Chelsea flash fiction

Nitrogen Narcosis by Zoe Raine

We pull the rusting boat out of the weeds. It takes us an hour of searching the dark to find what we had abandoned years ago. I don’t remember who gave us the boat, or if we bought it, do you? Earlier, we laid on our sides, facing away from each other, wondering if the other was awake.

Do you wanna go fishing? You asked.

That sounds nice, I said.

I thought you meant “sometime,” the place we put things that we’ll never get around to— but then I felt you get out of bed.

Spiders crawl over our hands while we drag the cold metal toward the lapping waves. It doesn’t look like it will stay afloat, but I focus on the sound of sifting sand. My nightgown dips into the lake, and I like how it clings to my legs as I steady myself in the canoe. You give us the last push before jumping in. We have no paddle. We have no fishing poles, either. The clouds are covering all the stars, and I can’t seem to find the moon. After settling into the metal and rocking with the waves, I can feel that you’re looking at me, and I wonder if you’re also nostalgic about when we loved each other every day.

We almost don’t notice the leak in the boat, the water rushing in from the sides. Submerged up to our waists, we smile, and then we laugh. Hard. Even with headlamps blinding each other, we find the other’s eyes through blurred vision and burning cheeks, and we don’t look down at the water creeping to our ribs. The cold shows our breath between us, fogging the beams of light. Our headlamps don’t go out once we’re under water, and I watch the shapes of light and darkness dance in flecks around us. Your muffled voice melts into a kaleidoscope dream. Our lungs fill with the lake, and we make bubbles— laughing out the last of our air.

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Zoe Raine is an MFA candidate at Western Washington University (recently trading Michigan snow for Washington rain). She found her love of literary magazines through interning at Passages North and is now a fiction editor for Bellingham Review and reader for Fractured Lit. Her work is featured (or forthcoming) in The Hunger, Maudlin House, and A Velvet Giant. (Photo credit: Elation Studio)

Chelsea prose poetry

Smoothing the Cranial Curve of a Ghostskull

Can’t shift this sticky Hoosier summer. No walks off the front porch anymore. My hair won’t behave and it floats like a cloud. My hangnails are drying up and my armpits are wet and the sky is a chalkboard of plane exhaust streaks. Ants nip at my dirty feet and crawl up my dirty jeans and the wind tickles the base-fuzz of my spine. I shaved my toes and still stepped on bees. The house chimes an idle litany. My dead dog’s dishes are asleep in the backyard. I scrambled barefoot over the prickle-grass, trying to find some remnant of her dried shit, but I missed the spring and the softening and now the bluebells by the stoop have turned beige. The basketball on the driveway bakes inside its mud shell. The cars hum down Carlisle. The monarch butterfly I’ve been trying to catch since first grade jitters in the peripheral. I don’t turn to face it. The wind dies. A fly pisses on my arm. A branch cracks by the road. A squirrel sneezes at me and I bark back. He scurries into the tree crown as my hair haloes.

kristinelangleymahler_headshotKristine Langley Mahler is a memoirist experimenting with the truth on the suburban prairie outside Omaha, Nebraska. Author of Curing Season: Artifacts (WVU Press, 2022) and recipient of a 2021 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council, Kristine’s work was named Notable in Best American Essays 2021 and 2019 and is published in DIAGRAM, Ninth Letter, Brevity, and Speculative Nonfiction, among others. She is the director of Split/Lip Press. Find more about her projects at kristinelangleymahler.com or @suburbanprairie.

Chelsea prose poetry

Epitaph by Kelsi Lindus

We made art. We wept. For no reason. There were tidal patterns in our souls that we could not understand. We had souls, we suspected. We knew very little. We saw colors and we named them. We burned things, yes. We burned everything. We took it all and we used it and we did not feel bad. We turned off the television. We cupped small lifeforms in our hands. It grew warmer. We looked for mushrooms in the dirt. We hosted dinner parties. We drank til we were sad. We never learned. We learned to forgive ourselves and continue. We held the door for a stranger. We were all just babies once. We were all so anxious. We invented occasions to feel warm and generous and sorry. We let the stains set. We put off the important things. We made love. We said love but didn’t mean it. We meant to say it more. We regretted everything and nothing. We were hard, then so soft we couldn’t bear it. We made dramas of our suffering. We could not get out of bed. We humiliated each other. We used our hurt in hurtful ways. We embraced. When it rained, words came to us, and we sat alone and wrote them down. We sang, and the singing broke our hearts, made us kind again, made us better listeners. We were terrible listeners. We were terribly selfish. We built cathedrals and would not let each other in. We were boring. We grew bored. But sometimes we stopped as a bird swooped, plunged its body through the water, reemerged, soared away. We knew to watch. We knew it to be beautiful. We knew.

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Kelsi Lindus is a writer and documentary filmmaker living in the Puget Sound. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Autofocus, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Cloves Literary, and elsewhere. She can be found online at @kelsijayne or kelsilindus.com.

Chelsea flash nonfiction

When Home is Not an Option by Naz Knudsen

Burning coals glow red atop the golden plate. The friendly café owner props the Hookah next to us by the planters of mauve and red lilies. My mom nods her thank you. I whisper mine. You say, “Merci,” and with it, watch my parents beam in your sweet attempt to speak Farsi. Our Turkish host chimes in, “Teşekkür.”

We flew across the ocean and over the seas, you and I, to meet my parents somewhere in between. I wanted you to experience a place akin to where I grew up—a city cloaked in honking horns and exhaust smoke, where drivers color outside the lines, and dark brown eyes are framed with deep wrinkles of smiles.

Winding the cobblestone paths to the Galata Tower, we wander in and out of shops tucked into ancient walls. We practice our negotiation tactics with the amiable shopkeepers; we resist buying a large rug with hues that mimic the mood of the Blue Mosque watching over the Old City and its red-tiled rooftops. In the bazaar, you linger near the fragrant heaps of herbs and spice. I am drawn to the kaleidoscope of shawls and scarves. My fingertips run along the gleaming threads of silk. On a shelf next to the amber bracelets and opal rings, an orange tabby is soundly asleep. Ceiling fans lift the heat from our cheeks, the delicate fabrics dance. Blue and gold, sage and silver shimmer with the slightest breeze.

We find our way to the water. Near the bridges across the Bosporus, we settle in at a café hidden in a narrow alley, where old Maple trees shelter the travelers and the local passersby. Between the Black and Marmara Seas, Europe, and Asia, the four of us gather. We smoke Hookah, drink from thin-waisted teacups, and savor little Turkish Delights. My mom cuts into the flaky layers of Baklava, and I long for that hint of bitterness that almond paste leaves behind. “Iranian Baklava is different…it’s concentrated and intense, better , I think,” I say. You disagree, but I can trace a faint smile in the depth of your blue eyes. My dad laughs, and you roll the dice. The rug-covered cushions feel intimate, rough, just right against my bare legs.
Bubbles form in the base, loud at first, but soon they fade into the clinking of teacups. The sound of the checkers hitting the edges of the wood brings back memories long forgotten: the times my grandfather used to challenge my dad to a game of backgammon with a bit of bantering on the side.

Hagia Sophia, with all its charm, awaits us somewhere beyond this street. I sip on the hot tea with a perfect note of cardamom and think, perhaps tomorrow. Today, I want to be in-between.

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Naz Knudsen is an Iranian American writer and filmmaker. Her nonfiction work has appeared in Mayday Magazine, and she has a flash piece forthcoming in an anthology by Alternating Current Press. Previously, her translations have been published in Farsi. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, and teaches storytelling and film editing. You can find her on Twitter, @nazbk.