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"Baby Galaxy" by Emanuela Iorga

Attenuation by Quinn Forlini

I face the quiet
of you
not calling. January,
 
and I keep the lights on
low. In the dimmest
corner of night,
 
it’s just me and you
not talking. My head
stacked with empty
 
ice cube trays, craters 
where I used to hold
the frozen vapors
 
of your voice, where
I sometimes
catch some thought
 
of you still burrowing.
These hollows
make me think back
 
to the neuroscience
class I took years ago,
that man at the front
 
of the room who said
he didn’t give a tiny
rat’s ass if we ever
 
showed up. Every
electrical impulse firing
along my axons went
 
into getting an A. I did
the same in high school
biology, chemistry,
 
physics: infinite hours
smoldered in the heat
of a Bunsen burner,  
 
just to prove myself
to science teachers,
like I needed them
 
to know I could play
in their hypotheses 
and control groups,
 
that I could
choose microscope
and C. elegan, and
 
didn’t. I still remember
all the body systems
from when I was fourteen
 
and wanted my body
to die. Test me.
Skeletal, lymphatic,
 
endocrine, nervous.
I didn’t die. I got
another A. I want you
 
to give me a report
card now. I want
to crystallize us,
 
so if I turn back
some night and try
to listen, all
 
that’s left of everything
we ever said
is a single letter. 


Quinn Forlini (she/her) has writing published or forthcoming in Catapult, X-R-A-Y, Jellyfish Review, Longleaf Review, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from the University of Virginia and lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. You can find her on Twitter @quinnforlini.

​Emanuela Iorga is a filmmaker, artist, and screenwriter, who lives in Chisinau, Moldova. Art represents for her a recently rediscovered passion, following a series of world and inner changes. Her work can be found at https://manolcaincosmos.wordpress.com/270-2/
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