The Messenger
Claire Hopple
I thought, this message probably killed its messenger, strung out on finding its way home.
I thought, this message probably killed its messenger, strung out on finding its way home.
Nick your shin shaving, stare idly at the blood coursing down your foot and down the drain, and maybe this is how you do it, empty out all your insides until your shapeless skin is all that’s left.
I wanted to be “that girl,” but my new high-waisted pants from the Marais were already unbuttoned once.
A girl named after a country wore a metallic jumpsuit and gave tarot readings.
Brian was psyched too. Not about her requests—Tom Waits was more his groove—but about where things seemed to be headed.
I didn’t know why I never wanted to have sex. Or I did know, but what I knew was a lie, or maybe the Biggest Truth of All and I would rather die than admit it to myself.
To be naked on the beach after a storm is something special—the salt and the petrichor and the hum of being unsettled that maybe the torrential rains caused damage, that maybe there were nearby ships that will never make it to harbor.
Violet and I sit in her bed a while and talk. She shows me how to unhook and snake a bra through a sleeve.
“When Zac started writing the poems, I didn’t think it would get to this.”
I can see him weakening, even if he can’t.
“Foresee this, I did not,” Yoda commiserated. But he knew what he had to do. He just didn’t know if he could do it.
I’m not trying to justify myself. I’m trying to tell you something.
Mississippi Man and I been dating for a few months now and we ain’t said it yet.
Under what circumstances do we find ourselves here?
This was months ago. April, maybe May. The weather was foggy. So was my brain. I saw you again in the Cubism section. I was standing in front of “The Actor” by Picasso. The second I saw you, I smiled
"You won’t let me love you, so I am loving this plant,” he says.
I want to say, Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker, and mean it.
People used to tell my father they looked alike, he and Bruce, and I suppose it was true.
Betty's son Jonah is convulsing in the kitchen and there are fifty ways he could die.
"If Elizabeth Ellen exists, I would tell her it was like she channeled the anthemic scorn of Alanis Morrisette’s “You Outta Know” through Anais Nin, in her own inimitable way. And if Elizabeth Ellen doesn’t exist, at least she can invent herself.
currently ON SALE for $11!
“Legs Get Led Astray is a scorching hot glitter box full of youthful despair and dark delight.”
—Cheryl Strayed, author of WILD
currently ON SALE for $9!