April / May 2019

By describing something we place it at a distance. My body

is a fleshy thing, my body is tall and filled with citrus. I want

everyone I have touched to send me a postcard on which

they describe their fingers, but mostly I want them to do

this before I have the chance to ask.

-from Syzygy, Beauty by T Fleischmann

Find your body. Reach out to someone you've touched. Then come back and tell us about it at The Stay Project.

Wickedly Yours

by Chet Holland

You’ve never had the gift of wayward glances, or the gentle brushing of a strangers finger tips. You’ve felt overt stares, but never felt coveted. You want to feel the wrinkles, and the heat emanate from someone’s hand.

You think about that magical fit you've always read about, and you wonder why hopes lied to you.

To you, the used side of love feels good. It’s what you’ve been weighed to be worthy for, and the birth of the sun is saved for those who are deemed deserving.

Despite the slurs you’ve gotten life hasn’t made you a princess. You’ve seen what separates you from that feeling. Whispers kissed across your neck. An arm wrapped around your waist. A hand that might finally fit your hand.

No matter what you do it isn’t enough. You buy gifts. You throw parties. You make surprises. You give yourself: relentlessly.

You do everything, but actually say it.

The wispy blonde hair, and the scantily clad breasts will always be better than you, so you never say it.

You settle into the cracked and dusty makeup that’s become your porcelain like frigidity.

Fighting as the grip around your ankle drags you across the tattered sheets of the bed.

Cowering behind the couch, as the boy with the floppy brown hair and the sideways grin, is told to never speak to you again.

Witnessing the anger come to life every time the long neck bottle swirls below the blue mountain line.

It all became your shame, and you grew to hate so much it fell below the freckles on your skin.

You learned to defend yourself with a pointed tongue, but your wit and fortitude can never hide you from it all.

Your uncle leering at the temptation of your one valuable asset as he watches you change.

Sniffling under fluorescent lights, as the boys in gym, howl at the fag who changes in the stall.

Looking at your father, and seeing your own watery disappointment reflected at you with such disillusionment and contempt.

You’ve become venomous, and name yourself the boy who waited.

You wait for the sound of horse hooves stomping through the thick mud.

The sound of clanging armour as the Knight makes his presence known.

You wait for the flick, and the snape of a cape jetting in the wind.

The sound of squeaking latex and chaffing leather as the crusader rushes in for you.

You wait for sweltering courage.

Surrounding yourself with a masquerade of the Jessica’s and Annaliese's you’ve always resented. You hope some of their power sprinkles on you like pixie dust, and you only diminish yourself more.

Nobody mistakes the clown for royalty.

The one perk of your novelty is your isolation.

You’ve turned your cobblestone tower into a risen catacomb.

You wait, and every prosperous boy who scales the wall, jumps into the thorn pricks below when they realize what you're missing.

You don’t have it.

You don’t have the magic it takes to turn beasts into men, or make blue birds sing.

No one is kissing you awake from a glass coffin.

The heat you feel doesn’t come from the sweat of another hand.

It comes from every tear that’s ever streamed down your cheek.

It comes from the rejection of being deemed the spare piece.

Your magic is dirty, and the world names you wicked for wanting to be what they don’t want.