Aura Martin is currently a senior creative writing (B.F.A.) student at Truman State University. She serves as staff writer for The Index–Truman State University’s student-led newspaper–intern at Golden Antelope Press, and assistant nonfiction editor at WORDPEACE. In Aura’s free time, she likes to run and take road trips.
There is No Space for Anything (But Dreaming)
Last time I drove to a reading I brought a boy who wasn’t my boy but a boy from class. He stretched bungee sentences and overloaded hot cocoa with spices. He just didn’t know when to shut up, but talking wasn’t what I had in mind when I asked him out. He is that boy with the crooked smile and thumbprint lizards on his notebook. I never learned how to draw flames properly.
The second time I went to a reading, I asked a girl who was a girlfriend who I thought was alone but that girl now too has someone. She is the hot apple cider I needed in my life, and on the drive, she insisted I wear her mustard gloves. She read me her poetry, unknitting words from her tapestries.
When was the last time you kissed someone?
Read me something else. My eyes facing away from the red band on the horizon.
Didn’t you have your heart broken, from that boy at Blue Shed?
Yes, but even if that woman wasn’t in the way, he still would’ve said no.
To find love, the trick is to leave the door open, and then somebody will come along and stand there smiling and ask if you would like some company. I left that door open for two years, in sunshine and snow showers. The only ones who stopped by were peeping Toms and boys with dead daisies.
You’ve got to be desperate to approach the awkward tomboy who always says the wrong thing.
Several glasses of wine later, I realize that I am the person you feel sorry for. I throw away the heart locket and punch every light bulb till there is only darkness and bleeding hands.