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After reviewing the entries to this
year's contest, The Printing Press has chosen Lindsey Markel as
the winner of the creative writing contest. The prize for
this contest will be a framed and autographed black and white
photograph of any English professor Lindsey Markel so chooses.
The following is a selection of the work she submitted for the
context. Enjoy!
Plant
While we slept, boneless and clasped,
I dreamt of you. We were the same,
not more alive nor more absent;
I was pressing the back of your neck,
the places you absently touch but never see.
I pushed at your hairline and it folded,
like soil, making way for a seed
which I planted with my pursed wet mouth, again
and again, your skin spreading, giving way,
hungry for the shoot, for birth,
for my insistent crawling fingers to uproot what
you have buried, locks rusted shut,
everything cold underground, sealed and secret.
Untitled
The Salvation Army woman, bundled up in a gray fleece coat,
smiles half-heartedly at me as I approach her. The night is
cold, and as I am grasping for change in my bag, part of me is
thinking about how frozen her hands must be on that bell,
ringing and ringing like something from another century: a
street urchin, a newsboy. "Hello, how are you?" she says to me
politely as I join her underneath the glow of a neon grocery
sign. "I'm fine," I say to the side of her face, "How are
you?" But she is yelling something to another customer who has
just passed us; they seem to be acquaintances and there is some
sort of casual joke they are returning to. "Merry Christmas,"
she says to me without turning, still looking at the parking
lot. As I walk through the automatic doors, the familiar
mechanical sound--the smooth track and stop, the air rushing
in--is comforting. It reoccurs to me that I graduated from
college today, and I suddenly want to make an about face and run
back outside, feel the winter air sting my cheeks pink and tell
the Salvation Army lady. "I graduated from college today," I
say in my head. In my imagination, she stops ringing the bell,
taken aback and charmed. She looks me directly in the eyes and
says to me stoutly, with a nod of her head, "Well then, it's a
good day."
I've been worrying lately
that everyone is an idealization in my head. In my head, the
boy who lives in the apartment two floors above me is secretly
in love with me. I have only seen him once, when I happened to
glance up at his lighted window from the parking lot below; he
was standing in a doorway, one hand on his face, seemingly
looking in my general direction. In my head, he peeks out that
same window now, whenever I go out to my car. He holds his
breath when I look in danger of slipping on the ice, like glass
in the moonlight. He wishes he could hold my hand. He thinks
the pigtails I have fashioned tonight are spectacular and
adorable, sort of punk rock, the way they don't quite work.
When he saw the new Alumni sticker on the back of my car today,
he noticed, and smiled.
Now, the tall, older man who
tilts his head at me when he smiles and says "Excuse me," moving
his cart to clear my path to the tortillas, has quite obviously
been equally charmed by the pigtails. I really shouldn't shake
this town up like this. I have moved on to the tortilla aisle
only after having patrolled the produce section for at least ten
minutes, looking for zucchini. Having located the tortillas,
shredded cheese, red bell peppers, broccoli, and the right kind
of vanilla soy milk, I venture bravely back to the produce,
hoping that the deli workers have forgotten my face by now. I
return with a plan of action: I walk along every single aisle,
from west to east, to make sure I don't miss a single
vegetable. Only after I find the avocadoes and realize that
they are avocadoes--even though I have pictured them as zucchini
in my head--does it occur to me that I'm not quite sure I know
what zucchini is. I know exactly who I would call and ask. I
imagine the conversation in my head: "What do you use to make
guacamole?" I ask. He's equal parts glad to hear my voice and
confused by my non-sequitur. "Avocadoes," he replies. I know
he knows this, because he made me guacamole once, out of
scratch. I sat at his kitchen table and opened my eyes
cartoonishly wide every time he turned his back, like we were
being filmed, like I needed to prove how charmed I was by his
two hands slicing avocadoes and carefully pouring lemon juice,
the smell of it filling the room. "Why?" he asks, and I say,
deadpan, "Because I just realized that I have no fucking idea
what zucchini is." The conversation may also involve me asking
if zucchini is "a green leafy," and then him asking me if I want
to come over and watch a movie with him, and of course I do.
As it is, I'm giving up on
the zucchini, green leafy or not, but there is something about
being here late at night that I like. I'm the only one in the
produce section besides bored-looking employees, and the fruit
aisles are shocking in their assault on the senses; the smells
and colors make them seem actually alive, breathing, like they
shouldn't just be sitting stadium-style beside their
accompanying plastic bags. They should be rolling, dancing,
jumping. They should have little top hats and canes, vaudeville
acts, like dogs begging you to adopt them at the animal
shelter. I stop and consider a bag of oranges, but don't have
enough room left in my arms to carry them. As I walk past the
floral section, I smile at the man leaning against the counter,
and he watches me go by. It might be the pigtails, but it's
probably the fact that I'm always wrong whenever I assume I
won't need a cart. The tortillas slide from the crook of my
elbow to the tiled floor, slippery as a squirming child.
One of my best friends has
just moved in with her boyfriend. Three weeks ago, we pursed
our lips side-by-side in the mirror of a bar bathroom, and
neither one of us had boyfriends. Each of us had a boy, but we
didn't want the whole boyfriend thing, you know, because
people are so quick to rush into commitment, and we're just
having fun, you know, and we really love what
we're doing. We mean, if we were to see him kissing another
girl or something, it'd be over, end of story. But this
totally works. Yesterday I found out that not only is this
boy her boyfriend now, but she's moved into his apartment, and
she is simply happy, sublimely happy. They share a basement
room; she hasn't been back to her old apartment in weeks, except
to get her toothbrush and a fresh pair of pajamas. She comes
home to find that he has done laundry, carefully folded two
pairs of her jeans. He is in love with her; I could tell when I
sat next to them together that night. You could see it in the
way he watched her. Anyone could have seen it. I'm glad for
her. She deserves that.
The cashier is a girl my
age; she is hardly impressed by the pigtails. She overcharges
me for the red bell pepper and I am too tired to care; I think
of myself as a grocery martyr instead. She bags everything in
plastic bags, which I hate, but it's done by the time I notice
and so I just say "thank you" and pick everything up to leave.
I wonder what she thinks as I'm walking away, jangling my keys
in one hand like I'm looking forward to something. I wonder if
she assumes that I'm going home to someone, that there is
someone else inside my warm apartment eagerly awaiting the
perfect vanilla soy milk. When I walk in the door, bringing the
cold with me in a rush, he'll turn around, grin broadly. My
cheeks will be pink from the cold and from his smile.
Walking out to my car, I
pass an older couple, both talking at the same time, gesturing
with the hands closest to each other. I open the back door, and
the plastic bags rustle as I set them inside; they settle
unsteadily. I start my car and, driving home in the dark, I
know that if I call him right now, he will realize that it was
just an excuse to talk to him. Zucchini looks like cucumber.
When I get to my apartment, I unload the groceries and realize
that I am no longer hungry. I take off my jeans, the bottoms
wet and frozen from the snowy ground, and lay them on the
radiator to dry. The room is silent, feels harrowing, and the
solitude fills the space. Above me, I can hear my upstairs
neighbor reading to his one-year-old daughter. He is talking in
a kind, soft, sing-songy way that is familiar and comforting. I
can't hear the words, but I can imagine them. The tears come
quickly, before I even know they're there.
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