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 Oct 2016 Emma
nivek
a few clouds
 Oct 2016 Emma
nivek
the Sun shines on all you do
what's a few clouds
between friends.
 Oct 2016 Emma
Jonathan Witte
We counted seventeen that morning,
driving in circles around Greenbelt Park.
Biding time before preschool drop-off,
we moved in measured paces beneath
a verdant canopy of oak and Virginia pine,
crossing diminutive rivulets repeatedly,
revisiting the same downed tree limbs
and tired park signs, disappearing and
reappearing in mist, our languorous
revolutions seemingly interminable,
each lap lost behind our slipstream.

It was a game we played together,
my daughter and I, circumnavigating
that slight road and counting the deer.
We tallied the bucks, does, and fawns
in plain sight, either ignorant or bold.
Vigilant, we watched for minuscule
movements beyond the windshield,
subtle stirrings in the understory:
a foreleg caught in a confusion of ferns;
a white tail, brazen, above the blueberries
or hovering, a clump of cotton atop holly;
caramel eyes cupped in mountain laurel—
ephemeral proof, woodland intimations.

Most days, we saw nothing
but familiar creatures as we
circled, spinning our wheels.
If we parked on the shoulder,
the black ribbon of bitumen
seemed to move beneath us still,
a vinyl track playing under tires,
daughter and I locked in place—
two diamonds at the tip of a needle,
skipping across prosaic grooves.

But the morning of the seventeen!
The moon hung dilatory in the sky,
a winking crescent eye, opaline.
And with each loop, the number grew.

-------------------------------------

Two years later, I circle back,
my daughter and I walking
toward a black fishing pier,
gulls etching invisible lines
into an aquamarine sky.

I ask her if she remembers
those rides before preschool,
if she remembers the morning
we saw those seventeen deer.
We pause, waves washing
white sea foam over our feet.  
She looks beyond the breakers,
taking in the horizon’s hard line,
a crisp indigo seam that appears
to stitch the round world straight.
One hand rests on her bony hip;
the other grips a shell-filled pail.
She turns, sizing me up with the
cold skepticism of a six year old,
and shakes her head in disbelief.
She tells me I’ve got it all wrong:
It couldn’t have been that many.

I’m tempted to argue. Instead,
I ask her, why does that number
(seventeen!) seem too high.

She looks at me, incredulous.
What am I trying to prove?
She speaks in small measures,
makes herself perfectly clear:

We were driving
in circles, Daddy,
and the deer,
the deer,
they move.


At once the horizon bends,
azure arc in space and time;
gulls stall in midair, snapshots
above suspended breakers. Silence.
Suddenly I’m back in Greenbelt Park,
treading nimbly, veiled by ivy screens,
leaping broken dogwoods cantilevered
over precious shallow streams,
muscles, ears, and eyes electrified.
I see as the unseen eighteenth deer
would have seen us—two creatures
harnessed in a restless death machine,
recumbent gods marking territory.

Around again. Wait.
Another close orbit.
Scrutinize red taillights
fading to distance and
then explode, vaulting
across alien asphalt,
hard halo of misery:
unnumbered,
exalted,
infinite.
 Oct 2016 Emma
xmxrgxncy
You think you know every little crack, every crevice in my soul; yet there is so much of my life’s book that you haven’t read. My hair is a carefully styled mess, strategically placed static, and my lips are what they are- lonely. Sometimes I think you wonder about who I am, my origins; I can’t say that I don’t either. How’d I end up as such as mistake? You love me for what you say are perfections, yet you see not the real me, you see the front I put up, my acting. How can one be addicted to a person who doesn’t even know themself? Yet loving you makes me want to learn.

We both **** the life, the very being from each other; yet it is still not enough. I want to hook myself to you like an IV, to pull the gold running through your veins into my conciousness and let it light me. If there was a way to evaporate your essence and save it in a bottle for later, I’d be the scientist who discovered the way to do it. The very scent of you carried on the air from yards away is enough to register me for a few centuries in an asylum. You say you don’t even wear cologne, and I understand it. You wear yourself, a fragrance I wish I could rub all over myself every second of every day, every time I curl up in a ball on my bed after you drive home at night, wondering why it is you can’t just stay.

You belong to the road, you’ve sold your soul to the feeling of the wind in your hair. I can’t break your contract with independence, but I can tag along for the ride. Seeing you so happy, getting your racer’s tan, blaring the radio until the speakers want to scream. Why can’t I partake in your happiness? I wish there was a way for us to share the love for the world that you have; in its’ place in my mind is loathing. The only reason for living I have is you- and all I ask of you is to answer this one question; how have you fallen for this fallen angel, the outcast of society, the girl whom everyone forgot to remember and who you didn’t remember to forget?
something I wrote about a year ago that I just happened to stumble upon today. brought back memories.
 Oct 2016 Emma
a t l a s
"you're a boy? but you look like a girl."
graces my ears too often for it to be innocent anymore.
some days i wish the word woman didn't make me cringe
i wish i didn't have to tell teacher after teacher,
"i know what it says in attendance, but my name is atlas and my pronouns are he/him i'm depending on you not to ***** up, i need this to feel normal, please don't make me feel invalid like all my efforts to erase the young lady i was expected to be at birth will never amount to anything more than a teenager's attempt to be 'different'"
i think sometimes i hate my mind more than my body, because it's the one that does the screaming.
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