Waiting Through the Ones Who Came After You
Ella Schmidt
That was my youth: I developed a sickness, a ruinous crush on the man at the filling station
That was my youth: I developed a sickness, a ruinous crush on the man at the filling station
1. A bottle of orange wine – half a packet of cigarettes.
2. You caught at the bar the space so crowded that people were practically caught under your armpits – grinning nervously, two pina coladas in hand.
3. A kitchen dance – or two.
4. Luther Vandross.
I knew the talk about a baby was another red flag, but the more uncontrollable Amelie became, the deeper I got hooked. I couldn’t go back to what my life was before. I think it had been drowned the
I am not sorry about most things I’ve done; I really do try my best to be good.
The hangover was ruining the romance. Last night I woke up a friend and made her drink wine—Chateau 2016. I had to deal with my nerves somehow.
By March of 2016, my cousin Josh and I were practically flat broke. We’d been having an incestuous and adulterous affair, one that elevated his title to “cuzband” (he hated that term). Four years
One night I was so drunk, I couldn’t feel my face.
I was drinking bitters and soda with lemon, my new signature drink. It has .03% alcohol, less than a bottle of kombucha.
When I asked years later if you had a sex addiction and you said, No, do you? I hesitated before responding no, because I was thinking, Only to you.
Snapchat filter. Left.
but you know there is a Truth Moment coming, and sure enough the next morning he says hey and you say hey and he says sorry about last night
You’re probably thinking these things happened a very long time ago, but as a matter of fact it was just yesterday, and yet somehow we are all old and married with children now, even the former supermodel
He doesn’t seem to think I’m a handful. I can tell by his texts.
In the train carriage, we’re hot in our furs, brooding and half-drunk.
The other half was the memories of the end. The time Teddy had threatened to burn the only copy of my novel.
He stole my Tupperware, the largest one in a glass Pyrex set.
Sophie had recently gone through a break up. I don’t remember her ex's name. I do remember the striking legibility of the word VIOLENCE.
My fantasy of Lockwood started to deflate like a balloon with a tiny hole.
/pəˈzeʃ.ən/
One morning I woke up with my right scapula in my mouth. You would think that is physically impossible, but in the case of demonic possessions it is actually more normal than not.
I tolerated Marcus and Haley because I knew their drill. Marcus would pick me up with drugs coursing through his system
I reminded myself that I spent just as many lonely afternoons in the State Library of Victoria with a pile of international Vogues as I did at a Goodwill in the Valley.
I was sobbing too loud for the men’s room and I was in no shape to explain myself so I settled on the supply closet next to it. After a couple minutes of moping I got a BBM (we had to have Blackberries then, for whatever reason) from Jarrett. “Were fuck are you bro?”
A year wrapped in a day, a teardrop at the climax of every way that wounded, furthering the wounds.
That was the world then…
That was the world then….bawdy cars and tawdry thoughts and rundown wannabe skyscrapers brownie baked by the sun that just looked cheap against the horizon and everybody
I hold myself in the plank position. The little dog sits on the rug watching. It’s a very expensive rug. She’s not supposed to be here. He’s up on the purple couch and I do not know what he is
"It captures all the doubts, giddiness, confessional streaks, blabbiness, self-alarms, rationalizations, feigned equipoise, and instantly breakable resolves of a person freshly infatuated and likely in love." -anonymous writer friend
“Transgressive and immediate: you feel these stories shoot through and wrap around you.”
- Kyle F. Williams, Full Stop Magazine
“Lutz’s work is a marvel of the possibilities of language. Each of her sentences is an intricately crafted thing, deeply complex yet crystalline in its clarity . . . her command of each and every word remains supreme.”
--Mira Braneck, The Paris Review Daily
Garielle Lutz is the author of The Complete Gary Lutz, among other books.