Your Writing Is Honestly Amazing You Have A Lot Of Talent Wow

The Paper Just Said a Boy Left, The Obit Did Not Specify Homicide or Suicide.

the blue house catches on fire and passes it on like a secret, making lips out of wind, whispering its neighbor to charcoal.

in the basement of the house that heard and caught, a boy is already lighting something of his own and signing it off in kerosene as if that clear,  chemical wash of to-be light is exactly what letters are made of.

he goes up to his bedroom on the third floor to wait for the rise. the ceiling caves in as the carpet starts to fester with heat. the room is biting down, rafters and floorboards chew in towards heartbeats. the boy forgets his name, tries to say it to himself, but without air to inhale, the sounds he keeps his brain in feels too see-through to say.

he stands up, waiting, his biology screams. he manages to squeeze out a sentence, one sentence to himself once he figures that two fires are at work. it’s a little question, and it happens over and over running over tongue it until it smokes, like a match that goes too black to light. he asks: “which one, which one, which one?”

                                - C. Essington 

Excited to have a short story in the upcoming issue of Bridge Eight

Joan of Arc’s Area Code

I have kept the fire on hold for eight months now- the dial tone is burning my left ear into decibels of charcoal.

I have re-recorded my answering message to say that I am out of town (and also newly made of ash and second-story window exits.)

I have slept next to the receiver, receiving, as the blips of flame came at me like candle light.

I know that, on the other side of the spiraling teal cord, there is an orange and a yellow and a red all gnawing through the same heated throat, all of its light just waiting to get to the talking.

But I do not want to start with the hellos or the incinerations; I would like to skip the going down and get right to the coming up for air- as though this were water, as though all the ocean’s burning salts were synonymous to a lit stove.

I want the after photo — the stale, post-noise sound of nothing happening. That saw-tooth quiet coming in like a wave.

I want the lost-conversation hum of the house being suddenly empty and the me being suddenly not on fire —

the phone cradled in a soft, home-dialed, plastic-blue.

                             - C. Essingotn

today the air is dim, oyster-shell dim cut through with sheens of rain, coming from far off, nearly off-screen, with cold signed at the bottom of every cloud-bank.

the sky is longer than the word it takes up or the words it takes down when snow happens in front of the billboards, the ads, going white.

                              - C. Essington

Writing game: How about a phone number scribbled on a bit of paper, two dollars in change, a pen, a receipt for a restaurant, and a pack of cigarettes?

Sure thing, thank you. 

Inventory:1. A phone number scribbled on bit of paper2. Two dollars in change3. A pen4. A receipt for a restaurant 5. A pack of cigarettes

There is a piece of paper in my pocket, folded twice over, like pigeon’s wings, or my tongue in a fight, or how I sleep when I’m sad. It’s white with black print and it says that I should be full by now. There’s also receipt from my dinner. After eating through six truffle mushrooms curled in oil and laid over pasta, I left with some coins in my pocket and not much else, my mouth ringing with salt and linguini and fungi I can’t afford but swallowed anyway. 

I’m not full yet despite the seven digits that sit like a brand by my left thigh, so I take out ink and cross them into black hashes. There is being bloated and there is being starving and I’d rather fit in one of those places than be left alone in the middle, a stranger’s affection listed to me in numbers. 

I light something and watch it dwindle, a white column of paper singing in orange and going grey. I think that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing too. It’s not great, I’m still hungry and aching and made of willow leaves and molars, but I can stand upright in my name and store my grievances on the dark sides of my quarters and breathe like I love it, but don’t really have a reason for it all the time.  

           - C. Essington

Thank you for this and your support,

If you want to play this writing game, send me a theoretical inventory of five items in an ask and I’ll try to write a person for it. 

but what if it were

nice/ honeyed/ came with its own heart/ already done up in light blue muslin and set to music, wait, the right music.

and what if it 

didn’t hurt (too much)/ came soft in places like the sky comes whole/ and looked like cream and felt like it too and worked like it too. 

and what if

a pulse doesn’t have to feel like a punchline that keeps getting told without a joke to explain it/ (get it, get it, get it)/ and a life doesn’t have to feel like a pressure/ and your head doesn’t always have to be the thing that starts you and ends you and is you. 

                                         - c. essington 

I love the poems you choose for your page. They're absolutely lovely! :)

Well thank you, your readership is greatly appreciated. 

- c. essington

~I have a flash fiction piece published in Newfound Journal~

it’s here: http://newfoundjournal.org/current-issue/flash-claire-oleson/

I covered her neck with my left palm as I carried her up the hill. I’d been letting my hair grow and it had been growing fast, slipping my whole body back into the version of “girl” my grandparents understood. Oh, she wasn’t heavy, just cold and still. My hair grew down in tens of cowlicks, each edge gesturing out differently, looking like briar or a shoddy charcoal drawing. Underneath my palm, I could feel the pocket-knife slits of gill studding her thyroid. I knew the house, which burned and simmered in its yellow glow, was empty. I knew my hair ended around my clavicle, jutting off suddenly like scorpion tails.

Her rib cage was slight, her skin almost like a frog’s in its sheen and lichen-colored tint. I carried her up the hill and it didn’t even exhaust me. My hair got in my eyes, making it seem like I was hiking through a bramble patch. But the air was clear and the dark was building itself up like a good story. I wondered where I’d end. Her breathing seemed to come off from miles away, all of it slow and tired and as if it had touched the mountains before it bled out from her mouth. What she’d been doing, what she’d been being, I wasn’t sure. I’d never seen anything like her before, but I tend to be a calm person, so I am okay with what’s terrifying and what’s new and what’s soft to carry uphill.

Once we’re at the door, I kick the handle in and the yellow hits us like a pierced yolk pooling across ceramic. I set her on the table, her long body composing its life distantly. I get water from the tap and fill a glass and drink it while leaning on the counter. She turns once in her sleep. I think she can breathe the air. She’s been looking like she can. I suspect she’ll be up soon. I wonder what she speaks, if she speaks at all. I wonder if she’s ever killed someone. I wonder if her hair grows fast, jeweled here and there with clots of duckweed, slipping over her eyes when she works hard. I will go fill the bathtub. I will carry lilly pads up from the pond in my palms, holding their floppy lives close to my sweater. 

I will ask if she likes acrylics or the wind or staying in bed on saturdays. I’m sure we’ll be fine. I’m sure we’ll get over each other at some point. Years from now, after we’ve already divorced, I’ll see her in some cafe, her webbed toes cushioned in elongated oxfords, and we’ll do the thing where we hurt and then we nod and then I order my latte and walk out like fire. I’ve already left her, so I fill the tub and I smile at the water. It’s new and terrifying and so soft to carry uphill.

       -c. essington