Volume 08

A SAPPY, OVER-EXAGGERATED RETELLING OF
AN AUTHORʼS IMPORTANT REALIZATION
Written by Charlotte Roberto
A cold gust of air breezes in through a haphazardly open window pane. A soft, eshy form
begrudgingly oats to the opening and slams it shut. An unimaginative documentary
about how pencils are made plays in the background. e cushioned being is a young
woman, skin ushed pink and hair as unraveled as a rat’s nest. She glances around her
surroundings and sees nothing but imaginary shadowed gures dancing in the shadows
created by ickering lights reminiscent of a holiday current but seemingly long gone
in spirit. A long, exasperated sigh slips out of her cracked lips. After then covering her
ushed skin with a lilac cocoon of eece, she solemnly sipped on a lackluster mixture
of poorly manufactured cocoa powder, moderately ltered tap water and hot buttered
rum. Feelings of loneliness washed over her like a cascade of ocean water lling an
opening that, unbeknownst to it, was actually the throat of a living being gasping for
anything but its salty, liquid death.
Her cell phone lights up with two different requests from friends to hang out. e
woman ignores these messages and encases her body in thick cloth, xes her hair,
paints her face, and positions herself in front of the door. She looks down at her watch
and observes the time: 8:04PM. Unless her memory deceives her, she remembers that
at this time of night, the plaza—unofficial mecca of her city’s downtown center—
would be lit up like a Christmas tree, ttingly so for the time of year. Seeing as how
she was sufficiently wrapped in her own and artiicially created warmth, the woman
ventured into the heart of the city, hoping the vicinity to such a place would instill her
own slow beating, blood-pumping organ with enough lovable sustainability to vanquish
the lone stillness that currently lled it.
She neatly parking in an asphalt parking lot dark enough to be mistaken as a large, vast
and hapless void. Fearlessly crossing this battleeeld manifested in her David Lynchesque
mind, the woman makes her way to one of the chilled metal benches sprinkling
the plaza. As her pupils adjust to the darkness, she looks through the glistening snowwakes
to see multiple dark blobs in motion across the way from her. ey politely pass one
another as some exit the area and others come in to it. Squinting, the woman realizes
these shapes are nothing but couples arm in arm, so close they form some sort of new
entity, a creation of being conjoined by love and tenderness. She looks down at her
eece covered hands, wondering what it would be like to have them held once again.