Glimmerers
i. Soft boiled eggs clink together in hot water.
ii. Your face, pulling close. Plum jam, beet juice & melted butter running purple down
my fingers, leaving a streaky stain on your chin, neck. Sticky breath, gray owl,
grasshopper, yellow trees, evening. Slow dancing with you to the sound of crickets.
iii. A body decaying. A body to protect.
iv. My want, I am not afraid of you. Not naive that I will lose you, either. You sit by my
thin legs extended under the heavy blanket. Your hand rests on my knee. The place that
bends. You are facing the window. I watch your back as you breathe.
v. You take care of me. The window is open.
vi. Now I hold your warm hand. Proud, closely, walk slow along the town’s main street.
We walk together, against all odds.
vii. Fire
viii. we are letting ourselves.
ii. Your face, pulling close. Plum jam, beet juice & melted butter running purple down
my fingers, leaving a streaky stain on your chin, neck. Sticky breath, gray owl,
grasshopper, yellow trees, evening. Slow dancing with you to the sound of crickets.
iii. A body decaying. A body to protect.
iv. My want, I am not afraid of you. Not naive that I will lose you, either. You sit by my
thin legs extended under the heavy blanket. Your hand rests on my knee. The place that
bends. You are facing the window. I watch your back as you breathe.
v. You take care of me. The window is open.
vi. Now I hold your warm hand. Proud, closely, walk slow along the town’s main street.
We walk together, against all odds.
vii. Fire
viii. we are letting ourselves.
Aiyana Masla is the author of the chapbook Stone Fruit (Bottlecap Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in Cordella Press, Field Notes, in the collection So Many Ways to Draw a Ghost, and elsewhere. Aiyana grew up in a rural hill town, and is now living in New York city. She is an interdisciplinary artist and anti bias educator who's been managing chronic illness.
Art: The Old Slaughterhouse, Now a Café, oil on canvas, Rebecca Pyle