Flashlight in the Ocean

This is where I want to wander, swirl and curve, to linger

ekphrastic for Emily Carr's "Beach and Sky"

Verloren

Squinting when I wake. Not from sunlight, I soon realize, but from the walls. Yellow, the happiest color. But where am I? Room service menu lurking by the bed, its jaundiced paper slightly stained. Bulbous lamps, blown glass, birch forest print. All vaguely Scandinavian. Probably high end at one time — now tired, having given up on former glory. Except for the paint — its sharpness out of place. 

The corridor is no better, pinched and listing in the glare — three sides canary yellow, matching doors, cream floor. Small lobby. Reception sign on a desk off to the side. No people. But the corridor went on for miles. I realize too late: no room numbers on the doors. Which one was mine? 

Ding! I look at my watch, forgetting I don’t have one. But someone will be along soon. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Ding! No wallet either. No calendar. Nothing moves. Outside, a gravel courtyard crunches underfoot. Carved cornices — three solid stories looming over a denuded valley. Still no people. Not even a sheep grazing the slopes. How long have I been here?

Thoughts During Quarantine

yellowish

Questions For New Poets

Four Questions

Pollen Nation

Yellow Car

You hang up the phone. Your name disappears from my home screen. All I can see is the wallpaper, which is a photo of me and my friends. Through their smiles, I can hear them scream, ‘Don’t do it.’ And I should listen. Listen and take my maroon blanket into the lounge, curl up on the couch and watch a movie. That’s exactly what I don’t do.

After standing in the centre of my shared room for a little over a minute, I dig under the desk for my shoes. If anyone in the apartment block is on the stairs, they’ll just have to see me in my Pennys’ pyjamas. Raincoat or dressing gown? Sensible or soft? I grab the gown off the corner of my wardrobe. I’ll need all the comfort I can get. 

Keys in my pocket, I close the front door and descend the three flights of stairs. I blink back the memory of chasing and holding you at the top of the staircase. Clenched in my fist are the times we trudged up these steps together. Feet slowing, lips laughing. My hands feel cold. Yours must too. I take the last step slow, and it might just be the light, but my vision can’t make out your face through the window of the door. 

I push the button. My legs tremble. The door buzzes. 

For parallel’s sake, I expect you to stand where you stood the first time you came here. Three days after I moved in. Back to me, bag on the wall, rooting for god knows what. The sun was shining, the leaves were green, and I wore a smile. 

Tonight, the moon hides behind the clouds. She and the stars refuse to watch. I breathe and wisps of white seep out of my mouth. I find you leaning against the wall. You left the bag at home this time, but you’re wearing the denim jacket. The one that you debated buying, while scrolling through ASOS on the upstairs bed. I suppose you got it then. 

A yellow car passes. Did I ever tell you that my family and I used to play a car game, where every time we saw a yellow car, we shouted, ‘yellow car!’? It must be ten years since we last played that. Since I’ve shouted those words and laughed. 

Your hands are in your pockets. I wonder if you wish that you’d brought your bag, so you could cling to the straps. A habit I’ve seen you do almost a thousand times. 

“Would you hate me if I did something stupid?”

I take a step back at the sound of your voice. It’s strange hearing it so close. A couple pass by, walking their dog. My eyes fall on the Labrador with its tongue sticking out, hoping for a snowflake. Your eyes watch me. Have we stepped into the past? 

“You asked me that before,” I say.

I’m unsure if you remember. Your memories are sprinkled with dust at the best of times, but who knows how much sticks after alcohol is added.

“Well, I’m asking again.”

I throw my eyes to the heavens. Some things don’t change, and that tone is one of them.

Nothing’s changed and I hate that. I’m supposed to look at you and count the differences. Your stubble should have grown or been shaved. The streetlights should highlight the blue of your eyes more than white sheets ever could. We won’t have grown. We’re too old for that. From time to time, I’ve noted how faded your voice has become in my mind. When I pass you in the hall or when your clone sits beside me in the library, my heart no longer turns to ice. I should ask why you’re here, but after all these months, I’m still scared to know the answer.

Something stupid could mean a variety of things. It could mean asking me to edit a story - an email would have sufficed. It could mean jumping in front of the next vehicle that drives by. It could mean what I’ve waited all these months for: clarification that your hand now feels at home in hers.

But maybe it means the same that it did more than half a year ago, lying on the pastel blue duvet three flights above our heads. Your fingers shaking, my fingers still. ‘Would you hate me if I kissed you?’, and the word ‘No’ leaving my lips faster than any word before. When I swallow, my throat feels cold.

“A lot would have to change,” I say, although what I should say is ‘no’.

“I know,” you say, although what you want to say is, ‘I know I’ve said this before, but this time I mean it.’

I want to ask, where was this eight months ago? Where were the boxing gloves, the clench in your jaw, and your eyes on mine? Where was the fight when my frame slipped through your fingers? When you let me walk out the door after you stepped out of the ring? I can’t change the past and neither can you, but that’s the excuse I always use. I’m done throwing the punches and winding up on the floor, while you walk away clean.

“No."

You look away from me and it’s a strange relief, returning to how your eyes have evaded mine for months. My words should stop there, at one singular one syllable word, but they don't.

“Not if it’s something stupid.”

Your eyes meet mine again. Crystals lacking hope yet racing with curiosity. I look away and run my tongue along the holes of my lips. The weather doesn’t do them any favours. I’m not inviting you inside.

  “It's always stupid with us," you say.

“Then why are you here? Because you’re lonely? Because your rebound failed? Because-”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

“Then tell me.”

“I’m sick.”

Two boys walk by. Both wearing gear bags and tracksuits. I presume they’re my neighbours and when I hear the door buzz, I’m confirmed correct. I don’t turn to check.

“It’s nothing serious,” you say, either to follow up or to fill the silence. “I’m better now, but the doctors were pretty scared for a while. I was pretty scared for a while.”

You haven’t been in lectures lately. My smile muscles have noticed, as they didn’t have to strain whenever I was in your peripheral vision.

“You could’ve called,” I whisper, because even though you called an hour ago, no alternative response comes to mind.

“You said we couldn’t be friends.”

“We’ve tried being friends. It never works.”

I’ve said this before. Eight months ago. You’d responded by saying, the metaphorical door to being more than friends had never been closed before. Forgetting the three times that you slammed that door in my face, before opening it again with a kiss.

“I know,” you say.

A breeze chokes my breath. My hands crawl from my pockets to wrap the gown tight across my chest. I should’ve brought a scarf.

“So, why are you here?”

Your eyes meet the ground. The streetlight to our right flickers. The cat that scampers across the road hears you sigh.

“I was in hospital for a few days and after I thought of my family, but before I remembered my friends, I tried to decide how to tell you, if you’d even want to know. And I knew if I got bad news, it’d be you that I wanted to talk to.”

I imagine that. The world where things went wrong. Where you call from a toasty ward instead of standing on my road. Where I arrive with your favourite chocolate and books. I wouldn’t read you a passage and you wouldn’t ask me to. We’d annoy your neighbours with music and move apart when the nurse came in. I want to say, ‘where was this eight months ago?’ You’d say, ‘I wasn’t sick eight months ago’ and where would we be then?

“Is that something you still want to do? Talk to me about it?”

You nod.

A gold flash catches my eye. The yellow car speeds to the traffic lights. The lights are red, but whoever controls the wheel isn’t stopping. My mouth opens. To tell you, to scream, but it’s meaningless. Just as the front tire meets white line, the lights go green and the car races around the corner.

I’m unsure what startles me more, that there could’ve been an accident or that I saw two yellow cars on the same side-street in half an hour. That’s what made the game so fun when we were young. There were barely any yellow cars, so the person who found more than three usually won.

You call my name, and it takes me two seconds to return my eyes and mind to where you are. I look at you. For the first time in months, I really look at you. I think of the questions that remain unanswered. What happened to that girl? Did I make it all up in my head? Why do you always come back? I ignore them all and decide to ask only one.

“If this hadn’t happened, would you have come back?”

You look at me with a clenched jaw. I already know what you’re going to say.

“I don’t know.”

I smile, shrug, and take a step back.

“That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? This will always be stupid because you never know.” You never know whether you want me or not.

The door beside us buzzes.

“I’m sorry you’re sick. I’m glad you’re doing better, but I really have to go."

I turn towards the door. You call my name, but you don’t ask me to stay, so I don’t. The person leaving the building waits with the door open and I smile in thanks. I don’t look back.

Each step on the stairs is another name. A friend or family member who’ll support you. Every second step is your voice reminding me how you rarely open up. Each third tells me you didn’t think of that the first or second or third time that you walked away.

I reach into my dressing gown for my keys and cringe. I probably should’ve worn something else to stand outside in. I should’ve made you wait a little longer, put some lipstick and mascara on. I open the door, close it, and after a minute of rapid blinking, I push myself off the door.

She comes home an hour later. A face that silently screamed at me from my home screen earlier, telling me not to do what’s already been done. She finds me on the couch, curled up in my maroon blanket, watching a sitcom that’s long been taken off the air.

“Hey, how was your night?”

“Grand,” I say. “Didn’t do much, what about you?”

“Yeah, pretty good. Just went to the cinema and picked up some stuff. Did we need milk?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Good, ‘cause I didn’t get any.”

I laugh out of habit and she joins me five minutes later.

After two episodes, she turns and says, “guess what I saw on my way back?”

I try to straighten my face. Could she have seen you walking home? Surely it didn’t take you that long to leave.

“An accident. Two cars; one was sent flying into a lamppost. It looked serious.”

“Jesus,” I whisper.

“I know, hopefully they’re both okay.”

“Yeah, hopefully.”

The theme tune plays, so she stands, searching for the remote to press the skip button.

An hour later, she and I lie on parallel beds in the dark. I think about asking what colours the cars were, but I already know the answer.

Shopping

Volterra

In Volterra the many churches scrub themselves clean in the case-hardened sun. Chiesa di San Giusto Nuovo with its yellow interior cheerful as a kindergarten; The Cattedrale do Santa Maria Assunta creaky with scaffolding spiderwebbing the apse and choir, its blue and white arches looking nervous but aloof; Chiesa di Sant’ Andrea with its attached seminary brooding. You worry about the altar boys trapped in these compressed hill villages. The air pressure is conducive to lechery, while the ancient stonework is too rigid to stoop to notice the shy little faces looking up at the godless blue. Near the Etruscan museum, on Via Don Giovanni Minzoni, we pause for coffee almost too rich and black to drink. The streets are nearly too narrow for my shoulders. I don’t understand the red and white flags everywhere. The flag of Tuscany? The flag of successful seduction? No, don’t ask the waiter. We’re alien to all local concepts, and the towel on his arm is spotless. Besides, the long shadows creeping down the street will soon engulf us in gray. Once we’re part of the scenery, we’ll understand that the flags are fluttering in memory of us and the Etruscans, from whom so much has evolved.

French Eggs 

A Former English Teacher Contemplates Retirement 

Black Gold

The crops in these fields are a shade that is unreplicated on free charts from the hardware store. Their flowers are almost aggressive in their not being gold, but a screaming yellow. The gold only comes from when their crop is pressed for an oil that is sold as a sometimes organic alternative to I don’t know what. Liquid gold is liquid luck.

On other coasts and in other countries, black gold might mean coffee. Here, it means oil. We’re here for the gold rush, and whatever that promises. But this time, the current pulled us northwards and eastwards. The skies are bigger here than anywhere I’ve ever been. People say that about California, too. Some family said we lived nearer Oslo than London now. I still don’t know if that’s true.

My mum drove around a roundabout to enter one of the many retail parks that punctuate the boundaries between Aberdeen and its vast shire. We spoke about what certain words made us think of, the images they conjured. I told her that days of the week made me think of different things. The word Thursday, for example, made me feel queasy and gave me a headache. It made me feel like I had been in the car for too long on one of the winding roads connecting arteries of villages and hamlets to schools and shops and draughty town halls, turning my head to the yellow fields. Sunday, though, made me think of babydolls. 

Younger still, I proudly told adults who asked that yellow, lellow, was my favourite colour. It was the colour of La La the Teletubby, of the rain jackets we needed so often and of my bedroom.

It is accepted that yellow means optimism, but maybe also sickness. That slippery place between the green and the red light that reminds us to temper ourselves, that we must stop soon. A warning of decline. In catalogue entries of Van Gogh paintings anyway, there lies madness.

Some of the companies that brought families like mine from the country’s industrial middle to this northerly county of yellow fields and big skies have left now. 

Questions have been asked about what is left for the county’s young people. What is left is sunlight until 10pm and evening dew kissing bare feet, strawberries from the vine, bonfire season, more snow than others believe, castles and stone circles, tradition and community predating multinationals. After that, I don’t know.

One day, we were allowed not to wear our uniforms to secondary school, on the condition that we wore our house colours instead. My house, named for a missionary, donned yellow. Friends in the same house as I were flustered, racking their brains for how to abide by the code flatteringly. 

“Am I the only one who actually likes yellow…?” I wondered to my roughly 100 online friends in 2009.

I have not been back since my grandmother passed away in 2018.

 

                      Yellow is still my favourite colour.

Sunflowers Out the Train Window:

                                     Post-Communist Hungary

After Vincent Van Gogh’s “Bedroom in Arles” 1889

Paul

The Yellow Piano

Golden Hour

DAVID ANGELO is an up and coming UK poet who can be currently found in the League of Poets. He is currently working on a sequence about the migration of red monarch butterflies.

RHIANNON-SKYE BODEN is a professional freelance writer, poet and spoken word artist, living and working in Leeds. Her work deals with themes of queerness, nostalgia and childhood, often through the lenses of nature and rock and roll. Her work has been featured in various Leeds publications, such as Nice People Magazine, and her poem Harvest Time was most recently included in Green Teeth Press' anthology Unhomely. Website: goodnightskye.comInstagram: @goodnighttheskyeTwitter: @GoodnightSkye

MARILYN CAVICCHIA lives in Chicago and is an editor at the American Bar Association as well as a freelance grantwriter. Her first (and thus far, only) chapbook, Secret Rivers, received the Helen Kay Chapbook Prize and was published by Evening Street Press. Three of her poems recently appeared in The Disappointed Housewife. Marilyn blogs sporadically at marilyncavicchia.com

BARBARA DANIELS’S Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press in 2020. Her poetry has appeared in Cleaver, Faultline, Small Orange, Meridian, and elsewhere. Barbara Daniels received a 2020 fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. 

ROBIN DELLABOUGH is a poet, editor, and writer with a master’s degree from UC Berkeley School of Journalism. Her full length collection, Double Helix, is forthcoming in October 2021. Her poems have been published in Stoneboat, Fifth Estate, Lines + Stars, Nassau Review, Tiny Spoon, Maryland Poetry Review, Blue Unicorn, Negative Capability, Gargoyle, Westchester Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Friends Journal, Persimmon Tree, Footworks, and other publications and anthologies. She has studied with Galway Kinnell, Sharon Olds, Brenda Hillman and, more recently, with Alex Dimitrov, Kathleen Ossip, Amy Holman and Silvina Medin at the Hudson Valley Writers Center.

WILLIAM DORESKI lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. His most recent book of poetry is Mist in Their Eyes (2021). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors.  His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in many journals.

ROSEANNE FAHEY is a twenty-one-year-old living in the midlands of Ireland. She studies Creative Writing in the National University of Ireland, Galway. Her poetry and prose have been previously published or are forthcoming in The Five-Two, In Parenthesis, The Ice-Lolly Review, and The Daily Drunk Magazine. You can find her wandering a forest or at@FaheyRoseanne  on Twitter. 

SANDRA FEES is the author of The Temporary Vase of Hands (Finishing Line Press, 2017), served a term as Berks County, Pennsylvania, Poet Laureate (2016-2018), and is a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has recently appeared in Kissing Dynamite, Sky Island Journal, Dodging the Rain, and Blue Lake Review.

CYNTHIA GALLAHER, a Chicago-based poet, is author of four poetry collections, including Epicurean Ecstasy: More Poems About Food, Drink, Herbs and Spices (The Poetry Box, Portland, 2019), and three chapbooks, including Drenched (Main Street Rag, Charlotte, N.C., 2018). The Chicago Public Library lists her among its “Top Ten Requested Chicago Poets.” Follow her on Twitter at @swimmerpoet, Instagram at @frugalpoet and her Facebook page at @frugalpoets.  Amazon Author Page: bit.ly/gallaherc Website: bit.ly/swimmerpoet   

LAURIE KOLP is an avid runner and lover of nature living in southeast Texas with her husband, three children, and two dogs. Her poems have recently appeared in Moria, The Pinch, San Pedro River Review, A-Minor, and more. Laurie’s poetry books include the full-length Upon the Blue Couch and chapbook Hello, It's Your Mother.

MIKE LEWIS-BECK writes from Iowa City.  He has pieces in American Journal of Poetry, Alexandria Quarterly, Apalachee Review, Blue Collar Review, Cortland Review, Chariton Review, Eastern Iowa Review,Guesthouse, Heavy Feather Review, Inquisitive Eater, Pure Slush, Pilgrimage, Seminary Ridge Review, Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art, and Wapsipinicon Almanac, among other venues. He has a book of poems, Rural Routes, recently published by Alexandria Quarterly Press.

P.J. REED Writer of Warlocks. Destroyer of Worlds is an award-winning, multi-genre author with books ranging from high fantasy, horror, to haiku. She writes the Richard Radcliffe Paranormal Investigations series and the Bad Decisions series. Reed is also the editor and chief paranormal investigator for the Exmoor Noir newsletter. Finally, she has written a series of seasonal haiku collections - Haiku Yellow, Haiku Gold, and Haiku Ice as well as Flicker one sizzling senryu collection.Reed lives in Devon, England with her two daughters, two rescue dogs, and one feral cat called Sammy. For more information about Reed visit one of her websites below but choose wisely! 
The Dark Worlds: pjreedwriting.wixsite.com/darkworlds
Poetry: pjreedwriting.wixsite.com/poetry
Fantasy: pjreedwriting.wixsite.com/fantasy
Twitter: twitter.com/PJReed_author
Facebook: facebook.com/p.j.reedauthor

SUSANNA RICH was twice nominated for an Emmy-Award for her work in poetry.  She is a Fulbright Fellow in Creative Writing, a passionate feminist, environmentalist, and activist. Susanna tours her musical, Shakespeare’s *itches: The Women v. Will and performances focused on her five poetry collections: Beware the House; Surfing for Jesus; Television Daddy; The Drive Home; and SHOUT! Poetry for Suffrage. 
Visit her at  wildnightproductions.com and becauseicanteach.blogspot.com

SUSAN SARVER is a Chicago-based writer and painter. She is a member of the Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Arts. Her written work has appeared in various publications, including The Christian Science Monitor, Portland Review, Reader’s Digest and Dance Magazine. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Oregon State University-Cascades. She is the author of Returning to College, Continuing to Learn, After 50, (New Forums Press, 2017). Samples of her work can be found at susansarver.com

COLETTE TENNANT is an English professor at a small university in Oregon. She has two books of poetry, Commotion of Wings and Eden and After. Her most recent book, Religion in The Handmaid’s Tale: a Brief Guide, was published in September 2019 to coincide with Atwood’s publication of The Testaments. Her poems have appeared in various journals, including Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and Poetry Ireland Review.

MEREDITH GRACE THOMPSON (she/they) is a Canadian poet, essayist and visual artist. Longlisted for the Vallum 2020 Award for poetry, their work can be found in SPAM zine&press, GNU Journal, The Dallas Review, Queltehue Ediciones, and others. She is co-editor of orangeapplepress.

CLAIRE THOMSON works in communications and lives in Glasgow. Her work has previously appeared in Dear Damsels, Severine Literary Journal and Ta Voix. She is studying for an MA in Art History in her spare time.

SEAN WINN’S work has appeared in a number of literary journals, most recently in Rappahannock Review, Waymark, and Halfway Down the Stairs. After living in Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Singapore, he now calls Austin, Texas home. Find him on Twitter @SeanWinn_.