For more about Tessa Gratton, visit her website, twitter, facebook or Merry Sisters of Fate. Keep your eyes open for her upcoming novel series “Songs of New Asgard.”

The story was read by artist Joa Stenning. Her work can be found on blogspot, carbonmade, and etsy. She’s also on twitter too!

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Carefully chosen words make the satire wicked and the comedy rapier-sharp. His humor comes on many levels — sometimes over-the-top, often much more subtle — and that makes an evening rise above stand-up comedy to something closer to social commentary.” — Jon Potter, Brattleboro Reformer

Various Characters

Music by Sethums: Older Than Hours

Sethums’ other musical endeavor: Jesus Year

This Summer’s Tour

Watch out for Sethums in a city near you! He will be touring the United States.

Losing My Religion: Confessions of a New Age Refugee highlights the absurdities, paradoxes, and heartfelt qualities of having any kind of spiritual leaning. The audience is escorted through an earnest, sidesplitting depiction of the trials and tribulations of losing and finding one’s spiritual path.

Lepore uses his fecund imagination to take a humorous and sincere look at the pitfalls and biases that make up the melting pot of spiritual choices. The intention of the piece is to create a dialogue of deep questioning in terms of how we view our own faith, belief systems and judgment of those who we don’t understand, all the while having a high level of humor to dilute the dogma.

Losing My Religion: Confessions of a New Age Refugee is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of Losing My Religion: Confessions of a New Age Refugee may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

Support Seth and the wonderful art he creates!

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About the Author

Maxine Lopez-Keough is a cheap date and aspiring deep sea welder. Her work has has appeared in the Best of the Net Anthology, Juked, MonkeyBicycle, Dogzplot, The Sarah Lawrence Review, the Boston Playwriting Festival, and on bathroom walls the world over.

Excerpts From Maxine’s Blog

Coca

Okay, so, I am going to tell this story because— even though I am a bourgie hoodrat and I pretend that the only things that matter to me are rovers and white girls who land basketball players— sometimes in life something happens that is so totally wonderful, it transcends everything and sort of hovers above the stratosphere like a crazy beautiful event-comet. And in the midst of oil spills and Tipper & Gore splitting, we need this. We NEED this.

When I was 16 I went to study abroad in Santander, which is like the Boca Raton of Spain. Nothing happens there, ever, except sometimes people eat baby eels and teenagers just found out about Nirvana like last week, and the beaches are pretty okay. I went to study there because my great aunt, Coca, lives there, and my whole Cuban-side of the family was like, SHAME ON YOU AND YOUR HOUSEHOLD FOR NOT SPEAKING OUR LANGUAGE, YOU MONGREL, GET YOUR ASS TO SPAIN AND GET YOUR LEARN ON. Anyway, Coca is 90+,  almost completely blind, and usually in a wheelchair, and kind of crazy. She took me around with a bunch of her nun friends in a tiny smart car to all these Catholic monuments, where lepers lined up with me to get our respective souls cleansed. I learned like 3 words of Spanish and read the Magic Johnson biography like 17 times because it was the only English book I had with me, and I was generally miserable but wicked tan. (Re: beaches.)
ANYWAY. When Coca was young she was a total babe stunner in Cuba. Like, a true-tropical pre-J.Lo swoon-worthy fox of 18 years old. Some boy in Havana fell in love with her from afar. He could never date her ‘cause she had all these other boyfriends, and then she got married, but he was totally smitten. SEVENTY-TWO YEARS LATER he tracks her down, calls her up (she’s like almost deaf) and is like, I’mma come and see you girl, I have loved you all my life. He FLIES TO SANTANDER SPAIN, and is like, Yup! Still Love ya! You’re still a fox. Your husband is dead now, let’s do this thing.

Dude is some millionaire in Miami with a bunch of houses. He’s like, It’s you, it’s only ever been you, forever, my whole life. HE ASKS HER TO MARRY HIM. SHE SAYS YES. THEY ARE GETTING MARRIED THIS SUMMER AND TAKING A CRUISE TO RUSSIA. Then they’re going to split their time between Spain & Miami, because even at 90 years old Lopez women are heartbreakers who can land themselves world-traveling millionaire husbands.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM SAYING HERE? People can LOVE YOU FROM AFAR FOR 8 DECADES AND PUT A RING ON IT, EVEN WHEN YOU ARE BOTH ABOUT TO DIE. THAT IS SOME EPIC LOVE ELIZABETH TAYLOR SHIT.

I am going to buy the biggest hat in the fucking world and go to the wedding and swan around and be like, sometimes life is fucking beautiful and when it is, damn. Get love, chase your girl, lock it up if it takes you almost a century. The end.

WANTED

One well-rehearsed band in need of a hair-whipping, bass-worshipping, harmony-murdering Karen-O-meets-Ke$ha-with-a-splash-of-Bjork lead singer. Leather pants optional. You should be polished and on the brink of success. I will speak for us in interviews and promise to never date any of you, will inevitably date one of you, and when we break up you’ll most likely be kicked out of the group. Must be comfortable with partial nudity, my obsession with Nicki Minaj, my overprotective boyfriend, cultural-appropriated usage of face paint, pandering to both the gay and hipster communities, and ridiculous fur hats. Kindly present with fully-written songs that are neither twee nor derivative of any band other than ZZ Top. Must enjoy drum circles, overt use of hand-claps, children’s choirs, synth-pop, tambourines, Max Bemis (the crazy years), guest-verses by rappers I am in love with, swampy beats, the entirety of Justin Timberlake’s solo career, coyote skulls, Indian food, Beyonce and jingle bells. Please come prepared to rehearse with sour patch kids, a brief personal statement explaining your affinity for vests, an addiction you’ll beat and recover from publicly, your instrument, frye boots, a short essay addressing why Tegan is superior to Sara, a pen and ink drawing of a Clydesdale, your resume and a list of things you’ve done to prepare for the apocalypse. No vegans.

Untitled

For a really long time whenever someone was like “FUCK THE INTERNET IT’S A FACELESS VOID OF NARCISSISTIC SOLIPSISM FATED TO DAMN MANKIND TO AN ETERNITY OF LOLCATS” I just let them vent. I think it’s important to get that shit out or else it burns a hole in you, and I mean— sometimes things online are awful, and when I was 14 I had a MySpace so I’m not running off to find a step-ladder up to my high horse, you know? But from now on, whenever anyone bitches about how nobody goes outside anymore to milk cows, and how the web is defecating all over good society and our brains are turning into weird html static, I am pointing to this and I am saying: Fuck outside, everything I need to prove we are a society that is blazing forward in a fiery racecar called Progress is in this clip. Take your farm, take your fucking fresh air, and walk away because it’s over, go home, goodbye, rah ah ah-ah.

Together We Can

At my job I sit within eyesight of our lobby, which means I get to watch all the interview subjects arrive and wait to be greeted. Every now and then a girl comes in who is dressed so inappropriately that I literally stop whatever I am doing and stare at her and imagine the life that has lead her here, to our fancy office, where she is sitting in a belt masquerading as a skirt and a button down shirt undone to mid-breast and high heels designed to hurt and confound and a necklace that spells out Tasty. I stare at these girls, and instead of feeling superior and well-accessorized, I can’t help but picture a life in which they grew up without a mother, developed way too early, dated a series of regrettable men, left home at 16, never looked back at their abusive stepfather, turned to stripping to pay the bills and put themselves through night school. And  how this morning, getting ready in the run-down two-bedroom they share with Crystal, their closest girlfriend from The Viper Pit, they looked inside their wardrobe and frowned, struggling to pick out their most Businessy outfit. How pausing in front of the mirror, they adjusted the strap on their Lucite stiletto and asked Crystal what she thought. “You look great, ” Crystal said, “Serious, but also like, young? Like, really professional but still cute.” And they believed her, and they arrived here with skin the color of antique leather, white eyeshadow staring out at the world, acrylic nails clenched tight around their fake Fendi purse and a lone bic pen.

They all look so transparently hopeful, every single one of them—so much more so than the BU girls who roll in post-graduation in a suit their mother helped pick out, serious shoes, serious hairstyles, serious jewelry, serious internships on the resume. Girls who studied ambiguously corporate things like Marketing or Communications, and who probably played a sport completely unrelated to dipping it low or ass-clapping. And I know that it’s ridiculous for me to assume that every girl in a Bebe miniskirt is looking to upgrade her life from CucumberMelon Bodysplash to one of endless, endless paperwork, that my thinking so is probably MORE judgmental than if I was just staring out at them thinking Girl Your Skirt Is Such A Tragedy, and yet I cannot help my Lifetime self. Maybe these chicks all belong to a subculture of BU girls who simply like dressing as though they get paid in hundreds, and their tans are from Spring Break in Cabo, and they all played tennis and dated boys named Hunter in college, I’m sorry, I can’t fucking help it: In my mind, these girls are strippers, they dated Bucks and Dwanes, they tried meth more than once and they will never get hired. They don’t stand a chance. They will be interviewed dutifully and then laughed about for days behind their backs; in weeks to come, I’ll hear the end of some pithy insult, something about giving head to get ahead, a chorus of laughter, back to work.

And all I want to do is walk out into the hall, pull them into the elevator, down into the mall, into Banana Republic and say to each one of them: Here, this is called Single-Breasted and it has nothing to do with boobs, and these are Pants, and let me help you. You don’t have to give up who you are, you don’t have to sacrifice hotness for the job, there are ways. There are blazers that are cut in at the waist, and have you heard of darts? And there are skirts that hit at the knee, and good leather boots, and a world of wrap dresses. There are ways. I can see your vagina, put it away. Put your thighs away, put the upper quadrant of your breasts away, you don’t need them. You will command both male and female attention in a smart and manipulative way that will lead people to promote you because they feel you are worth taking a risk on, not to see if you’ll go down on someone in the freight elevator. Let me help you. Take my hand, let’s do this thing. No, put down the camisole, that is not a shirt, put it down—yes, okay, now take my hand. Let’s go.

I finally nailed down my plans for the apocalypse

and let me tell you I am so relieved. It’s like, Free Time: Hello Again! Flitting through mad daisy fields, calling all my grandparents, baking crazy pies for people, so much free time! Don’t know what to do with it.

More ramblings on Maxine’s tumblr.

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The Book

more thoughts at nonsensethoughts.com

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2. R. Wade Wilshusen (Austin, USA)

Second Hand
Birds spit strings in six flavors
Smoke, time, tinges of brown on finger edges.
The cobweb foam ebbing after a first pint-sip, just plain spit, a mist sharpening now, just now.
Just now, dripping at half-speed house bpm: water.
Rivulets converging, tributary spilling, a bucket carried with lazy knees knocking.
The television is off; hear it not making noise. Three fans roaring, whispering, churning, telling inside jokes.
Just now, a descending squirrel rasped leaves:
An excuse to yell about baseball.
A splitter is the hardest pitch to hit.
Fastball arm action, deceptive motion, control the direction by applying pressure to different seams.
Try a sixty five mile-per-hour (an hour: excruciating, searing, ticking seconds gashing wind strokes, rapidly deteriorating stomach lining,
windsocks torn, angrily portending storms, staring, waiting, tearing skin and pressing fingernails into palms, ripping by, the seconds,
tenths of seconds sprinting odometer circles [and hour can be either good or bad and as you age, time becomes proportionately less significant. To a one-hour-old infant, an hour is 100% of your life.
When your'e thirty, an hour's two sitcoms and a six-pack] just to leave a mark)
pitch starting off well above the strike zone and dropping, just now.

3. Mahima Bhatia (Delhi, India)

4. Amy Rosenberg (NYC, USA)

“Funky Goddess Woman” (collaboration with Sherri Rosen)

5. Sherri Rosen (NYC, USA)

“Funky Goddess Woman” (collaboration with Amy Rosenberg)
-
Funky Goddess Woman has a fierceness that cuts through the bullshit of excuses. She’s been around. She’s seen and heard it all.
She sees people around her that allow fear of failure to stop them from preceding ahead.
They want a guarantee that whatever idea, problem, creation they are working on will work, but
she knows there are no guarantees on anything.

Funky Goddess Woman says “don’t allow yourself to continuously be sidetracked, while all the time knowing what your problem is, and ultimately allowing fear of failure and fear of success to get in your way.”

She prods, she pushes, doesn’t hold back, and aims for the truth.  She keeps
Injecting the medicine of truth into their heart until they wakeup and realize it’s no big deal to move ahead, actually it’s much easier and simpler than holding yourself back.  Holding yourself back takes a great amount of energy and is a burden.

Funky Goddess Woman says “own your truth! Own what you are good at and don’t hold back!”

6. Francois Cachet (Johannesburg, South Africa)

7. Bethany Grace (Prague, Czech Republic)

“To shoot or not to shoot. That is the question.”

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- Chris Collins.

Play this for extra emotion

02 I Believe
I Believe by NS Member: Chris Greenwood

Copyright 2010 Chris Collins, All Rights Reserved.

Please feel free to judge me by what comes into my head.

Nonsense Thoughts are now available on your favorite body!

Nonsense Thought – I’m Awesome by nonsensesociety
Browse more Nonsense T-Shirts

Nonsense Thought – Anorexic by nonsensesociety
Browse other Humor T-Shirts

Want more!?

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Meet Mellanie Carney, a 28 year-old poet/photographer from New Mexico, USA. Mellanie’s submission caught the attention of the Nonsense Society, because it combines two arts in one. We are all about this! Take a look at how words and images inspire Mellanie, and hopefully they will inspire you as well. Welcome, Mellanie.

Shards of Time

Another fragment in time,
That we somehow
Managed to capture.
Trapped in my mind
Like a firefly in a jar.
A beautiful shard of time
Where we sat on a mountaintop,
Smiling like idiots in love.

Feather

Feather floats on breeze
And finds it’s way to me.
Comes to rest on my knee
Under the willow tree.
Feather where have you been…
Have you seen the morning sky
Ablaze with a million facets
Wondrous to any eye?
Have you seen the oceans vast
And mountains unsurpassed?
Creatures wandering to and fro
Watching you as you go?
Have you traveled to distant lands
Been passed through so many hands
Sure that you’d come to find
The innocent and kind?
And found your way to me
Who will carefully
Tuck you in my shoe
And take care of you…

These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Mellanie Carney

I started writing poetry when I was in the third grade. I entered a poetry contest that my school was hosting, and I won first place. Everyone was blown away by the writing I produced at such a young age. I never stopped. Over the years, poetry has been many things to me – a release when I am sad, a friend, an inspiration, a means of coping, and a way to express my love of the people around me and of the world.
Photography came a little later, in high school, when I took a photography and darkroom course. I dabbled in it for a while, then a few years ago I got pretty serious about it and started taking a camera with me everywhere. I recently started doing portraits for friends and coworkers, and it gained momentum. I made a website. I have done couples portraiture and individual portraits for quite a few people I know. It seems to be the sister to poetry…I love using words to capture my feelings, and I love using a camera to capture the beauty of life.

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Gordon McBryde

United Kingdom

Rosaria Battiloro

Italy

Amber Rubarth

United States

You Will Love This Song

you-will-love-this-song

Nirrimi Hakanson

Australia

Mario Sánchez Nevado

Spain

Ben Wytinck

Canada

‘Bel

‘bel

Martin Stranka

Prague

Lawrence Yang

United States

Chris Greenwood

United States

I Believe

I Believe

Tuna Ferit Hidayetoglu

Turkey

Cara Persico

United States

“Not Enough”

I don’t know enough about the world to write poetry.

I don’t know about foreign lands and broken bridges
and the pages of history I never turned in high school-
Maybe I should have turned them.

I don’t know all the animals that have sex for fun,
or the ones that don’t have sex at all,
all I know is that both of those have described me.

I don’t know how to write fiction; I think fiction,
I am fiction–

its potential string of words
grabbing me into a black widow’s web,
tantalizing that soon I shall die, or it shall die
Or at least suffer from the slow sting and poison.

I don’t know about anaphoras and hyperboles and
all the words we assign to movement trying to explain
the inexplicable quickening heartbeat and waves
of hot blood flooding into our veins as if we suddenly
feel ourselves alive and this is the first time we noticed
all day.

It’s lucky if we notice at all.

Mara Brioni

Italy

Vitaly S. Alexius

Canada

Nootrac

United States

Extreme Croquet

extreme-croquet

Emily Tebbetts

United States

Jarek Kubicki

Poland

Greg “Craola” Simkins

United States

Aja Apa-Soura

United States

Emily Mover

Canada

Ordinary Day

ordinary-day

Florian Nicolle

France

Jeannie Paske

United States

Kamil Smala

Poland

Steven Madeja

United States

Garry and Harry, Documentary

Noteworthy Compilations & Posts

Women in Photography

An Interview With Zoë Keating

Instances of Breathtaking Creativity

Ace, King of Space

The Best Break Up Songs of All Time

Attractive and Inspiring Liquor Labels

The Line Between Art and Pornography (NSFW)

Rejected Submissions: Music

Are You Being Censored? (Hint: Yes)

The Most Interesting Search Terms of 2009

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Nonsense Society artists reflect on simplicity.

‘Bel

‘bel
Copyright 2009 Ben Wytinck, All Rights Reserved.

Copyright Martin Stranka, All Rights Reserved.

Plastic Deformation

A stone is ground by the passage of time
into grain Sizes tiny and fine
washed away by the Falling rain
without Feeling, without Pain
oh god, to be a Stone.

- Patrick Nietupski

Copyright Gordon McBryde, All Rights Reserved.

I Believe

I Believe
Copyright 2008 Chris Greenwood, All Rights Reserved.


In my experience, artists who have found their own sense of inner simplicity produce some of the best work. Do yourself a favor and find simplicity in your life.

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The porch door jolts me from my movie, my breath catching in my chest. Dad’s just come home again. It’s 5:30 A.M., another sleepless night. I’ve tried everything: Benadryl, chamomile, weed. I for sure thought the weed would work. Maybe I need to try all three together. Dad is in the kitchen. The clank of ice followed by the slosh of liquid, his daily brandy cocktail is soothing his conscience. Roxy yelps a few times in her annoying, small dog voice, but he hushes her and feeds her snacks from the jar.


I pause the movie and wait for his ritual to end. He slides off his loafers, leaves them on the welcome mat. He starts the laundry, puts in his white button down shirt with Spring Fresh detergent so tomorrow morning his shameful clothes might smell like lagoons and sun showers. This all could have been avoided if I wasn’t an insomniac and my mother didn’t sleep like a dead log. I’m not out to ruin lives, I’m only the girl at the convenience store who hid next to the frozen peas at the holdup. “Are you okay?” people will ask me. “I’m not the one who got shot,” I’ll reply.


My phone vibrates on my desk, glows neon in the semi-darkness: 1 new message. Only one person would know I’m even up at this time. I flip open my phone, squint with the rush of light.


“Parker?” dad’s voice is hesitant like a terrified character in a slasher movie. “Are you awake?” It was a dumb idea for me to take the bedroom off of the kitchen. Actually, it was a dumb idea to move here in the first place.


“Yeah dad, my phone woke me up,” I say confidently. He doesn’t need to know that I know. One of us carrying that awkwardness is one too many.


From: Jordan
Delivered: 5:46 A.M.
U still awake?


I don’t know why he bothers to ask when he knows I am.


From: Parker
Delivered 5:48 A.M.
You know I am. Why.


From: Jordan
Delivered 5:51 A.M.
Jeez insomnia makes u cranky. Wanna get greakfast?


From: Parker
Delivered 5:54 A.M.
You mean Breakfast? Maybe.


From: Jordan
Delivered 5:57 A.M.
Ur an asshole. Txt u in an hr.


I might as well get up. Go for a run maybe. No, it’ll probably be a walk. But if anyone asks it was a run. I’ll wait; make sure dad is safely upstairs before heading into the kitchen. Roxy leaps off her dog bed when she hears my footsteps and follows me to the door. “No, Roxy, I’m not taking you with me.” She cocks her head to the side, sticks her tongue out. “Nooo Roxy.” I feel sorry for her, so I head to the snack jar to placate her like dad did. She got the good end of this deal being the witness of everyone’s secrets.


Just as I stick my hand in the jar, I hear it. The vibrating of his Blackberry. Their bedroom door creaks open – it has to be mom this time. Without even thinking I grab his phone off the counter and sprint out the door with it. Shit. Why did I just do that?


***


“What’s that noise?” Jordan asks, pointing to my bag.


“Don’t worry about it.” I squeeze the phone through my backpack, try to make it stop.


“That’s the third time it’s gone off; people are starting to stare at us.”


“We’re at a diner, not a four star restaurant.”


“Whose is it anyway?”


I sigh, annoyed, and pull it out. “My dad’s. It has ten missed calls from my house.”


“He probably thinks he lost it or something. Aren’t you going to call him back?”


I look off wistfully; shove a hash brown in my mouth. “Nope.”


His eyebrows scrunch, he’s clearly fishing for what to say.“Parker,” he says finally with a mouth half-full of pancakes, “is there something going on? Everyone’s got moods and stuff, but you’ve been kind of different lately.”


“What do you mean different?” I say hastily, stabbing my egg.


“Don’t get all defensive and crap. You haven’t been sleeping in a couple of months and you get irritated a lot. And now you’re ignoring your dad. You still haven’t told me why you have his phone.”


“Maybe I’m irritated because I haven’t slept.”


“Well maybe you should sleep then.”


“Maybe my dad shouldn’t be cheating on my mom.”


Fuck.


I wasn’t going to say that.


He drops his fork on the blueberry pancakes. “Wait… what? He is? How long have you known about this?”


I put my head in my hands; run my fingers through my hair a couple of times. This is what happens when you don’t sleep. You blurt stupid shit out.


“A few months now.”


“A few months? Does your mom know about this?”


“Do you think he would still be doing it if she knew about it?”


“What are you going to do? Have you talked to him? Are you going to tell her?”


“I can’t imagine which of those conversations would be more awkward: confronting my dad about where he puts his dick or telling my mom it’s not only going in her.”


We sit there what seems like an hour, both of us pushing food aimlessly on our plates. The phone rests on the table between us, constantly vibrating in circles.


“Um. So how are you going to return the phone?”


“Don’t know.”


“Are you going to at all?”


“Probably not.” I lean back in the booth; put my foot up on the seat.


“Why did you take it in the first place?”


“Mom was coming downstairs and it started going off. Who else do you think would be calling at six in the morning?”


“Fair enough, but did you even look at it to see who it was?”


“Nope. Don’t want to know.”


“Why don’t you just check now to be sure? I could look at it for you.”


“No Jordan, just drop it.”


“Okay, I’m sorry. Why don’t you stay at my house tonight? We could have a bonfire or get drunk or something. We could go get drunk now.”


“It’s eight a.m.”


“Well, technically you’ve been up for days so I don’t think it really matters. Later it is then.”


***


I belch, catching my mouth with my hand. “Ladylike, I know,” I say, swigging another sip back.


“Since when are you ever ladylike?”


I go to punch at his arm but his quick reflexes have me narrowly missing his crotch. “Whoa! Easy on the gin, killer. You almost knocked my balls off.” He grasps me around the waist, pulling me on top of his chest. I’m too drunk or too tired to question it.


In this position I have no choice but to look at the sky, watch the stars glisten in their happy little gas atmospheres. I’d rather it be cloudy. I’d rather the blackness.


Jordan leans over and kisses the top of my head. In my gin induced stupor all I can think about is a chain e-mail I had gotten years ago that outlined what all the kisses meant: If he kisses you on the cheek, he thinks you’re sweet. If he kisses you on the mouth, he likes you. If he kisses you on the hand, he adores you. If he kisses you on the forehead, he misses you. If he kisses you on the head… What the hell did it say about being kissed on the head? I’m sure a twelve-year-old wrote that, it probably shouldn’t be my number one consult on men’s behavior.


The vibrating of the Blackberry cuts through my thoughts again.


“Parker, just turn the phone off so you don’t have to deal with this all night.”


I probably could have done that right from the start, but I wanted to see how progressively freaked out my dad got. Final call count: 38. That’s sufficient paranoia for the day. I hit the red end-call button when I notice it isn’t a call from my house – it’s from “Jessica.” The no-name slut in my head actually does have a name. Jessica.


I weigh the phone in my hand for a couple of seconds. I could tell her off, ask if she knows he has a family, or what it’s like not to sleep for months at a time. Her name starts to look fuzzy around the edges; a drip tries to escape my nose.


“Where are you going?” Jordan yells.


I don’t turn around. I don’t even think I hear him. It’s all gibberish like screaming underwater. Next thing I know the brand-new silver Blackberry is careening through the air, landing in the flames. The vibrating stops. Jessica’s name starts melting into the pit. In a few hours it’ll look the same as the other ashes in the fire. Jordan tugs on my shirt, turning me around.


“Did that feel good?”


“Really good,” I reply. Jordan cradles my cheek in his hand, pulls my body into his and sweetly kisses my lips. If he kisses you on the mouth, it means he likes you. I pull him in tighter, breathing in his surfer-smelling cologne and a mixture of burning metal.


That night we lay on his bed, watching re-runs of Friends until we finally passed out, hands clasped. I had the most amazing dreams.


Copyright Cara Persico, All Rights Reserved.

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