“Maybe it’s the curdled face of terminal illness, or realizing my total dependence on charades and false cognates, but I stammer. I stutter. I grow frustrated. And whether Lourdes senses my exasperation or it’s simply that wicked prodigious event we call coincidence, her eyes flicker and dim as she shoots off the pillows and grabs my arm with a force so startling it’s only her voice that keeps me from gasping.”

- salt hill 47

image: jose adrian pompa, adios

“You wait arched in the sun. Because I cannot touch you, I smell the insides of my hands. The smell is an egg, just cracked. Priests in saffron robes are dancing in my head. We learn to swim when we have to, this is what I’ve learned. Look how golden the ground. How loud the midday wind. How far the sea.”

- salt hill 47

image: roger camp, broken glass, charletson il

“When touring this property, you suspect it isn’t quite the right fit for you. Your father did hit your mother—but it’s been at least four years since you’ve seen him. For a few weeks, though, you will each have beds. You store the food you buy in individually labeled cubbies, and you look forward to your meals of Cosmic Brownies and chewy granola bars. It’s at this point, when you’re in the middle-age of your adolescence, that you find yourself aching to settle down. House touring isn’t as fun when there’s no end in sight. The woman who shares your room sings to her toddler, and by proxy, to you, every night: ‘Oh, Savannah, don’t you cry for me...’”

- salt hill 46

image: dylan lewis, untitled

“I kneel before him, tilting my head until my chin is pointed at the sky, my eyes wide open. The goo in Syl’s rheumy eyes is now dried yellow crust and the whites are bright pink. He dips a finger into the eye goo and touches my eyelids, blessing me.

‘It is done, my child.’ He does the sign of the cross. ‘Our mothers will say we can stay home tomorrow. We’ll have enough time to plan how to catch snails.’”

- salt hill 46

image: mwanel pierre-louis, chameleon

“I don’t take off my coat. I am afraid that if I do, my question will be answered. Instead, I stand in front of the mirror and take my time looking at the woman in the mirror. She stares back with the same unwavering scrutiny.

I smile and she smiles back.”

- salt hill 46

image: mwanel pierre-louis, just let go

“I like to see them dangling, those
carnal cups both pendulous and gaping,
sunbeamed so the veins bulge in their throats.
The pitchers drool when they are happy,
oozing sugar syrup from their pores
to which I say: girl, same.”

- salt hill 46

image: dylan lewis, untitled

“Every morning,
you will kill a lime green caterpillar
and every morning it will return
to bring your world to ruin.”

- salt hill 45

image: matt bristol, of the earth iv

“and by god it works and by god something’s heard me and by god something’s gone as planned and I press my little pinky to my heart and sure enough the echo was wrong”

- salt hill 45

image: laurence philomène, lost in a blizzard, january 2019

“Outside, wildflowers have doubled in size. Sunflower faces bloated by seed, mutated. Pods of tumorous cells. And bumblebees, now the size of my stomach, droning around like toy helicopters. Tish wants ice cream. We walk toward the river to a famous parlor. I’m still measuring my breath, focusing on feeling still while moving.”

- salt hill 45

image: matt bristol, of the earth iii

“It is fall of our senior year of college when we are cast opposite each other in a play about betrayal. It is your first time on stage, but it does not show. If anything, your newness is magnetic. You are cast as Gino, a dejected Hollywood dreamer with thick glasses and an even thicker head. I am Marla, a seductive con artist. Each night before the house opens you take great care blindfolding and gagging me backstage, then tying my wrists behind my back and rolling me up in an Oriental rug. It is unclear why I begin the play this way, but as actors we do not ask questions, we do as we are told.”

- salt hill 45

image: erin loree, three mountains

“a snake goes blind the last time it sheds skin, a body
refused. I’ve found my own senses dulled once freed of some body:

a cello’s strings bending out of tune.”

- salt hill 45

image: matt bristol, of the earth vii

“I don’t feel so far away. At night, I dig
a shallow pit the length of my body and lie down in it.”

- salt hill 44

image: zoran pungečar, 2016-10-09

“I’d picture our names
on popsicle sticks, pulled from

the teacher’s mug, making us
partners for peg board geometry:
first period spent stretching rubber
bands into symmetrical shapes.”

- salt hill 43

image: zoran pungečar, 2018-11-29