4th Place

He is at the coffee shop.
Waiting for her to arrive.
He sips on the drink.
It's a warm, creamy beige.
It tastes better than anything,
Especially on a cold afternoon.
She walks through the door.
Bringing a cold breeze in.
He shivers from the chill.
How could she possibly know?
Know that she makes his teeth chatter?
She sits in the chair. She didn't even order coffee.
"I really hate these places."
"But why?" he asks her.
"Everyone is just so snobby."
'Tm not snobby," he says.

Old woman so pale with face gaunt
Stands amongst the grey of the morn,
Bound by spell; a beautiful haunt.

The passage of death does not daunt
Colorful-wisdom; knowledge-borne,
Old woman so pale with face gaunt.

To be free is all we could want
Although life is more than forlorn,
Bound by spell; a beautiful haunt.

Death is just a lighthearted jaunt
On a wooded path with many thorns,
Old woman so pale with face gaunt.

sit softly in a country cornfield
and swiftly smudge graphite
on a page of paper while the

corn stalks stalk the edges
of the eyes and subtle sun strikes
the skin with strokes, so

listen to the light listlessly and
let the kaleidoscope glasses
don the extra eyes of the mind

In Egypt, there’s a popular nationalistic song my mom used to play around the house when I was a kid called what translates to "Egypt is My Mother." It’s patriotic, sung in a serious, deep baritone, and uniformed kids in school listen to it sometimes after singing the national anthem. Whenever I heard it playing through the tinny speakers in our small Chicago apartment as a kid, there was a line in it that captured my imagination out of all the lyrics: Even my skin is the h ue of wheat. I never considered this might mean to have tan, North African skin. My mind always

“Well, I’m here. That was some train ride”, I said.

“How long was it?” She asked,

“About a day and a half. Way more than 24 hours”, I said.

I didn’t look back as I untangled myself from my fathers’ grasp, and bolted for the front door, losing my vintage Zeppelin T-shirt for the effort. I blew through the threshold, unintentionally, but satisfactorily taking the screen off its hinges along the way. I tripped from the impact sending a cloud of red dust billowing into the air, as I smacked the so loose dust. I placed both hands flush on the ground pushing up with all my might. The fall had hurt my hip, not my head I knew why I was running and I knew why I couldn’t stop.

The sky was bright and clear.
We sat shoulder to shoulder.
It was two different colors as a matter of fact.
I felt the ocean between us stir.
Turquoise and Sapphire if I can recall.
It was quick and painful.
A line of clouds seemed to separate the two.
An impact tsunami? “I think I Love her”.
What did the sky look like without those clouds?
Drowning right next to him, could he hear the gasps?
What did it look like where they met?
So close his heartbeat pulsed throughout me.

I was falling. I mean I had fallen before; from a bed to a plush carpet, a bus to the muddy ground, from the 13th stair all the way to the 1st. Yes, I had fallen before always getting a scrape or a bruise or lesson, but I would get up I would survive, they were never really a great distance.

White

I sat on the bike. My legs were planted in a strong, wide stance. Rojelio exited the stranger’s car and sauntered towards me with a smug grin on his face. He had an especially cocky strut which annoyed me. He nodded at me which meant the deal had been a success and that we would both be feeling quite good shortly. He was perhaps my oldest friend in Los Angeles, but after this night we would never speak again.
―Vamos a tu casa, guey. He lofted the bag to me.