Tongue is a Void

by P H Low

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Late at night, driving: highway lane lines spooled like cream beneath your high beams, fields of corn and hay undulating soft beneath pinprick stars. The last gas station has faded behind you; ahead, only mile markers, a firefly flicker in the velvet dark.

The echo of your father’s voice, thick with disappointment: I thought you loved musical theater.

And you do, you want to cry out—you dropped out of conservatory for this, love it with every atom of the wreckage that is your body—but when you light yourself on fire every night before a thousand pairs of watching eyes, there is only so long you can last before the wick burns low.

An indrawn breath from the backseat, a brush of shadow like feathers, but when you turn around, you only see the dark. (Continue Reading…)