Creative Colloquy strives to highlight the South Sound literary community & build relationships based on mutual admiration of the written word.
[Newest] Stories
sea salt caramel fudge
sits delicately inside a tin
it has traveled across continent borders
to wait for the upset stomach
of one
who has grown so tired
of plain rice & ramen
how does it taste they ask
when simple riches are washed down
with pepto bismol & tums
…
Behind dingy cellophane,
the photograph in the family album
encases me, where I grimace like I’m behind bars—
lips stretched taut across gritted teeth,
eyes plaintive, fixing my father, the resident cameraman,
asking any witness not to believe
the bottom half of my face.
My age, ten,
my hair, mostly brushed, my pantsuit, floral,
a K-Mart layaway acquisition,
my hands, clutching a certificate reading
“Honorable Mention.”
A bone thrown by the school district arts committee,
a pack of energetic, under-employed moms who
anoint the preteen illuminati each spring.
You do not have my consent to label me
I have not so much as muttered the words required for you to put me in the boxes which shape your reality.
If you seek clarity about my identity,
you may ask me an open-ended question.
You may invite me into conversation where you will expose your mental limits, and I will expose mine.
I will hope for the lines of my limits to intersect with the lines of yours,
that we might co-create escape routes to different dimensions
and we will dance and play in dialogue and nuance.
My dearest perceptive one,
how do you know that I am not truly here?
I can be,
or could be,
but this body is exhausting, so
I am coasting in a space
just above and behind my eyeballs
where I don’t have to deal with full body chills
and the feeling there’s a hoard of termites
chewing into my cervical vertebrae at the base of my skull.
...
