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Tobi Alfier

Calendar of Hurt by Tobi Alfier



She’s not a woman who changes men or friendships the way some women flap sheets straight before hanging them on the line, sunlight warming them in the heat and glare, the scent like no other—you know that scent, electric, like the back rooms in dive joints. Grit, sweat, beer spilled twenty years back yes, you know that scent. But she’s not you. She’s not a rebounder, a new man because today is a day ending with “y”, a new man because she’s tired of someone whose story she could write in just one line, who kissed her while looking over her shoulder for someone better, no, she’s not you. She’s a healer, who needs to heal herself, makes it tough for men to reach her, for people who want to call her friend.


She opens the dresser drawer, the dresser they’d argued about before gingerly putting it into his back seat, the dresser he never liked and she adored the way a southern man loves his mama’s biscuits. Proving her right, seashells, takeout receipts from meals of which she was not a part, and a housekey for somewhere else—bittersweet sadness and righteousness—it was smart of her to let him touch her haltingly, she didn’t want him to injure her heart again. Not yet. All the unreadable graffiti carved around it still hadn’t healed enough, God damn it! It was her fault, a long while before she’d try again.


She put on her sheets, lavender she’d bought for herself—no man had ever shared her bed with them and never will—her choice. She’ll paint for a long while. As summer turns to autumn, gold and brown leaves crunching like someone sneaking down a stairwell at night. An ancient stairwell. When autumn slides into winter. Wind and water, the blackness of waves before storm.  Silence of snow tip-toeing gently into drifts, the sound of Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano on an old stereo, intimacy only dreams can hold. She’ll paint through the winter and into spring, and with the wildflowers starting to peak so will she. The wind throws clouds about as if to find something lost. She’d been lost but no longer. She puts the lavender away. Light bleeds to the edges of her room.


 

Tobi Alfier’s credits include Arkansas Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Cholla Needles, Gargoyle, James Dickey Review, KGB Bar Lit Mag, Louisiana Literature, Permafrost, Washington Square Review, and War, Literature and the Arts. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).


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