lmnl lit

Bloodseat by Jeremy Trager

Characters

KLOWN A clown.

BRANE A seated man.

MELLON An unseated woman.

Place

Somewhere with a chair and lots of space.

Time

Yes.

SETTING: A segment of space. There is a chair, at least.

AT RISE: BRANE sits on a chair in the dark. In another part of the space, bright lights and offensively clamorous music attack the audience without restraint. KLOWN enters, dancing and singing.

vvv

KLOWN (singing)

Beneath bone, inside flesh I find my face:

Vessels insisting on retribution.

Cells multiply without my permission

Scavenging death, hunting destroying all.

KLOWN dances and claps to a flourish and clang.

KLOWN (singing)

Tiny bugs with heads hide inside my thoughts.

Songs of my late demise garner reverse applause.

Purple smiles reveal fangs as white as wings,

Tearing flesh, as sharp as muted words.

KLOWN dances more violently, ripping the head off a doll.

The music softens and KLOWN becomes still.

KLOWN (singing monotonously)

Do you ever wake up from a dream and never sleep again?

Do you ever tell yourself you’re still alive after you’re dead?

Do you ever fall in love with someone who does not exist?

Do you ever look into a mirror and slowly disappear?

Do you ever play with dolls that come alive and bully you?

Do you ever pray to God and realize he worships you?
Do you ever kill yourself because somebody tries to stop you?

(slowing down, meticulously)

Do you ask these questions knowing nobody can answer you?

Accosting clangs return. KLOWN dances violently off stage.

Lights rise softly on BRANE, seated in the chair. MELLON enters.

She seems to be passing through but stops to engage with BRANE.

MELLON

Excuse me.

BRANE

Why?

MELLON

It’s the polite thing.

BRANE

Why?

MELLON

I don’t make the rules.

BRANE

Finally, we agree.

MELLON

But why are you sitting there like that?

BRANE

Where?

MELLON

In that chair there, hovering over the pit.

BRANE

This one here? Is that it?

MELLON

That one, yes, the big one. The big, big one. Sitting there. Like that.

BRANE

Oh yeah? As opposed to…?

MELLON

I dunno. Standing?

BRANE

Or?

MELLON

Lying down upright, or sideways squatting?

BRANE

Huh. My body is always here, in this chair.

MELLON

Is it yours, or just… someone’s?

BRANE

Sometimes. Sometimes it is.

MELLON

Well. I’ve never seen you before.

BRANE

Maybe you’ve never looked.

MELLON

I have. I’ve looked high and low. I’ve not seen it. I’ve not found it anywhere.

BRANE

I’m always here, somewhere. Perhaps I’m not noticeable. Perhaps I’m-

MELLON (urgently)

Sitting is dangerous. Haven’t you heard?

BRANE

I have heard, but I haven’t listened.

MELLON

Tell me this: Do you like it?

BRANE

What? Not listening, you mean?

MELLON

It’s almost like sitting on a toilet, isn’t it? But instead, it’s just a chair.

BRANE

Very similar, yes. I am similar to you. And a chair is very similar to a stool.

MELLON

I enjoy sitting on a toilet, you know. But not for an eternity. I scoop in and plop out. The experience wipes away. Then I’m back on my feet, trying to go places.

BRANE

Your feet appear to be stuck. I’m not stuck. I’m… well. I guess I’m floating.

KLOWN enters to intrusive music, dancing.

BRANE and MELLON shake their heads at one another, disapprovingly.

Music softens and remains:

KLOWN (tying a balloon)

I says to the kiddies: Pretty soon you’re gonna grow up and be just like your mommy and daddy and all your pervie uncles and your neighbor’s dog. You’ll start to see purple veins in your legs where there used to be hairs. You’ll see your own flesh rupture. I says: Do you know what rupture means?

(cackling)

Pretty soon, I says, you’ll open the cupboard to see what’s for dinner and ten years will go by and twenty years will go by and thirty and forty and fifty and everyone will die, including you and all your fantasies!

(pops balloon)

I says to the man, have you got some more make up for me? I need it bad. I need a ton of it. The caking kind. To cover all of this dried blood, okay? All over my body, okay? Smeared on like icing, covered up, filling my cracks. Okay? Okay, he says! Okay!

Intrusive music returns; KLOWN exits.

MELLON

So. What about hemorrhoids?

BRANE

What is it now?

MELLON

You get them from sitting. Ruptured veins. In your anus. From sitting there. They bleed.

BRANE

Right.

MELLON

Well? What about that?

BRANE

What am I supposed to do? Get up and…?

MELLON

Yes, that’s it! And take a walk.

BRANE

But then I’ll lose my seat.

MELLON

Well, that’s life.

BRANE

I enjoy sitting here. The view is… something.

MELLON

But sitting is poisonous, dammit. It stops your blood from moving. It stops the oxygen from getting around. Your cells die off. Tumors accumulate. Your feet lose sensation, go blue, get lobbed. Everything inside you is dying right now—you know that!

(BRANE shrugs)

Don’t you want to become very, very old? Or are you still hoping to become young?

BRANE

What’s the difference?

MELLON

They’re just ideas. But they have value. Numeric. Do you have a calculator?

BRANE

I can measure my rings. Like a tree.

MELLON

Where are your rings? I don’t see any. That means no one loves—

BRANE

I’m like a tree—planted, rooted. Rotted, perhaps.

MELLON

No way to quantify things. How can you measure yourself without a ring?

BRANE

Well—you know. Down there.

MELLON

Oh?

BRANE

My bone.

MELLON

Oh!

BRANE

Yeah.

MELLON

And?

BRANE

It’s private.

MELLON

But it will stop working. It will shrivel. Sitting still does that—it shrivels bones.

BRANE

When you’re not looking, I can… you know. Play with it. With my bone.

MELLON

Oh?

BRANE

Oh yeah.

MELLON

But I’m not looking. I’m seeing, but I’m not really looking. Or is it the other way around?

BRANE

They’re both true. I mean, they’re both half-true. Right?

MELLON

Well, at least you’ll get the blood inside you to change positions. If you…. when you… you know.

BRANE

Right. From time to time, I change my legs. Watch me do the work.

BRANE changes position in the chair with great difficulty, wincing painfully.

MELLON

Your legs haven’t really changed—not really.

BRANE

Incremental change, you see?

MELLON

I see. But I would feel terrible if I didn’t reiterate how much danger you’re in from sitting there like that. It’s the most dangerous thing you can do. The riskiest thing in the word. Sitting there—like that.

BRANE

I am a natural risk-taker.

MELLON

It’s safer to roam. Come on—take a risk!

(begins walking through the space)

I’m walking aimlessly. It’s very healthy. I know I am walking, but where? Why? For how long? It’s best not to know. Just walk. Listen to the rhythm of your body moving through space. Feel the vibrations formed by a shoe clomping the ground. Notice the scenery change before your eyes. Look up, look down. Look all around. Wave your hands in the air like you do or do not care. Run for a while then stand still again. Let out a small fart, noiselessly, and let it disperse into the atmosphere. Catch a tiny bug in your nostril and huff it into your brain. Walk sideways into drunken traffic. Bend yourself, naked from the waist down, over a guard rail and wait for the crowds to penetrate you. Lie across a railroad and squirm. Beg to be sliced apart. All, all of this is safer than sitting down. I’m safe, safe, safe…

MELLON continues to walk through the space, in a sort of trance.

BRANE

I am sitting. I am in a position. I am comfortable. I am numb, shifting this way and that.

I am naked beneath layers, but I cannot face it. I am warm in parts and ice cold in others. I work on my stillness and stiffness. I justify the absence of things. I argue with distinct voices that attack from within. The voices are as old as me—they are my real self. I fight them every day. I dig into gravity. I crawl through my bed and fail to find a way out. My pain comes from the walls and ceiling. At night I can’t breathe. In the morning I sweat. In the afternoon I eat until I am sick. I think about exercise. I think about more food. I think and think and think. I am seated here, sinking down deep. Sometimes a challenge comes, and I am seated. I am seated still. I am here, seated like this. Just like this.

Warbling music. KLOWN enters.

KLOWN (singing in high falsetto, operatically)

Get up, get up and fall down.

Get up, get up and stay there.

Get up, get up and fall away.

Get down and up and down and stay down.

KLOWN strips away their costume and wig.

KLOWN stands naked, wearing a soiled diaper and shaking from illness.

MELLON slows down her walk, almost to the point of slow motion.

KLOWN (singing in low register, monotonously)

I am hungry. I am tired.

I am horny. I am fat.

I am ugly. I am awake.

I am no one. I’m still dead.

KLOWN dances oddly off stage.

Silence.

BRANE stands up with great pains.

KLOWN screams offstage, in the distance.

BRANE walks toward the audience then slowly turns to show his backside.

The back of his trousers is soaked in blood.

He remains there, frozen and bloody. He will bleed out.

MELLON moves to sit in the chair BRANE had occupied.

She walks there deliberately, slowly, trance-like.

MELLON

There are little grapes coming out of your anus—grapes that squirt. Makes a fine red wine, aged in a sedentary casket. We crush them, impatient for juice. The red gets embedded beneath our nails. It stains our bones: fermented, sulfuric, bitter, cloudy. It makes us bleed inside and out. It hurts us. It ruptures us. It’s very, very dangerous. It’s a very dangerous thing—sitting there like that. It is a grave, grave danger. A dangerous grave. Let me show you. Allow me to allow myself to become a demonstration. Look here—I now become a seated object. Now—like this.

MELLON sits in the chair.

BRANE bleeds out from his anus; his face is gone.

MELLON (cont.)

I am seated now. There is nothing here. Just enough sunlight to turn me into a raisin. So then: I won’t get up again.

MELLON waits.

Lights fade out.

End of Play.

Jeremy Trager is a third-year playwright in the Creative Writing Workshop. He’s a transplant from Chicago, where he was a professional actor. He appeared in over 50 theatre productions there, winning the Joseph Jefferson Award, the After Dark Award, and the Broadway World Chicago Award. His plays have been read or workshopped at the UNO Playwrights Fest, Bailiwick Chicago, and the University of South Dakota. His writing and photography have been published in Southern Review of Books, 433 Mag, Ellipsis, Midway Journal, and The French Quarter Journal with a piece forthcoming in The Daily Drunk.

Thunderbolt by Jack Cape

I was twenty-three years old when I finally stopped lying to myself. The rain-splashed cobblestone streets of Antigua, Guatemala, shone under the scattered streetlights, the rich night air was pungent and smoky with the exhaust of the chicken buses. I was at a club called La Sala, dark and sultry with sweaty bodies. It wasn’t a gay bar, but it was the closest thing Antigua had at the time. A thunderbolt had been living inside my chest for twenty-three years, deeply etched with letters denoting my condition. A leaden amalgam of shame and confusion. I didn’t know how to shake it.

Growing up, I didn’t kiss anyone under the bleachers at a football game. I didn’t lose my virginity on Prom Night. Encounters with girls were forced and infrequent. There was no attraction, no intimacy. I never felt like a sexual being. It was an acute and intimate misery, one that I thought would last the rest of my life. The thunderbolt was insidious, slowly collecting inside my chest.

That night in Antigua, I was threading my way through the crowded club towards the single restroom under the stairs. There was a knot of well-dressed men standing a few meters away, all of them around my age. One of them was looking at me. He was tall and strikingly handsome, with thick dark hair swept back, and smooth, sculpted features. I smiled at him and went into the restroom. When I came out, he was standing there.

“Como te llamas?” I asked. What’s your name?

“José Antonio,” he said. “I speak English.”

His voice was rich and melodic, strongly accented.

I gestured up towards the terrace. “Upstairs?”

He grinned. “Vaya, gringo.” Let’s go.

We shared a cigarette on the terrace overlooking the ancient city. There were a at least a hundred people up there and I wasn’t conscious of any of them. Someone could have walked up and pushed me off that balcony and I wouldn’t have noticed. José had his hand on my knee, and his liquid brown eyes never left my face. For the first time in my life I wanted someone and felt wanted in return. I had never known what that felt like. I felt lit up, as if he and I were glowing. I remember being more aware of my body than ever before, beautifully so, aware of the muscle, the sinew, the tissue that comprised my physical form.

I was transfixed by him, tongue-tied, clumsily slipping between English and Spanish. He was laughing, his hand moving further up my leg, taking a pull off the cigarette and passing it back to me. I slowly, ever so cautiously, allowed myself to believe that maybe, maybe this was it—

Suddenly, one of his friends approached him, speaking in rapid-fire Spanish. José took his hand off me, asking a flurry of questions. What happened? Where is he? Why did you leave him?

He turned to me. “My friend is sick. I need to help get him to the car.”

“Okay,” I said. I felt oddly discombobulated, like I was slipping. “Are you coming back?”

“If I can. We’re from the city.”

Guatemala City was fifty kilometers away, through the mountains. We looked at each other for a long moment. I felt a swell of panic.

He took my hand. “I hope I can come back.”

The moment he left the balcony, it became ordinary, desperately so. The glow had vanished. I felt the weight in my chest shifting, expanding. I couldn’t take it anymore.

I stumbled through the club and onto the crowded cobblestone street. I scanned the crowd desperately, pushing to the middle of the street, staring around me. The sea of people seemed endless. A pit formed in my stomach. I felt as though I had pulled my way up a cliff but now I was slipping, sliding towards a churning river, clawing at tufts of grass for dear life, but the inertia was too extreme, too inexorable—

Suddenly I heard a shout. “Gringo!”

I turned, and there he was, striding through the crowd. I moved towards him, and without thinking, in the midst of that crowded street in Antigua, I seized the front of his shirt and kissed him. He kissed me back, both hands on my face. I quickly became aware of people staring. We pulled apart.

“Are you…?” My head was spinning.

He took my hand. “I’m staying with you.”

The thunderbolt clapped, dissipated — and was gone.

Jack Cape is a graduate of the University of New Orleans’ Creative Writing Workshop where he earned an MFA in Fiction. Over the course of his haphazard and fragmented career he has led teen wilderness excursions throughout the Boundary Waters and the Rocky Mountains, coordinated logistics for a New England-based traveling youth circus, managed a backpacker’s hostel in Guatemala, and written celebrity gossip for an online tabloid out of New Orleans. His writing strives to examine the nuances of queer love and connection. His work can be found in The Peauxdunque Review, Del Sol Review, and in the “Love Like Mine” column of Xtra Magazine.

Six-Month Skid by C.A. Munn

I came here tonight with a purpose, but it’s forgotten as soon as I feel the brand of your mouth on my throat. My neck will be red in the morning from the rub of your day-old stubble. I like that, the concreteness of it. Proof it wasn’t just a dream.

We’re on your bed and the lights are off, like always. You draw a hot sharp line with your tongue down over my collarbone, stop short at the nylon of my binder. I won’t take it off, even when the rest of our clothes are tossed to the floor.

Your ex would let her nipples show through her shirt like incipient rosebuds, just waiting to be thumbed. I wonder if you miss her.

I’m not used to this, having to guess at what you’re thinking. You used to tell me. Late nights spent on the phone, or sharing cigarettes on your porch. Sharing space, just for the sake of it. That all changed when you pulled me into your bed six months ago, whiskey-drunk and wounded from your breakup. I don’t know whether you felt the same momentum I did, if you’d been anticipating it for most of a decade, too. I don’t know if it was inevitable, or just convenient.

Your fingers scrabble at the tight edges of the binder, trying to worm their way underneath. It reminds me of my purpose.

“Wait,” I say.

You draw back.

This isn’t working. It’s on the tip of my tongue. But I can’t see your eyes in the dark. I need to know you’re looking at me.

I flick on the bedside lamp. Its harsh light makes our bare skin look sallow. “Something wrong?” you ask.

There your eyes are, tender and familiar. Like on the night we first got drunk on stolen bourbon from your parents’ basement. Your brother griped, something about bro code and sharing the goods with a girl, but you looked him in the eye and said, “She’s one of the guys.” You gave me a smile, a private, small thing, and from that moment I loved you.

The words die in my throat. If you can still look at me like that, then maybe we don’t have to stop.

“Nothing,” I say. “Just don’t mess with my binder.”

You blink, and the look is gone. “Yeah. I know.”

You switch off the lamp and lean down to kiss me. “You’re so beautiful,” you whisper against my mouth.

I don’t say anything.

I saw this car crash when I was a kid. A silver sedan took a sharp turn too fast and went skidding, no chance of course correction. It didn’t stop till it flipped into a ditch twenty yards off the road.

I kiss you back and don’t think about the ditch.

C.A. Munn is a current M.F.A. playwright in the University of New Orleans’ Creative Writing Workshop. Their plays have been produced and received staged readings at the Mid-America Theatre Conference and the UNO School of the Arts. For their poetry, they were a finalist for the International Literary Awards’ Rita Dove Prize in 2019, and for their fiction, they were a semi-finalist for the American Short Fiction Halifax Ranch Prize in 2020. Their work as an interviewer has been published on the Ploughshares Blog.

Man Down by Mimi Ayers

CHARACTER

CRANE OPERATOR: A skilled professional responsible for operating a mobile crane to lift, move, position, and reposition loads. Must be reliable, determined, drug-free, safety and goal-oriented with a positive attitude. The Operator controls crane functions by depressing buttons and foot pedals as well as manipulating levers.

PLACE

Open space

TIME

Fall

Performance Note: As the Crane Operator reconstructs his life, he may at times forget he is telling his story to strangers.

(Lights up on an African American man, the CRANE OPERATOR, standing tall in his overalls.)

CRANE OPERATOR

Penguin suits ain’t got nothing on me

This is who I am

I am who I am because of what I do

I can do a lot too

More than most men

Because of what I do

It takes skill

It takes me high

This crane takes me to the sky

Pay is good

She

Ada

The Wife takes most of it

Food

Bills

Clothes

She dresses good

In my overalls

Women look at me all crazy-eyed say

“Looking good honey”

I know I look good

But

I don’t have no time for no extra women

I got a woman

A good woman

And I got a job

To get to

To do what I do

I hurry up to get there

To the slab yard

To my steel chariot

Taller than all the buildings in this dusty city

Longer than a block

Stronger than Superman

I am

The steel lifter

Hot rolled sheets of iron

Copper, all different mixtures of metals

That plate’s for a building

Maybe a house

I’m going to build my own

Move that plate for a freighter

Ship, train

A car

A jet plane

I don’t always know where they go

How they will be used

I do know the steel at my mill is well made

Those steel plates

Will construct

Something important

Yeah

Important

What I do

The jib and the mast are my wings

And I’m flying

So high

My hands dance with the hum and screech

Of moving heavy metal

A 75-ton crane

Under My control

The weekend comes

She does what

She does with the bills

Special food dishes on Sunday

Fried Chicken

Mashed potatoes and gravy

Biscuits

Collared greens with smoked ham

At the dinner table

Ada tells me how much she done put aside

For a house

We gonna have us a house

Our own house

She’s ready to fill it with more mouths to feed

She takes my hand

She’s ready now

Now

I can’t wait for Sunday dinner to be over

Lovemaking

Then sleep

Long time Sunday into Monday sleep

Get up early

Fully rested

And ready to get back to it

The cold embrace of my steel chariot

I’m the master here

I plant my feet

Firm

Balanced

Doing a job for a new building downtown

Hands the brains

Buttons just like in an airplane, like you see the cockpit on TV

Give it a little bit of gas

Push a button to go right

Side to side

Up and away

Out of the

Fiery hot furnace

Ease on down

Down to the assembly line

Side to side

Oh, no

Lever’s stuck

What the

Jiggle here

Jiggle there

I’m the best at what I do

I know I can

I can fix this

I know I can

Corner of my eye

Lower corner

Boss man coming

Looking up at me

Questioning

My answer

Breathe

My chariot

You

Can

Do it

Jiggle

SLAP

Wiggle it

Just right

Click

Thank God

I got it

It’s moving

Nothing to worry about

I look down and return his nod

All is well

I got it under control

He looks for someone else to boss

I know

He knows

I know what I’m doing

’Cause I’m good at what I do

Time

Mirror showing more gray than black

I can still do the job

Not one accident

I train some young ones to do what they will never do better than

I am grateful

To be above ground

Ada gone

People, even the menfolk at church say I look good

I’m feeling pretty good too.

Family, friends still calling on me

Fix this

Fix that

I can figure most things out with my hands

Time

Hands ain’t thinking straight

Can’t hold on to my fishing pole

Can barely sign my name

Still can change a lightbulb

Daughter tells me, “Take it easy. Just say no. You ain’t got no business climbing ladders Let somebody else…”

“Okay, okay,” I say to shut her up

She’s in the driver’s seat

Another doctor appointment

My eyes are better than hers

“Watch that car”

“I see it Daddy”

“Well act like it,” I tell her

She tells me to relax

I keep my hands in my lap

Can’t do this

Can’t do that

Damn

I might as well just lay my ass

Down

(Lights fade out.)

END OF PLAY

Mimi Ayers explores the African American experience through her family stories. Mimi began her theatre career as an actor in 1969. Her transition to playwriting began when she performed her one-woman show, Three Women and a Crone, originally produced at the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago. Mimi moved to New Orleans in 2016, received her MFA from UNO, and established a new artistic home here.

My Father’s Hands by Mimi Ayers

He’s done about everything with his hands:

Pick cotton one year, tobacco the next

Load ammunition in one war, clench fists in another

Wash dishes

flip burgers

Cobble shoes with sturdy soles for those fine leather uppers

Sort mail

Carry his first-born baby girl to his mother’s arms

Repair watches, dentures too –

DIY penny pincher

Move hot steel with a 5-lever, 7-ton crane

Install parts, motors, transmissions

Fix a flat, anything to get a car rolling again.

text

Tools

Toys

text

Weld, dig, cut

Saw the wood

Mortar the bricks

Pour the cement

Size and fit

Pound those nails

Plaster those walls

Paint inside, paint outside

Any kind of plumbing, and wiring –

A house well built.

text

So much he could do with his hands,

But he never held mine.

text

After note: When I read this poem to my father, his only comment was “But I held you in my arms.”

Hope and Fear by Christy Lorio

A pair of finches took up residence in an abandoned nest in my front porch light fixture. We watched them as they made a little home in the sweet olive tree in our front yard. They scoped out a good spot and they began to build trust not with us, but with our physical space. They tolerate when I sit on the porch with my neighbor most evenings, eavesdropping on conversations from passersby and shaking our fists at drivers going too fast.

At first, it was three finches claiming space in the tree. The two females got into fights, especially if one got too close to the other. If they were humans, I imagined them ripping each other’s hair out, cursing at one another, and causing a scene. Why are they fighting for the male’s attention? They, along with the red-chested male finch, would perch on the power lines and declare our front yard their own. They chased off other birds if they got too close, not unlike our dogs barking at other dogs on their evening walks.

As the temperature changed from a mild, New Orleans spring to the cusp of an unbearably hot summer, we noticed the finches inching closer and closer to the abandoned nest.

The male and one female padded the nest with anything they could find, mostly sticks and tired, old cushion batting they plucked from a trash pile. The light fixture is too high for us to peek inside, but we tried anyway. My husband grabbed the ladder so we could get a closer look, but we didn’t get so close that we disturbed anything potentially growing inside. It wasn’t our space now; it was theirs. We left them alone as we watched and hoped from afar. I pulled out the long lens on my film camera, using it like a pair of binoculars to spy on our potential new neighbors.

One morning, Thomas let the dog out and there were new sounds emanating from above. The eggs had finally hatched, which made us positively giddy. We had just lost our other dog to cancer after months of treatment, including a leg amputation and six rounds of chemo. Our hearts were still heavy and my head was still bald from my own cancer treatment, which has been ongoing for the past three years.

Mom and dad guarded the nest and I imagined, like any new parents, that they were full of hope and fear. Every day the babies got a little bigger and a little stronger. I take delight in the tender caretaking. When dad feeds them, I can hear the high-pitched chirps they emit from my living room. If I’m lucky enough to be sitting on the front porch while they’re being fed, I watch them crane their necks, reminding dad they are still in need of his care.

The fledgling’s heads are now covered in feathers and my hair is starting to catch up to their heads, although I have a long way to go until I have more than a veneer of near-invisible strands covering my scalp. I imagine the babies are approaching the avian equivalent of teenagehood— getting stronger and more independent but not quite ready to fly.

My husband and I don’t have kids by choice, just my two-year-old niece that I’m enamored with. Like watching the momma and poppa finches, we are on the periphery of my niece’s upbringing. I taught her how to trigger the shutter button on my camera, snapping a photo that I have yet to develop. I taught her my dog’s names, Izzy and Beignet, while Izzy was still alive.

I hope to live long enough to see my niece become a teenager. I hope she loves me as much as I love her. I often joke that when she’s old enough to spend summers in New Orleans away from her parents, she’ll sneak out of my house and head to a bar but, jokes on her, Aunt Christy is already there, two drinks in.

I’m awaiting the day that the baby finches are big enough to fly. I wonder if they’ll hesitate, unsure of themselves, or if they will have the confidence to trust their wings. They’ll falter before they succeed, but they’ll go on to soar through the neighborhood. Perhaps we’ll see them again as adults, ready to use our nest once again.

Christy Lorio is a writer and photographer based in New Orleans, LA. She had the distinction of being a Fellow at Arizona State University’s 2021 Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference. Her writing has been published in Had and Nurture Literary, among other places. Most recently, photography has been selected for the 2021 Louisiana Contemporary exhibit at The Ogden Museum in New Orleans. @Christylorio

This piece was originally published by 433 Mag.