My favorite part was laying at the edge of the world together.
Backs on 200-year-old concrete.
Faces at eternity old sky.
Prosciutto and curry chicken and Trader Joe’s crackers
spewed around us and lullabies
spewed around us and youth
spewed around us rising off of us like
heat from the concrete road in the middle of summer.
When people say “let’s be together forever”
I often feel pity because forever will never exist.
But I guess the together is nice, the together is real.
We’re all just in one of those spinning teacup rides
where if you look outside your particular pastel cup
your stomach turns over and wants to come out your mouth.
Better to stare at your fellow passengers and laugh
as the wind plays with your hair and you forget your forever.
Someone out there is reading into each teacup,
where we are just the tea leaves,
and is trying to find meaning
in the way we wilt just so in the bottom.
And when they squint their eye into our cup
and shift it this way and that
I hope they see four girls spewed out at the edge of the world.
Holding on for dear life.
Megan Waring graduated from Virginia Tech with her BA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. Since then she has lived in China, North Carolina, Virginia, and currently, California. She often teaches children but more often finds them teaching her. Her work has been published in The Silhouette, The Legendary, Germ Magazine, Aegir, and is forthcoming in the Used Furniture Review. She was the 2010 recipient of the Virginia Tech Literary Award. She blogs occasionally at mmwaring.tumblr.com.
Rachel Kertz was born in a small town in Missouri in 1988. While earning her degree at Southeast Missouri State University, she became interested in photography and began using her commutes as excuses to go on long drives through the rural countrysides, hoping to find locations and abandoned houses to photograph. She hopes to convey relatable stories in her images that speak to her audience on themes such as loneliness, love, exploration, and the feeling of being alone in unconventionally beautiful places. You can find more of her work on Flickr.