VIOLIN INSPIRED

the flowers—tiny white snowflakes piled on top of each other.  soft petals oversaturated with warm, burning opium.  four seeds star the middle and cackle.  it’s all so gentle.  so light.  like a fairy’s dream.  I am glowing.  The wind pulls me along in my flying hammock.  every once in a while, I hit a cloud, and it swallows me into its wet shadow.  the drops attach to my skin like leeches, and I pull them off to find my bleeding scars.  But no one can hear a scream from inside a rain cloud, so I have to save myself this time.  This time it’s finally possible.  This time I can use your power to turn my neuroses into witchcraft and your body into a toad.  I won’t hurt anyone else.  Just you.  because your foot taps too lightly and I just wanted to waltz.  But what just happened?  Something went wrong.  Negative energy still managed to sneak in the back door but I’ll turn it into steps and walk right through my gloriously holy light at the end of your wretchedly mind-numbing tunnel.

a moon drenched walk through a 1920s flashback.  the whole damn thing is conducted by the circus ringleader.  it’ll be a wonder if they make it out alive.

rapid musical fairies pour their glitter across the farmland.  bubbles and diamonds drench the cows and pigs, and they all grow wings.  some try to fly and fall.  others never turn around to notice them so they remain land-bound.  but the rest, the smart ones, move in with the birds and start taking notes.

you hold your beauty in your hand and nuzzle it with your cheek.  I’ve never seen you so gentle, so slow, so patient.  A young boy who refused to wait settles down and takes his time with the beautiful sadness.  a merman.  the magical weatherman.  whatever it is, it’s magic, and I doubt your spells are only for me, but they’ve definitely found their way into my energy field, and I have no weapon.  What is your power?  Distraction?  Independent provision?  It’s love for sadness...beautiful sadness.  like warm water when ice would burn your throat.  sometimes almost too low, but perfectly refreshing, given the moderate climate.  but right now, it’s way too hot, so I just feel too stuffed.  I’ve had my fill, thanks.

Close your eyes and reach with the faith that your fingertips will grasp whatever it is you immediately need.  Trust your own manifestation power combined with the knowledge of the multi-verse.  When you open your eyes and look for something, you lose everything waiting at your fingertips.  Acknowledge the fact that the system knows what I need better than I do, so reach out and grab what is being offered.  Trust everyone else’s magic, but most of all, trust your own.  As soon as you need something out of desire, it will not be found.  You cannot possess anything or anyone.  You have to meet in the middle.  Bend two points to exceed the speed of light.  Stop looking because it’s all happening way faster than that.  I met Peter Pan, and he wants you to know you have the power to create your own world and live in it.  Be mindful of the system, if only to use it for your own power.  The world is your wonderland...so open wide and eat what’s given to you.  Define your own witchcraft...your own magic, and wait for others to show you theirs.  It can’t be taught.  It’s intuitive.  It’s individual.  It’s between you and the multi-verse.  Brew your own potions and watch them turn your world into a magical playground.  Alice in Wonderland.  The indomitable will.  Meditate on the world, and you can control the energy.  The control is deep inside of you.  Can you find it?

Emily Calvin

NAUSEA

She presses her palm to the left side of her abdomen, and my flesh dissolves into her hand.  Her left hip sinks beneath the pressure into the empty space behind her, and the string between her body and mine yanks my stomach out of my skin.  No one notices.  I quickly grab the pounding organ and shove it into its proper hiding place.  As a child, I would hide my feelings underneath my blankets.  Sometimes my feelings would lock sleep out of my bedroom, so I would drag my sleeping bag into my parents’ bedroom.  I would place it on the floor, tuck myself inside, and hide.  My parents would awaken to a bedroom full of 6-year-old emotions, but before they had a chance to decode them, I would snatch them all, stuff them into my mouth, swallow them, and sneak back into my sleeping bag.  Out of sight, out of mind; what you don’t know can’t hurt you; and other such clichés.  Unfortunately, too many secrets before bedtime can cause indigestion, and they don’t make Tums strong enough for that kind of acid reflux.

Her body twists in and out of the absolute potential surrounding her, and I watch as she deconstructs the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th dimensions until I have melted into her and the floor and the mirrors and the music and her movement and myself.  I am the river, and she is the current.  I am the rock, and she is the water.  I am the möbius strip, and she is the enigmatic boundary connecting me to the universe.  But I think it’s time to get back into that sleeping bag and consume consume consume until my stomach rejects everything and my flesh becomes slave to the porcelain altar once again.

I watch her watch herself in the mirror behind me as I sit with my legs crossed.  Her eyes lift up and down, scanning the fluid motion of her ethereal body in a futile attempt to burn a carbon copy into her retina.  But she forgets her movements a second after her body performs them.  A millisecond.  A nanosecond.  A fraction of a second smaller than the human eye can see, hear, or taste.  So I devour her insipid body, and it dances down my throat, down my esophagus, and into my stomach, where the butterfly wings flap back and forth around her flailing arms and legs and torso.  I look down and lift my shirt.  My stomach has turned red, bright red, blood red.  No one notices.  She keeps dancing, but I can no longer see anything but my bleeding torso.  I have finally internalized her entire body, and my own red flesh stretches and pulls as her legs kick every which way from within.  My stomach continues to stretch and grow until it feels larger than a woman pregnant with quintuplets, and I can finally see where the red is coming from.  The stretch marks on my abdomen have opened, and I can see inside myself.  No, not the metaphorical self; blood, intestines, tarred lungs, and my last pay check (I swallowed it for a bet one time, long story).  I see myself looking up at me, and I fall into the stretch mark, down my skeleton, past my organs, and onto the grass, looking up at myself.

I watch through a fisheye lens, terrifyingly aware of the curvature of my surroundings.  I look up from the bottom of my chemical snow globe and watch tiny white pills float around my spherical existence and disintegrate into blurry lines and invisible energy transfers.  My neuron sensors wail and gnash their teeth as I fail to dispel any feeling floating through thick air.  There is nothing I do not feel.  I close my eyes and kick off.  I reach my arms in front of me and press my palms against the oversaturated space, absolutely melting away as I spread my arms and push through time like a frog through the pond.

I rest my head on Mother Nature’s mattress and dream I am a freak.  I paint friendships on my walls and speak to their paint chips about reconciliation.  I carve ice cubes into tongues and swallow them whole.  I confuse Martha Stewart with Sylvia Plath and decorate my entire apartment according to her poetry—stuffed wolves, rabbits, and fathers, accessorized with jade stones.  I stand in my kitchen and laugh at the top of my lungs, wearing nothing but a ripped t-shirt she gave me years ago.  I awaken in her bedroom and immediately vomit on her hardwood floor.  At least it wasn’t carpet.

Please don’t tell me that was—

Yup!  That was my first time with a girl!

Fuck; now you’ll never leave me alone.

She giggles and flirts while I put my on my pants.  She only stops when I close the door to her apartment.  I know because then I press my ear to the door, and her tears give me swimmer’s ear.  My bike sneers at my ridiculous predicament, accidentally letting slip a tiny snigger as I draw closer.  Fuck you, Beatrix, I tell her in an attempt to silence the laughter swallowing my eardrums, but she has no ears.  She stands in silence and waits for me to tell her where to take me.  I mount her sleek, shiny body, sexier than any woman I’ve woken up next to in the last year.  Take me home.

Where?  The house in which I spent 16 years enduring misdirected fists and foodless refrigerators?  My first girlfriend’s flat full of hypodermic needles and queer fantasies?  Or the apartment I built with my own hands out of sacrificial cigarettes, New Year’s resolutions, and my mother’s bruises?

My bike stops short of the last option, and I dismount into a world of overly sweetened tea, pounds of makeup, and thick drawls.  I thought I left this hell years ago, but it followed me, as expected.  I walk down the street and force myself to respond to glimmering greetings and uncomfortable eye contact.  I drown myself in fake friendships and asinine acquaintances until the whiskey pours from my eyes like tears from my father’s cracked fingers.  I retrace the events of last night, last week, last year, and try to recall how I got here.  I can’t seem to remember anything anymore.  How long ago did I live in Ohio?   How did I get to South Carolina?  What happened to California?

Are you going out with friends for your birthday?

I don’t really know if they’re my friends, but they’re people I know.

Enough with the negativity.  You have lived in four different states since you left home.  Will you ever be satisfied and just settle down already?

I fucking hope not; that sounds terrifying.

You’re an adult now.  It’s time to start thinking responsibly.  If you continue this behavior and this attitude, you’ll never amount to anything.  What happened to the 8-year-old who used to want to be the first female president?  Now you’re a nobody.

I’d rather be a nobody than an everybody. I slam my phone shut and throw it in the trashcan.  I look past the trashcan and see a bus stop.  Maybe it will take me home.  I cross the street and see a southern gentleman sitting on the bench, pretending to be ignorant of my presence so he doesn’t have to stand.  I lean against the bus stop sign and stare at the back of his shirt.  “RUSH ΣAE.”  He has on a backwards cap, with the Red Sox “B” staring at me and my lack of conviction.  I walk up to him and knock his cap off.  He looks up and pulls the cigarette from between his grinning lips.  Hey sexy lady, he laughs as I grab the lit cigarette hanging limply between his two fingers and place it in my mouth.  He fantasizes about throwing me against the pavement and boarding the bus, leaving me lying stunned, motionless, and freshly exhausted, and I realize I am in love with the girl I just left.  I envision her still lying in bed, thinking of me, wondering when I’ll call and crying when I don’t.  I see her two years from now.  I see her gaunt complexion and sallow face from too many years of neglect and drugs.  I want to tell her I am in love with her.  I inhale and hold in the cigarette smoke long enough to eliminate my need to breathe.  I think about flicking the cigarette onto his face and ripping his stupid cargo shorts off so he never makes the mistake of wearing them in front of me again.  I turn my head and exhale.  The bus pulls up; I flick the cigarette into the street; we board the bus, and the doors close behind us.

Emily Calvin

Sexistentialism

He bites her neck, and she sighs because someone wants her, or her body, but, does it even matter? she wonders.  She can’t be too loud because her roommates might hear her.  None of them are even around, but they might come home while she’s, you know, in the middle of it.  It.  It?  She doesn’t even know what it is.  It is whatever everyone says it is.  That’s all that matters, right?  Wait, no, that “right” is supposed to be in a sentence alone.  That’s all that matters.  Right?  That implies a sense of security in the first statement that doesn’t belong there, though.  The whole thing should have a question mark attached to it, not just the “right.”  But grammar never aided passion.  Ani DiFranco’s playing.  He doesn’t even like Ani DiFranco.  Most men back away in fear of women like Ani DiFranco.  Oh well, it’s not like she can push him off and go change the music now.  She’s committed.  To what?  To this, so she might as well be in it.  What’s he doing now?  Taking off his shirt, so does he expect her to take hers off?  Probably.  He pauses at her small breasts, on his way down her tall, slender body.  Well, maybe it’s not so slender.  Everyone else seems to think so, but she can’t agree.  I mean, look at those hips.  Just one touch, and she can feel the fat on those love handles.  But she loves her small breasts the breasts she used to jokingly call anthills in middle school, hoping they’d grow even though she knew they never would.  When she puts on a tight tank top and stands in front of the mirror, when she steals away from everyone she knows and hides in her room, she feels more like a teenage boy than a girl, a feeling she guiltily enjoys.  Just the other day she was telling her friend how she might be a lesbian, but now she’s in bed with this boy.  This boy.  This boy.  This boy.  If it were a girl, would it make a difference?  She wouldn’t be able to do what she’s planning on doing tonight, but maybe that’s better.  His hands.  They slide lower, lower, lower.  They find wetness, and she tries to identify with what she feels.  She moans because that’s what she’s supposed to do, right?  Why did she put her iTunes on shuffle.  This could be embarrassing.  The Spice Girls could come on.  Aren’t they back together?  Her friend was trying to get her to see their comeback concert.  At least she had enough sense to refuse then.  What about now?  It’s different.  She moans and something moves near her thigh.  Is that what she’s planning on allowing inside?  It felt so…weak.  Shit.  Why didn’t her best friend talk her out of this when she called her yesterday?  “It’s your choice, ultimately,” she said.  That’s the problem.  That’s always been the problem.  She doesn’t want to make the decision.  Her best friend was molested when she was little, and now she fucks every guy she can.  What’s the difference between that, being molested, and this, having sex?  Consent.  Somewhere in her, she decided to give consent, and now he’s devouring her as if she is his last meal on earth, and who’s to say she isn’t?  She’s the bread and the wine.  She’s the vinegar and the sponge.  She’s the wood and the…but that’s enough of that.  She made this decision days, months, years, lifetimes ago.  There’s nothing she can do about it now.  Her hands move to mirror his; she forgot to hang her favorite blue skirt up this morning, she remembers.  As soon as this is over, she’ll walk over there and hang it up.  Her closet door is open.  That’s what’s been bothering her.  Her skirt lies crumpled on the floor, and her closet door hangs open.  She will clean her room as soon as this is over.  If she’s lucky, he’ll go outside and smoke a cigarette.  A Marlboro, just like her father used to smoke when she was 8 years old.  Even then, she knew there was something wrong with his smoking.  She used to kick and scream in her room, refusing to talk to anyone when he went outside to smoke.  She would sneak in his closet and smell his shirts to see if he’d been smoking that day.  Of course, he always had been.  Eventually he replaced cigarettes with chewing tobacco.  No smoke to make his shirts smell, but that circle the outline of the can made in his back pocket.  That was the culprit.  She always knew what to look for.  She found it in his glove compartment when they were on the way to the mall one day; she dumped it out the window; his face twisted with anger, and he turned around in the Citgo station.  She tries to remember when she stopped crying that night.  Did he stop chewing after that?  Probably not.  He stopped eventually though, and nothing happened.  No cancer.  No nothing.  Not that she wanted anything to happen to him.  It’s just funny how some people can never smoke a cigarette in their life and die of lung cancer, while other chain smokers can live until they’re 90 years old and sound like a dying frog.  Life is just.  She bought detergent today and took the nice sheets off her bed.  Such calculation for such an irrational decision.  She could be sitting in her bed by herself on her good sheets reading Sylvia Plath, but one can’t live by reading Plath all day.  That would be too easy.  Life would make a lot more sense if she were a literary character of someone’s imagination.  She wouldn’t be making her own decisions then; a narrator would be; an author would be; anyone but her would be.  If someone else were writing her story, would she be lying in bed naked right now?  But someone else is writing her story, and she is lying in bed naked right now.  If someone else were writing her story, would she stop him before he entered, finally taking power of her situation and life, refusing to allow anyone else to tell her who she is or should be; or would she lie docile and let him do what he came here to do, freeing herself from all the limitations of conviction and morality she placed on herself at age 5, allowing herself to live without fear of anyone or anything?  But someone else is writing her story, and I know just as much about what choice she’ll make as you do.

Sexistentialism

Emily Calvin

My name is Emily Calvin, a.k.a. Kairos Rae, or simply MLE.  I am a 24-year-old cat lady, a wannabe mother, and an aspiring rapper, working on my masters in Creative Writing from Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.  I currently brood and write in a hermit crab's hole in Portland, Oregon with one foot on the East coast and another in California.  My writing's been called experimental, fantastical, fabulistic, disjointed, inaccessible, and "interesting...".  I am just grateful I have fingers to write, a brain to think, and people to read and reject or accept my submissions.