Suburban Median

By Myna Chang

 

We see the body on the way to drop our kids off at school. It’s in the median at the Parkway stoplight. We don’t recognize what it is, at first. Understanding comes in pieces: leg, arm, slender foot. Naked, of course.

We try to look away. But is it someone we know? Nestled there in the ragweed and road debris, snarled hair hiding her face.

We gather over coffee. Talk about what we saw, how we tried to protect our children from it. Close your eyes, baby. Blood pounding in our ears.

One of us admits her husband looked, driving past, looked and kept looking. His breath ragged. She doesn’t say any more, but we know. He liked it. That helpless curve of hip.

We expect the authorities to remove the body. Cover her with a blanket. Gentle the evidence from under her nails. But when we go pick our kids up, she’s still there. No police cars, no crime scene tape.

We steel our nerves. We go to the station. We file a report. We demand: Didn’t you see? Who was she? Who did this to her? We hope for help.

The police officers raise their eyebrows, say there’s no body. Maybe it was a trick of the light, they say, or a dead deer. Maybe you imagined it.

No, we say, we didn’t imagine a dead body in the median! It wasn’t an animal, it was a woman!

The men shrug. I don’t know what to tell you.

We still see her. The bend of her back. Tangle of limbs. Faceless. It could be any of us. We think it might be all of us.

 


Myna Chang (she/her) is the author of The Potential of Radio and Rain (CutBank Books). Her writing has been selected for Flash Fiction America (W. W. Norton), Best Small Fictions, and CRAFT. She has won the Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction and the New Millennium Award in Flash Fiction. She hosts the Electric Sheep speculative fiction reading series. Find her at MynaChang.com, or on Twitter or Bluesky at @MynaChang.

Image credit: R. Nial Bradshaw via a Creative Commons license.


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“I can experience joy alone”

By Tristan Richards

 

I meditate on this line while hiking
away from the waterfall, and a doe
pokes her head out of the snow,
watching me, her eyes black and beady,
her body sandy, the color of spring
gravel turned mud. She is beautiful.
I freeze, my heart in my throat.
I become too aware of the ice
surrounding me, melting but still
cold enough to take me down.
She tracks me as I walk, alert
but faking confidence, toward
the parking lot. I think about how
strange it is to be so close to nature
and also surrounded by cars.
It is wild to set natural growth next
to what comes at you so quickly.
When I pass, she stands on top of
the hill and I see her full body,
white stripe running from her throat
down her belly, somehow calm and
ready to bolt at the same time.
I think each of us scared the other.
It is hard to exist in this world
as a woman and not be afraid.

 


Tristan Richards (she/her) is a poet and student affairs professional from Minnesota. She is the author of two self-published chapbooks: Not All Challenges Are For Us (2022) and The Year Was Done Right (2019). Her poems have been published in Preposition: The Undercurrent Anthology, on the Mankato Poetry Walk & Ride, and in Firethorne. In 2022, Tristan facilitated daily poetry writing workshops throughout the month of April for National Poetry Writing Month. She holds an MA in Leadership in Student Affairs from the University of St. Thomas and a BA in Communication Studies from Gustavus Adolphus College. You can find her on Instagram @tristanwritespoems or at tristanwritespoems.weebly.com.

Photo credit: “Doe in the Snow” by Richard Carter via a Creative Commons license.


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Fury

By Skye Wilson

 

I want to break his bones for what he did.
No metaphors, just snap against my skin;
pain blooming in his eyes like burns on flesh.
I’ll scorch all of the skin he touched me with.

I want to grow to twice my usual size,
drink in the pain and terror in his eyes,
feel the power as I tower in starlight,
inhale the fear he sensed on me that night.

Tell Salome the Baptist’s head won’t do,
I take more than half a kingdom to subdue:
I need rivers of the blood of all the men
who kill their lovers and who hurt my friends.
Give me the lives and wives they don’t deserve.
Give me a platter: on it, place the world.

 


Skye Wilson is a bisexual Scottish writer, living in Newcastle. She has an MSc in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh. Her work is preoccupied with the body and belonging. Find her words at skye-wilson.com or on Twitter @skyegwilson.

Image by Sharon Brogan via a Creative Commons license.


A note from Writers Resist:

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.