Long Ago Beautiful Boy

After John Skoyles and Ross Gay

By Megan Glionna

Thank you long ago beautiful boy who found me sitting in that dusty backyard at my first college party in Tucson, Arizona in 1995, thank you for locking eyes with me and asking the person next to me to move over, thank you for softly lifting the hem of my shirt and drawing circles on my lower back with your fingers, for kissing me when we said goodbye next to the gate while Shyle yelled for me, for the blood rush I can still remember all these years later as I ran to Shyle and said “I think I’m in love,” thank you for the hours we spent entwined on your dog-haired mattress on the floor of your off-campus apartment smoking weed to Kind of Blue while I marveled at your sophistication as you read Machiavelli and played chess, thank you for that night at Will’s when you held my hair back as I snorted coke for the first time, for twisting the bead in my hair as the coke dripped down my throat, thank you for agreeing, when I whispered that we needed to find a place to make out, for finding a hallway and pushing me against the wall, no one had done that to me before, my breathlessness bouncing over my tumbling cocaine heartbeat, my numb lips kissing yours, thank you for making drugs fun and sex funner, those few months before it took you, we had so much of it, sex and fun, I licked the slope of your lower back, and you spanked me and taught me that laughter can be a part of pleasure, I try to remember more about those days when I get lost in the rest of them, thank you for sitting on the edge of the world, our legs kicking off the dry desert cliff awake all night on mushrooms and weed, the colors bleeding into our hearts, thank you for laughing in the tent when everyone was trying to sleep, you wouldn’t stop biting me, my laughter hurt my sides and made me nostalgic for you in real time, thank you for driving down that mountain in the rain while our acid eyes sparkled and the monsoon overtook the jeep, thank you for pushing me out of the car and making sure I danced while the rainbows moved through us, I finally knew what it felt like to be free and to be eighteen and to be in love and, to be, to be in a moment and nowhere else, thank you for telling me I could just try snorting a little of it to see what it felt like and then making sure I was ok when I nodded off, I mean, I think you made sure I was ok, I don’t really know because I was nodding off, but thank you for hearing me when I said that downers weren’t really my thing, even though the rush that came from my toes and fluttered my eyes was unlike anything I’d ever felt, and I knew you were in love…but not only with me, thank you for being an escape artist, for always feeling so sad that escaping was better, and for finding the ultimate escape, if you hadn’t, I would still be loving you and hurting myself for you, thank you for little piles of torn cotton, burnt spoons, tar, for overrun ashtrays, bruised arms and legs, for pharmacists who shook their heads at me when I asked for clean needles, for swollen arms and ER visits and doctors asking me “why I was with you” and “didn’t I know how dangerous it was,” for glassy eyes and a blankness that was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen, thank you for forcing me to sit in the car waiting for you while you scored in the most fucked up of places, for putting me in danger as I wrapped weed to mail to Georgia or told people that you owed money that you weren’t there when they knocked on our door and threatened me, thank you for agreeing to put the needle in my arm when my exhaustion from taking care of you took over and I said yes, for the bleach that you cleaned the needle with, for the chipping yellow paint on the windowsill of that house that had a baby in it, but where you took me to score and stayed long enough to almost kill me, thank you for fucking me to keep me alive, I don’t remember that because I was out for almost two days, waking up on the couch feeling like I was dead but embarrassed that I was actually still alive, thank you for taking my first love and turning it rotten, for throwing the lamp at me, for yelling at Shyle when she tried to get in, for locking me in the room, for screaming at me because I was moving out, for throwing boxes with all my belongings into the street, my CD collection crashing onto the pavement as Shyle pulled away as fast as she could, thank you for being so beautiful that I almost took you back, that summer you cut your hair and cleaned up, we made love like the first time, and you made promises you wouldn’t keep, thank you for knowing I’d meet someone else, even though he turned out to be an asshole he did save me from you, thank you for the way you looked on the escalator at Madison Square Garden the last time I saw you, we were both high then too, but I still cried as you floated by, thank you for writing me from prison, for dying in your thirties and for teaching me long ago that loving yourself is so hard that some people can never do it.

Megan Glionna is a poet, teacher and podcaster living in Brooklyn, NY, and studying for her MFA at Columbia University.

Art by Thomas LaGrega.

You don't know how to talk to people at parties

By Grace Crouthamel

“You don’t know how to talk to people at parties,” Julia said while we were outside

smoking—she likes American Spirits, I prefer anything else because they take too long, and I’m the sort of person unwilling to ash early—twelve dollars a pack now—and I said, “all social scenes are going to die if they kill the cig, think of the culture,” and she almost laughed, the other people around us laughed at least—all Thatcher’s friends from that private prep school he went to, we know him from college so we’re second-tier friends—and then I’m talking to some guy Thatch knows about where we’re from and he says he grew up right outside the city (New Jersey) and that transplants are ruining the city, and after another third of the cigarette I tell him I’m from Appalachia and he asks if I’m saying it correctly because he heard it pronounced differently in his Labor History class, and I don’t know how to respond and he follows up with, “what was that like?” so I laugh and say, “well, the stereotypes are largely untrue,” and he says, “what do you mean?” so I tell him about my incest cousins—true story—“I do have incest cousins, but I’ll have you know they aren’t from the coal-country side of the family, they’re from the DC suburbs,” and I laugh because that’s the joke, and he asks, “wait, do you really?” and I have to say yes, “I found them behind our grandparent’s shed one summer, and it was at least a handy, so I’m pretty sure that counts,” and he doesn’t laugh, and my cigarette is almost done, and he says, “that’s kind of offensiv —you shouldn’t joke about things like that,” and I say, “oh, I’m sorry,” and turn to see Julia smiling, she takes me by the arm and we walk back inside and tell Thatch we’re leaving, and he says, “that’s too bad, you didn’t get to meet everyone yet,” and we walk toward the subway—she’s taking the L, I’m taking the M—and we both laugh, she kisses me on the cheek goodbye and tells me again, “you really don’t know how to talk to people at parties”—and I laugh, but not really, because every night I still walk home alone.

Grace Crouthamel, a queer writer from Northern Appalachia, lives with two mutinous dogs, a lizard, and a novella-in-progress, with work appearing or forthcoming in Sky Island Journal, ANMLY, and matchbook.

Art by Jasmine Hyman, a playwright and artist living and working in her home town of NYC.

The Ocean Never Really Leaves You

By Bethany Bruno

When the hurricane came, I watched my childhood street rearrange itself into a map of everywhere I’d ever wanted to escape, mailboxes floating past like lost punctuation, our front porch bending into the canal as if bowing to some god I never believed in, and afterward when the water receded and the fish lay gasping in the ditches, I felt something ancient in their mouths, a secret current that whispered all our names backward, and I knew then that the ocean never really leaves you, it just waits inside the plumbing, hums beneath the drains, remembering the shape of your house, your voice, your smallest sins, and every time I run the tap I think I hear it rehearsing the moment it comes back for me.

Bethany Bruno is a Floridian author whose fiction and nonfiction have appeared in more than a hundred literary journals and magazines, including The Threepenny Review, The Sun, McSweeney’s, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, and The Huffington Post.

Photo by Jason Thayer.