Amanda Pendley

honey, rhythm is nothing but a collection

of tinny things from youth that have been held
within the time capsule of a resurrection

and we listen to the bottlecaps clank
and hear glass on teeth and windchimes
made of soda tabs as if it were the very day
we were first cracked open, how we watched
fanta sizzle on concrete as we guzzled it like
helium gas the day we met a girl called
gravity and we went up
and we went up and

we fished out friendship
bracelets and let
the loose threads tickle our wrists and tied
ourselves too tightly together that when we
heard the hiss of the garden hose late one
night we tip-toed up to the spout and watched
the mouth trickle and run down the slope
in two separate directions and our eyes met in
moon glow and we pinky
promised and I still

know that the click of the
flash light means
morse code and when we wanted to go unseen
we would leave messages on the walls with spy
markers that only revealed their words under false
light and the glow in the dark stars we held hostage
in our mouths as they unhinged to become planetarium
and the awe that would slip out wouldn’t be an eraser
of past but it would make the room into something safe
because these four walls knew long before I did that
they would crumble if I so much as pressed mouth
close to keyhole and practiced the art of confession
through incantation instead of

dangled keys held on
necklace chains who knew
who’s tenderness they belonged to, buried below
and heaved so loud as they were dug up from
ground with hands covering muffled
mouths as to not get caught while I
caught my breath as it snuck
out the back door

I was snagged thread on the edge of a
hand-made casket,
and even more so I was the sound of the fabric’s rip
and once the lid closes it will never reopen and once eyes
close they will never reopen and once I am repressed I will
never reemerge until I hear the chime of memory fade into
the prickle of uncut fingernails sliding across ridge and I
breathed in sun and I breathed
and I was music, drumbeat of habit
held in inhale of women in waiting
to resurface

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Amanda Pendley is a queer twenty-year-old writer from Kansas City who is currently studying creative writing and publishing at the University of Iowa. Her recent and forthcoming publications include The Hellebore, Vagabond City Lit, Savant Garde Literary Magazine and Storm of Blue Press. She often finds inspiration in Lorde songs, movement and obscure art history.