By Wren Ashenhurst
Dolly Parton plays on the battery radio
I am laid out under an oak tree
the sun sits hunched low painting the sky
blue fading to orange
just at the horizon line it’s grey
I tell him I’m that grey; he laughs,
fiddles with the sunflower I brought him
he finds me in sonatas
somehow we live forever
They take me to an aquarium
hold my hand;
tucks the clasped mass into their pocket
they’re so warm
they takes me to the place where it feels
like we are the things the fish have come to see
where we can breathe underwater
at least we pretend
believing by breathing in each other's air
we can never drown.
we don’t kiss
She reads to me
in the hushed hours of the late night
her voice articulating how to identify fissures
I ask her what fissures are; she tells me
she used to be a singer before she discovered microscopes
even when she tells me horrible things
her voice carries that note of music
of calm
I ask her to stop telling me things from her anatomy textbook
she doesn’t understand
They teach me how to paint
I start to see their colours in my poetry
I teach them how to read the stars
how to have them lead you home
they say they are home
He was a dancer
so light on his feet you would think he was flying
he lived for the thrill of the performance
I asked him his favourite dance once
he smiled, heavy handed statements
lead on his tongue
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Wren R. Ashenhurst is a writer and artist from the Canadian West Coast, currently an undergraduate completing their Bachelors of Fine Arts with a double extended minor in creative writing and theater. Their work explores themes of queer identity, existential dread, and the melancholic, addictive horror of being known. When not writing, they often find themself painting. This is their first publication.
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