins. my mouth clotted shut last winter on the flight home, and
I’m a heart attack now, so
cold
I can’t even taste your smile or the plums crushed in my fists.
Em Dietrich is a genderqueer author represented by the Belcastro Agency. They are an MFA candidate at The New School and have been published in numerous literary magazines, including Flat Ink Magazine. Currently, they split their time between Ohio and New York City, where there are far fewer cornfields but many more haunted coffee shops.
Editorial Art by Dilara Sümbül
