Breadcrumb #653

NICK PERILLI

A frame of a person carrying a tray of small, lit tealight candles emerged from the kitchen. The restaurant pattered with conversation. Outside, the midwinter afternoon approached evening. The flames danced on their wicks in excitement.

The chef’s hand shoved the frame into the busy lanes between the tables, where servers sped, and drunken patrons staggered. But the frame did this every night, so it slipped darkly around every full body, its long arms and spindly legs laying the dancing tea lights between the people and their food. 

One at the table with the couple breaking up. Trying not to make a scene. The fire shined on both their wet eyes, perhaps enough that the two of them remembered why they got together in the first place. The flames were interested, of course, but it wasn’t the frame’s concern.

The frame had candles to place. One at a time. Between the conversations and problems of families, friends and partners.

A new server bounding down the lane with a tray full of wet glasses crashed hard into the frame, but it kept its perfect balance. The new server fell with his tray of glasses, into shards of cutting glass slick with beer and soda. He screamed. Not the frame’s concern. Even the fire in the frame’s tray didn’t care. They stood tall—unwavering as they peered at the fallen and bleeding server.

“Even the fire in the frame’s tray didn’t care.”

One candle with the lonely widower sitting surrounded by the pictures of her family, all of them lost to her in one way or another. Three between the banquet of businesspeople, the flames falling immediately to their gesticulating arms. 

One final tealight at the empty table by the large glass window, where the evening poured in from the street. The frame placed the candle between two empty place settings. Another frame seated in front of one grabbed the frame’s arm, slipping between it like a puzzle piece.    

“I didn’t see you there,” our frame said, trying to pull away once.

“What are you doing putting candles on tables?” the other frame asked, slipping further into our frame.

“It’s what I’ve always done.”

The other frame shook its head. “You’re supposed to be right between all this.” It eased into our frame’s veins. “Neither here nor there.”

Our frame dropped its tray, dotted with dry white wax. It clanged on the floor. A server barreling by picked it right up. It hummed in her blistered fingers. Our frame shuddered.

“Is that right?”  it asked, its arm dripping sweat into the black seams between the floor tiles.

The other frame’s hand ended where our frame’s arm began. The other frame reared back, pulling our frame with it over the lip of the window and through the restaurant’s twilight glass. The mass of customers, mouths wet with unwiped food aglow in the tealights, didn’t hear or notice as the two of them slipped between any of this—all of this. Bored, the flames stood tall on the candles, reaching to tease the rats in the ceiling. Then, they snuffed into rising smoke. 

During the next evening’s rush, the chef reached out from the kitchen and shoved through empty air. An absence crossed through her, but only briefly. She picked up a tray of tealights waiting for her by the server station, their flames dancing in somber excitement, and slipped into the busy lanes between the tables.

• • •

Breadcrumb #652

TRACE DEPASS

family court fucks up being a child. adopted by my grandmother,
born when mom was 16, i think. i choose not which man but which
boy i might become. i remember migrating. three, yet no parents.
then court saying the boy old enough to choose this time.
in 4th grade, visitation rights allowed me my moms
& she was a fly hood moms, she had edges, my mom still
calls herself "a bird". this how she loves herself. i think. i didn't
get the chance to know her how nests know branches.

i tap her and custody paper fall like bird feathers onto the floor. here
black foster homes are broken trees. & i hatched from the system
perpetuating itself wherein most poems don’t make it out.
mom came to me
when i was five, & seven, a couple times like
you know
i'm your mother,... right?
i say yes

she must need to know i know.
& this is how i love my moms, i think. &, i know i inherited her flinch
at those that say
they'll “fly,” yet they'll
“...return.”
when mom can’t find
word to peck - i tell her

i wasn’t able to mosaic
whichever promise that my father left inside as shrapnel, but
i want to.

& even after i am a pile of feathered bone dancing
into dust, i still might not find “enough”. but
i did make sure to keep searching for it, for
whomever needs them a man. i dig & claw a way with
wings, & like a god in nest,
gray clouds escape under me as mists, or his myths

& i bite, chew grit through
where the his absence emptied, like thunder, into my nest,
like

“wow. is this a cage i bit too? this want to be enough
for you - how my mouth mistakes birdcage for
stubborn twigs? was dna what st(r)uck as storm & let
blood somersaults across my body? this whole time?
this why i was born unmade? because since birth i
was thrown in this cage wherein not a thing in it
rattled like a parent's love? how? did my father think
i was a Phoenix? these his ashes he forgot in me, or
am i burning? & is that a lock? i only know five
answers for certain...”

1. i am not my father’s Phoenix.
2. home must be wherever we kiss to keep the
warmth in & shut the smoke out.
3. neglected & abandoned are fires that could only be
manmade.
4. vaseline -athing protects the skin from crisps
because some boys’ wings hurt more, burn better,
than the birds.
5. lightning. who knows if it’s what he left me, or why
he left her. but if my father’s answer for why he gone
had a name, it would be lightning.

• • •

Breadcrumb #651

ALLISON PUNCH

Every writer has the same story they keep telling, on repeat, in different disguises, until they get it out of them. My queerness began as a fiction. 

It was the fall of my senior year of college. That season was one of the best of my life, crisp jean jacket days, an old home in Kerrytown I shared with five women who are still some of my closest friends, with a farmers market down the street and a neighboring home of boys I’ve not kept in touch with, Michigan football, and a slow, earnest coming out process. 

I fell off my bike on the sidewalk off Huron Street, a busy road connecting my parents’ neighborhood to the hospital, campus, and all the way down to the Lurie Terrace retirement home where I waited tables for my first job. I was always running late in college and the day of my creative writing workshop critique, I tried to cut over onto the grass to avoid slow walkers. The sidewalk and grass parted, uneven, my front tire caught on the concrete, and I flew forward. What I remember most about this fall was the way my travel coffee mug and water bottle left my backpack, simultaneously hit the sidewalk, bounced with a loud crack, as the pedestrians I was cutting off rushed to retrieve them, asking if I was okay. 

I scraped my hands and shins; my legs bleeding underneath my tights. I arrived to class five minutes late and sat in the small, U-shaped classroom with wounded hands palms down on my lap. My classmates critiqued my piece as I listened silently to advice, agreeing or justifying my decisions in my head as they spoke. 

In the summer of 2016, I attended a panel in a warm, crowded room at DC’s LGBTQ literary festival where a panelist bemoaned, “we need queer stories told of life after coming out and before death.” The co-panelists nodded, audience members snapped in affirmation, I furiously tweeted the quote – all of us in agreement about the need for diversity of queer lit. There’s more to queer life than coming out, I rage! 

Many queer people will tell you it’s easier to tell those who you don’t know, especially when you’re first coming out. My liberal, college town was also my hometown. I would cautiously create an OkCupid profile, only to delete it once I saw people from high school. 

“Many queer people will tell you it’s easier to tell those who you don’t know, especially when you’re first coming out.”

I have so many memories of loneliness from college. I spent nights under the twinkle lights of my dorm room while my roommates were out with boys, thinking I had high standards or couldn’t find the right guy. I drunkenly kissed boys at parties and remained a virgin. Sophomore year, I developed a crush on a curly haired girl with an eyebrow ring who gave me butterflies. One night, I confessed my crush to my best friend in the gender neutral bathroom down the hall from her dorm room, only to never speak of it for years. 

I can still feel myself holding back from sharing details in my writing. I’ve written and deleted the scene in the dorm bathroom over and over, not sure if its because it doesn’t fit in the essay or if I’m ashamed to share the way I closeted myself. 

Senior year, the loneliness shifted. I couldn’t ignore the small but mighty crushes on long-haired femme girls in my women’s studies classes. I spent evenings quietly reading Jeanette Winterson and wondering if someone would notice. I knew now what I had been avoiding for years: my loneliness was distinctly queer. I didn’t know how to place my queerness within my understanding of myself, or how to move forward. I remained quietly closeted, consumed with the question of why I didn’t know sooner. This question still shows up in every single piece I write. 

My final fall was when I took my first college creative writing class - where I fell back in love with storytelling, and also where I first wrote my queerness for the first time publicly, sharing the pages for the class to read. We went on a field trip to the art museum, and I found myself staring at photographs of rolling sand dunes, unable to write about anything other than women’s bodies. I know now what that experience meant - I was horny. 

I’ve been trying to expel my coming out story since before it began. Queer literature is oversaturated with coming out narratives, yet for so long I sat with my queerness close to my chest, held in silence like accepting a workshop critique. 

And yet. Here I am writing another coming out narrative. Here I am because the story has still not been written out of me. 

I started with the sidewalk, with the way my tire couldn’t quite hit the concrete, the way I flew off my bike, scraped my hands, sent my coffee mug flying. I can’t get the image of that sidewalk out of my head and want desperately to write some metaphor about falling from the bike and fall the season. The way I wrote my story quietly in a class full of strangers before I shared it with those closest to me. But instead, just like that fall day, I get up and carry on, hands open this time.

• • •

Breadcrumb #650

AARON CLODE

• • •

Breadcrumb #649

KATELAN FOISY

All the days, they faded away.  They faded the way a sunset fades, first vibrant, streaking the sky then slowly becoming muted as the night creeps in. The smell of dead roses permeates the room. I haven’t washed out the vase, only sat it in front of a painting applying layers. I think of you as I laminate these layers. You're layered in a way I dream about often. The seasons are changing, Autumn leaves are falling to the ground waiting for the bones of winter. Hay tantas capas en el invierno.

Winter days pass too fast. I feel them slip by as I dip brushes into paint. It all feels like a jumbled motion to move ahead. I want to be in Mexico. We're in the 'tween weather now; snow and rain, the space that falls between seasons. I'm in the space betwixt two lives and cities. I miss the days I would spend all night reading, listening to the droplets and anointing myself with oils. Those were the evenings when the moths came. Small moths entered first. They kissed the doorways and camouflaged with curtains. Then they became bigger. The large wings flapped against flickering bulbs. They always carried messages. Rikker dovo adrée tute’s see — keep that a secret.

“I miss the days I would spend all night reading, listening to the droplets and anointing myself with oils.”

Moths, moths, moths.

When I was a child I dreamed I’d live in Paris, speak French, and dress in all white, smoking slim cigarettes from my moth colored chaise lounge. Sometimes I'd dream of being a starlet in Mexico and Italy. My house would be filled with rich fabrics and hand painted partitions. I never wanted anything new, I always wanted imprinted memories. This itself imprinted the path to cameras and film.

I love the flicker of Super 8 film, the way it flips and sputters adding layers of time to moments captured. I love knowing those moments will never happen quite the same ever again, even if reenacted, or part of a routine. I like knowing in a moment’s time that you can capture past present and future all at once. I like to think of memory as the flickering of film or the flapping of a moth’s wings against night air. My memories are in soft focus. Your face blending into the backgrounds like pastels. I no longer remember the crisp details of time or the seasons as they change. You've become like a ghost to me: unseen but heard, making me soft and surreal. We’re invisible creatures only known by melody, words, and images. Always the same faces, always the same shapes morphing continuously. Memory has a distinct taste. It's kind of like red but softer. You make me a romantic.

• • •