spin technique
after olivia gatwood
johnny’s name isn’t johnny. his name doesn’t even sound like johnny.
it starts with a B but he is not bastard or boyfriend, he is just–johnny.
johnny likes red wine. what i mean by that is, johnny likes being drunk.
johnny likes not being him because maybe he knows somewhere inside
all his bullshit that him isn’t a good thing to be. johnny says
he shares a car with his best friend even though she always pays.
i watched johnny take that shared car when she needed to get to class because johnny wanted starbucks and she could walk–it wasn’t that far.
what i mean by that is, johnny likes using things other people need
more. johnny likes taking.
what i mean by that is, johnny loves taking.
he would take and take from me and then beat my knuckles
to remind me to clean up the blood. i was a messy girl–cluttering
his life and what i mean by that is, i was unaware of how to exist. johnny joked
about killing me once. what i mean by that is, johnny joked about killing me.
i thought about killing johnny a thousand times. what i mean by that is, i wanted to know what johnny’s blood looked like.
johnny is hours away and also always
in my bedroom. what i mean by that is, johnny has always been inside
me. since johnny, people look at me like they’re mourning
something. like the whole world knows
what happened. what happened in that apartment with so many locked doors.
i swallowed a piece of night sky with johnny on top of me; it’s been absorbing me for five years.
i pretended
johnny was dead. what i mean by that is, i wrote him letters until
i was a screaming pile of floor-bound limbs.
what i mean by that is, the doctors gave me a new acronym.
what i mean by that is, i don’t know why i still have dreams where johnny comes back. i don’t know what johnny meant by any of it.
what i mean by that is, i don’t know anything about johnny. i just hope
johnny knows that we weren’t all laughing when he chased his roommate
with the steak knives because we thought it was funny–we were laughing because we knew if we didn’t,
he’d come for us next.
• • •
Twilight
How many corn startch new moons am I going to have to look at before
the story’s old. When are the twelves going to be blossoms, reading
rose-stained pages covered in Shakespeare’s syrup, instead of
store-brand, Pepsi-scented novels full of every trope their
grandmother fought. I’m tired of the stories. My
window stays locked and I know I’m beautiful, I don’t need
the protagonist to enlighten me to what I was born with. I’d trade
all the spines of these spangled-hardbacks for a night braiding
my mother’s hair. The guy at the drugstore stopped selling me
fairy dust because I’m not a twelve anymore. I watch them
from my old tree and cry because they’re busy biting apples
instead of waiting for Pan. They’re turning tricks outside bookstores
in hopes that midnight men dressed like a boy band will bite
their necks. They’re painting their fingernails black and smashing
little white pills with a glass. The kind of glass I use to crush
crackers on Thanksgiving for my mother’s famous broccoli
cassarole. They keep printing the story in different fonts, I even
loved it once too. I couldn’t help it. Everyone is a twelve
at some point. I loved the fangs and the rain soaking
the book between my hands. Mostly I loved the trees, and how her
hair was the same color as mine. But the story has become mangled
like the roots of the ugly trees down by the polluted river. None
of the twelves swim or climb, and everything looks too dead.
I wonder how many paper-maché eclipses before the story ends.
• • •
In Another Universe
“The multiverse is the hypothetical set of finite or infinite possible universes, including the one we live in. Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time matter, energy, and the physical laws and constants that describe them.”
That’s what Wikipedia said when I Google searched multi-verse.
By this theory, there is a world where Hitler won and one where JFK lived. There is one where Joan of Arc doesn’t burn and one where Lincoln doesn’t get shot and one where 9/11 never happens and one where women never get the right to vote and one where slavery never ends and one where being gay is still illegal and one where I don’t exist after age eighteen and one where you never do and one where we exist together.
In another universe you don’t make me so sick. You never pushed me into the lockers. We got to be those high school sweethearts everyone says you only find
in the movies. You asked me to take your last name and feminism be damned, because I loved
you. In another universe I stayed in Pennsylvania and you stayed in school and we never saw each other again. In another universe you knocked
on my door, remembered my birthday, and choked on the word sorry before I pulled you close and let you paint the walls of my room with your breath. In another
universe I’m the president and you–a decorated veteran. In another universe you died in war. In another universe I died in the hospital. In another universe your father
invited me over for dinner. In another universe my mother hated
you. In another universe we were born in 1952 and our kisses were stolen
and illegal. In another universe we were born in a year this universe hasn’t lived yet.
In another universe we collided that halloween and I don’t carry the regrets in that universe that I carry in this one. In another universe we breathed the same air and said the same thoughts and my dress was as red as cherries and your lips were chapped and minty from anxiety-bitten gum and we were perfect and everyone knew it in that universe.
In all the worlds in all the universes, across the cosmos, from here to our moon and all the other ones we’ve never seen and never known, we end up in each other’s beds at the end of the night. Crawling under the sheets like a dog with its tail between its legs. You lick my lips and say this is the whole universe and I agree with you. I would give anything to find
the universe where you loved me as much as I loved you.
• • •
Molly Likovich’s poems and fiction are forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: Bluestem, Columbia College Literary Review, Rust+Moth,and The New Mexico Review. She received honorable mention in the AWP Intro Journal Contest 2017 for her poem “Beste.” She also received honorable mention in the Glimmer Train Jan/Feb Short Story Contest.