& the sound of our being. red lips & violet skin. the thunder was so loud we forgot how to breathe even as the rain fell we were dying a little more and more, shedding skin that was not our own, painting each other’s cheeks & exhaling as if this was what we’d been waiting for as if this was an acceptable way to live mama, I know you were only trying to get us to witness the fault of our own steps, to see & understand the way we were unraveling fragile threads. but we were young & did not want to abandon the spotlight of bold colors we did not want to forget the way it felt to be in love & to feel as if our lives were something bigger but mostly we just didn’t want to be forgotten.

Erin Jamieson holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University of Ohio. Their writing has been published or is forthcoming in After the Pause, Into the Void, Flash Frontier, and Foliate Oak Literary, among others, and their fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. They currently teach English Composition at the University of Cincinnati-Blue Ash College and also work as a freelance writer.