The Fire Going Down Until Its Just  Loose Heat And Fruit, The Quick Lisps Of Faces Caught At Its Edges,

prof: you use some awkward phrasing in this sentence here

me: me too

prof: what

me, with a brain full of exhausted bees: what

Engine Flooding

You can see the cellphone, flushed teal underneath at least three feet of water, shiver when the pond’s surface gets frayed by the wind. You are on your hands and knees.

Just had a short fiction piece published by Maudlin House! Please consider taking a look if you have the interest and a speck of time to do so. 

I’d also love to hear what anyone thinks about it, any comments/ critiques would be immensely appreciated. 

http://maudlinhouse.net/engine-flooding/

color palettes

               - c. essington 

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 

- c. essington

Short story of mine published by Spry Magazine— check it out if you have the time and interest to do so. TW for some violence. 

A tiny piece up on Moonsick Magazine

Throwback weird art time to add some picture to the page. 

Weird art time? Weird art time.

- C. Essington

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

Here's another photo from my great grandfather Axel's fishing trip out west in 1928. I'll probably put a few more up before I'm through.