Page 15 - WTP VOl. VIII #6
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Market Square, Biking
Love, I have found, knows intimately how to undo a tight seam. It’s a thin blade, more sewing needle
than matchstick, despite what people might tell you. Slips right below a stitch and upends the hem of your dress, just like that. Quick and sharp; that angle at your belly after surging forward, after laughing whole and hale. Clever and acrobatic; the soaring, upward croon of my mother’s laugh. Watch carefully, look closely. It’s a tedious mantra, one I’m panicked to fol- low. It’s true: these are only the things I see, and I am so much a fool for this Earth that I can’t sleep at night without marrying each and every one of them. Some- times my fists clench at bowed heads of lilacs. I want to shout aloud as I move through the streets, naming a specific explosion for it all. It nearly hurts when I see the bikers, incongruous in their joy, carving away at ice cream with their tongues.
Donohue’s work has previously appeared in the Northern New England Review and Kingdoms In The Wild, where she was featured in the “Writers in Conversation” series. From New Hampshire, she is currently studying English and journalism at Simmons University in Massachusetts.
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