Written by Marisca Pichette
Maybe I didn’t ask
but sitting in the shadow of summer
makes me wonder
if asking isn’t always.
Isn’t it us?
Isn’t it me?
I’m alone and I like that.
Everyone around me is on the other side of the door.
So I can go there if I ask
but why do I have to? Sometimes
I want to be the answer
Sometimes
I don’t want to ask.
I want someone else to open the door and tell me I’m wanted because
no one knows what asking does.
No one knows how hard questions feel
on the thumb.
No one remembers the last piece they couldn’t take
because the letters fell apart
and rolled away beneath the Chippendale,
where they sit for years among dust and forgotten
cat toys, irretrievable, unchangeable.
I’m here on the floor, but
I can’t reach my voice
.
Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in The Razor, Door is a Jar, Room Magazine, Flash Fiction Online, Necessary Fiction, and Plenitude Magazine, among others. Her debut collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker and Elgin Awards. Her first novella, Every Dark Cloud, is forthcoming in spring 2025 from Ghost Orchid Press.