No. 4 : Naughty by Human Nature
I know my heart will never be strong as theirs and my senses never as clear. But for a moment my neurons get to mirror them, and for a moment I get to be much more than I actually am. I raise the mug to take a sip. It’s when I burn my tongue that I realize: I’m just sitting on a chair.
It was a Saturday afternoon. We were exhausted of and from each other. The room was full of anxiety. I guess it was a normal thing to feel if you were living in a new country, had secretly moved in with your also nineteen year old boyfriend and were supporting both financially with the money your parents sent you to pay for school and cover life expenses for one.
The light changes and off you fly, my body is still in yours. Knee touches knee, helmet cheek on helmet head. We’ve barely met. You pick me up from the station. We throw my weekend bag in the apartment. “Do you want to watch the recommended French movie?” you ask. I hesitate, “Yes!”
He came back to bed, bringing one glass of water for the both of them. She took it, quickly sipping a bit. She had no idea what she was supposed to say. She had no idea how she was supposed to feel. But the water was cold, and asked for nothing in return.
I want to be spared the wrecking ball, I want to stay in this place, the best place I've ever lived,
in the best city there is to live, forever. But my Brooklyn haven is a precarious nest because it's
slated for demolition.
My children, who I call the dwarfs, at the end of the day, after I've concocted them three meals, sometimes four, have a habit of asking for warm milk and a platlet of fruit or bowl of dried banana.
We shuffle in the grass. Andrea is close to me, much shorter in the dark. There is the smell of wood smoke among the bare trees, it is on the roof of my mouth. We search but there is no rope to see. We get our jeans muddy.
I definitely wasn’t expecting any of this and had no idea the night was going to take such a turn.
At 5 a.m. I heard the phone ring. It must have been the ring’s tail, because as soon as I heard it, it stopped. My first thought — a mistake. I returned to deep sleep snoring like a koala bear, hibernating. And as my body slowly sagged into to la-la land, I tried to revisit my dream, but alas, it was gone!
I live in Israel, Kate in New York. Since our parents died, my trips there have become less and less frequent. I hadn’t seen my sister in eight years. Suddenly she decided to attend my daughter’s wedding.
It hurts him so to see his love in pain that, to keep him from seeing her, he dream builds a very tall ice palace to keep her wandering spirit away from seeing him, from seeing that there is more to him than he lets his words convey.
How is it that you could make us laugh // even in the most dire of times?
Surely I knew, right? That I should be grateful. That I had something — someone — special sitting next to me? Didn’t I? Surely I appreciated the friend who put her life on hold for me.
“Did you ever imagine that Granny’s old oak table would serve this purpose,” I heard my daughter-in-law whisper to her father as she leaned over to him.
Sunrise at the sacred circle of stones. We have joined hands and now we separate with instructions to find the stone that calls to us. Some one else claims the one I was first attracted to.
I wondered about why our eyes change colors. Climbing up and down the wooden ladder of the ship throughout the night as if between the earth and sky.
You told me once,'
The heart has room for only one Lord'
I lean my face forward towards the tall glass of coffee, my nose fits inside the narrow opening with room to spare. The steam fills up my nostrils making my face feel warm a maybe slightly wet too.
I know my heart will never be strong as theirs and my senses never as clear. But for a moment my neurons get to mirror them, and for a moment I get to be much more than I actually am. I raise the mug to take a sip. It’s when I burn my tongue that I realize: I’m just sitting on a chair.
It was a Saturday afternoon. We were exhausted of and from each other. The room was full of anxiety. I guess it was a normal thing to feel if you were living in a new country, had secretly moved in with your also nineteen year old boyfriend and were supporting both financially with the money your parents sent you to pay for school and cover life expenses for one.
The light changes and off you fly, my body is still in yours. Knee touches knee, helmet cheek on helmet head. We’ve barely met. You pick me up from the station. We throw my weekend bag in the apartment. “Do you want to watch the recommended French movie?” you ask. I hesitate, “Yes!”
He came back to bed, bringing one glass of water for the both of them. She took it, quickly sipping a bit. She had no idea what she was supposed to say. She had no idea how she was supposed to feel. But the water was cold, and asked for nothing in return.
She wakes to the sound of sirens and calls out “Madelyn. Let’s go."
It was May. The garden was dressed in luscious greens and the water of the pool glistened outside. The outer porch had been contained with a screen structure. It kept the mosquitoes away and somehow gave the sensation of separating us from the heavy humidity of the air.
Share your story!
Popcorn is a bimonthly zine. We accept any and all submissions from current and former Sense Writing students. Story length should be 1000 words or less, and inspired through the Sense Writing practice. While every submission will not necessarily be featured in the upcoming edition, we are committed to featuring everyone's work eventually.
Edited by Hannah Sparks
There seems to be a very deniable appeal to romance novels. Although romance is the best-selling genre of paperback book sales, topping a billion in sales annually on average, most romance readers squirrel away their desires, relegating their books to the bedside table. But can we blame readers for keeping their book affairs quiet?
Granted, a majority of romance readers could be your sister, mom, or grandmother (thus some of the last people you prefer to imagine reading Fifty Shades of Gray). Nielsen estimated in 2015 that 82% of romance book buyers are women, between the ages of 30 and 54. I think it’s also notable that—according to the Romance Writers of America website—the most popular way romance readers share what they are reading is in-person, conversations with a friend or family member, instead of, say, sharing or “Liking” the book on social media.
Unsurprisingly, one of the most popular subgenres of romance is the “secret lovers” trope. We live in a society that confoundingly glorifies sexual imagery while vilifying its language in the mainstream. Even ads for something as clinical as contraception are written almost entirely in innuendo, as if we can’t talk about sex without a snicker. Is it fair to say then that words are more dangerous than picture? Well, I’m certainly not going to attempt to answer that here.
Sense Writing helps to create and strengthen channels in our nervous system, allowing us as writers to sense the world more deeply, and interpret it more clearly. As we exercise these neuronal pathways, we train ourselves to experience the world with increasingly lucidity, and, furthermore, making those connections between the physical and emotional. Sexual experience is seldom unchained by emotion, and the stories selected for this issue are just a few examples of how the psychosexual is interpreted in writing.
Shannon Lior’s “Ride” reminds us there’s really nothing like young love, but the memory endures into old age. In this fond recollection, there’s a subliminal notion that there’s something equally special in being able to share that memory with your lover for years to come. On the other hand, Mateo Lynch Gil shows us how relationships, sexual or not, are always evolving. His story “Neverland Smile” is a snapshot of a romantic relationship between two young men, who once let their lives be ruled by it, and now sit spectator as love carries on without them.
Often the physical entanglement is fleeting, or can only be anticipated, never taking place. The title "Salvation," by Collier Lumpkin, suggests that such an encounter can have an everlasting impact. Sometimes, though, just a little is just enough, as in Hannah Mann's "The Stud Farm." She writes, "Though our skins never touch, I feel our souls holding hands." The question remains, are there any regrets?