Jessica Bell

SELF-PORTRAIT AS A STRANGER IN DENVER INTL

Somewhere in the B terminal I am found, running. Watched. Witnessed as I
sprint down a moving walkway, desperate in my loneliness & ponytail.
Please, please     please, don’t leave me— I am crying, disbelieving of
my position, begging passenger assistants who aren’t there. Calling out to
pilots who’ve already buckled in & pulled their giant metal body away.
From the terminal, from where I’ve come, towards wherever I was
supposed to go. Perhaps Boston, where a fiancé has been waiting days &
nights to know if I’ll commit. Maybe Spain, an unknown language waiting
to be discovered & caressed by my tongue & throat as if it were a lover.
Please let it be some nameless, blurred up city. Anywhere in the world but
the brick buildings of home. Any place at all except moments where I
cannot help but shrink, my body slid down into a bucket of a seat that can
never be just mine. Somewhere in the B gate I am unbound, abandoned
inside myself. At 11 p.m. in Denver I am again a begging woman, left
wide open, her mouth little more than a hole ripped between lips. Please
       don’t leave me;
       Please         let me go;             Please, the word gouged out
from behind my teeth like an age-old wound; an echo between my ribs; a
vine knotted around the joints of my fingers. Like a question to the long-
left lover who would never answer; a plea made for the man who has never
forgotten how pretty I look when I cry.

On Loneliness

My mother’s salt-and-pepper shaker collection dances
across the kitchen window sill. Above the sink & beneath stained

glass are alligators with red chefs’ hats; owls with chipped feet
& chartreuse eyes, their feathers rubbed flat from secondhand

fingers & their prints; t-rexes with golden bow ties; roosters’
overgrown plumage & giant, dust covered mushrooms. On night

she isn’t home, I wash dishes inside an orange glow
from the recessed light. Shakers shine from heads & feathers down to

talons & leathered up skin. The water is nearly too hot.
My father & brother sit in the living room, their laughter

raucous from across the kitchen threshold. The window
& my upper lip are slick with condensation & a woman’s

after-dinner sweat.

Jessica Bell (she/her) is an emerging writer living in Southwest Virginia with her dog and two ferrets. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University and is currently focused on two creative projects—a hybrid essay and poetry collection centered around the grief and lived experience of womanhood, and a collaborative fantasy series written with a dear friend from Hollins. Her work can be found in The Journal, Midsummer Magazine, Ink & Ivy Lit, Londermere Lit, Wildscape Literary Journal, The Circus Collective and more. In her free time, she can generally be found outside, drawing and covered in ink or oil pastel, or reading fantasy novels near moving bodies of water.