by Sally R. Simon
Blue
I’m in high school and Joni’s voice fills my room with melancholy oxygen. I breathe it in, expand my lungs with gray clouds. I have no tattoos, only the outline of a heart waiting to be filled. Drinking Boone’s Farm late night in the park, passing on the weed, wondering if someone will look my way, see through this hippie wannabe. I ride the wave of Blue through crowded hallways, feeling both lonely and alone. But lying on my bed, the simplicity of a single word wraps itself around me like a blanket, keeping me safe until love comes knocking at my door.
Down to You
Wanting a boyfriend so bad, I join rows of coeds lined up like balloons at a carnival. Spread our legs for boys to pop and win a prize. No names, just a plush teddy to take home and sit on a shelf, a soft reminder to harden my heart. Then came you. You, with tousled hair and a windswept smile, an inconstant angel. You mumble my name into the pillow we share and down a shot of Jack. Just when I think you’re here, you’re gone. Gone across town to a room with batik sheets and a dreamcatcher hanging from a crystal chandelier. Joni says it all comes down to you. She puts her eggs in one basket and invites me to breakfast for scrambled eggs and hash with her lyric lilt. We eat and eat until we could eat no more, before going back to bed to cry.
Hiss of Summer Lawns
Mama tells me to marry a doctor, a decent man with a white-picket fence in his pocket, so I do. Fairy tale glitter makes the grass grow, a velvet carpet to keep the toddlers safe as they play on the slide, no need for the corner playground where other children run free. Cuisinart, stainless steel, and salad spinners, the best that money could buy, clutter the kitchen. Dahlias paint a rosy picture, hide snakes that curl tight until they can stretch in the midday sun. They slither and hiss their way to the edge of the lawn, wondering if the grass is greener. Seeing only withered weeds, I whisper the answer, hoping they can hear. I drink lemonade, dream of the day the asphalt cools and I can cross into another song that doesn’t turn my darkness into regret.
Sally Simon (ze/hir) lives in the Catskills of New York State. Hir short fiction has appeared in Hobart, Truffles Literary Magazine, (mac)ro(mic), and elsewhere. When not writing, ze’s either traveling the world or stabbing people with hir epee. Read more at www.sallysimonwriter.com.
Emerge Literary Journal 