Parts

There are so many parts. Kept in so many places. Compartments. Boxes. Bags. Bottles of fragile glass. Crumpled notes. Silent emotions. Screaming thoughts. Swept under the rug, in full view for all to see. No one cares to look. Feet itch. Throats burn and choke. There is pain. A fullness in the head. Legs are terrified. Hips want to cry. I don’t know why. Go, in search of questions. Lost with all your parts. Unable to fix. Unable to stop. Unable to flee. Unable to look you in the eye. Scared of what you already know. Parts of a whole.

From Guest Contributor Courtney King

Reflection

I sit by the fireplace in the cabin I rent, sipping steaming tea,staring at the painting above the mantel.

The woman’s face has a distinct redness to her cheeks and lips. Her deepbrown eyes match the color of her hair which is tied in a bun with onesmall red rose tucked behind her left ear, her head tilting ever soslightly. Her pearl necklace drapes neatly around her neck and shestands tall, her gown showing off her shapely hips.

There’s no date on the painting or artist signature.

The young woman in the painting is me.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Wavestar Bang

He lost her, but not as he thought: not to the cancer, or a car accident, or to some art student.

She was dancing alone to Wavestar in the dark, only the nightlight of the stove touching her naked toes, her knees, her swishing hips. She spun, hair whipping, neck caning, hands flying like children playing through the twilight air of the highway with the windows down, wrists like autumn leaves whose time had come.

She became transparent, translucent, spinning faster and faster, and glitter evaporated from the feet up, a tornado of silver steam.

He fell right through her.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

After graduating with a BA in English from Vassar College, Brook landed her first paid writing job as a reporter for a small-town Colorado newspaper. She left it to travel to India, where she fell in love, got married and canceled her ticket home. She and her husband Gaurav write freelance articles for dozens of publications, including Outpost, Ecoworld and Little India. In 2013, they launched www.BluePlanetJournal.com, which she edits and writes for. She also teaches writing at a community college, is earning her MFA in Writing at Lindenwood University, and is writing a novel.

Drum

There is one bright dancer among them. Her hands trace the music onto air. The “U” of her hips sways, telling bedroom stories. Melodies float her toward the youngest doumbek player, barely bearded.

She bends to him, smiling, flirting even, to the ululating tongues of all her watching sisters but as the hafla pauses to draw a collective breath, I see the truth: her focus is not the boy drummer. She shines for the pulled-skin drum.

An elderly man leans near me. “It is all that remains of her husband.”

“He played?” I am confused.

He shrugs. “He had enemies.”

From Guest Contributor Laura Lovic-Lindsay