I’m so excited to announce that my short story Log Jam has been published by a lovely journal called The Bohemyth. This piece, about the often inexplicable nature of depression, is very dear to me and was in submission for a long time, so I’m deeply thankful it found a home. It would mean the world to me if you read it.
I just need to make it through this party. I just need to make it through this party and then I can cry.
Alright. I can do this. Just fix a smile on my face and no one will ever know. Say cheese! Now hold it. Hoooold it. Damn, the corners are twitching. My cheeks hurt. I probably look like I’m snarling. As though I’m about to eat someone just to get out of here.
~ a fictional letter-story ~
To the woman on the bench left of the crabapple tree by the fountain, who wears that coat with all the buttons and I think has black hair but might just have really dark brown hair, and who yesterday was looking much sadder than usual —
You are alone today.
And what an aloneness it is.
There is space when you are alone. Such roominess is uncommon for you. You feel compelled to test it, to savor it, so you stretch your arms out wide and wave them in propeller circles like that exercise in middle school gym class. All space. Space in your apartment, space in your head. You wave all the arms of your thoughts, hear the airy swish as they feel out their boundary-less quarters.
You can do things alone that you wouldn’t dare in front of others. Secret thrills.
Her heart was always hungry.
Its ribs showed all the time.
She tried and tried but it never felt full.
Pointing Telescopes | S. Noel Brady 