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Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

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us without formaldehyde

By Neva Ensminger-Holland

there isn’t a version of this       I can see ending
happy   even in my head      we are doomed
to spend forever       in that storage closet   yes

we are in love     but eventually     the taste
of your strawberry lip gloss    goes rancid
in my mouth     and the zipper on my dress

rusts shut and no matter     how much we try
to convince each other that our love     transcends
hunger     we starve to death    all the same no

one notices we’re gone for months    years even
but when they do          they find what’s left
of my biology notebook    seeped with just enough

acetic acid to make      my marginal drawings
of us at an altar    unrecognizable to even your mother
the morgue buries us      in the same unmarked

grave our bodies    lay rotting        unadorned
unremembered beneath      the soccer field
in death     I rest  in secret     but you rest    easy

knowing     that the evidence of our transgressions
will decay    until there is           nothing
left for the anthropologists  to find

 

Neva Ensminger-Holland (they/she) is a recent graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy, and is an incoming freshman at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland. They are a YoungArts award winner, and an American Voices nominee in the Scholastic Art and Writing Competition. Their work is published or forthcoming in the Interlochen Review, One Art, The Albion Review, and the YoungArts anthology. In their free time, they enjoy wearing ripped tights in the winter, watching Gilmore Girls with their roommate, and hot-gluing the straps back on their platform Mary-Janes.

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: Issue 27

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