Scholastic Writing Awards

So, I want to enter my writing in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards because I've never done it and it would be fun. So, the plan is to spam the system with a shitload of entries. BUT, I think I also want to do a portfolio (4-8) pieces, but I'm nervous to do that because what if one piece of said portfolio is not good and screws it all up? So, I need your help, my friends! What should I submit in a portfolio? What separately? I plan on taking a day and editing/fixing up everything and whatnot, but I first need to know which pieces I should spend time on and all that. So, without further ado:

1. Flash Fiction

You smell like pine needles when you lie on the bed, glasses dangling from the corner of your mouth. You glance up with green eyes flashing in the light and smile at me, perched precariously at your desk. “Come join me.” I huddle in the hallow of your stomach, under your arms, face in the dark of your chest. Over me, I hear the crinkle of pages, listen to the gentle rhythm of breath and heartbeat, the rhythm of eyes flying across a page, absorbing the words only up to the brain because the main attraction is curled upon your chest. Your fingers cling to my ribcage and your lips take a moment on my forehead. You cannot read any faster because you’ve stopped reading the page and have started reading my skin. My lungs fill with you, my mouth exhales you, inhales you, tastes you and absorbs you. We are now passing the same air between our lips. A book drops, spine down, to the floor. The prospect of an eternity on pillows and mouths stretches before us as fingers link upon sweaty sheets. If we became paralyzed here and now, like this, we would be the most contented statue in all of history. We are knots. We will take years to untangle, but just minutes to twist again. The Fates have lost their single eye, we’ve stolen it and their scissors too so they can never cut through us. Tonight I will wash you out of my clothing, but you will never come out of my skin. We are soaked with each other, the scent of pine needles and deodorant, but it’s your sweat I like the best. It’s when I curl up against you in bed and feel your skin stick to mine that I know you will stay here until the thread grows old and we fall apart piece by piece. Together.

2. Poetry **accepted into my school's art and lit mag

In my next life I hope I am reincarnated as a boy

So that I too can feel the wind in my hair, the pump of tired legs and the cold air in my lungs as I shout when the neighborhood boys gather their bikes to play football at the high school.

I hope I am born with a male appendage,

So they can take me out of the classroom with the others blessed similarly in fourth grade health, and so I shall never again be afflicted with blood and pale, knobby knees. So that our return is wrought with red-cheeked laughter and cries of, “Hair? There?”

I hope I am born a boy,

So, that I will never again sit at the edge of my bed, head down, hands in lap, to be told that I am a gift, protect my gift and in sleeping bags, we huddle close, giggle anxiously and whisper, “but that would make me a slut, wouldn’t it?”

I hope I grow into a man,

So, I can walk down the street, so I can square my shoulders, and whistle from between loose lips. So I can welcome the dark, instead of flee from it. But, please, ma’am, do not think of wrongly of me when I point out your untied shoe at the bar. The music slows, the bar wiggles, but it is no excuse.

I hope I can prove that when I am born a man,

Because the numbers on my paycheck have extra zeroes and nines as she, a mile away, packs up her desk with a disgruntled sigh.

I hope I am born a man,

Because my voice is loud, because if I speak in a crowded room and no one is there to hear it, it does make a sound. So that my voice doesn’t fall upon the indoctrinated ears of those who howl and sniff unappreciatively like dogs faced with whistles.

I hope I am born a man,

Because without my help on this human ground that we stand upon, it will never breathe and grow. We are paralyzed.

In my next life, I hope I am born a boy,

So that seventeen year old girls, sucked of their pride, will never

Hope the same for their daughters.

3. Flash Fiction? Poetry? **art and lit mag

She smokes two packs a day these days, determined to fill her lungs with fire. In the pews they screwed her into the ground and condemned her with words to the howling, biting wind, but she does not concur. At this rate, she surely will need to burn herself out of the afterlife, for she’s to be one with the trees

She knows

That oh-so-many people surely cannot fit in this bed, but they worm their way under her sheets and wag their fingers in her face, crushing her under a weight that if she asks if that could possibly, somehow, in every way, be them, they, of course,

Deny

Thy father and refuse thy name. She was once Juliet in the tenth grade when the spotlight was white and kissing in the curtains was worth only a week’s whispers. Little did she know then, caught up in the heavy fabric (the easy price), that one day her father would deny his daughter and his name would be unwillingly returned to

Her

Daughter cries up in her room, a flower at sixteen, but wilted, ripping at the seams with legal papers that turn her into weekend visitation rights. There’s no amount of mother’s milk that will revive her and it’s no matter anyway: the milk has dried up. By the time her mother has grinded down her tenth pack, she’s a woman

Alone

Was the way she was used to, staring at spiders that no one can reach and no one will touch. Her ring finger has turned green and her ribs were bruised. She can still feel the apron when all she wants to feel is his weight. She smokes him out of her lungs, out of her bed. She burns herself from the inside out, trying to burn away the woman

Within

Her own home she was betrayed. There is passion in a pounding heart. There is passion in bound hands. There is passion in a man in town for a week. There is a passion in a woman left alone for a week. Her hands shake when she pushes aside the business papers, the speeches made of mere numbers, her stomach lurches, her armpits sweat when she opens up a hidden notebook. Her tongue sparks, her head empties as she pours herself into eager ears. Her ring comes

Off

With her head, she is told, hissed at. She escapes into her closet. Her typewriter burns her now, but she is fire now. They insist her fingers gave her these ideas, her tongue. Speak no more, woman. Her skin is scalding, bursting with blisters, but she turns off the light and cuts a vein in

Her wrist

Her hands, they’re full, they’re white. The wrinkles are gone, no longer little rivers filled with water. Her neck no longer has that crick, from bending down, always down. So, she writes. She writes the story of a bed, a bed that grew so large it engulfed the entire town. It gives her purpose

Sometimes,

She likes to imagine that each tick, each word is a dollar off the mortgage until it’s all paid off. The crayons will be returned to her only then, to illustrate herself. Only then, can she pack up all her words, tattooed across eyelids and under her tongue, and escape this

Small

Small

Town.

4. Short Story **art and lit mag/got me into writing camp??

The affair takes place on a Monday and you decide that it couldn’t have been a better day. Mondays will forever be associated with unpleasant events and why soil a perfectly good day with such unhappiness when you could just add this particular one to the ever-growing list of why Mondays are such taboo? It’s time to take out that black dress you don’t have and, Mom, I told you I needed one, but, I’m sorry dear, I forgot in the middle of all this, wear that purple and gray one, she wouldn’t have minded. She would’ve thought it was lovely. She would’ve. Past tense.

They take you on a series of stops before the final destination is reached and, in some way, it’s kind of like life…if you walked around your whole life with your eyes closed, against a hard wall that yields no answers. The first stop is the building that they call a funeral home and it’s ornate and gold with tissue boxes on every single surface that you’ve only used to blow your nose when you had an allergic reaction to the flowers that are everywhere. Flowers shaped like hearts, flowers that smell like death itself, and flowers that wilt and die at the slightest touch. Flowers, flowers, the kind of flowers that cloud your vision of the person that you’re really here for. Here is where your family congregates, taking seats on the worn sofas that have held more weight than a person could possibly bear in their body and listen to a large man who opens a large Bible and begins to read that “Rose” lived a long and healthy life and everyone’s cheeks burn as your mother takes it upon herself to get up and whisper that her name wasn’t Rose and you almost feel sorry for him because you’re tired of feeling sorry for yourself and it’s pity for the man who’s seen more dead bodies than you have, far too many exhausted names to keep them all straight and maybe Rose is next door in the room where you hear the honking of noses on tissues and choked sobs in closed throats that send stabs of pain through your body and your twist your hands in your lap until your father pulls you to your feet and to the casket. And you kneel.

Instantly, you decide that whoever you’re staring at isn’t her, but rather some kind of wax version and it’s some kind of cruel trick and they’ve gone to such great lengths to replicate her soft, wrinkled face that just weeks ago, was it? was smiling at you, overshadowed by those great, round glasses. They even recreated the short blonde hair that just days ago when she lay asleep in the place they call Hospice, you commented that they, the nurses, must’ve cut it, but your mother shakes her head. It fell out. She’s wearing the blue dress that she always demanded right before they put her out for the surgeries and how you’d love to crawl into her lap and ran your fingers over the lace, to wiggle the beads and tug the threads and she’d grin and rub your feet, but now, you cringe away because her skin is leathery, but you mustn’t let it show because he’s standing at his usual post and how it would kill him.

Huddled in the crook of her arm, as if she could feel it anyway, is the little peacock book that you all wrote in last night with your final words. Your hand clutched the wobbling pen and scrawled superficial words, the only thing that’s broken through the ice that layered over everything in your body and believed it was common courtesy not to read what the others had written, but you did peek at his and it was signed simply. “Me.” And had the ice been thin, you might’ve shattered.

Finally, comes the closing and maybe you should’ve cried and tried to catch that last fleeting look at her like the others around you do, but your body is stiff and all you want is that wax figure to go away and at last, with a soft thud and click, it does and you can breathe again.

The next stop is the church where your parents were married and like Mondays being all bad, perhaps once they had seen this place as a lovely one, a happy memory of white and giggles, but today, it’s nothing more than black and tears and sorrow lasts longer than happiness ever will. With a skip or two that you never intended, you scale the steps and smooth the back of your purple dress to stand alongside the women who hold tissues to their eyes and they smile through their tears at you like you’re a child who shouldn’t join in and a year from now, your mother will cry in the car and tell you that she would’ve wanted you to be happy, you’re still young, but a year from now is when the meteor is set to hit the hard-packed earth of your heart. You’re not prepared for impact, so you simply swallow because this makes no sense, it’s not real and there’s your little brother trailing behind the men, his head barely visible over the casket as he tries to hold it too, but they’re taller than him and your lips twitch a little bit because he’s so young and it’s not fair and then, there’s a fluttering in your stomach as the smile drops and you remember how he cried when your mother told you of what’s to come just weeks ago and how you and your sister looked at each other, but not a word was said.

You’re supposed to read something that your cousin picked out for you and you realize once you take your seat after the painful wake down the aisle past friends and family who give you sad looks that that’s not what you want right now, not the sobbed sorrys, not the lipsticked kisses, not the bone-crushing hugs, but rather silence. But you still have to read. The paper in your pocketbook burns as you reach inside for it because the words aren’t real, just the leather interior of a pocketbook and not the fleshy interior of entity, of memory with its caramel odors and wrinkles. This paper feels stiff and crinkly and can be bent and you don’t like it. A mother, you describe as you stand later before the congregation, a mother is everything she was. You describe her duties, her compassion, her everything that she was in life, but the writer of this never knew her, not like you did in sixth grade when you wrote your essay about heroes on her. But, this is about mothers or, in your case, Nannys. One day, your daughter will maybe read it for your mother, her Nanny, and her daughter for you. It’s your uncle with the eulogy who captures what this writer missed, but your ears have suddenly begun to buzz and you lose your trickles of who she really was as he talks and it’s not then that you realize, but later when suddenly you can’t remember the color of her eyes or the name of that James Bond movie you watched once and your heart skips a beat in time. The service passes.

A time later, you’re sitting in the back of the car and the funeral procession is broken up by the highway that goes and goes. The girl in the car next to you is playing her DS and maybe your heart sinks a bit, recalling the times that Pokémon seemed more important than a proper conversation and you’d give those superficial responses, yeah, uh huh, of course, a giggle and then back to the superficial screen and the superficial beings called Pokémon that weren’t even real. When you lost a battle, you could go the Pokémon Center and revive your Pokémon and everything was all better.

Somehow, your destination arrives and you come to a screeching, screeching, screaming, we’re going to crash! we’re going to crash! prepare for impact! halt. And you float up from the crash and it won’t occur to you for at least six months that you’ve been ripped from your body, torn from your very skin and you’re some kind of vulnerable imprint of yourself for. And then, you’ll find yourself crumpled on the bathroom floor, stomach lurching terribly, tears rising in balls in the throat, in gasps and groans.

But, for now you float over the line of cars waiting in the cemetery for their turn to bury their loved one and think it’s good, clean and done. And they’ll wipe the dirt off of their hands and think it’s gone, but it’s actually just embedded in their skin. A parasite.

Somehow, you get through the service. You don’t see them lower her into her final resting place, finally sealed off, and as you slowly pick up the petals that had fallen to the ground from roses that were supposed to be alive, you feel your body just as open as her, not sealed under the weight of six feet and that’s how you escaped perhaps and you float up into the cold December sun and they’re all hugging each other again and someone is surely hugging what is you, but you don’t feel it. Partly because you don’t want to and partly because you just can’t.

The sun casts the long shadow of the man called “me” and despite the arms of family on his shoulders, he stands alone. There’s another hand on his shoulder, but it’s cold and heavy and your mother tells you that he needs all the support you can offer so that he doesn’t crumple, but up in the sun, you shiver and stare out at the long, endless lines of gravestones. Your skin prickles. If only you can keep him standing.

But, even the most stable structures can fall and you’re on that bathroom floor, cursing the system.

When you attend the next funeral, your mother tells you to wear that nice blue skirt and the crisp white blouse. You still don’t have a black dress. And something tells you that you never will.

5. Humor Short Story **won 2nd place in a town wide contest idk

“Well, there you go,” he said, slowing the car to glide alongside the house. “I found one.” Leaning over him as the car came to a complete stop, his fiancée gazed out the window for a few minutes at the house, her mouth twisted slightly upward into a dainty smile. It was a beautiful thing, a large, white colonial with a blue door and red shutters. The flower boxes were in full bloom, a lovely mix of red, yellows, blues, and whites and the short tree out in front was bursting in pink, sending the rosy, barky smell of flowers and foliage over into the car. The fiancée turned up the air conditioner to banish it as she squinted at the sign set right in front of the house.

“Good, honest wife wanted: inquire within,” she sounded out slowly and then, as the words sunk in, her creased forehead flattened and her mouth opened wide in laughter. “That’s a good one!”

“Let’s go in,” her soon-to-be husband urged with a smirk. He turned off the car, stemming the flow of cool air and his fiancée frowned as the suffocating summer air pressed into their limited space. “You can be my sister and we’re ‘inquiring.’” His fiancée let the words slide under her skin before giggling with a nod. They were on their way home from their visits to relatives across the country. To them, there was nothing worse than driving for long hours through the heat towards the rural towns their families lived in and pretending they enjoyed laughing with them and dining with them without much air conditioning and cell phone service to go around. Apparently an online picture of the engagement ring didn’t suffice and so, they had to go in person.

Stepping out of the car, the soon-to-be married man straightened his sunglasses with another grin towards the house. “I ought to get a picture of it.” The soon-to-be married woman who’d just gotten out of the car herself chuckled again.

“Later!” she hissed. “When we’re leaving.” Fishing a napkin out of her purse, she daintily dabbed the sweat from her forehead. The photograph would be added to the archive they’d already collected on their road trip. If they were to be forced from the comfort of their New York apartment and to no man’s land, why not make a game of it? And the game? To locate the craziest people in America. Photograph them, archive them and laugh over them at parties. So far, their archive of pictures in the husband-to-be’s camera consisted of a man they saw fishing with a dollar bill on the end of his line, a woman walking her cat on a leash and a red-headed family dressed all alike in plaid suits. But, as the engaged couple walked briskly up towards the house, they thought this one would just take the cake. Their friends back home would love it. With the eagerness of children, they knocked on the door.

To their surprise, a young woman answered the door with a loud, white smile. “Good afternoon!” she said brightly, “Are you inquiring about the sign?”

“Yes,” the fiancé nodded eagerly, “I’m Daniel Smith and this is my sister…”

“Rachel,” his lover popped in. They just named their friend and his wife, rather than their own names. Nevertheless, the young woman before them beamed and extended a cool hand. Her nails were painted red and deciding that her own nail color, also red, was much better, “Rachel” shook her hand carefully, barely touching it.

“It’s very nice to meet you,” the woman told them, “please come in. I’m Mr. Barbiel’s secretary, Arielle.” Walking in, the couple found the interior of the house beautiful, but disorientated. Gorgeously crafted wooden tables, chairs and bookshelves occupied the living room they were led into, but they were all of different shades of wood. Cherry, mahogany, chestnut, some light, some dark, so old, some new. Some pieces stood in the center of the room and some were pushed up against the wall. The walls were adorned with old, dusty paintings that were crookedly hung up. Still, to the couple’s great delight, there was no taxidermy. Walking across the rumpled red carpet, they took seats on the royal blue couch as the cat sitting on the back of it, meowed reproachfully. Arielle smiled apologetically.

“You’re not allergic to cats, right?” she asked “Rachel” and the other woman shook her head. “Good! One second, please!” Arielle’s smile widened as she skirted around a bookshelf, disappearing. They could hear her rummaging for something and the engaged couple exchanged smirks. “Rachel” buried her nose in her perfumed wrist, trying to mask the traces of an older, different perfume, the kind of musky thing an elderly woman would wear as “Daniel” rubbed his own nose and kept his mouth tightly closed for fear of inhaling the dry taste of the animal that stretched out on the couch behind them.

“Remind me not to invite your sister to the wedding,” he muttered softly to his fiancée. “Doesn’t she have, like, fifty cats?”

“Well, then, your grandmother isn’t invited either,” his wife-to-be hissed back. “She smells funny.” They’d been debating over their wedding guests since leaving their family behind for their home in the big city. They’d always dreamed of a large, extravagant ceremony, but that would be mean inviting all of their family members with their taxidermy, their cats, their funny smells and so on and so forth. All of their luggage, deposited in New York City and credited to “Rachel” and “Daniel.” What would their friends say? It would be a nightmare to say the least. Both fell silent as Arielle re-emerged, toting a pile of papers in her petite arms. “Rachel’s” eyes passed up her thin frame and she sucked in her own tummy.

“Would you mind filling these out?” Arielle asked, handing them to the couple. “Once you’re done, let me know and Mr. Barbiel will be happy to meet you!” Turning on her heel, Arielle departed the room and they could hear her through a thin wall, humming to herself in a high, clear voice.

“I hope this Mr. Barbiel isn’t some kind of freak,” “Rachel” muttered the second Arielle was gone and “Daniel” rolled his eyes.

“What sane person would put a sign like that out in front?” her soon-to-be husband murmured back, his eyes alive with mirth. They both chortled softly and dived into the papers handed to them. It looked like a regular application, including typical information such as her address, email, phone number. The couple had great fun making up fake material and when it came to personal questions including those on what “Rachel” liked to do in her free time as well as her special skills, they were even further amused.

“I like to grow cactuses and donate them to people,” the woman suggested, her lips turned upward in one direction.

“Your special skills include singing songs about plants and cooking homemade remedies for foot ailments,” her fiancé chimed in. When they were done, ribs sore from muffled laughter, they called Arielle back in and she took the application without question.

“Follow me,” she told them, her high cheekbones even more accented when she grinned, “Mr. Barbiel is right this way.” Leading them down a brightly lit hallway, Arielle spoke to them softly, “Good of you to answer his inquiry.” Her smile had dropped completely from her face now, replaced by a soft frown. “The poor man has been a wreck since his wife left him. Cheated, you know,” she added hastily. “But, now, it looks like he’s got someone else stepping up take her place! It’s so good of you.” As Arielle knocked on the door at the end, the couple smirked at each other. Good of them, yes, of course. “Sir,” Arielle called, “there’s a woman and her brother here to inquire.”

“Let them in,” a voice not-as-deep as expected, but distinctly male called back and the couple walked into the room. It was a study, handsome in red and without the smell of cats. Above the empty fireplace were several blank picture frames and empty, dust-less spaces and sitting in an armchair before it was a young man and when he stood, the couple found it hard not to betray their surprise by dropping their jaws. He didn’t look much older than thirty, dressed in a pinstripe suit. His black hair was greased back, revealing an innocent, blue-eyed, handsome face. However, their gazes weren’t drawn to his attractive visage, but to his back. Hunched over, a gentle hill, a gentle rise, a hump…he was a hunchback and as he extended his right hand to them to shake, they could see that his hands were spotted and gnarled. No wonder his wife left him, the couple’s exchanged look said clearly with its high eyebrows and slightly upturned lips. They both shook Mr. Barbiel’s hand daintily, trying not to touch him too much.

“Welcome to my home. Thank you for answering the sign out front,” he said formally, seeming neither cruel nor friendly. Simply business. It was a language that the couple before him could speak and they took seats in front of the empty fireplace to talk. “I’m Evan Barbiel.”

The couple introduced their fake names and listened as Evan Barbiel laid down the terms, making it sound more like a contract than a marriage. “As my wife, you’ll be expected to love and entertain me. We will share in the maintaining and caring of the house. If my wife,” he swallowed hard, “ever needs or wants anything, all she needs to do is ask and I’ll give it to her.” His eyes and shoulders seemed to droop a little now as he went on about his job (a lawyer), his house (inherited), his hobbies (reading and writing) and his great love for entertaining guests and how his wife would be his queen.

“I’ve always envisioned my future husband as my king,” “Rachel” told him in a bright voice and there was some truth to her words. Many a times did her fiancé-to-be whisper to her his love and she would respond, “I love you above all, you’re mine, my prince.” He only expected to be promoted to king when they wed. Though not knowing this, Evan Barbiel only nodded slowly at her words. He was a blank-faced man and that only amused the couple even more for they assumed he was simply dumb.
Their conversation went on as Mr. Barbiel described the wedding he hoped to him should she choose him. “A small intimate one,” he offered. “I do not want any distractions from my love.” And the honeymoon? “Anywhere she desired.”

“You sound like a slave to your wife,” the other man in the room finally burst out with a chuckle. He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it up as his wife-to-be stared longingly. He had her quit before he proposed, unhappy with her yellowing teeth.

“Not a slave, no,” Mr. Barbiel dropped his head, his cheeks reddening. “I fear I didn’t give my previous wife the attention she wanted or, rather, deserved…and she sought other attention. And lied about it too.” An uncomfortable silence passed through the room, interrupted only by the puffs of smoke rising up into the air and the fiancée’s hands fidgeted against each other in her lap. Finally, “Daniel” stood, pulling “Rachel” to her feet.

“I’m afraid we must be on our way,” he said to Mr. Barbiel who hastily got to his feet too. “But, we left our contact information.”

“Of course,” Mr. Barbiel nodded in understanding, “I just have one more question for you if you would.” The couple exchanged a quick eye roll, but nodded anyway. The setting sun filtering through the window behind Mr. Barbiel illuminated his crooked figure in a dazzling yellow. He took a deep breath and asked, “Do you think I’m ugly?”

The couple was silent for a long moment. Despite living in New York, the sudden question caught them off-guard. In truth, they both found him a monstrosity. Bent over and gnarled, they hardly noticed the handsome face and the kind attitude. But, surely, they couldn’t tell him that! Hadn’t they been cruel enough, coming in here and all? And so, in harmony, they both forced smiles. “No, of course not! You look great!” Mr. Barbiel’s shoulders drooped further as he nodded slowly.

“Yes, thank you,” he muttered. “It was nice meeting you. Thank you.” And hastily, the couple said their goodbyes, turned on their heels and left the house. That was that. They’d had their fun. As they drove away, after snapping a quick photo of a sign, they resolved to have a small wedding. To elope in a way. Not an intimate one, but a quick one as to avoid any unsavory people making appearances. Yes, that is what they’ll do. Their friends would love it.

Meanwhile, back in the red colonial house, Mr. Barbiel heaved a great sigh. Of course, they said he looked good. What else could they have said? He pulled his tucked shirt out of his slacks and reached up it to unbuckle the strap across his chest. They would never admit that he was a monstrosity. Never. He swallowed hard and yanked the hump from his back with more force than necessary. People just weren’t honest anymore. That was all he wanted! Honesty! Unlike his former wife…that lying, little…Massaging his hands out of their gnarled position he’d forced them into, Evan Barbiel picked up the soft hill of a hump that he’d buckled across his chest and frowning, carried it over to the armoire in the corner of the room. Why couldn’t he find one woman, one wife who would tell him the truth, no matter how much it hurt? Out of love, she’d have to do it out of love!

With a deep sigh, Mr. Barbiel opened the locked armoire and placed the would-be hump in, alongside the convincing fake teeth, scars, tattoo, extensive make-up kits and even more. All to create any ugly blotch on his skin that he’d like. For the next woman to judge. And the next and the next until he got what he wanted out of her. Honesty, he heaved another great sigh as he closed the armoire tightly and locked it again, that’s all he ever wanted. Honesty.

6. Short Story **written at writing camp/art and lit mag

The wailing of Matilda behind him did little to improve Francis’s mood. “But, I want to see him play the flute!” she cried, tugging at his brand new tunic, freshly made by Mother, as she stomped behind him.


“Be quiet,” he scorned her, grabbing her tugging hand and pulling her through the pressing crowd that was chattering and shouting away eagerly. The festival was well underway and every face not encased in a colorfully painted mask was wild with laughter. Matilda, on the other hand, cried even more loudly when her older brother lifted her up over a puddle of mud and even farther away from the troubadours with their flute and song.


“Why can’t I?” she whined, stumbling a bit over her dark green dress when he set her down again and Francis had to grab her hand once more to keep her from knocking into a nearby vendor’s table which was advertising cheeses.


“Because we’re busy,” Francis replied blankly, eyes following a slender maiden across the field with rosy cheeks and a purple dress dancing before another set of musicians. The entire festival was overwhelming, riddled with cries of, “Happy Carnival,” quick, strummed instruments, the silky slither of the flute and the swishing of skirts as women, such as the one before him, abandoned all and gave in to the lure of the music. Tearing his eyes away, for suddenly the preaching against such acts or thoughts by the bishop that morning had boomed into his ear, Francis turned back to his little sister, “Mother wants some new fabric. Dark green, she said.” Matilda tugged her own faded frock, rubbing the rough fabric between little hands, and pouted. “Let’s go-”


“Young squire!” Francis’s gaze was pulled away from his little sister once more to a vendor’s table next to him. The man behind it had taken down his mask, a green and purple thing, and set it beside his cask. “Wine, boy?” His green eyes glittered and when he grinned with chapped lips, laughter lines were drawn into his face. Francis held up his hand as if to decline, but the man poured him a glass anyway and pushed it forward. “Straight from France. The best you’ll ever taste. Eight pence.” Francis’s eyebrows shot up and his hand, which was just closing around the warm, sticky glass, opened once more and set it down with a little thud. The vendor frowned, “No, no, you won’t regret it, I assure you.” Francis felt his hand around the glass once more.


The air was cool, with a gentle wind that made the net holding Matilda’s hair rustle, but no one could hear it for a group of boys carrying a chicken had just run past, splattering the girl with mud. She began to howl once more. “Francis!” Tears streamed down her cheeks, leaving trails of dirt, and her teeth chattered, but Francis ignored her. The bag of shillings hidden in his cloak seemed to burn against his thigh. Just before Francis had stormed off with his fists tight, his father had stuffed it into his hand. “Get your mother her fabric,” he commanded, “and don’t you disobey me again.” And then he turned back to grab his bow and compete in the archery tournament, the very same tournament that Francis had trained for for months, taking his bow out every morning and shooting down the birds in the woods, tightening his bow string weekly and crafting his own arrows if one broke only to be declined to compete by his father. “You are my squire. You are not a knight.”


Francis’s cheek was still burning from the strike he received from his Father when he continued to argue and had seared even hotter when other squires, who had been allowed by their fathers, chuckled behind their bows. It was a mark of shame that he now carried through the festival and to the grinning man before him, winking as he reminded, “Only Eight pence.” Eight pence would easily lighten the money pouch, but he could still get Mother some fabric…the thin kind that would soon fray and fade back into the same frock as the one Matilda was wearing as she tugged at his own brand-new sleeve again.


“Francis…” she moaned and he shoved her away for a second time. Don’t disobey me. Father’s words were ringing in his ears like the bells in church this morning coupled with the gravelly cries of the Bishop warning sharply against temptation and the devil with his sharp, gripping claws, but beyond the vendor’s stall in the wet field on that gray morning, the young maiden was dancing again and some secret switch inside of Francis had turned on and his skin was crawling with goose bumps, his heart racing as her little breasts bounced up and down and her dress swished. He could almost smell her, the scent of sin in the form of warm sweat and sharp, metallic money. Father would never approve, Father would be angry, but Father, Francis bit his tongue, had refused him. The girl danced on and on. Matilda’s whiney voice melted away behind him to be replaced by the clang of coins as Francis reached into his coat pocket, eyes glassy, and produced the wallet. He counted out eight pence and placed them down on the table.


“Thank you, young squire,” the man chuckled passing Francis the wine and with his eyes still firmly upon the dancing woman, Francis raised it to his lips and took a sip.

7. Flash Fiction

We kissed in the park one time, hidden in the shadows of the slide with the buzzing of insects in our ears and the heat, even in the night, slowly setting our skin to 350 degree Fahrenheit. Your lips tasted like the time we took shots in the kitchen where sweaty and feverish, mine were, as you hold the cough medicine cup to my lips and tell me that a shot of medicine for me is worth the foul tasting vanilla vodka that we both choke on and now you’re holding two shots, one to my lips and another to yours and one, two, three, tip our heads back, sputter and swallow. In the park at night, you’re vanilla sweat and grape medicine, an addiction to be satisfied. I’m starved for the melt my name on your tongue, for you to give it back to me on a slip and slid neck, salt enough to fill the ocean.

The park at night is the garden of Eden and we taste the forbidden fruit, the serpents in the grass where we lay. You smell like that first time, the faint quiver of musky cologne and the fervor that makes me sudorific to you. The spark’s still there and it has multiplied.

We kiss in the park in the shadow of the slide and this time, we light the garden on fire.

8. Flash Fiction

She felt as though she’d lived a thousand lives, each new mouth full of the ashes of the old. She’d died in that funhouse when he’d broken into her screaming only to be reborn on splintered legs in a pink bathtub. She’d died when they told her to give it up and closed her file with a thud and crash and then she was reborn on the bedroom floor, pounding callused fists. She died once more and another time after that when they came knocking at her doors, ripping at the flesh on her back with their questions and their blame heavily on her knees, back on her knees and they suffocated her with duct-tape, don’t you sing, but she was the phoenix, reborn again and again from the ashes of her own immolation. She once heard that the phoenix song was sweet and clear, but on the same day the phoenix learned to sing, she learned to scream and on the same day the phoenix was reborn for the last time before a crowd she was a song bird no more. On the thousandth rebirth, she spoke in every voice.

I WILL NOT BE IGNORED

Well, yeah, so if you actually read this, I thank you. If you're willing to help I LOVE YOU