L
‘
Jawlines I want to suck on
to stop the hurt from
teething, like ice cubes.
about
Olivia Behan hails from Middletown, New York. She is currently a junior
at SUNY Purchase, striving to get her B.A. in creative writing. As well as
having her work published in Purchase's literary magazine, Olivia has also
had the privilege to be on the board of said magazine the following semester.
et’s imagine a world where I don’t fall in love with strangers, don’t obsess with the idea of
toying with their clothes, loosening their straps, and straddling their hips. Let’s imagine
we’re all just brothers and sisters of a holy place.
But I do fall in love with strangers. Every single one. They sit there, on a train, in a classroom;
stand there, walk there on a sidewalk, in the road, at a mall. Have dreads in their hair or lots
of pockets on their pants. They have feminine smiles or masculine hands; touching these
sheets, making them dirty, making them wrinkle, making them clean again.
A nail-biting feeling and I taste the copper on my tongue; it swells in the back of my throat;
a doe carcass on the side of the road with its legs jutting out in different directions of the sky.
Sometimes I look at the fingers of the nameless and realize that I don’t love those fingers so
maybe I could make them wear gloves. If the eyes weren’t the right color, I’d rip those out
too; burying them in the backyard where I keep everything else in nice holes that I cover
with doilies. It’s better to have manners with these types of things.
Jawlines are important to me. Shoulders, necks, jawlines that cut me. Jawlines I want to
suck on to stop the hurt from teething, like ice cubes. Maybe long torsos with abrasions
down the ribs; valleys deeply engraved and scooped out. Maybe icy Alps popping from just
above the heart; atop with raisins. Winter resorts dedicated to your slopes specifically. And
I want a ride. But I can’t snowboard.
Mind readers don’t exist but if mind readers did exist they would see my insides churn pink.
Sometimes I think they’re in the room with me, so I scream my thoughts to see if one will
flinch. Any time a stranger has a tattoo, that tattoo looks drunk. Flexing an arm muscle, the
tattoo winks at me; it knows me by name. It has my zip code; I yell at it to stay away but it
can’t pass the alphabet test. I may put a blanket over those tattoos too when I slither i