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Tag: Writing

LE Fiction, Andreia Rosanova

Eva’s Garden

By Andreia Rosanova

The voices from the other side of the courtyard, although blurred, reached Kasper’s ears in distinguishable tones. During summer, most of the younger students vacated the residence, Kasper was among the few who remained.

“You know, Anja, now that I’m in my 50’s, I like it even more.”

“Really?” A younger-sounding voice whispered.

“Yeah. I’m much more comfortable in my skin. I know what I like.” After a brief pause, she continued, “My life is also calmer. With no children to care for and the house all to myself, I let my mind wander into naughty thoughts.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I’m kind of revisiting fantasies from my younger years.”

There was the sound of chairs scraping against the floor as the younger woman spoke. “Fantasies? What kind of fantasies?”

“Nothing special, really. Like having sex outdoors, under the moonlight.”

“Outdoors? You mean in a public space?”

“Not exactly. I’d find that uncomfortable. Here in my garden, for example, would be great.”

Laughter filled the air. Kasper slid his chair closer to the wall separating the residence yard from the neighbor’s garden.

“That’s not naughty, Eva.”

Eva chuckled. “It’s because I only dared to share the softer of my fantasies.” A small hiatus followed. “You know what I’ve done recently? Since living on my own, I like to be naked around the house. One very hot evening, I even dared to lie here in the garden.”

“Naked?”

“Yep. Completely. There’s nothing more arousing than feeling the sun’s rays on your intimate parts.”

A mix of murmurs. The next phrase Kasper grabbed came from the younger voice.

“Aren’t you afraid someone might see you? I mean, it’s a student residence over there, isn’t it?”

“It is, but it’s for the art school, they’re mostly women. They all leave at this time of year anyway.” A short pause followed. “But you know what? Imagining one of those cute male students watching me just gives me more pleasure.”

Laughter erupted, then Kasper’s phone rang—damn it. He silenced it quickly.

“Was it your phone ringing, Anja?”

“No. It was yours.”

“Mine isn’t even here.”

A moment of silence.

“I think the noise came from the residence yard.”

“Oh, someone is there. Was I talking too loud?”

The voices lowered to a pitch Kasper could no longer hear.

***

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10/23/2026
LE Poetry, Diane Funston

Late Afternoon

by Diane Funston

We lie atop fresh bed linen

Ceiling fan laps the air

Love in late afternoon

French doors draped with lace curtains

half-mast with climbing roses above

light from skylights

Our bodies

naked and imperfect

but still working well

So delicious these afternoons

without the tiredness of nightfall

Soon

dogs having finished treats,

will scratch at the door

but first the shower calls for two

These afternoons

and ourselves well spent

BIO:

Diane Funston lives in Marysville, CA and is originally from Rochester, NY. She began writing in adolescent angst which ultimately led her to a degree in English from CSU San Marcos. Diane has been published in numerous poetry journals. Her first chapbook was published by Foothills Publishing in 2022.

12/12/2025
LEM Conversations, Andreia Rodrigues

LEM revisits “ta erotika” with the author of Eva’s Garden

Read Time: 8 minutes

“The only thing I say I know is ta erotika.” – Plato, Symposium

Interview with Brazilian author, Andreia Rodrigues

For centuries many of the most culturally dominant erotic narratives have been driven by mail centric frameworks think Nabokov or Henry Miller. This month, however, in response to our Ageless Sexuality themed call for submissions on Duotrope, we invited author, Andreia Rodrigues to talk to us about the reason she chose to write in an erotic format and what’s behind her essay and its masculine and feminine balance of protagonist and plot against the backdrop of aging.

Rodriguez features the cultural anomaly of a sexually vibrant aging female figure not as a fading or invisible victim but as someone armed with the courage to be seen by the male gaze on her own terms. She does this through inner curiosity and psychological awareness.

Because the power to transgress the female sexual ceiling is picking up speed for women in the 21st-century, we wanted to look back at where erotica found its origins and how the ascension of digital media and its relationship to time, the instantaneous in particular, allows this platform to explore its ability the deliver an up-leveling of conscious aging.

The idea of a erotics seems to go back to Socrates and the claim that “ta erotika” was his only area of expertise. Since the Greek sense of poetics around love, Eros, parallels the focus on philiosoohical process of “erotan”, to ask a question shares the same root as love itself. Perhaps to love is made possible through questioning. Certainty, then, may divide the emotional aspects of the erotic by its proximity to fragility.

As Power dissolves in the moment you reach for it, surrender is at the center of erotica itself. To contextualize the erotic is akin to love, an imperative that clarifies the confused hyper-state of arousal; its boundaries in media bookended by the performative and goal driven pornographic tone and the continuum of pleasure in its expression of love, self, other, erotica which informs the chasm between love and power.

Eva’s Garden works as a metaphorical exploration of the space between this libidinal quandary. Eva allows herself to expand between each edge through her acceptance of her corporeal reality, being in the last third of her life. Time itself becomes the biological imperative creating tension with the Self’s sense of want. What lives beyond that impetus toward wholeness and the cultural language that dilutes the power of the aging female form is the body’s effort to ceases responding to nature’s reproductive imperative. Freedom to restructure itself neurally opens up with nature now in the back seat instead of being the decision maker.

In the world of the garden, Eva shifts with the neural changes the hormonal wave of maturity carves out as a woman goes through different stages of life transformation. A symbolic mapping of Aphrodite’s trials put before her daughter, Psyche, similarly require Herculean aspiration to meet and conquer, to reinterpret the wisdom of an experience-informed psychology of the masculine gaze that is alchemically of service to the libido.

As a result, Eva emerges into a seasoned understanding of her desire. Like Psyche, Eva gives birth to Pleasure, new life unadulterated by the tirade of patriarchal dynamism. Through Rodrigues’ development of a pathway to her future self, womanhood in the last third of life may be a little less sexually fettered.

Consequently, while Eva’s admirer, Kasper, watches from his window overlooking the garden, he bears witness to a mythopoetic shift in time; the garden’s gods are now older gods who dream a myth unfolding into a modern skin.

LEM I read you’re from Brazil. Limit Experience Journal was founded in 2019 while I lived in Sao Paulo. Locations sometimes drive an artist’s work as they nourish ideas. How do your origins affect you as a writer?

AR Nice that you lived in São Paulo! It’s a fascinating place, and it has certainly shaped my work. Brazil, and especially the periphery of São Paulo, built who I am and imprinted itself on me: happy, sad, energetic, insomniac. There is no moderation in São Paulo, nor in me or my life. The tragedies are daunting, and the joys are sublime; those extremes fuel my writing, as do the love and urgency of Brazilian culture. We are passionate and intense people, unafraid to show emotion and reveal our true selves. We’re also deeply aware of our finitude, and that awareness gives me the courage to write without the restraints I sometimes observe in other writers.

“Works of Art are of an Infinite Solitude.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

LEM When did you first see yourself as a writer and what did those efforts look like inside yourself, of course, but also outside you, across the exterior expression of your creative life?

AR I’ve seen myself as a writer ever since I learned to read and write. It was the first profession I ever dreamed of. The world of words is my home, something I discovered as soon as that world opened itself to me. When I was nine, I wrote a little book. It wasn’t a good one, but I finished it, and that, to me, is what makes a writer: starting a story and carrying it through to the end, enduring the struggles in between just for the urge of it.

For me, the efforts of a writer are expressed through being open to the world in a particularly profound way. You can’t help it. You find yourself writing because your experience of life is too intense to keep inside. That’s why writing isn’t just something you do, it’s a way of living. It shows itself when you can put words to things in ways no one else can. When you notice, hear, feel what others take for granted. When you manage to capture true humanity in language. It’s a difficult exercise, but for many of us, it’s also unavoidable and necessary.

LEM When you say that writing is unavoidable why does it feel that way for you? What would happen if you didn’t write?

AR This question made me think of a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke: “Works of art are of an infinite solitude.” This is what I feel, an infinite solitude. It doesn’t come from a lack of company, but from a lack of connection. The kind of connection that bridges voids, ideas, and longings.

“…I wasn’t just telling a story; I was feeding my infinite solitude.” – A.R.

Writing soothes that solitude. It’s my way of reaching toward a higher consciousness. The work of finding words and releasing them from me brings a sense of catharsis and connection. With whom, I don’t know. With true humanity? With future readers? With the page itself? The answer to this doesn’t really matter.

Writing allows me to fill a void and brings the colours my life lacks.

Through writing, I make sense of my existence and taste experiences beyond my reach. Take “Eva’s Garden”, for example. That story carries a beauty life hasn’t yet gifted me. Unrestrained desire that transcends fear, age, and prejudice. Few live such freedom; Annie Ernaux might have had. I was so touched by her experience in “Le Jeune Homme” (“The Young Man”) that I felt the urge to create my own version of that kind of encounter. In doing so, I wasn’t just telling a story. I was soothing my infinite solitude.

Join LEM as a subscriber and read Eva’s Garden in its entirety December 19, 2025 here at LIMIT EXPERIENCE MAGAZINE.com.

LEM In our correspondence you mentioned that you intend for your piece, Eva’s Garden to have a transformative effect on readers. What is it about the piece that fulfills that intention and, as a writer, how did you construct the effect?

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11/21/2025
LE Poetry, John Davis

And Now

the hug, the need for necking

cuddling, collecting kisses

up and down legs to shiver

a river of love. To whisk

my skin with your skin again

and again, a madrigal

of our beings lilting long tones,

honing joy inside our skulls.

Hear the sift of desert sand.

Banish anger to the wind

that blushes bougainvillea,

rushes up the canyon, sinks

inside the stream. Yes and now

we know the way how. The song

of bodies harmonizes,

rises, livens, makes us strong.

Fluid Muscles

We have found the zone

where love re-loves.

My fingers sweep your back:

water-soft your skin

along your calves and thighs.,

oboe-smooth, what Mozart

composed. Here is how snow

feathers on snow. Our bodies

know how blossoms ripen

sweet meat into song.

BIO:

John Davis is the author of Gigs, Guard the Dead and The Reservist. His work has appeared in DMQ Review, Iron Horse Literary Review and Terrain.org. He lives on an island in the Salish Sea and performs in several bands.

Blogroll

10/31/2025
Flaneur with Us: Bios

4 minute read

Introduction to the Ageless Sexuality Series and its Origin

This month I urbanize myself in the philosophic sense with the sense of impending change. The season is changing. The government is in limbo and I live underneath my aging skin with a sense of defiance, not toward others necessarily, but toward the looming sense of fear that permeates the public spaces around me. Intimacy is shaped by the subterfuge.

Once I set foot outside the security of my car I flaneur the park, the street that leads to the ocean and then the dock around my local library. I listen to the one inside as Sam Shepard puts it in his novel of that name.

The philosopher Walter Benjamin gave voice to the state that takes over when I roam my city, intimately connecting yet maintaining distance. I check into the computer station at the library and open a piece I wrote while the pandemic was raging in Peru. I think of the last great, bone nourishing embrace with a friend there on the cobblestone street by the mercado.

Urubamba Mountain Range

Surrounded by the Andes from the north and my indigenous Quechua neighbors to the East, I watch as a new phenomenon intermittently occurs in the dark of my bedroom at night. I chafe uneasily under the alpaca blankets warming my skin against the Andean chill. Episodic memories hover after midnight. They wait, transparent to waking life on the walkway outside my cottage door. Their presence informs my dreams, and even my breathing changes when they hover at the Sacsayhuaman ruins near up the hill from my Peruvian home. The horse trainer visits me one night and we sit, me in his lap, on my patio under the Calca sky.

He saddles a Pinto. I put my boot into his laced fingers as he raises me to the level of the ride. The horse and I gallop across the pastures to the edge of the mountain behind our houses. We take a rocky path, dogs from villagers napping at our heels part of the way. We crest to a plateau, lay in the grass overlooking the valley while the horses meander chewing juicy Bermuda cud.

I return to Los Angeles with a sense of curiosity about the state of the post quarantine metropolis. I walked the beaches along the surf on a rare rainy day. In my twenties as an actor this was my city in every sense; I avoided the blase attitude that the sociologist Georg Simmel thought the defining patterns of constancy with which being a city dweller confined you. It was a survival mechanism, he thought, that kept you from being overwhelmed. I didn’t need that in my twenties and now in the last third of my life it doesn’t seem to be available. And then, a stranger at a Tango lesson tales my hand and leads me toward a place my body drinks in the dance. Unspoken, ageless, a form of primal movement requiring trust. What does the flux we’re in mean for us 21st century inhabitants of cities around the globe? Where is our psychic suit of protection? Is it in the small gesture? Does it transcend time?

I find solace in my roots. I learned as a child the fluidity of nature because I was surrounded by pastures and wet weather creeks and cows and forests that yawned fluid and flexible as an umbrella over my budding sense of self. I call forward the dexterity of my rural youth today as I drive along ribbons of traffic, sit amidst the well and the struggling, allowing the one inside to shift the gears, turn the wheel and apply the brakes when necessary. The perceptions of the urban flaneur penetrate the Now with shades of gray, leaving the extremes of black and white as night seeps in gradations across the sky to day.

As I prepare each week’s new work for Limit Experience Magazine’s Ageless Sexuality series, I feel the work turn from dark to light and back again, sometimes with humor and ever punctuated with moments of quiet, stillness, and rage. No judgement, just lived experience opened to the digital page. The work, new and old brings me joy, contemplation and sometimes rubs against me. evening out rough spots it elucidates change, the only guarantee in life.

From My Balcony, Buenos Aires

After all, perspective is everything; when on the way to meet a friend, Uruguay refused my American passport. Shortly after a long ride into dawn, I stood in the border station watching the bus drive away. Several motorcyclists offered me a ride. We stopped and bought I ought a helmet, slung a leg over a tall stranger’s Harley and the took me to the nearest airport. I took a plane to my friend’s mountain town where we spent several days together. We ate nectarines in the shaft of sunlight over the sheets and communicated through out translation devices about our lives as parents, as visual artists and as new friends we bridged vast gaps on time. I never met his daughter but since I had seen her the year before in my vision in the desert of Joshua Tree I felt I knew her. I never told the man about this earlier meeting. The clock didn’t exist in that space but our connection somehow expanded even as I left post breakfast a week later. The liminal world can do this just as literature can. Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote a book about the kidnappings that took place in Argentina and I read it after I left the man. I went South to the end of the continent and in that city felt his presence and then eventually he again appeared. He’d been handed a Paris assignment and his plane stopped in Buenos Aires where I was lodged at their Congreso. I walked endlessly tracing paths I knew he had taken when he lived there when his daughter was a baby. I got messages he was nearby but I had immersed myself in Marquez; I missed his visit and have not seen him since. Perhaps I write submission calls for Limit Experience Magazine about the dynamics of this time curious about others’ rendezvous with timelessness and love.

AGELESS SEXUALITY SERIES

The Strange Hotel, Buenos Aires, Photo Credit: Nicolas Guerrero

A little about the writers you’ll meet; In the next few weeks you’ll have poetry and fiction and nonfiction through which to flaneur with men and women of many different perspectives:

Bio: ANDREIA RODRIGUES

Andreia Rodrigues, author of Sin & Other Stories, is a Brazilian writer based in Europe. Alongside her work in erotica, she has written a memoir, a romance novel, and a collection of autobiographical essays. Her work has appeared in literary collectives such as Bare Back Magazine and Feminine Collective. Through fiction and autobiographical narratives her writing is dedicated to helping women heal and transcend.

Bio: DIANE FUNSTON

Diane Funston lives in Marysville, CA and is originally from Rochester, NY. She began writing in adolescent angst which ultimately led her to a degree in English from CSU San Marcos. Diane has been published in numerous poetry journals. Her first chapbook was published by Foothills Publishing in 2022

BIO: LINDA MALM

Linda Malm was published as a teen and only returned to poetry after she retired as a college dean. She won a competition to write with the Robert Redford/NM Film Board enterprise and now is publishing poetry. In 2023 Kelsay Books published her first chapbook, “Winded from the Chase.”

BIO: JOHN DAVIS

John Davis is the author of Gigs, Guard the Dead and The Reservist. His work has appeared in DMQ Review, Iron Horse Literary Review and Terrain.org. He lives on an island in the Salish Sea and performs in several bands.

BIO: ANDREW PARKINSON

Andrew Parkinson lives and writes fiction in Vancouver, Canada. His recent work has appeared in DarkWinter Literary Magazine, Porch Literary Magazine, and a ‘long short story’ in The Write Launch. Forthcoming writing will appear in Queen’s Quarterly and Gaslamp Pulp.

10/17/2025
Limit Experience NEWS

FALL 2025

We’re putting the next series together from our most recent Ageless Sexuality: Libidinal Innocence and Wisdom call for submissions.

Next Friday, October 3, we’ll announce the new LE Authors lineup. Take a peak here on LEM in a week.

And, on Wednesday, October 1, a new call for submissions about the chaos of sexuality both personally and collectively begins:

READ the CALL: Figuring Feral: The Great Ephemeral Skin

“That is, to be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

“Sex is kicking death in the ass while singing.” – Charles Bukowski

“Open the so-called body and spread out all its surfaces: not only the skin with each of its folds, wrinkles, scars, with its great velvety planes.” – Jean-Francois Lyotard

Go to our Duotrope Submissions page to see the calendar: Duosuma’s Limit Experience Magazine Call for Submissions.

Share this opportunity to become a part of the Limit Experience Magazine Contributor’s Mission with your writer groups and friends.

09/26/2025
LE Conversations, Hugh Findlay

On Haiku as an art form, a skill elevator, and a lifestyle

5 minute Read Time

LEM Haiku is deeply rooted in the natural world—but your language seems to do more than observe.

HF I consider myself a “traditional” haiku poet, adhering to 3 lines with 17 total syllables, which gives me the structure I enjoy. I try to include nature in each poem but find other influences just as worthy—some may call a narrative work a “senryu” instead, but to me the definitive terms are far less important than the work itself.

LEM What environments shape your haiku? The Physical, the internal? Do you write from weather, ritual, urban soundscape, dream terrain? I’m curious to hear what surrounds your work.

HF I strive to include three equal elements in my work: inspiration, craft, and what I call “significance.” Inspiration comes from anywhere/anytime, as most poets know. Of course, “craft” comes from life experience and education, both academic and personal (I’m a voracious reader).

Finally, “significance” refers to the WHY a reader would appreciate a piece; likewise, a deep dive into what exactly I’m trying to say. I find that all these elements are critical and surprisingly difficult to achieve in haiku. Sometimes, it takes me months or even years to reach my goals for a single poem.

LEM What’s a haiku (your own or someone else’s) that you return to again and again?

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08/15/2025
LE POETRY Hugh Findlay’s Haiku

Read

07/04/2025
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Limit Experience Magazine grew out of a deep frustration: I watched too many powerful stories silenced, too many writers forced to shrink their brilliance to fit gatekeepers’ rules. I knew there had to be a space that honored the courage of authentic, challenging, beautiful work — a space that made creative freedom feel possible again.

Writing with pen and paper out of necessity once I reached South America, I found myself diving into a deeper relationship with the text…surprising revelations began to surface on the page. My work took on new dimensions.

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06/30/2025
LE Poetry, Manifestation for the Dead and Blue

Shan LYU

I.

I stepped into a street buried behind a hidden corner.

The sound of coffee grinding weaves through the streets and alleys,

French toast is sliced, a knife scraping against a porcelain plate, across the street under the gaze of a pale gray Gothic statue.

Blue pinpricks cover the stretched-out skin.

A woman in pain, a body indistinguishable and bodies tangled.

The air carries an inescapable scent of death.

A wave of dizziness washed over me.

II.

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BIO:

Shan Lyu is an artist and writer based in London. Having completed an MA from the University of the Arts London fine art program, she is taking on a creative writing and artistic practice based in UAL. She works across the mediums of prose, composition and sound art.

05/23/2025
Literary Events

Upcoming

DREAMS AND DEMONS

May 02 – Alaina Hammond – Theatre

May 10 – Editor’s Letter

May 16 – Christie Chandler Stahl – Poetry

May 23 – Shan Lyu – Poetry

May 30 – Kelly Piner – Fiction

June 06 – Craig Matsu-Pissot

June 13 – Robert Pope – Fiction

June 20 – Gerrard Sarnat – Poetry

June 27 – Thomas Penn Johnson – Nonfiction

July 04 – Hugh Findlay – Poetry

LEM NEWS

July 04 – Limit Experience Magazine’s SEVEN YEAR CELEBRATION!

05/20/2025
LE Poetry, Christie Chandler-Stahl

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05/16/2025
Editor’s Letter

What happens when we deliberately venture to the very edges of what is knowable, acceptable, or even bearable?

READ

05/10/2025
Under Love’s Influence

Alaina HAMMOND

MARA ROSE, 30s

JOSHUA, her husband, 30s

CHORUS 1 and CHORUS 2: Any age or gender.

Setting: An empty stage, populated only by the actors.

The dialogue takes place in MARA ROSE’s mind. When writing to JOSHUA, she speaks directly to the audience. The shifts in time can be depicted by changes in light, or just the actors’ body language. The CHORUS can speak from a distance or more closely interact with MARA ROSE and JOSHUA, to the director’s discretion. The pace should be quick, the dialogue at times overlapping with only a few significant pauses.

MARA ROSE: To my nearby darling: Today is the first Valentine’s Day since we met…wherein we’ll not be in each other’s arms.

JOSHUA: When you’re away, please write to me. Letters from my Valentine will speed my heart, and warm me.

MARA ROSE: Words drawn on paper are too remote, not real the way your touch is. I need your body beside mine!

JOSHUA: Wrong. You need nothing, outside yourself.

MARA ROSE: Perhaps, maybe not. I’ll miss you till I ache.

JOSHUA: I feel the same, my love. Aches heal. You’ll heal.

CHORUS 1: Heal.

CHORUS 2: Ache.

MARA ROSE: This place—

CHORUS 1 and CHORUS 2: St. Vincent’s Rehabilitation Facility.

MARA ROSE: This place is so pretty. On the outside, at least. But still I grind my teeth with my fellow inmates.

CHORUS 1: What a miserable vacation this is!

CHORUS 2: I need a drink!

CHORUS 1: Miserable!

CHORUS 2: Drink!

JOSHUA: It’s not so bad, my Darling Mara Rose. You’ll see. The days will fly by.

CHORUS 1 and CHORUS 2: Ha!

CHORUS 1: Does he not know how long a dry day lasts?

CHORUS 2: Tick. Eternity. Tock.

JOSHUA: There must be at least three heated pools here.

MARA ROSE: Good. Maybe if I drink enough chlorinated water, I’ll black out till my time is done.

JOSHUA: Don’t joke about that!

MARA ROSE: At least my humor’s dry.

CHORUS 1: Black humor.

CHORUS 2: Bitter ale.

JOSHUA: Yes, Honey. That’s the “spirit.”

MARA ROSE: Sorry, I don’t mean to “wine.”

JOSHUA: I could trade sober barbs with you all day.

MARA ROSE: I could try, I mean I could give it a “shot.”

JOSHUA: Which brings us here.

MARA ROSE: Which brings ME here. You’re free to go, no addiction binds you to this place. Or anywhere. You’re truly free.

JOSHUA: But I’m here with you, even as I leave.

CHORUS 1: Leave.

CHORUS 2: Here.

MARA ROSE: Oh god. Will you become possessive of my illness? Will you smell my breath with eyebrow raised, disguise it as a kiss? Will you measure how much juice I drink, worried it’s whetting my appetite, a chaser to something stiff? Will it become “our” alcoholism?

JOSHUA: Don’t be absurd. Although of course what’s yours is also mine. Sickness. Health.

MARA ROSE: I would have spared you…this. All this.

JOSHUA: You’re getting the help that you need. As such, you’re helping me.

CHORUS 1: Help.

CHORUS 2: Me.

MARA ROSE: I promise to no longer mistreat your wife.

JOSHUA: My lovely wife. My perpetual Valentine.

CHORUS 2: To pour much liquor down her throat, and numb her till she feels nothing, rapidly approaching nothing herself.

CHORUS 1: (Moving hands together until a dramatic clap) Closer closer closer closer CLOSER CLOSER (CLAP)!

CHORUS 2: In time we go from live to dead, no abstract between the two. You know this, you can’t blur it, and so you close your eyes.

MARA ROSE: Eyes closed, I move—gratefully—toward that which I fear. And to the abyss beyond it.

CHORUS 1: Death hardly frightens you then.

CHORUS 2: Not quite. It just seems less real.

MARA ROSE: With every drink, I’m closer to forgetting irrefutable, depressing facts. For a moment, I feel less mortal, less made of meat that’s doomed to decay, when my mind is enhanced by chemical madness. Immortal truths of light and air unravel in my consciousness…at cost to my liver. The false disconnect between brain and body kills me slowly.

JOSHUA: Last week, it damn near killed you fast. Live awhile yet, my love. The future’s bland without you in it.

MARA ROSE: Well…For you, I suppose I could be swayed. To stay—in this constructive castle.

CHORUS 1: Bland. No booze.

CHORUS 2: My teeth grind.

JOSHUA: (Hugging her) They’ll let me visit you soon. We’ll walk the hospital grounds together, grounds that soon may feel hospitable. If your teeth still grind, I’ll kiss you anyway.

CHORUS 2: Did you imagine this would come to pass—

CHORUS 1: —when you placed gold upon her hand?

CHORUS 2: Remember what you said that day.

CHORUS 1: Recall your wedding vow!

JOSHUA: (Reciting his wedding vows) The future cannot be seen, nor determined, by any fixed point of the present. I am humble regarding that which I cannot know. And yet, I know myself, and you, well enough to face no doubt: I’ll always love you, Mara Rose. Whoever you become.

MARA ROSE: What did I say, then? I forget, though for once I hadn’t dulled my sense with drink.

CHORUS 2: Drink. Drink. Drink!

CHORUS 1: The external toxin that’s practically part of you.

MARA ROSE: I was drunk off a different chemical, though. That which comes from nature, unmade my man.

CHORUS 1 and CHORUS 2: (confused) …Weed?

MARA ROSE: Adrenaline!

JOSHUA: And you know you’ll get more of that natural high, starting now. Alcohol does not exist outside regular physics: Whatever we suppress comes back in kind. All displacement eventually compensates itself. Your mind, my love, will do for you what you have done for it: Intoxicate to ecstasy. Soon you’ll have moments of euphoria…and be able to relive each one.

MARA ROSE: Relive moments. Yes. My wedding. I must have vowed before man and god: All of me is in love with you. On a subatomic level, that which can’t be broken down—I AM my love for you. My Joshua.

JOSHUA: Yup. That’s what you said, to effect. I’m still not sure about that metaphor, but I like the sentiment.

MARA ROSE: (Back to her letter) It’s that emotion, that intellectual knowledge of emotion, I’ll use to stay well. My bones are dry, and they love you.

JOSHUA: I can imagine you without a glass in your hand.

(flashback to the time they met. MARA ROSE is drinking. JOSHUA is not.)

MARA ROSE: Hi!

JOSHUA: Oh, hey!

MARA ROSE: You’re not drinking.

JOSHUA: I don’t drink. It’s not my thing.

MARA ROSE: Then how do you make a fool of yourself?

JOSHUA: With surprising ease.

MARA ROSE: How will I convince you to dance if you’re not drinking?

JOSHUA: …You want to dance with me?

MARA ROSE: Sure. Or I could just have you dance for my amusement, judging all smug from the sides. “Faster puppet! More rhythmic!”

CHORUS 1: Hey Mara Rose! You look stupid!

CHORUS 2: You should drink more!

CHORUS 1: That’ll make her look even stupider.

CHORUS 2: Yes, but she won’t care as much. Faster, puppet!

CHORUS 1: More rhythmic!

MARA ROSE: I’d never do that to you. I’m not a bossy, nasty drunk.

JOSHUA: Well you definitely don’t seem nasty. Or drunk.

MARA ROSE: Give me an hour.

JOSHUA: An hour?

CHORUS 1 and CHORUS 2: Yeah right!

MARA ROSE: I hold my liquor well.

CHORUS 2: For now.

JOSHUA: Lucky liquor. I’m Joshua.

MARA ROSE: Mara Rose. And don’t worry, I’m really not going to insist that you dance.

JOSHUA: (Disappointed) Oh.

MARA ROSE: I’d rather just sit with you and engage in conversation.

JOSHUA: (excited) Sounds great!

(Time shift, to the present)

MARA ROSE: How strange. I didn’t get wasted that night.

CHORUS 1: Wasted.

CHORUS 2: Night.

JOSHUA: I must have been sufficiently charming on my own merits.

MARA ROSE: You were. You are. My body didn’t get bored of your touch—It got thirstier of its own accord, for reasons that are beyond me. Why do I drink? Am I trying to remember how small I am, how much a part of all living things, and so destroy my too-alert self conscious thought? To be a babe in utero, or a fish that does not think, nor judge itself? Just swims. A fetus in the womb moves in a sphere. Makes circles, as close to perfect as a living thing can get. Fish and birds form themselves in rigid alliance, and no one sticks out. I’d like that grace.

CHORUS 1: Did you just pontificate on how you wish you were less cerebral?

CHORUS 2: Kill metaphysics with itself?

MARA ROSE: (quickly, dismissively) Whatever, I guess. (beat) But it’s not only that.

I drink because I am…an alcoholic. The tautology is brutal, elegant in its simplicity. Red wine is called that because it looks red. Drunks are called drunks because they’re drunk. There’s no mystery, no underlying cause to the phenomenon. That is: I’m an alcoholic. No why, only what.

JOSHUA: I almost lost you. I didn’t.

MARA ROSE: Am I a good gambler, because I won?

JOSHUA: There’s no such thing as a good gambler.

CHORUS 1: Chance eventually makes you its bitch.

CHORUS 2: What a tasty gun is booze, loaded in your hand, brought to your tongue. Dragging you to heaven.

CHORUS 1: Be careful not to mix metaphors. Metaphors aren’t drinks!

CHORUS 2: At least I’m not slurring my words.

MARA ROSE: (Interrupting CHORUS 1) I would feel dazzling. The eyes of my friends reflected my buzz as we shared wine and laughter. I was so funny, everything danced…and in the morning we remembered little. Sunlight can’t recall the magic dark. Before the blackout is the darkening.

JOSHUA: None of that matters; you require no veneer. I only see one of you, and you’re no less beautiful for that. You’re still whole.

MARA ROSE: Your love’s my favorite elixir. Great high, no headache!

JOSHUA: I do what I can.

MARA ROSE: Well, so does everyone, you just do it better. I worry, though. We’re beautifully in love. According to the classics, shouldn’t one of us die soon? And seeing as I’m the one with the disease….

JOSHUA: Shut up. Get that out of your head. Don’t even think of hurting me that way. That’s not romance, that’s melodrama. Suck it up and stay awhile.

MARA ROSE: Until the world spins one time too many, and we’re no longer on it.

JOSHUA: But how many spins, how many rotations, have we until that dread time comes? How many nights of your sleeping head by mine? How much bread will we break for each other? Our flesh will be solid until it is naught. For all purposes, we have eternity to touch.

MARA ROSE: Oh god, it should be enough! And yet…I’m afraid. Of a future with no more liquid hope—A bottle held fast in the same space I breathe.

CHORUS 2: Breathe.

CHORUS 1: Heal.

CHORUS 2: Drink.

MARA ROSE: It tastes so sweet and hearty, as if joy could be distilled, bottled, and corked. Emotion fermented by fruit. Born fully formed in the throat.

CHORUS 2: Poison is easily brewed to taste sweet.

CHORUS 1: Do not conflate pleasure with happiness.

MARA ROSE: I love my body, but sensual pleasure is not enough. That’s a dead end, as sure as the same body someday must die.

CHORUS 2: And yet?

MARA ROSE: I want to leave myself—swim away from the gravity that brings me down, pulls at my breasts, my face, ever closer to the dirt. Free myself from Earth, my breasts, my ego.

JOSHUA: I love your breasts.

CHORUS 1: You crawled from the water, you walked upright—Why would you return there? Fish aren’t happy. They’re just simple.

CHORUS 2: Simple. Stupid.

CHORUS 1: Don’t envy them, Stupid!

JOSHUA: I need you here.

MARA ROSE: Could I be partway here? Drunken revelry’s the compromise between too much consciousness and death. You still can hold me, feel my bourbon breath even as I float above it.

CHORUS 2: Don’t kid yourself: The serpent’s fruit only offers false wisdom.

CHORUS 1: Nothing appears more beautiful, less sinister, than what harms you!

CHORUS 2: Shatter your idol. Break the glass.

MARA ROSE: What’s broken in me must break, dissolve. The antimatter of my illness, my antibody, if you will.

CHORUS 2: You were damn near destroyed by the chemical explosion erupting in your veins.

CHORUS 1: Do you remember what number your blood was, as they hauled you away in a stretcher?

CHORUS 2: You didn’t ask. You didn’t need to know.

MARA ROSE: I got the point.

CHORUS 1: She’s very perceptive.

CHORUS 2: Why waste that? Is the world so dull that you must dull it further?

CHORUS 1: Through a wine glass, dark and cloudy.

CHORUS 2: Break the glass.

CHORUS 1: Red wine is called that because it looks red.

CHORUS 2: Blood. Red. Break. Glass.

JOSHUA: Look at me. Focus on the human that loves you. The rest is ephemeral, of no matter.

MARA ROSE: I love drinking, while thinking of you. I stumble home smiling. Toasted. Warm.

JOSHUA: On nights you came home drunk, you’d slam the door open and jump in my lap. You’d swallowed fire, that my touch alone would fuel and quench.

CHORUS 2: Fuel.

CHORUS 1: Quench.

MARA ROSE: Life seemed to get easier with every drink. (beat) But it never gets easier.

CHORUS 2: Just more lush. And therefore, better.

CHORUS 1: Lies, lies, lies!

CHORUS 2: We’re lying to you. You know that, right?

MARA ROSE: I know; I don’t care. I want a drink. I WANT A DAMN DRINK! (beat) Or five.

CHORUS 1: Or ten.

CHORUS 2: No you don’t. We want you to drink.

CHORUS 1: But you’re the one calling the “shots.”

CHORUS 2: Will you drink? Will you?

CHORUS 1: Will you?

CHORUS 1 and CHORUS 2: Will you? Will you?—

MARA ROSE: (interrupting, with violence) NO!

(CHORUS 1 and CHORUS 2 recoil. Pause.)

MARA ROSE: (with weary resignation) Dammit. No. At least…not today. I physically can’t. I wish I were stronger…this is where I am.

JOSHUA: Mara Rose? You’re the perfect amount of human. You need to wake up, and come home. I’ll make love to you. You can drink your own endorphins.

MARA ROSE: (Going back to the letter) Joshua, my husband, my Valentine. March comes closer. Soon I can leave the prison that I—with help from others—walked inside. Healed. (beat) Or nearly healed.

CHORUS 2: Well, sober at least.

MARA ROSE: No small feat, that. And in the meantime…

JOSHUA: In the meantime….

MARA ROSE: Dream of my body, beside yours, and whole.

MARA ROSE, CHORUS 1 and CHORUS 2: Dream of me.

JOSHUA: Always.

END

Bio:

Alaina Hammond is a poet, playwright, fiction writer, and visual artist.

Coming Soon:

LE’s Interview with Ms. Hammond about her work and influences

05/02/2025
LE Nonfiction, Gina Moriarty

100 Words / 12 Hits / Gravity

“I promise, you don’t know what tie-dye is until you’ve watched the rising sun’s rays tickle through the ocean foam while you’re tripping on LSD.” – G.M.

100 Words / 12 Hits / Gravity

GINA MORIARTY

The first time my boyfriend ever tried LSD, I put two hits in a beer bottle a half hour before I told him about it. He was already rolling so he fucking loved it.

“Let’s candy flip on the coast.”

Before our trip, I traded a half ounce of Medicinal Gelato for two strips of Rick and Morty perforated paper. I sold ten hits, one strip, and the profits funded a ball of cocaine. We stopped along the turnpike every hour on the hour to sniff lines in the family bathroom stalls. The ball didn’t make it to the beach.

*

1:53 AM. The motorcycle revved into the parking lot just in time: Ocean City liquor store closed at 2. Neon lights fizzled in the salty breeze. We were in and out, but we had a dilemma: until you’ve packed for a motorcycle trip, you’ve taken the luxury of luggage for granted. The pannier was crammed full, and all our clothes jammed in a duffel bungie-tied to my backrest. Now what? We hit Coastal Highway, full speed. Him driving, me on the back, with a case of Budweiser and a bottle of cheap tequila across my lap. Let’s call it carry-on.

*

We ate Rick and Morty LSD on the Fourth of July. Three days in advance a friend hooked us up with one room two blocks from the beach. Three Cheers. Second Floor. One hit each. Sul-sul. This batch made me speak Simlish: A language from the Sims. A strategic life simulation computer game. Auschten-Dorf. Holographic vision. Beach and back. Sisaroom? The condo was brand new. Aventurescence. Pleasant. Ah, docka morpher. Tequila. OJ. Tequila. I expected an explosion. Boom. Big boom. Back to beach. Ooh be gah. Beachside at sunrise, the sun shone green like a traffic light traversing the atmosphere.

*

Sunshine. Sugar Cubes. Lucy. Liquid Love. Uncle Cid. Windowpanes. Doses. Paper. Blotter. Stamps. Lysergic-Acid-Diethylamide. One hundred hits are known within the psychedelic community as a sheet. Ten sheets, a book. One-hundred sheets, ten thousand hits, we call that a Bible. On the beach, I suggested we call it a passport instead. The nomenclature of a traveler’s visa derives from the Latin phrase Charta Visa: “paper that has been seen,” and U.S. citizens refer to their passport as a “blue book.” So, why not? Ingesting that much LSD is a spiritual journey, but ten-thousand stamps sure make a lot of trips.

*

Clothed with surge, heavy with undercurrent, our feet and our hands in the tide. We let the waves drag the beach snug around our shins.

“Do you feel it? The waves, the energy? More than the water. That pull – a deep force beneath – in and out… in and out…in.” I felt connected to the core: beckoned from the nucleus.

“What has the moon to do with the tide?” he asked the summer night’s sky.

“How can the moon affect the Earth breathing?” I breathed deeply. In and out. I suggested, “It’s all connected by a remarkable something. Maybe it’s love.”

*

I promise, you don’t know what tie-dye is until you’ve watched the rising sun’s rays tickle through the ocean foam while you’re tripping on LSD. The swells of water twist and turn vibrant shades of pinks and violets into turquoise, cobalt, white and emerald green colored braids. A fluid rainbow fashioned from the Earth, the wind, and the water. The involuntary tug, infinitely heaving. Swirling streams of shades into a mirror of humanity. In Portuguese, the word cafuné means to lovingly run your fingers through someone’s hair. That’s what the sky was doing: caressing strands into the ocean’s chaotic locks.

*

Lights off – useless. I could sense his signature with my eyes shut; his aura glowed sultry shades of pinks, blues, orange. Perception vibrated. His energy was enveloping. It pulsated, savage, and intimate. When my eyes blinked open, I engulfed his white swirling energy. I breathed him in, consumed by desire, and a carnal urge to bite. My lips slid sideways across the bridge of his nose. My incisor punctured skin. The movement sent us slipping, polished with passion, we plummeted to the rented condo floor. My lips were wet and red with his blood. We chuckled, convulsing, still connected.

*

Wearing shorts on a Harley is frowned upon. The pipes will burn the skin off your shin faster than you can cuss. Riding the east coast beneath the July sun, jeans were out of the question. Sunscreen made my butt cheeks squeak. When I shifted, my skin sounded like the beginning of “Money.” To achieve this noise in the recording studio, Pink Floyd tore pieces of tape. Sweaty thighs against black leather make the same sound: riiiiiip. Red splotches appeared like bruises. When traffic stopped, the asphalt replied with ripples of heat. High-fidelity first-class traveling. No way to get away.

*

Map Quest lied. The three-and-a-half-hour ride became five. From Ocean City, MD to AC, New Jersey, we rode painfully hungover with the coast on our right. Traffic was a bitch. We rode the berm. One side of my body burned bright red. On the AC Expressway, the Jersey skies opened and cried. The lobby was filled with flashy sundresses and sandals. We were holding hands and dripping rain. Sunburn singed my shoulders.

“One smoking king. Floor 7.”

Pot fumes greeted our arrival as if Cheech and Chong were down the hall. I sparked a joint before our door clicked shut.

*

We meandered Old Philadelphia Pike and took back roads home. I watched red teardrops on my GPS, set to “search along” our route for restaurants. The town names of south-central PA, nearby Amish Country, are coined with silly, sexual innuendos. First, Intercourse. Now, Bird-In-Hand. Fertility Village ahead. Signs for horse-and-buggy crossings punctuated the otherwise empty roads. “Smokehouse BBQ and Brews” appeared promptly. I tapped him, stretching my arm across his shoulder, I waved my phone in his face. He nodded and signaled the turn. Two-and-a-half hours since we left Atlantic City. We stopped once for gas. Still six hours from home.

*

“Pump the brakes,” I yelled, pinching his sides.

He couldn’t hear me. I should’ve let him buy the expensive headsets. I wanted to spend our money on drugs, but now that all the drugs were gone, I was beginning to doubt the expenditures, our priorities. For roughly nine rough hours I sat behind him, with nothing to amuse me besides the steady scenery, the rolling hills of Pennsylvania. I played Grateful Dead renditions through the Bluetooth radio, barreling a parade from the saddle bags. I hoped the melodies would distract me from how quickly the asphalt whizzed beneath my feet.

*

8:57 PM. The sky had darkened by the time we pulled into the driveway. Darkled. Nine-hundred-and-eighty-nine miles in total. 11 miles shy of 1000. I dismounted first, hamstrings aching. Riding a motorcycle can be a real pain in the ass. We untangled our luggage and collapsed beside each other on the couch. After twelve hours, the physical separation from feet to floor, from chest to back, was unfamiliar. I was ungrounded, cold without him. We went to bed immediately, slept tucked together, like when the bike turns hard into a steep turn, and the pressure smushes us together like one.

BIO

Gina Moriarty is an emerging writer who earned her MFA through Chatham University in Pittsburgh. Her thesis was the recipient of the Katherine Ayres Award. She writes emotion driven narrative nonfiction. Typically, her work covers the themes of addiction, heartache, and coincidence beneath an umbrella of hope.

12/06/2024
LE Select FICTION

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10/20/2024