riverrun Vol. 47

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Take me.We stayed there for years and years and years, but when I checked the time, theclock seemed to think it was only a few hours.The Florist had been rubbing my hands when our ring fell off. He tried to reachfor it, but the tide was already pulling, our ring was being roiled in the sand. Itglinted in the water, and even though it should have been so far that no eye couldcatch it, I saw its silver.Let him go. I saidHim?It. Let it go. It’s alright. Just… let it go.Love Always,Rachel82
river salt by Hannah R. CromwellThe girl finds the mermaid after school; it’d washed ashore in the nighttime,nudged along by lapping tongues of river water all the way up the beach anddown the gullet of the petrified drainage pipe that dribbles into the creek. Upsidedown,its open mouth gapes, its lips lilac blue and shimmery like a half-healedbruise. The scales of its tail gleam peacock green and blue; tiny fingernails glinton its webbed hands like little polished abalone and slimy crab shells clinging insidethe tangled pillowcase of its outstretched hair.She crouches on the hot sand, dry grass scritching at the knobs of her anklebones,and she flexes her toes and watches the biting flies hop and twirl atop its flank.So close, she sees the pale gemstones of sand stuck to the mermaid’s eyelashes—sparkling.Much cooler than a jellyfish, she thinks. And less ugly.In the haze of the sun, its pale hair burns gold at the roots; it must be a princess.She whittles away hours inside the shallows, wading with her pantlegs pulled upto her crotch and kicking her feet through the waves. She conjures up a world forthe mermaid: magical sea glass, evil octopus wizards. A spindly white tree tallerthan the church tower juts out of the beach’s bay like the mast of a sunken ship.Sometimes she’ll see an osprey clutching to its fingerbone branches, strippingaway at squirming fish. The water there is shallow, but the girl never splashesclose for fear of waking the weird creatures she knows to lurk in the tangles of itssubmerged roots. Now, she decides, it is a castle spire; the birds are dragons,spinning leagues overhead.There’d been a pier here once, and when the water pulls away a little island ofsharp rocks and slime pokes up—hairy with green algae. It is not an island, thegirl knows, but the domed, balding head of a sleeping, buried giant; the scuttlingcrabs and wriggling shrimp are its headlice and the smell of cold air wafting offthe water its briny breath.Real princesses need servants, the girl remembers, so she uses up an hour plungingthrough puddles after half-invisible ghost shrimp, spearing her dinky plasticnet into the water and occasionally scooping up a twitching shrimp—they glistenin the stringy folds of the net. They are people from the mermaid’s kingdom, shereasons—cursed, transformed. She plops them all in a red bucket for safekeeping.The bucket she hefts with two hands—slopping over with too much river water,spattering her feet and shirtfront—up the dunes to thump next to the mermaid’sfluke.By dinnertime, with her mother hollering her name songlike down the hill, the83
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riverrun
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What Changed the Man? | Tristan Hin
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A Note from the Editor-in-Chief:Dea
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nonfiction“The challenge of nonfi
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Anxiety Driven Damsel in Distress b
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desire that of me, but I still felt
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taught me how to believe I wasn’t
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The boy paused, thinking about what
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Prayer House by Brandon FlaneryHerC
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That’s right. My dad brought me h
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The bees stop.The questions stop.An
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On the stretcher lays a motionless
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poetry“Genuine poetry can communi
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The Barkeep by A.E. NewellThis bar
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Drowning Out Man by Grace ShepherdI
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Alas, that quilt,by nature’s law,
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For the rest of our lives, tomorrow
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Memories that were host to a smilef
Page 37 and 38: If Only by A.E. NewellThe wind whis
Page 39 and 40: Little Puritan girls in whiteSingin
Page 41 and 42: Missed by Natasha PepperlMaybe it
Page 43 and 44: to keep my knees from shaking.Tell
Page 45 and 46: Nightfall in Palestine by Natasha P
Page 47 and 48: Rich by Rebecca SachajAfter C.P. Ca
Page 49 and 50: Tava by Skylerann Gorgonio-WongFor
Page 51 and 52: To Park at the College by Rebecca S
Page 53 and 54: Trapped by A.E. NewellI have a life
Page 55 and 56: Vanity by Rebecca SachajCould I be
Page 57 and 58: When My Rapist Dies by Irina Amouzo
Page 59 and 60: fiction“Some day you will be old
Page 61 and 62: And So She Flew by Taylor Shackelfo
Page 63 and 64: And from my hands, the wind tore th
Page 65 and 66: my house and texted my friend Vienn
Page 67 and 68: My mouth fell open, and tears burne
Page 69 and 70: Katie sat on the bed next to me and
Page 71 and 72: The senator entered a café where t
Page 73 and 74: rose upon the horizon and ivory spi
Page 75 and 76: If Owen Ramus had been someone else
Page 77 and 78: Not a peep from the boy was heard,
Page 79 and 80: with a skeleton frame was facing aw
Page 81 and 82: wards him, the father felt a sense
Page 83 and 84: He didn’t make me feel overrated,
Page 85 and 86: Love,RachelDear,I saw you today. Di
Page 87: You are not your slacks.You are not
Page 91 and 92: around her.At recess, she prefers t
Page 93 and 94: Only her mother, nosing through a p
Page 95 and 96: her tongue. It’s brown, a smear o
Page 97 and 98: Feb. 10th 17Christ, today was a mes
Page 99 and 100: I watered Ferndenand like you said.
Page 101 and 102: I’m the exact same person that I
Page 103 and 104: So no shit it didn’t go any furth
Page 105 and 106: Just “what would you do if you hu
Page 107 and 108: lungs, kidney and liver too. Instan
Page 109: I still don’t think I can tell he
Page 112 and 113: Letter from the Art Selection Commi
Page 114 and 115: Blue Horse Eye by Kendall StearsAcr
Page 116 and 117: Drifting Underneath by Simeon Wuthi
Page 118 and 119: Finite Perception by Simeon Wuthier
Page 120 and 121: The Gaze by Jaden BrownColored Penc
Page 122 and 123: Upright by Tiff BlakelyGraphite on
Page 124 and 125: Letter from the Online Committee:An
Page 126: riverrun Vol. 48 SubmisssionsIf you
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riverrun Vol. 47

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