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Flat Ink Magazine
“Wilted Shadows” after William Carlos Williams, “This is Just to Say”

“Wilted Shadows” after William Carlos Williams, “This is Just to Say”

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

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“Wilted Shadows” after William Carlos Williams, “This is Just to Say”

“Wilted Shadows” after William Carlos Williams, “This is Just to Say”

Em Dietrich / she said cup my tears in the / palms of my hands—fresh plums / for when my doubts starve me.

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    • Issue #1: Alternate Endings
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