The Olive Press Review

Category: Short Pieces

  • (no title)

    Sometimes, briefly or as though I know what it means to dream, the leaves begin to shift each time I am near, as if the tree could fathom the soul of my name. There was time spent defining energy (the soul gliding amongst tissues and muscles and nerve endings as my mouth once did on the rim of a wine glass; purely intentional in the mark I left behind). A familiar tug of war, as death mechanically hovers over the ankles (and family corners the home of the soul), that one’s eyes, saturated in hunger, blink toward their rife separation. A dilemma which begins at a curve, disjointed by laws in physics and treehouses, till the breath begs to touch the calcium of carved bone.

    I suppose my chatter toward energy is valued at the notion that it cannot be destroyed; therefore, the remnants of my smile could be altered, but not erased. So, my laugh should follow alongside the crooked shape of my eyes with each wink… (and I am finding it hard to believe in an afterlife, when your smile still exists). Maybe, it is the wind I mentioned previously?

    Anyway, I can tell you that the light, which arguably reflected off the leaves at 5 PM last Tuesday, was proof enough.

    Fuck the wind. Let’s share this fantasy together?

    Please.

    Three days ago, a surface-level cavity had to be filled, yet when they drilled away such brief remains of bone and decay, I wondered if you would see my smile clearly in the trees. Should we let this hope extend amongst the row of ants captivated by the rich, dense roots of this oak tree we buried our catastrophic fingerprints upon?

    What should we do about the winter due to arrive soon?

    Where will your smile go then?

  • Temptation and Excess in ‘Goblin Market

    Temptation and Excess in ‘Goblin Market

    Preface: This essay stirred self-doubt and questionable career paths due to its final grade. While I have made a few tweaks to this paper, I felt it was necessary to release a piece that invoked excitement and curiosity within my work at university. My relationship with criticsm has mirrored a complexity of my love for literature in general, so as a way of letting go, i felt it was necessary to uplift a voice not understood, or markedly seen as wrong.

    “The evil of [her] self-indulgence, the fraudulence of sensuous beauty, and the supreme duty of renunciation[1],” delivers Rossetti‘s conflicting dispositions in her fairy-tale world of the “sensuous, […] ascetic[2],” and religious. On reading Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market,’ sexual desire permeates the text of the fairy-tale world of the poem yet, I argue, we should go further and examine the eroticism of the mouth in maidenhood, to capture consumption through a lense of temptation and excess, eventually altering the body.

    Christina Rossetti’s brother, Dante and his painting, The Annunciation, cited as Image A, composed the Virgin Mary, cowering in the corner of the bed, leaning away from archangel, Gabriel, to capture inciting fear of an approaching holy figure. Yet, the psychological realism confronts the young maiden through a forceful motherhood. Hilda Koe’s painting, referenced as Image B, introduces similar implications as Dante’s piece, of white gowns, biblical references from golden circles to tempting apples, fearful eyes as the man imposes into female spaces. The condition of the women merges here, as she is now tempted by possibility, of the taste of fruit or the holy summoning, yet unaddressed by the sexual nature of the offering, that which is the social insistence of motherhood.

    Laura approaches the Goblin men, by “stretch[ing] her gleaming neck[3]” like a ‘poplar branch,’ an gesture of intrigue, until “[her] last restraint is gone[4].” Desire is initiated by the maiden until the temptation compels her to cut a lock of golden hair; “’Buy from us with a golden curl’ / She clipped a precious golden lock[5].” Her virgin maidenhood shifts to female eroticism, transactional is relingquishing a piece of herself, notably her youth, until the emodiment of seductress follows the expanse of her mouth. Eventually a physical rupture of Laura’s virginity hungrily commences when, “She dropped a tear more rare than pearl / Then sucked the fruit globes fair or red[6],” till the “mouth-watering urgency[7]” she trembles with, incites a realm of perversion. It is through this desirable loss of innocence, her mouth becomes a sexual orifice, filled with, “hunger and satiation[8]” and as a result, temptation becomes animalisitc as her oral state is transfixed on consumption for, “She sucked and sucked and sucked the more / … / She sucked until her lips were sore[9].” Must she bite into the fruit, a mirror of Eve who held the red apple, the ‘fruits that thy soul lusted after[10]’ leave the maiden to be consumed by an erotic madness, which now sustains her body. A hunger which can no longer be satiated by the forbidden fruit “sweeter than honey[11].” The temptation in now embedded within the lining of her stomach and the taste lingering in her mouth, until she must return for more, utilizing such a mouth to speak, kiss, and desire: “’Nay hush, my sister: / I ate and ate my fill, / Yet my mouth water still: / To-morrow night I will / Buy more,’ and kissed her[12].”

                Noted in religious text as the “Fall of Man” with Eve’s temptation of the apple, to the “Fallen Woman” during the pre-Raphaelite era, biblical interpreations begin to center the sexual corruption of women. Sharon Smulders’s, Christina Rossetti Revisited, reimagines Laura’s actions toward that of Eve writing, “Indeed, while the sisters’ temptations double on Eve’s temptation, the fruits multiply outrageously. If the first fruit of the goblin as well as Satanic temptation is the allusive apple, the second fruit (the quince) and the twenty-first (the pear) belong to the apple genus.[13]” Precisely, the relationship between the mouth of a biblical, virginal, or maiden women consume a ‘sinful’ fruit, prescribes her ‘fallen’ stature and immoral standing with God, until the hunger which riddles temptation can only be led by the mouth of a man.

    From this moment, the decay of Laura unfolds. She becomes an “all-giving, all receiving womb[14],” yearning to embrace the taste and the sensuality to suck upon the fruit which fills her mouth, dependent on the pleasure she is to receive. Marsh conceives this phenomena arguing, “This is also the essence of desire: once attained, it ceases to satisfy, vainly driving the sensual urge to repetition, seeking to regain the first, orgasmic joy[15].” As a result, the animalization of Laura recenters the mouth to hold her forbidden carnality, while also supplying bestial gestures as eroticism reconstructs her previous maiden identity: “She gnashed her teeth for balked desire, and wept / As if her heart would break[16].” 

    Correspondingly, Victorian history alongside prostitution produced conversations on venereal dieases, leaving women to become the center of another social illness. Eager to consume only the body of women,[AS1]  their mouths produced the sexual desire, the necessary tempation, to leave the women are their “…hair grew thin and gray: / […] dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn / To swift decay , and burn / Her fire away[17].” The mouth now rids her of vitality, sprititually depleting the maiden, and a site once fit for eroticism fades swiftly as, “Her tree of life drooped from the root[18]:” until she can no longer serve, nor consume eagerly as a biblical woman.

    As I divulge into ‘excess’ in ‘Goblin Market,’ the maiden’s peverse actions are analyzed through the lens of, “violence of passion[s]; extravagant or rapturous feeling; [and] unrestrained manifestations of grief[19].” Arthur Rackham’s illustration as Image C, drowns Lizzie in the “Cat-like and rat-like, Ratel- and wombat-like[20]” creatures, tearing at her white dress, as their hands force sinful fruit into the maiden’s face. Otto Greiner’s sketches seen as Image D, attracts a desirable comparison between the poised women: the body is malleable, desirable, corporeal as its skin holds the hands of those below them, each head turned purposefully, the mouth shut and unwilling to concede, skin wrapped with pure intention. Sap-filled pastures, blooming lilies, to the maiden’s milking the cows, the intersection of nature within Rossetti’s poem expands Dijkstra’s thoughts, “Thus, the eroticized body of woman became the late nineteenth-century male’s universal symbol of nature and of all natural phenomena. She sat, a flower among flowers, a warm, receiving womb and body, waiting patiently for man, the very incarnation of the spirit of the rose[21].”

    The development of Lizzie from a cautious, untouched maiden insistent of the deviant sexual nature the goblins present to excessively urging her sister to lick upon her face, is no coincidence. A rational, modest maiden who “churned butter, whipped up cream, / Fed their poultry, sat and sewed[22]” to:

    “Come and kiss me.

    Never mind my bruises

    Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices

    Squeezed from goblin fruits for you

    Goblin pulp and goblin dew.

    Eat me, drink me, love me[23]; “

    captures the sexual sacrifice explored by Rossetti, through an excessive, ‘unrestrained manifestations of grief” of Laura’s declining state. A transitionary moment for both sisters, the exploration of excess expands with the rape of Lizzie as the goblins forcefully invade her body with the forbidden fruit. Moreover, Freud’s construction of hysteria, the breach of the mind can develop from, “[…] any pains, whatever their cause, reach maximum intensity and that any afflictions are ‘terrible’ and ‘unbearable’[24]” accompanies the demanding, desperate tone to present her face covered in the ejaculation of the goblin men. Even further, Dijkstra argues alongside Albert Von Keller painting as Image E, of feminine submission as “[…] sadistic pleasure [is felt from] the representation of a vulnerable, naked woman tied to a cross[25].” Mirrored alongside Image C, the subjection of Lizzie as the goblins constrain her body against the tree, in possession of her vulnerable nature, displays the carnality she exhibits as the poem ends.

    As a result, the self-sacrifice must become transactional – Lizzie “put[s] a silver penny in her purse, / Kiss’d Laura” while the carnal desires of the goblins were “unrestrained[AS2] , erotic”, and held that penny to exhibitionism of her now hyper-sexualized body[26]:

    “Tho’ the goblins cuffed and caught her,

    Coaxed and fought her,

    Bullied and besought her

    Scratched her, pinched her black as ink.

    Kicked and knocked her,

    Mauled and mocked her[27]”

    It is in the rape of Lizzie, that her new role is to indulge in Laura’s lasting sexual temptations, and most notably, the desperation that inhabits her dying sister’s eroticized mouth, as excess constructs her body to a palatable feast. In the midst of her assault, Lizzie sealed the opening of her mouth, a distant allusion to the virginal qualities that can be physically penetrated, and specifically, Rossetti emphasizes the sacrificial nature of the maiden to relinquish her body instead, “Lizzie uttered not a word; / Would not open lip from lip / … / But laughed in heart to feel the drip / Of juice which syruped her face[28].” An offering, a face covered in forbidden juices, delievers her skin, ripe in sexual pleasure to her sister, until she allows herself to be ruined, perfect for her starving mouth: “Kissed and kissed and kissed her: / Tears once again / Refreshed her shrunken eyes, / Dropping like rain / … / She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth[29].” Thus, a promiscious mouth, riddled in ‘raptuous feelings’ of her self-sacrifice, Lizzie transforms her body to capture the erotic desires of Laura’s previously penetrated mouth, until the latter knows of hunger again.

                Altogether, an examination of the mouth is pertinent to grasping the inclusion of eroticism within the poem, and more specifically, in the realm of temptation and excess. Returning to Image D of Greiner’s ‘Gaia,’ the supporting quote, ‘The woman is the man’s root in the earth[30],’ illustrates the sensual relationship between Laura and Lizzie, as each supply their bodies – and more specifically their mouths – to confront maidenhood.

    Bibliography

    Bram Dijkstra (1986). Idols of Perversity. Oxford University Press, USA.

    Breuer, J. and Freud, S. (2013). Studies in hysteria. Digireads.com Publishing.

    Marsh, J. (2012). Christina Rossetti : a literary biography. London: Faber Finds.

    Mermin, D. (1983). Heroic Sisterhood in ‘Goblin Market’. Victorian Poetry, [online] 21(2), pp.107–118. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/40002024.

    Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “excess (n.), sense 9,” June 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/4381276791.

    Rossetti, C. (1862). Goblin Market. [online] Santa Clara University. https://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/lgarber/courses/eng67F10texts/RossettiGoblinMarket.pdf [Accessed 1 Nov. 2024].

    Smulders, S. (1996). Christina Rossetti Revisited. Hall Reference Books.

    [Image A]: Rossetti, Dante. ‘The Annunciation’, 1849-50. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/rossetti-ecce-ancilla-domini-the-annunciation-n01210 [Accessed 20 November 2024].

    [Image B]: Koe, Hilda. ‘The Goblin Market’, 1895. < https://theharvestmaidsrevenge.com/2023/04/05/revisiting-christina-rossettis-goblin-market-an-early-folk-horror-classic/ [Accessed 19 November 2024].

    [Image C]: Rackman, Arthur. ‘Goblin Market,’ 1933. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Goblin_Market_032.jpg [Accessed 20 November 2024].

    [Image D]: Greiner, Otto. ‘Gaia’ [Mother Earth],’ 1912. http://www.symbolismus.com/ottogreinerg228a1912.html [Accessed 21 November 2024].

    [Image E]: Von Keller, Albert. ‘In the Moonlight,’ 1894. http://www.symbolismus.com/albertvonkeller2.html [Accessed 20 November 2024].

    [1] Mermin 1983: 107.

    [2] Ibid.

    [3] Rossetti 1862: l. 81.

    [4] Rossetti 1862: 86.

    [5] Rossetti 1862: 125-6.

    [6] Rossetti 1862 : 127-8.

    [7] Marsh 2012: 231.

    [8] Dijkstra 1986: 62.

    [9] Rossetti 1862: 134, 136.

    [10] Ibid.

    [11] Rossetti 1862: 129.

    [12] Rossetti 1862: 164-8.

    [13] Smulders 1996: 35.

    [14] Dijkstra 1986: 85.

    [15] Marsh 2012: 233.

    [16] Rossetti 1862: 267-8.

    [17] Rossetti 1862: 277-80.

    [18] Rossetti 1862: 260.

    [19] Oxford English Dictionary 2024.

    [20] Rossetti 1862: 340-1.

    [21] Dijkstra 1986: 87.

    [22] Rossetti 1862: 207-8.

    [23] Rossetti 1862: 466-71.

    [24] Breuer and Freud 2013: 241-42.

    [25] Dijkstra 1986: 34.

    [26] Rossetti 1862: 324-5.

    [27] Rossetti 1862: 424-29.

    [28] Rossetti 1862: 430-4.

    [29] Rossetti 1862: 486-9, 492.

    [30] Dijkstra 1986: 85.

     [AS1]come back to cite

     [AS2]“These images were expressive of men’s dreams of generous, unrestrained inclusion; of nature as simultaneously receptacle, fertile soil, and comforting breast” (85)

  • A Sin-Eater: The Death Of Eve.

    A Sin-Eater: The Death Of Eve.

    Amanda Schlicht's avatar

    Amanda Schlicht

    I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wil and precious life?

    Mary Oliver

    What is worship to a body untouched by man?

    If god knows of everlasting

    love, shouldn’t his knees be

    raw and

    aching; maybe, it would finally be done correctly.

    Sickly, you would find it was never the position of your tiny

    hands that he would call; his sacrifice

    must have become

    Your fate when blood

    spilled

    outside that little body —

    a ground of worship so holy only he could deem it clean.

    The obsession weaned when she was thirteen along with the slimness of her thighs. She was a woman, categorically, but blood felt punishable in a body such as hers — It trickled intimately, smooth like wine and rivers and sin — at least she like to think her begging offered her the eventual desire to repent. She would stage each limb as if it were [Gods’].

    A performance dedicated to [man] for [man], that when she reached the exhaustion of prayer, she would then be man too. She would wonder why everyone wished to be a saint, or holy and pure and infinite; couldn’t the body hold corruption?

    At least, it would be enjoyable.

    2.

    She was a sin-eater, the devil, a whore too weak in her pleasure and dumb with folly desires. She was ravaged, metaphorically as if her body was already humanity’s and Adam’s and surely God’s.

    (the) womb and (a) rib

    The bruising of the apple sits between her breast. She holds the spec of nature, brutalized by its own condition to surrender, to fall, to give away, and she too wonders of the beauty she must hold. If she were to bruise so simply, by way of man or the rightful act of motherhood.

    Which held death stronger?

    (They both must stay fragile for enjoyment.)

    3.

    god, reveal what my truth is

    4.

    please father, make it stop. there is so much blood

    5.

    He laughed,

    and one might consider sounds so sickly

    raw monmentous,

    but his desires never shied — He was laughing at me, at

    each

    broken

    line

    of /repent/.

    How brutal of man to bite the body of their youth —

    they must like the taste of their own blood;

    it allows them to swallow their very corruption.

    She wonders who would purify her father. Did her womb drive such care or has her guilt not purified yet?

    Her skin is rotten, paper-thin; the veins bent into the faux lines of a tree. The hands of her god skim toward to weeping fingers; her blood wasn’t to fond for belief and a god’s hand never held much.

    (she grieved quietly — it was not often one sacrifices their god)

    6.

    please god, why are you so quiet

    please god, why are you so quiet?

    7.

    She briefly wonders who should respond first?

    She could only hope that god pitied the [believers.]

    They eat upon their skin as if it were his, as if they knew the contents of his blood. She was split open with guilt.

    8.

    [My guilt will not purify Me.]

    9.

    Take on the sins of God.

    10.

    She knew of the teeth she beheld, bones as bones.

    She was nothing more than that, she imagines. The contamination that is her mouth, a damp space for want. She begs, once more, with an unbent back and aligned knees, until the sweat must burn.

    She is still a child, even with the intent to murder such youth, yet unlike Gods, Eve’s blood never held a maternal hand; the notion to suckle upon the breast ultimately surrenders her rusted limbs.

    After all, she only wished to be holy.

    Mother?

    What blood could purify that body now?

    What little can be done, she thinks, about a body entrenched in sin and lacking in prayers. [What a broken worshipper a woman can be.]

    11.

    God was worse.

    He knew how to bite, tarnished and split. He was sultury; he knew where to play, who to beg, how to ravish until the bursting of the skin was the fall of man and the birth of women.

    It was the brashness of warmth, how it tingles upon the skin, makes liquid drop between the brow and ache from each eye;

    the salt upon the tongue was a new coming. a replicate to each holy sip of wine smoothed between the teeth and hidden behind the jaw —

    you were never

    cold,

    the wafer brought silence in a mouth surrenederd to

    [swallowing].

    The scribbles match the row of crosses, where does one put their name?

    On the corner where the sun is drawn?

    Does the importance simmer,

    marred between his name first,

    yours much later?

    you hold his bones between holy hands.

    //You bite each wrist first.//

    12.

    God, please. Bite me back.

    God, you owe me.

    13.

  • The Flexibility of The Body.

    The Flexibility of The Body.

    Amanda Schlicht's avatar

    Amanda Schlicht

    It’s past seven. I have broken my sobriety twice, if the first time didn’t count enough, and the cider beside me reeks of berries. I can only stomach fruits these days. My body burns, terribly so, each eye hums till the tulips double in sight and each finger becomes diminished by the slight intoxication I gave way to; my shoulder’s ache past relative relief and so in the intolerable heat of fermented cider, the shirt must come off. I am a woman once more. The breasts lean forward, the stretchmarks are abhorrent as they are lovely, and when I fall upon the corner of the shower, I can only find adoration in the body I can call my own. There is much I could say, defiantly, upon every marker of humanity and history and achievements and abilities, yet in a state where the alcohol has marked my singular body as a conscious being capable of love and generosity, each sip pushes me to the conclusion toward this feminine mind and artistic hands and moveable body. In some short, painfully illiterate way, here is everything I once felt about my co-existence of a woman, with a kissable mouth and rough skin.

    i. I cared willingly, fervently, and when religion struck upon my mind, I prayed, in an odd stance and with sweaty hands, about all I could not heal. It was painful in such a small body, poised to know the ruinous emotions and overwhelming fixation of love, yet not act upon them. My body was theirs unknowingly, and rather irresponsibly, and by natural law, I enacted my own child-like persecution, where I dreamed one could read my mind and such unnecessary devotion would be met with consistent understanding; I homed confusion. Still, my sacrifice meant something to me, in tiny jersey’s and shoeless feet, and from this I had come to know of such strange intimacies we pursue so willingly. I was tender as every nine-year-old is, and in big ways, I never knew how to say ‘Thank you’ at birthday parties and on Christmas days, but in some small ways, I knew of you, which meant I still knew how you felt eight years later (and the way you made your breakfast each morning). If I think about this matter at all, it does little harm to know I have never been in love at all, but simply by the condition that I do love, and therefore it must exist.

    From this, as a woman, fundamentally, the simple notion of love seems relatively simple for all the emphasis I put on making sure it was known; most people already know the love you feel for them, its awkward escapades and horrifying experiences are congratulatory. You love well enough, I should say, if doubts toward the softness of your hands ever claimed such tender inabilities, look in your medicine cabinet quietly, you will find all the remedies you salvaged just to save yourself once more.

    ii. We believe we are crazy, sometimes excitingly, as if the blood on our teeth was as clean as water. War-like screams, collapsing chest and mascara tears, all we know coincides with all we’ve felt. It feels structural, as if each cell holds its own grief, some lingering territorial part of longing, until each atom lacks in further development. I could uphold every name given to me, should you question if I have cried harrowingly, devastatingly; it is similar to cell division sometimes, while others fail to beat out by odd laughter. Completely, it is simple, all of this is simple, we cry, scream, puncture, scrape, melt, sing, must we remember how they felt. We wish to know of the devastation, and if we are smart, remember what brought us to strikingly still.

    [the window knows only the cold, the beating of wind upon its frame. I wonder if the heat will melt its body this summer.]

    Girlhood. (!!!)

    pajama parties. makeup and the use of our faces as dummies. princess dresses and our mom’s high heels. press on nails till our fingers bleed and glue that sticks to the sofa. the fear the first time we shaved; the liberation which follows; the begging of people’s hands upon hairless legs. our dad’s oversized shirts as nightgowns. hot, burning, blurring showers. rosy cheeks near the ocean and hopeful eyes in the forest. fashion shows and the swapping of clothes. showers of compliments in the bathrooms at bars; lipstick stains on each mirror as we walk out. the hugs, the touching shoulders, the grabbing hands to pull you into stores. mirrored grief and lack of apologies. selfies and videos and moments all hung upon the wall cased in spotlights. code names of the fruit we ate that morning to the boy we desperately look for. calendars, post-it notes, to-do lists, weekly chores and monthly meetings. the cheeky feeling of the hand over our mouth as we spill our secrets. matching outfits. spilled nail polish, wine, tears, dipping sauces, car keys, ice cream, white pants. the obsession of virginity and the relief that followed. journals and photo albums and burned letters. the synced nausea and white underwear that follow the cramps, panadol, hot water bottles, muscle relaxers, and the eventual fetal position. the anger turned to sadness we held toward our moms; they were girls once too; they could have still been girls now. telling everyone the price of our new shirt we got on sale. flowers, in excessive, in every color, on some continuous loop which holds the remnants of heartache away. our intelligence and the dreams that follow. holding love between the skin on our fingers, knowing it was enough, in some way, in some light.

    [Pause, once more, the shirt is coming back on. I digress.]

    GMT 21:00, Apartment 1, City Center

    (the difference in name is by want and honed acceptance.

    the mind has always been more flexible than the body)

    ME

    Is it pleasureable? You know,

    (pause, some sort of exasperated sign)

    was any of it pleasureable?

    MYSELF

    Were you happy? I am failing to understand the question. Were you happy with the outcome. Was this what you wanted?

    ME

    (confused in the manner of her question, she can only lean upon the frame of the bed)

    That is not really a question. I am happy all the time, you know that very well. I don’t see how any of that matters when it is pleasure I am seeking to understand. I don’t think where this has any place in our conversation. It is unknowing, like some spineless creature with no care of those around them. You can’t want if sacrifice has to exist.

    MYSELF

    (always smiling knowingly, she knows herself so well)

    What do you want? Think slowly, like some spineless creature, as you call it, and if they had no care in the world, what would they want?

    ME

    (her pause is predicatable and depressive. rather inconsolable in the possibility of the question)

    I would think of them as greedy, selfish probably, with to much attention to themselves. Maybe sinful to some people, I wouldn’t know who to hand my desires over to. Its some overflowing laundry basket, and quite frankly, I don’t have the time to seperate all the colors and whites. What’s the point anyway, if they are my wants, they could live in the same soapy water, for all I care.

    (pause. she is conflicted ones more. her body turns

    away from the speaker, a clear line to the city outside.)

    Should I care?

    MYSELF

    You could. I am in no position to point out such cares for you. Ultimately, your desires will slowly die with you, along with each passion and secret dream you have written about in your journal, and while you think you are doing some justice to the world, maybe even to yourself, you are too big to fit back into the box of self-repression as a term of endearment. You are older, not as malleable as a child, yet not old enough to simmer in lost opportunities, and while you think your life is over because everyone else has moved on, you still have to fend for yourself. How are you going to do that? You could care, unabashedly about everything and everyone, but what do you want?

    ME

    (she paces, clear on what she wants, but one more question must be answered)

    What about my mother? What did she want? Could you tell me?

    MYSELF

    (She should have known such a question would appear.

    All she can do is smile kindly)

    Such questions hold irrelavance, my dear. If you can do my the favor of answering the question, I fear my time is limited. All I wish is to hear all that you have wanted. Could you give me something so little?

    ME

    If I must. I want to be nice.

    MYSELF

    (astonished, she interupts seemingly frustrated)

    That can’t be…

    ME

    (Interjects)

    And weirdly strong, like you look at me and you wouldn’t know all that I have went through. And I want to love myself, annoyingly might I add, that I make myself blush when I look in the mirror. Oh, and maybe a little greedy, where I am the first to take a shower, or eat, and maybe I leave the dishes in the sink overnight, because who else is going to do them or really who cares? I wouldn’t really know what to do with myself. [pause] I think I would be happy then, brilliant even, and even when time did sculpt my face and make me knarly per se, I would know who I was. I would enjoy all the time in the world with myself. Who wouldn’t want to be someone so radiant?

    MYSELF

    Then, everything will be pleasureable. Or, by the way you’re looking at me, I am guessing you want to know if you feel the pleasure, am I right?

    [slight nod]

    Well, that I don’t know. Maybe you have always felt pleasure and never knew it. Maybe it has never left you like you thought it did.

    [a quiet smile]

    You know, you never left yourself? You were always here. What is to say about those desires to not wash dishes tonight? I don’t think that was spontaneous, nor do I think you have even recently felt like that. You, the person in front of me, has continually smiled and dreamed of momentous events and found ways to feed all the clothes you currently own. You were never not whole. You were you.

    (They both stare at each other. ME can only nod, gently, before she begins to look for her stuff, gathering her phone and keys upon the bed, as she stands up to head to the door)

    MYSELF

    Oh, and before I forget, when you asked me what you mom wanted, she was very short with her answer. She just wanted you.

    [The cold has gotten to me. I must leave quietly, tonight.]

  • Why You Should Think of Death More Often When Speaking of Love.

    Why You Should Think of Death More Often When Speaking of Love.

    Amanda Schlicht's avatar

    Amanda Schlicht

    Standing at bus stops, pulling apart my groceries in self-serve checkouts, a cafe run only achieved once, traveling to cities to merely see a performance — I am a woman saddened by natural inabilities to know of their existence, or rather the knowledge I would not see them again, not in this context at least, and so therefore I would never know them at all. The endpoint of loneliness has become a gateway to basic emotions, an allowance to decenter the disturbance of our own existence to allow relationality to develop. We nod, pat on backs till both are comforted, and then our feet catch upon another sidewalk as all we felt fades back once more. We as humans all condone the inevitable action of self-wallowing, the disgust that is simplistically natural, but action is not even limiting in this field, we as humans grieve over everything… Maybe I just do.

    There is an imprecise grief that comes with December, an unknowing baggage of words and feelings I will not admit to myself. I am alone and have been for a handful of years and while I should not be shocked by my inability to persevere past continual crying, I appear to collapse upon myself each year when people are willing to hold you longer or feed you more. I am not sixteen anymore and it’s December and while I thought my life was ending four years ago when my walls were chalkboard black and I couldn’t run from my mattress on the floor, I am diminished with the knowledged I can never go back, never once, no matter how loud I shout.

    I think of death a lot. I am not precise in eventual conclusions, nor have I created any foundation suitable enough to not fall apart when speaking on this issue, but simply if I were to pull apart my skin until I am a slight movement of my soul, I might understand all I have ever loved. I feel ashamed of my inability to pinpoint any current state of passion, whether I ponder on the embrace of romance or the sum of my debts, and so my lacks become more concurrent with this present baseline of ‘what if’ and it is clear I am struggling. Oversharing is a must, so I will leave it at this: Love can be more than what you are giving it. Yes, it can be brilliant and toe-curling to where you question if you were only in pain because you were fifteen and not because your scars didn’t heal, and while you ignore your family for the tiny minutes you feel you now live with as you lay by their side, there was always beauty in knowing that love can be a sacrifice of death, that even though they had passed away three years ago and you happen to drive by their gravestone on the way to work each morning, you always honk your horn and laugh till you can only smile, and somewhere in the distance a horn hocks back.

    I feel too human. I should laugh at such a statement knowing that empathy is bound to exist in this body, but I am simply too scared by how damaged it makes me. By this I become territorial of my own grief, the inconsolable sadness proctored by my very own hands and situated beneath clothing far too loose for my liking. It is through this identification, I run. My knees are raw and aching so I must account for the bruising and muscle spasms, but I repented, I apologized, I told them I was sorry, please laugh with me once more, I am bound to wonder how that sounds next to me at night. We all looked like the moon and it was hard not to whisper that you held the light more, it seems the universe sings only for you. I should have fought harder. 

    When you first decide to die, you thank yourself. It becomes peaceful to hear each breath as water only purifies and no longer burns. You apologize simply and your hatred no longer feels like a target but rather a confidant. An inconceivable normalcy is bound to exist with your unruly decision – you did not mean to be cruel, the harshness could no longer be contained to just yourself, your hatred was leaking and your fingers couldn’t mend all the holes; you were a good person, whose was young and possibly war-torn but the labels weren’t necessary so even if you were a good person sometimes you weren’t kind; you loved, and you still do presently but you have gotten confused with longing, so any concluding feelings all felt too fanatical and eventually too weak. I was dripping in love, encased in recognition that if I were to succumb to my own heartbeat, I had experienced what it meant to be drunk and still feel the flush on my cheeks hours later. It was devotion wrapped in a needed idealization that I was simply a body and you made me feel as if I never needed one to be loved by you.

    Eventually, when thinking about religion, I thought of death to be carved from love. That, we as humans, held too much devastation and not enough hands to encase their body, they developed heaven and any type of afterlife where suffering is unknowing and peace was necessary, so their own very hearts did little ponder what it felt like still. They mourned before sickness, graceful in their decision that their love was never to be questioned, that reconciliation was possible when death was only a measure of time separating them. So, they prayed, and sung, and prepared the body as faith in their goodness was never argued and their love for them by default would never be a separator. What is love but not grief persevering, hmm?

    In my all too serious, extremely lacking fantasy I should someday harbor about my life, it seems fair to acknowledge that there is no ‘another universe.’ This is all we got, all we have been given, and I am a little lost in making it seem worthy enough. I note that we are everchanging, ruinous creatures, sticky in shame and aching before collapse, but I wish to change so I am not as ruined as I thought. (?) I fail to link a future me in some present form of desire, a possible ‘what if’ on success or stability, possible love, yet there is not even a face to be formed, she is expressionless, bound by time and most likely debt, so I do her the honor of committing and she continues to brush hands with death, and the recycling of old tasteless haircuts and burdening effort will administer the same end.

    I have loved exceptionally, greatly, magnificently to those I never received a name from, whose home is empty and whose last names are changed, and I wonder who is holding their body now, if they have been graced with warmth. I guess in most ways, if we are to assume life is our greatest tragedy, it is to be noted that love was there. That it is still there and that while it didn’t change anything nor did it save anyone, it mattered because we were alive and shared this vibrant emotion. A repetitive cycle of varying combinations of ‘If I could have loved you enough, I would have stayed” and “I envy even the earth that covers their body” until death can only mean love. Humans understand that death is a fundamental ending and still choose to love anyway, so in some twisted, pessimistic way that maybe could be positive in overcoming the fear of death, know that death could only be born from the love fostered to make the body, and the body never forgets, nor can you forgot how to love.

    We all know of the grief when our mother can’t attend our own funeral.

    I have never loved her more for going first.

  • The Woman Who Overshares To Hide How Scared She Is Of Herself

    Amanda Schlicht's avatar

    Amanda Schlicht

    Thursday Brunch, a small table just left of the opening doors to the cafe. Your friend was late by 15 minutes, yet you remembered just how they liked their drinks. You have forgotten yourself once more, what a shame.

    “…”

    I have yet to learn how to be quiet. Or rather, when given moments to announce bitter emotions or too much space has existed between the conversation of those in front of me, the urge to belittle the wrinkles near my eyes, insult the form of my body, degrade my speech, is past perfunctory, it is expected.


    I perform in the shower, a certain nod over the shoulder or head tilt to a point I know covers what the mirror can’t, and once again I allow my body to overshare, to conduct its own persecution. I gather the pieces of skin less valuable and pull till red and loose, so if I must allow laughter to befall this body, it is me who has initiated it. Melancholy strums from the phone hidden beneath towels and I must gather their grief to understand how I know mine, but my sadness never held the attitude of ‘correct,’ so the soap must burn and scratch and tear until hopefully my body knows the right way to grieve – scared and starving.


    I knew the bed too intimately, which means, I grasped at its softness and learned of its warmth, but I still never thought long enough to look underneath and read the tags littered at the bottom. Discovery rested in the bi-annual practice of turning the mattress around till I was given a new space to re-learn. For days, I am left contemplating how little warmth you leave me.

    Could I profess a suitable amount of anguish? It might not matter, it seems I have already told you before. Maybe you had forgotten, or I simply wanted you to know, but either way when you sit in front of me and there are two cups between us, while yours is nearing its end and mine have only found needed warmth to purple fingertips, might you not question it. Might we find ourselves here next week, as the warmth spreads to your heart and I cover my shaky hands.


    The papers are overflowing and I am sick. Sick, sick, sick. The curve of white porcelain comforts exhaustion as fingers push past the resistance to relief. Hands, other than my own, race across closed doors, leaving behind utensils and empty pens, to slide down the wall with me. They mock the untouched corner near the bathroom sink, a mistake unknowing and wholly alive. It is only then, when the toilet settles and the shower drain slows in its movements, do I contemplate the life of the walls around me. Who cared enough to hold them, fill them with bleak colors, furnished till suitable. It’s functional, but damaged; covered and touched. My hands have only furthered this violation.


    I am shaking once more, I declare this my condition to love, the possibility that if such an occasion were to arise, I could finally step up. I love you or I possibly could and I notice the blood pooling at our hands, but mine are stained and dripping wet, must you always wash yours off? You always have a safe pair of hands.

    Passion grows embers barely pulsing, announcing its final breath, must it resemble its itch to gulp the lack of oxygen, I steadily feel. Death only comes to join the simple exhaustion of delicate air, pausing at the table beside me, a head pushed down admiring the unused matches scattered across the wood. He seizes the one closest to me, a countdown to his final collection.


    I am careful, so I dream. I paint points of intersection, dissect the old attic of a grandmother never held and hope the passing of stuffed animals from mother to daughter would suffice. It is important to have a routine, you must announce your presence but do so causually, a small nod or smile is pertinent, but don’t overdo it, the shock of such happiness can blind, or annoy, it is relevant to know who you are speaking to.


    Have a person of special importance peel an orange for you. Make sure you are in love with them before they dig in — it is messier when you can remember their kisses, a special kind of rich you desire in chocolate. Never eat an orange after that, or condemn the fruit to your sharpest knife, lest you learn what their hands felt when they cared for you.

    You allow certain moments of desire to be dreamed of with long showers, meditation, a handful of vitamins, someone’s hand wrapped around your waist, maybe you would feel full then of powdered supplements and a warmth you can only copy on clothes warmed twice. You cannot let your body feel such a touch, it is only when you are complicit in your singularity, war-torn and saturated, can the emergence of possibility reach its climax.


    Understand you are a daughter, someone’s child, so you have murdered your own childhood. You will wield the knife, in secret, when the blood tricked from your stomach to your cunt. You become your mother, let her demean and cradle your emotions, coddle resentment and gauge your anger; you are a woman now, keep the shirt loose and the joy brief. Your last name will only be worthy enough of middles, be smart.


    Tell every one of your grief. Bake it into pies, sew into hand-me-down clothes your daughter is to wear, don’t feel scared to leave behind a note shaming all you can not hide. Write. Everywhere. On your shower walls, restaurant menus, an old bus pass, the length of your throat. Remember if you are to scream, such words are to make you known. Be courteous to the ears around you.

    “…”

    “…”

    “…”

    I am afraid I have spoken out of turn, was I too loud? I apologize for the inconvience, the exhaustion must weight heavy for you tonight. It is all dust now, nothing two hands can’t dispose of.

    “…”

    “…”

    Would you like another cup of tea?

  • My Reckless Relationship with Pleasure and A Possible Love Letter.

    Amanda Schlicht's avatar

    Amanda Schlicht

    nulla.

    I am desperate and brandished by such public thoughts and I try to find God in everything. Which is to say my conclusions never differ. I am honest, moderately good on such terms I should know what ‘good’ means and if I happen to have forgotten that day, then I am strictly good. I pray in the shower, in my head, consciously, precisely, categorically, which is to say I don’t pray at all. I pretend to have not considered the simple acts of opening shower doors, cafe orders, restaurant menus, my positions in line, lest I not obsess over the horrifying act of falling asleep every evening. I wonder who is more me? That which commits elementary acts or one who thinks before the birth of such thought? I am malnourished, must I open myself up, may my flesh understand the desire for death, may resolution turn to salvation. Time must pass and I want to be good and healing and holy many times over, but who would I be without acknowledgment of my scars, what would my scars be then? I lack a purpose, which means I am human, and I could also be alive and held, so an orange must suffice, peeled by hands untouched and a mouth too clean, lost in the covers of a bed far to small. Who am I now?

    When has pleasure absolved me, fed me, nourished me? When have I experienced pleasure at all?

    I.

    I need to cleave apart my ribcage; would you find me inside? Would you know of desperation or do the claw marks already show themselves? Who am I to write? Does the question mark make the sentence, or do you already know my unfailing confusion? Or Anger. (?) Or Fear? (.) Do you know of my desirable pleasures? Could you write it down for me. (?) Would a notebook be sufficient, are there enough pages, or am I consistently short, do I have any desirable pleasure at all? Is it desirable to you? (!)

    My eyes have redden, bruised and scratched, and held between fingertips, wet and squeezed. They are the lonelinest parts of me I have come to know. I have never felt more understood in their presence. Knowledgable in all it passes, memory hardly fading as it contains faces and maps and your favorite buildings, it sits beside itself unknowing of similar company, similar passion and hunger a mere inch away, just as empty. Must I introduce them? What has loneliness done but fester on desire. I fear any hunger might kill you.

    II.

    Is it possible to fantasize too strongly? By which I dream too much, and my past never became present and the future was always a reaching, self-sustaining possibility, and so I never had a possible, remarkable existence. Maybe I should dream of waking up safe, start at roots, fracture, divide, make myself simple, easily digestible, with an extensive ability to mold, re-create, diminish my capacity and feelings and desires and myself. It would be nice to have two chairs, next to one another, where you could touch my hand under the table and I can turn to you and smile, and you can see food in my teeth because you are close enough, but you simply smile back and move closer. You know I would never hesitate to lean in.

    III.

    The oxygen hasn’t hit my lungs since I had been seven. The morning was dutiful and so was I, and water was more curteous to nature, more healing, lavishly generous and all-knowing. It was to similar to my mother. Maybe, I knew God after all. I became embarrassed with my name, its utterance failed me, sequestered me into moments of hallway banter and marked water bottles, my shoes squeaked on the way out.

    IV.

    I could present my hand and by that I mean, I should. I must. I might. You laugh and it ripples and I feel movement near my heart and you start to smile and I wonder what mine would look like next to yours. I think of the stars above us, past the bedroom ceiling, guarded by the sun, and how we have become our own pair of unflinching light. I smiled at once and only desired to take a shower. I never knew how I should act.

    V.

    I imagine my laughter to ring in my childhood home, my teal bedroom, our empty dining room table. Was it high-pitched, loud where one wished to cover their ears faster, was it ever pleasant to hear? Must I even know the answer to this question? Would you hold me then, pull the jacket over my shoulder and teach me the dilemma of tying my shoe laces? I still must tuck myself into bed every night.

    VI.

    In my head it is still April and it’s not to late and I can speak clearly and I don’t want to cry, so I must be happy. (?,!) A birth must occur, I should become holy, renewed, sacrifical, but the rain lacks any hunger and silence is my only objective. I must cry now, I have looked in the mirror, and the faces are new in the super market, and the fruit has been bruised and touched and I know such dirtiness, and the lights are flourescent so I must be naked to those around me, and I wonder what my favourite ceral was a decade ago. Must I be polite in my sadness, (?,!,.) can I ruin this for everybody? I seemed to have already ruined me for me.

    My memory has become disgustingly indulgent and I appreciate it. I favour moments forgotten when mentioned, lest any knowledge of my desires become too public, might you start to understand me, know the younger me, know of me. May I find regret with you. Shall I reminice once more on our past conversation, would envy be lacking, and I could be led by all that you remember instead. Might my regret be surronded by all I never told you. I am still here.

    Your existence was always a fallacy, one of intentional need. As a little girl, love was a cornering concern, a harsh, biting, embarrassing rue where hugging embarked desires to flee and eyes to shut me out. I felt I needed to be protected from love. I never failed to look past intertwined hands, necks, touching foreheads and lips and shoes. Notions of my incompetence were a clear statement, marked by highlighter and covered in white-out, and I never knew what was possible, or rather bitterly, I could not think of myself apart from love. I knew of such raging, bursting emotions vibrantly accompanying many childhood escapades, but questions of my inability, my second-hand nature of fleeing, became my conscious personal identity. My imagination was a dwindling ideology of my impotence, my forthcomings, tantalizing perceptions of my obscurity until moments of regularity seemed impartial, outdated. I grew out of myself before I even had the chance to grow. My identity has come to rest in my irregular confidence, cost-worthy desires that leave me breathless in my weight and biting sores in my mouth, an urge to speak just to feel my mouth overflow and trample into the silence between others. I could pray for [what? I am never particularly sure(?,!,.)] comprehension, possible reconciliation should I ever speak to my younger self, love (!,?). Have I become lethargic in every pleasure?

    Oh, how much love I needed to free.

    VII.

    Sometimes, in brief moments of solidarity, I believed that I am going to save my life a little. A slight pulse between my breasts is a guaranteed breath I can never be angry at for too long. I have another bookshelf to fill.

    I must consume myself if I wish to breath (?,!,;).

    I could rot in this room forever. (.,!)

    I have never been more beautiful.

    Oh God, maybe I have always loved. Maybe I always could.

  • Myself in Three Cafe’s After A Night Out, Excepts From My Worn Out Journal

    Myself in Three Cafe’s After A Night Out, Excepts From My Worn Out Journal

    Amanda Schlicht's avatar

    Amanda Schlicht

    Trigger Warning: The following extracts depict sexual assualt. Be cautious when reading.

    Journal Entry 1 – Cafe #1 14:13

    Fatalism is concurrent with the present. The objective remains active in every part of our life. We can love unconditionally to death, eat to death, dance, sleep, the connection is simple. Knowing this, what am I left with? Any action can be painless, rudimentary at best, or at the root, my own hands can bring upon the fatalism. I can be the mechanism, the driving force, the consciousness needed to sustain deliberate actions. Still, the thought of personal brutalism is not as manageable as it seems. A revelation like such is natural, a consequental choice one harbours in their teenage bedroom dreaming of desirable fantasies, developed on the basis of needed control which in actuality, we as people, lack extensively.

    I am too self-aware, too knowledgeable of my own self-mutilation. Each dark-filled shower, open-window-peering to those deemed ‘neighbors’ leaves me aware of my loneliness and ultimately futile existence past the borders of my convoluted consciousness, which is to say, I understand I am human.

    There are walls around me filled with faces, intimate moments documented for the price of four pounds, outlining the groups of many heads stuffed into a mere two inches, a series of faces developed from childhood pranks and secret moments with our siblings. Their joy is loose, unlimited, and occurring while they all share the same space. They simply are being human.

    My thoughts have become a revolving door of regular customers, customized orders specialized with their names, a designated seat in the corner of the cafe, with its own expectant wait times, which is to say they don’t exist, they were already expecting you. It knows its flaws, consequences, its terms for being stationary, or rather obsolete, that the gray lines developed into barriers as you hover over the edge of intimacy where you are knowledgeable of dog names and family photos but lacking in personal trauma and work issues. I like to say I know myself intimately, yet the moment his hand pulled upon my left breast, I wanted to detach from the symbol of femininity in order to be free of his touch. My hands cannot undo all that he has stained, they cannot compete, and the moment of reprieve I allow myself, I now question what it means to be a woman at all.

    Jounral Entry 2- Cafe #2 15:23

    Do his hands naturally diminish who I am? The obvious answer always remains as stated in pamphlets or articles, yet as his hands managed to slide and grope right over my heart, for a split second he knew what my heartbeat felt like. He took the intimate moment I was guaranteed, stripping my body for the pleasure of his naked hands. I was diminished to a byproduct for his self-indulgence. Memory is a sacred commodity, unable to be erased but possible to alter, and while I sink into inescapable briefs of sadness, I can feel it penetrate into each level of skin cells until I am merely made up of blood and skin. My normalcy breaks then as an acknowledgment of my insignificance is apparent. Who am I now, when I am simply another body, another voice, an option to feel or disown? The feeling of human connection has grown exceptionally since last night, the understanding that the warmth I carry is unable to erase all that pains me. My arms have failed to wrap around my body, carried by some unknowable need to not stop moving.

    On my second cup of tea, I found myself soothing the cup in front of me. My hand strokes each side, the other comforting the lid so the liquid has little room to escape. I picture myself as a child once more, her importance highlighted more now than who I was before. The simple effect of my failure to not be perceived leaves me inconsolable. Should I tell her about her own future? She could of had more time to prepare, diminish, compartmentalize, secure down each leg, arm, section of skin on her body to seize as her own. She might rename herself as strictly her property unknowing of the many unwanted hands that have touched her since. She would be a different girl with different experiences. I still never know which one I prefer in this sense: present acceptance or reconciliation of my past.

    I needed to be loved more than I wished to live, but their intertwining consequences leave me distraught and aching until the questioning of either is far easier to digest alone.

    Journal Entry 3 – Cafe #3 16:09

    I forgot how pliable the memory is, or rather, how willingly we suppress acknowledgment. A young family sat before me, molded by the young daughter whose hands would reach into the center of the table, aching for the shared coffee cup split between all three. Weathered and tarnished by the mouths of others before them, each partakes in their own enjoyments: the father faces the door, a book positioned so both he and his daughter can appreciate the words lining the paper, his whispers quietly and while you wish to be knowledgeable in their interaction, if he is willingly reading to her, his eyes stay glued to the black ink and his head doesn’t turn. The daughter listens as she once did half a decade ago, caged by youthfulness and her developing brain, she reconciles her past with her present action, a head tilt toward the shoulder of her father to see the words better. The mother is content, a sign of security as her back is to the door, her head pushed down toward her phone, a restful posture and performative hands. An expression of love, traced from the position of their heads falling inwards toward the other, a show of each foot pressing into the other, intertwining until skin can be touched. A warmness should appear at such a scene, but this ordinary show of affection leaves me bare of raised cheeks and stretched lips. I should feel more than this. The rain has been the only object to touch my skin today, but no purity, no salvation has been gifted to me. Why must a God be in control of every action and why do I have to beg in anguish for the disgust I never wanted to feel? Should I reject purity and desire my bones to be heavy instead? Would salvation be granted if I crumble into my bed, unable to bruise each knee in a trance of reverence, and only then when the skin is malleable, dirtied by its own cycled existence, might I derive a moment of peace, where their hands haven’t been able to touch me. I could be the one to squeeze, grasp, pull until the blood resembles the color on my cheeks and the warmness is brought on by the pain of each hand than the fingertips of another. Would I be pure then? If the mutilation was from the self rather than the other? Does pain circulate, can it be passed on, rid of, covered up like layers of clothes until you have a new meaning, a new reason for absolution? My eyelashes have been dry for three hours now, rid of the black tar I willfully drown each eye in. Joy has become a solid being now, one standing in front of me as a mother with caring hands extending outwards, yet one cannot replace the existence of comfort their mother has once brought them, and to take the hand of a creature rid of her scent, her aspiration, is cause for only more decay. Joy will eventually return, like we all do to seek out Mother once more, but I must wait, and in that time must I imagine the scope of her brave hands instead of those that pulled the night before.