CATCH ME ON THE BLUE LINE TRAIN LIGHTING UP
Dreaming. Deleting most of my words.
There’s a corporate job selling bad art I could probably get if I submit my resume. Tie me down. Tell me it’s not that bad. Tell me it comes with benefits. Sick days. Promotions.
And fiber. Stuff me full of food that doesn’t taste like food, of gut-healing-charcoal-blasted-microbiome-chia-seed-your-aunt-swears-it-tastes-like-chocolate.
Feed me prose. Slick with wanting, gaping. I mean it. Give me something dripping, soaked in meaning. I want the eating of it to be a whole affair.
See it to the end. Tell me we don’t have passions, only brief affairs with our marriage counselors. There are no truths, only people holding hands with sweaty palms and bad intentions. What am I supposed to say to my kid, the one in eighth grade, with the girls who are so mean to her? That it gets better? That the sparkly eyeshadow looks good on her?
I hate this trope. I’m so full. The tone is not coming at an angle. It is leaking, badly, like a faucet, into my mouth. We are lying to each other. We are ships in the night, we are nude holograms of meaning.
I’m trying to stop being so clever. I want to say exactly what I mean.
Elissa Fertig (she/they) is a writer and second-year Masters student in Art History at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her poetry and prose has been featured in Polyester Zine, JAKE magazine and others, and is forthcoming in several online magazines this fall. Her work tends to center around issues of femininity and motherhood and bodies of water.
