Self Portrait 1 by Kayla Miller
LIT ANGELS #26 LOVE. COMPLEX.
Edited by Francesca Lia Block
Copyeditor: Kerby Caudill
Art by Kayla Miller
Table of Contents
Closer, ok by Alex Moreno
High School’s Over by Reid Delehanty
The Palm Tree by Carol Faw
Complex by Nathan Buck
robots by Sarah Sunfire
Calliope by Kayla Miller
Closer, ok
by Alex Moreno
Blue drank the skin between my shirt and pants, I was born, we held arms. When the key finds a new hole, that’s when we’ll grip, and eventually we’ll die. If I’m being opaque, ask me a question about my childhood, let’s dance. The weeks trickle through my outline. How to capture this all-at-once-ness? Wriggling nows, water my holes, the angel’s eyes are open and on the mask rests sockets to which only I have the plugs. Collect the path. Folds ripple like degrees rising on concrete, where do the sidewalkers go if it melts, draped fabric has the most gorgeous lines, punt memory, everything is already.
Alex Moreno is a writer based in Los Angeles. Her poetry and fiction have been published with Scaffold Lit, Spectra Poets, Dream Boy Book Club, and more. Her novel-in-progress holds nominations for The Allegra Johnson Prize & The James Kirkwood Prize. She eats 1-2 apples a day, writes a Substack called “Thought juice,” and really likes being.
His Stillness Reveals So Much by Kayla Miller
High School’s Over
by Reid Delehanty
Molly flies through the front door of our house, and I remember the first time I saw her: her hair slicked back with sweat, a matted tendril hanging off to the side covering one of her hungry eyes, red from the joint she smoked in the car, the reason she was twenty minutes late for morning geometry. She sees me on the couch where I have been waiting for her to come home. She runs toward me, not noticing the pair of shoes left in the middle of the floor. She trips over them and hits the carpet, the cloud of dust her impact kicks up reminding me that it has been a long time since I ran the vacuum.
I try to help her up, but before I can touch her, I feel her bony fist connect with the middle of my chest. The impact knocks the wind out of me and knocks the air out of the room.
“Get your fucking hands off me, please,” she says softly, like she’s mad at something that has nothing to do with me.
She struggles to her feet and wanders into the kitchen, and I follow behind her. She takes a beer out of the fridge and sits at the head of the dining room table. Before opening the beer, she holds it to her forehead and rolls it back and forth.
“How are you, Molly?” I ask.
“I’m fine.”
She tears the cap off with her teeth, something I haven’t seen her do in years, and spits it on the floor. I want her now as badly as I ever have, as bad as when she didn’t even know I existed back in high school. I pick up the cap and throw it in the trash.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
She stops drinking and a bit of beer sloshes out the sides of her mouth. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“What do you know?”
“I just want you to be okay, Molly.”
“Well, I am, so shut up about it.”
I stop talking and watch her finish the beer, chugging it like she was at high school party that I’d hear about on Monday morning.
“That put some hair on my chest,” she says.
“Where have you been?”
“I’ve been out.”
“Out where?”
“Here. There. Everywhere.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“It was, but you wouldn’t know anything about that.”
She gets up and opens the fridge to try and find another beer. She closes the fridge, empty handed.
“I thought I told you to go to the store.”
I brace myself for another incoming slap or punch or kick, but she’s too tired this time. Something bad has happened.
I follow her back out to the living room where she steals my spot on the couch.
“I thought you got beer,” she says.
“I meant to, Molly, but I’ve been a bit busy.”
“Doing what, playing with your dick? High school’s over.”
“What does that mean?” I say and sit down next to her.
It was something she had been recently saying any time we fought. We went to the same high school, sure, but back then I wasn’t a blip on her radar. We were different people now, both she and I, and if we weren’t we wouldn’t be together. We’d both still be alone.
She reaches for the remote and turns the TV on. The light from the TV illuminates her face, unveiling wrinkles she tries to hide with foundation. Smeared amongst the sweat I notice streaks of darkening red that look like blood.
“Are you okay, Molly?” I ask again.
She scoffs and a bit of drool rolls down her bottom lip. “Jesus Christ what’s your deal tonight?”
“Is that blood?”
