A Kiss Eternal
by Matt Hollingsworth
CONTENT ADVISORY for suicide.
Sunset. Far below, waves crash, and I’m talking to my wife Melissa, who’s dead and gone because a year ago, she jumped off this sea cliff.
A clinking sound, and a little girl in a nighty emerges from the woods, same strawberry-blond hair as Melissa, flowing in the air as if she were underwater, weightless. She’s hugging a cinder block, bent over by the weight. From the block hangs a chain, down to an ankle shackle, her feet bare, blistered, bloody, and on her neck, she has the same heart-shaped birthmark as Melissa. Before I can stop her, she lumbers past—click clack—and straight off the cliff.
She plummets.
Hits the waves like a bullet.
I can’t let anyone else kill themselves in this cursed place. So I jump after her.
Down. Down. Down. The moment lasts a million heartbeats, and I remember Melissa, the pair of us be-bopping around on Eurail passes, pedaling past Holland’s canals and tulip fields, tidy rows—gold, white, pink—the sky a deep azure; Melissa, radiant in her wedding gown, feeding me cake, and the sugar melts in my mouth, then it’s gone; Melissa, organizing her pills into tidy rows—gold, white, pink—the look on her face broken. Was her final moment like this, containing a lifetime? In that other life, did she find happiness?
When I hit, the water is concrete, breaks me. I sink. Hold my breath. Ribs ache. Frigid saltwater burns my eyes. Vertical tangles of kelp surround me, sunlight cutting through the underwater forest, sea motes aglitter like gold dust, and there’s the girl, swaying in the current like more kelp, a serene look on her face. I pump my legs, swim to her.
Behind her, a man giggles bubbles. Also weighed down by a cinder block. Next to him, a woman, a crab claw jutting out of her mouth. And more people. The entire kelp forest is people, all anchored to the bottom, all smiling, clothes billowing off their barnacle-encrusted bodies, fish nibbling at their eyeballs.
And here beside me—the girl, she’s my Melissa, all grown up, and she whispers my name clear as an echo in a conch shell, and I kiss her, and my ribs don’t ache anymore, and the saltwater doesn’t burn my eyes, and she sucks the breath from my lips and hugs me and never lets go.
Matt Hollingsworth is a neurodivergent human and award-winning color artist for Marvel, DC, and Image Comics. His prose has been nominated for Best of the Net and Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year and has appeared or is forthcoming in Interzone, Tales to Terrify, Uncharted, and Bourbon Penn.
In a Heartbeat
by Elliott Fielding
Dispatch wakes me for a courier job. It’s a donor heart, which means a four hour countdown. I’m up and out the door, instant coffee in hand, in under seven minutes.
Ground transportation is the backup plan or I would’ve had more warning. Mountain weather is wild and high winds grounded the air-medical helicopter. The wind is gusting still, pushing my car around as I drive to the hospital.
Once I have the heart in hand, safe in its special transport cooler and documented with pages of paperwork, only three hours remain on the cold ischemia countdown. Snow is falling now, sweeping sideways across the road. I don’t need my coffee: the adrenaline keeps my eyes wide.
When there’s two hours to go, my hands are cramping, clenched tight on the steering wheel. Dispatch lets me know that I-70 has closed behind me. Traffic, already thin, gets lighter as people exit the interstate, pull over to the shoulder, or slide off the ice and into drifted snow.
One hour left. It’s a race: miles versus minutes—scalpels prepped and poised in Denver. I think about the heart next to me. I call it “the heart” but it’s a life I’m transporting. It’s the donor’s past and, if I can get there in time, the recipient’s future. I lean forward, take the middle of the empty highway, and accelerate, snowflakes flashing white in the beams of my headlights.
It happens on a curve. I don’t brake hard, I know better, but I’m crossing lanes, sliding sideways toward the drop-off and there’s no traction. At the last moment my wheels cut through softer snow to grip pavement inches from the guardrail and I’m swerving back to center. My heart is beating hard. I think of the donor, name unknown, who died in a heartbeat at age 30, maybe on this very road. I make a choice. I slow down. I pull over. The only life I’m carrying now is my own.
Elliott Fielding is a Colorado scientist and emerging author who weighs phrases and measures words. Xyr short narratives have appeared or are forthcoming in ScribesMICRO, MoonPark Review, The Examined Life, Five Minutes and elsewhere. https://elliottfielding.carrd.co/
Baptism by Falling
Fight or flight.
But she can’t fight gravity.
A splashing crash shocks all her senses. Where is she? This isn’t Momma’s hospital… or Prickly Pear State… or Burgers. She’s in her car, moving past trees, but this isn’t the road.
Gurgling and sucking sounds bubble from the engine. The car tilts downward as it moves forward. Cold water swallows Cynthia’s toes, ankles, legs–
She tries to open the door, but the water pressure keeps it closed.
Cynthia’s mind panics, but she doesn’t have time for that. Her body takes over. Hands unbuckle the seatbelt, and then fingers press the buttons to roll down the front windows, which begin sliding open with an electronic hum. Cynthia lifts her legs into the seat, preparing to climb out as soon as she can, but the window stops opening halfway down. Then the passenger side window rattles, stutters, and stalls too.
Cynthia’s fingers move to the buttons for the back windows, but the plastic only clicks with no response.
It’s too late. She’s lost power.
Her best chance of escaping the sinking car is through the passenger side window, so she splashes over to it. There is not much space to squeeze through, but it doesn’t look impossible. Water pours onto Cynthia as she clings to the top of the glass and tries to push it farther open. Fails. She shakes it with the hopeful frustration it might break or loosen. It doesn’t budge. Then, face pressed against the car ceiling, she takes the deepest breath of her life, and the river replaces the last of the air.
Cynthia reaches her arms, head, and neck out the window. She squirms and manages to shove her chest through. Pushing with her legs against the seat, and pressing her hands against the top of the door, she fights to squeeze her hips free, bruising like a masseuse applying too much pressure, like being smashed, ripped, but it’s either possibly tear herself in half or definitely drown.
She thrusts through the pain, encouraged by each inch of progress. It hurts worse before it gets better, but the digging and scraping finally release, and she swirls into the current.
Desperate for air, she tries to swim to the surface, but…
She can’t find it.
Water burns her eyes, and the same grayish green shades everything. Tumbling through the current, her smothering hair disorients her further. She flails her limbs in an attempt to gain control, but this exhausts her and fills her chest with fire.
She strains her eyes, unsure of up and down, but for the first time, she sees something different.
A golden glow.
Hope.
That’s all she has left, so she spends her final energy to reach the compass, the emblem, the cure – whatever it is, it is all.
Kayla Cain teaches high school English and journalism in Central Texas. Her passion is inspiring young people to read and write through example. Read more of her work at kaylacainauthor.com.
Time Finally Gets Fed Up
by Eirene Gentle
Time used to shrug it off. The defamation, bargaining and fear but it’s sick of the lies. Time doesn’t march or stand still. It hasn’t stopped, not even once. It’s had enough of blame. Illnesses aren’t its work but people’s own decisions or luck or who knows what, Time isn’t a seer, it’s just not at fault. Time isn’t wasted and can’t be spent. It’s always money with humans, money, money, money which is never Time, no matter how much people say it. Which is another thing, Time doesn’t heal. Not anything, ever. It’s not interested in your problems. Or you. Time isn’t God, or even god. It would leave all humans in a vat of tar to stop them crawling all over it, chopping it into seconds, minutes, millennia, whatever, but Time doesn’t have power, or tar, or vats. It possesses nothing and doesn’t want to. Time can’t be served. It has no say in your confinement. Or freedom. It won’t go back, not with serums or cells, cold-freezing or plasma. Time has no sense of direction and barely made it to the complaints office. There was a long line and it had to take a number. “It’ll be a while," they said, right to Time’s face.
Eirene Gentle writes, mostly little, usually from Toronto, Canada. BlueSky: @eireneeleni.bsky.social
Another Curry
by James C. Clar
The moment Paul Blaine boarded the train in Delhi, he felt an enormous sense of relief. No, relief was not quite the right word. As the train pulled away from the station, it was closer to elation. Fifteen years in India as a colonial bureaucrat and he was finally going home. In Blaine’s opinion, the Empire had five years left here, and that was it. Independence would come, followed by chaos. Anyone who imagined otherwise was a bloody fool. The Jewel in the Crown. What nonsense! Not even the prospect of the forty-eight-hour journey to Bombay, or the long sea voyage home, could dampen his spirits.
That evening when he entered the dining car, he was pleased by the familiar spectacle of imperial comfort. Here was the white linen, the polished silver, the crystal glasses and the liveried waiters moving with military efficiency. The sun might be setting on the Empire but, by God, it could still run a railway.
A man with a flaming red mustache waved him to an empty seat. “Join me, if you please. I’m Baldwin. I managed a tea plantation in Assam.
“Blaine,” Paul replied. “Civil Service.”
“Heading home?”
“At long last.” Blaine spoke as one who had been released from prison.
Baldwin laughed. “So am I. Thirty years among tea bushes. I scarcely remember what England looks like.”
They ordered dinner. Both men chose the beef curry and a bottle of claret.
“Funny thing,” Baldwin offered. “After decades in India, curry’s one of the few things I’ve come to appreciate.”
“The subcontinent’s only contribution to civilization, in my view.”
Baldwin raised an eyebrow but smiled diplomatically. Plantation life had apparently taught him tolerance.
The two men spoke of monsoons, railway strikes and the peculiar melancholy of leaving a place with which one has become, however reluctantly, accustomed. Baldwin described the rolling green hills of Assam and confessed that he would probably miss them terribly.
When the curry arrived, both men dug in enthusiastically. After several mouthfuls, however, Blaine frowned.
“Something wrong?” Baldwin inquired.
“Beef tastes a bit dicky.”
Baldwin took another bite of his own. “Perhaps a touch … but hardly the worst thing I’ve eaten over here.”
They finished their meals along with the wine, coffee and dessert. The rest of the evening passed in the smoking car amid week-old newspapers, whiskey, soda and cigars. By bedtime, Blaine felt vaguely unwell. He blamed the alcohol.
During the night he was awakened by violent cramps. He was not alone. By dawn, much of the train seemed afflicted. Everyone, in fact, who had ordered the beef curry was miserably ill. Several passengers, including Baldwin, required hospitalization when the train reached Bombay.
Blaine, fortunately, recovered quickly. By the time his ship sailed, he felt almost himself again. The investigation that followed was perfunctory. Spoiled meat in a tropical climate seemed the most likely culprit.
On the train’s return journey to Delhi, the supply steward locked himself inside his quarters. From deep within a drawer, he retrieved an envelope stuffed with banknotes. Smiling, he counted. No one had ever become ill before. There had been complaints, but complaints were common. Still, caution was now required. Another incident too soon might attract greater scrutiny.
The steward put the envelope away and reflected on the wonder of India. Here, with the right partners, even death was profitable. From now on, though, they’d stick with their usual suppliers, underpaid hospital workers and unscrupulous hostel managers. No more securing product right off the streets.
Blaine, for his part, arrived home safely. It was a long time, however, before he fancied another curry.
James C. Clar is a writer and retired teacher. Most recently, his work may be found in Bright Flash Literary Review, Flash Digest, 10x10 Stories, Freedom Fiction Journal, Topiary Stories, Antipodean SF and The Magazine of Literary Fantasy. More of his writing is also available at A Condor’s Quill.
Paper People
by Jenny Morelli
I wake to itches I can’t scratch, to air tickling my skin, to the reality that I’m drowning in papyrus. Only my face protrudes. I can’t see. Can’t breathe. Can’t speak or scream.
Skin’s brittle. Wrinkled. Ready to tear. So dry. So parchment.
Words skitter across my face like ants into the holes where my eyes should be, latching onto my thoughts, my hopes, my dreams.
Words swirl into those holes, form pupils to let me see what I’m hearing. A rip-rip-tear frees a paper person from the page, then another, then another. Paper people surround me, bound silent by words, tethered to the page with trains of sentences trailing behind them in long shadows like capes, like answers to questions we cannot ask.
We’re stuck to the page, pop-up palimpsests of all the stories we’ve ever read, of all the characters we’ve ever met, of all the selves we’ve longed to be.
Here we remain. Faceless. Mouthless. Silent paper people itchy with letters and words and ideas scampering endlessly over us and under, around us and through. We’re half formed and fully sentient, imprisoned on this page, praying to the paper gods a candle won’t tip and singe our crinkled cheeks, praying to the paper gods that hot tea won’t spill, that someone will notice us, will read us and won’t cry fat tears that dissolve us entirely after learning our fate.
I used to dream of climbing into the stories I read to escape my grim reality by dancing with wild things and velveteen rabbits and golden geese, but now that I’m here, I can only hope my imagination can help me arrange these words into an exit, an end, a way out of this nightmare, or else I must succumb to the grim reality that I’m just another avid reader who fell victim to a dream she desperately wanted fulfilled.
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything around her. She’s published in several literary magazines including Red Rose Thorns, Spillwords, Scars tv, and Bottlecap Press for four poetry chapbooks. Check out her website for more: JennyMorelliWrites.com
Another Senior Moment
By David Sydney
“I'm not eating in this place again, Edna.”
“What'd you mean? I enjoyed my shrimp with lobster sauce.”
“Maybe. But my chicken Parmesan was no good.”
“You had General Tso's chicken. We're at the Pagoda Palace, not Tony's Italian Villa, Ed.”
It was another senior moment. Here he'd been looking forward to a cannoli for dessert. He dejectedly set down his chopsticks.
Now came the fortune cookies.
Edna cracked one open. “How about that, Ed. It says, ‘Your next meal will be at an Italian restaurant.’”
“Really?”
She lied. It read, "The love of your life is right before you."
David Sydney is a physician who writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record).
Turtle Dee Turtle Dum
by Brenda K
On the morning of Dee's turn for show-and-tell, she finds herself walking to school with a turtle held against her thumping heart. The turtle's head and legs are retracted into its shell and she insists it's because he's resting up for the big day ahead. Her siblings scold her—he's scared, he's not yours, Mom and Dad will be angry, you're stealing, what if you lose him, what if you drop him, you're gonna get the belt from Dad!
"I'm only borrowing himmmmm! I'll put him back when I get home!" she says.
Dee is embarrassed she owns nothing fun to share. No Mr. Potato Head, no Bugs Bunny talking alarm clock, no Barbie in a pink designer gown, no Lite Brite, no Battleship. Nothing like what the other kids have brought. The most interesting thing Dee owns are day-of-the-week underwear.
Up in front of her kindergarten class, Dee's hands tremble against the turtle's shell. What's his name, they ask. What does he eat, they ask. Does he sleep with you, they ask. Does he bite, they ask, then ooooooo when she tells them he bit her finger once and she's pretty sure it's because he thought it was a french fry.
Dee's cheeks burn with joy as she rocks side to side, each foot taking its turn to tap the inside of the opposite foot. The turtle is even more popular than Bert and Ernie dolls!
At snack time, the kids gather in the sandbox with apples, grapes, and carrots. Dee is royalty at this feast, and her turtle is the guest of honor—a guest she leaves behind at pick-up time because she cannot return it to its home. Daddy will know. He will be mad.
Dee runs to the car and jumps in, out of breath like an alternate-fable hare who's finally won the race. Except. She hasn't.
Mrs. Scott dashes out to their car, waving wildly with one hand, the turtle in the other.
"Dee, wait!! You forgot your turtle!" She reaches through the car window and sets the turtle on Dee's lap.
Daddy's voice is cold thunder. "That's not ours."
Mrs. Scott's smile becomes the letter O.
Dee fixates on the side-view mirror as Daddy drives away and Mrs. Scott, hands on hips, gets tinier and tinier. The turtle's claws scratch against Dee's thighs—she does not dare say "ouch" out loud. Daddy's teeth throttle a toothpick. He says nothing.
At home, Daddy stands at the edge of the neighbor's driveway, scowling, while Dee slinks up to the garden by the porch. She kneels and cradles the turtle, envying its hard, protective shell. Her siblings' voices sneak into her head on sing-songy repeat…dum dee dum dee dum dee dum, told ya you'd get the belt on your bum.
She puts the turtle back into the bushes where she'd found him that morning, wishing she could crawl in next to him and play hide-and-seek without being found; wishing she'd brought her day-of-the-week underwear for show-and-tell instead.
As a child, Brenda used photos/keywords in TV Guide and her mom’s magazines to write micro-stories in the margins of those publications. She'd then bestow her masterpieces to her family. She now seeks a larger audience than that of her childhood. Brenda lives in SoCal with her husband and teenage daughter.
Rebel Yell
by Lori Cramer
August 1985. Another Friday night at the Diamonds & Hearts Club. I’m in my standard gear: fluorescent-pink minidress, neon-yellow tights, purple boots. I come here every weekend, searching for someone to rebel with.
The place is packed with guys. Guys wearing Frankie Says Relax T’s. Guys in studded leather. Guys with multicolored mohawks.
Same old crowd. Boring. Why do I even bother? I check my Swatch. Time to move on.
I’m almost to the exit when I spot him: the most rebellious of them all.
A guy in khakis and a polo shirt.
Lori Cramer’s short prose has appeared in Fictive Dream, Flash Boulevard, The Mersey Review, Scaffold, Splonk, and elsewhere. Her work has been longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for Best Microfiction and Best of the Net. Links to her writing can be found at https://loricramerfiction.wordpress.com. Bluesky: @loricramerwriter.bsky.social.
Interview
by R.K. West
“Why do you want to work here?”
I’ve been warned about this, the stupidest, trickiest interview question. Don’t say you, like all job seekers, need a paycheck to pay the rent. They don’t want reality, they want flattery. But don’t get personal. Don’t say it’s because the interviewer is charming. It must be something you like about the company, and it must be believable.
Easy! I give her the real reason I’m attracted to this place. The building is right next to a bus stop, so I won’t have to walk far in bad weather.
I don’t get the job.
R.K. West is a Canadian-American writer specializing in extremely short stories. Credit: This piece originally appeared online at 100 Words.
Prenuptial Consultation
Creative non-fiction
by Claire Massey
The birth charts are printed on heavy vita paper, the kind that resists thinning over time. The astrologer slides my father’s across the table. He should have lived, she says, by the sea, an inlet, a cove, a way to the gulf. He would have been happy. I nod my head, remembering how Dad trucked his sailboat for miles across featureless plains, to launch in reservoirs and lakes, manmade. Divorce forced the sale of his Flying Scott.
Now the mystic’s long, tapered fingers hover over my birth chart. There’s a legacy of longing to be near the water, she says, that’s where you should live. With a partner yearning for peace.
Our joint attention turns to the life path my mother trod. As if the tips of fingers can sense danger, the astrologer barely touches this chart. My mother once studied a palmistry book, Fortune in Your Hand. I remember her comparing the tangled mass in her palm, the zig-zagging lines of head and heart, to the cover’s ideal map, the lifeline with its gentle, doable slope gracefully curving to end at the deep wrist ring. Your mom was overtaken, the astrologer explains, by nervous exhaustion. You too, must guard against this kind of darkness.
We end with the synastry chart, his fate and mine, entwined within a circle divided into houses of experience yet to be lived. With one hand the astrologer feels the smooth-textured paper, places the other on her heart. I know you wanted another who craved conquest, adventure, but that was not meant to be. This man will be a foil for your troubles, his love a sheltering refuge. Do live with a view of a bay or an ocean, face east in the morning, meditate on every solar return, palms cupped like vessels storing life-giving waters.
Epilogue
We have been married forty years.
Sometimes late at night,
when the moon is on the build
in a fertile sign, we sit on our porch,
among aging pines and crepe myrtles
planted long ago.
Sometimes when unpredictable winds
change course, we hear the give and take
of the surf, ever in tandem
with the shifting tides, the cosmic plan.
Claire Massey’s work appears in many journals, including Bright Flash, Streetlight Magazine, IO Journal, Fictive Dream, Literally Stories, Barely South Review, Wilderness House, Writer Advice, and in her collection, Driver Side Window. She appreciates stories with a deep depth to length ratio and treasures her copy of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.
Going Home
by Armand Rosamilia
My mother was a witch. Burned alive. I was ten. I’d gone to live with relatives in Brazil after that, but when I was twenty-three I flew back. Where my mother was killed.
I went in search of clues. The apartment we’d lived in was still there, a new family occupying it since I’d been dragged away.
The old woman seated on the stoop had smiled. She remembered me. Told me I was as pretty as my mother had been at my age.
I found her broom, dusty, in the basement. I knew what I had to do now. Revenge.
Armand Rosamilia is a full-time crime thriller and horror author who loves coffee, bourbon and bourbon-flavored coffee. Crime Thrillers. Baseball. Horror. Contemporary Fiction. Heavy Metal. Zombies. http://armandrosamilia.com Also on Twitch, writing live! https://www.twitch.tv/armandrosamilia
Peace With Honor
by R.K. West
Granddad lives with us because Mom worries about what would happen if he had another stroke. She put a TV in his room so he could yell at the news with the door closed. Sometimes I stop by his room after school, when he is playing music from his old vinyl record collection on a turntable player he keeps on the bureau. When I told him we were studying the Vietnam War in history class, he took a sharp breath and squeezed his eyes shut for a second. “Well, fuck me,” he said. Then: “Sorry, kid, language, but Jesus Christ, couldn’t they at least wait until we’re all dead?”
Credit: This first appeared at Six Sentences.
R.K. West's work has appeared at Johnny America, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Surely, and others.
An Imperial Message
by Franz Kafka
Translation by Ian Johnston
Now and then, we publish vintage stories from historic authors. This was originally published in 1919.
The Emperor—so they say—has sent a message, directly from his deathbed, to you alone, his pathetic subject, a tiny shadow which has taken refuge at the furthest distance from the imperial sun. He ordered the herald to kneel down beside his death bed and whispered the message to him. He thought it was so important that he had the herald repeat it back to him. He confirmed the accuracy of the verbal message by nodding his head. And in front of the entire crowd of those who have come to witness his death—all the obstructing walls have been broken down and all the great ones of his empire are standing in a circle on the broad and high soaring flights of stairs—in front of all of them he dispatched his herald. The messenger started off at once, a powerful, tireless man. Sticking one arm out and then another, he makes his way through the crowd. If he runs into resistance, he points to his breast where there is a sign of the sun. So he moves forward easily, unlike anyone else. But the crowd is so huge; its dwelling places are infinite. If there were an open field, how he would fly along, and soon you would hear the marvellous pounding of his fist on your door. But instead of that, how futile are all his efforts. He is still forcing his way through the private rooms of the innermost palace. He will never win his way through. And if he did manage that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to fight his way down the steps, and, if he managed to do that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to stride through the courtyards, and after the courtyards the second palace encircling the first, and, then again, stairs and courtyards, and then, once again, a palace, and so on for thousands of years. And if he finally did burst through the outermost door—but that can never, never happen—the royal capital city, the centre of the world, is still there in front of him, piled high and full of sediment. No one pushes his way through here, certainly not with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window and dream to yourself of that message when evening comes.
Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924) was a German-language Jewish Czech writer and novelist born in Prague. Widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature, his work typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surreal predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. The term Kafkaesque has entered the lexicon to describe situations like those depicted in his writings. His best-known works include the novella The Metamorphosis (1915) and the novels The Trial (1924) and The Castle (1926). His work has widely influenced artists, philosophers, composers, filmmakers, literary historians, religious scholars, cultural theorists.
Monopoly Money
by R.K. West
Once again, Juan tried explaining cryptocurrency to his father.
“If it isn’t backed by a government treasury or physical assets,” Dad asked, “where does it get its value?”
Juan had answered this many times before, but he summoned all his patience and said, “It’s based on people’s attraction and faith in the product, and a consensus among investors, like the stock market.”
“So I can just create my own imaginary coin and it will be valuable because everyone agrees I’m a great guy?”
“Sure,” Juan responded, “but you’ll need to hire developers to start your blockchain,” immediately wanting to slap himself for blurting out “blockchain,” thus inviting more questions.
That night, he dreamed that they were DadCoin billionaires
R.K. West is a Canadian-American writer who specializes in extremely short stories.
Credit: This piece originally appeared at Six Sentences.
1-2-3
Photo by Judith Taburet
by Judith Taburet
1-2-3
I polish my calloused palms with grease and soap.
The keys still echo Bach in my fingertips.
The faint moonlight whispers back to the kitchen.
My mother’s eyes measure my worth in foreign currency.
Veiled in soot, frying oil, and imported perfume,
I stand.
My sister’s laughter—diamond-cut,
the rich one, my shadow in childhood,
the clever one who catches a stranger like a boar in a net.
I listen.
Seventeen—I carry a rolled diploma,
the muscle memory of waltzes.
On the piano,
I play.
1-2-3
None of it pays the rent. None of it paints the crumbling walls.
I teach little girls to dance on cracked tiles,
telling them to hold their heads high,
even as my own dips under the weight of uncertainty.
The music swells at dusk.
1-2-3—
And I imagine another country, one not for sale,
where a girl can breathe
without selling her name to the highest bidder;
where my hands, trained on piano keys, not on a stranger’s chest
where a mother’s pride is not swollen
by the men her daughters attract,
but by the songs, the heart’s sigh—
1-2-3
Judith Taburet is a writer and photographer hailing from Madagascar, now based in France. Drawing from a rich legacy of advocacy, she infuses her art with a sense of purpose. Inspired by her father, an influential writer who courgeously fought against prejudice and racism in their homeland . Judy T channels her creative voice to shed light on women's stories and Malagasy culture. Her work, both in prose and photography, delves into strong experiences, ensuring they are told with unflinching honesty and strength.
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