Ellie White
There is no version of this story in which you are okay
The first time, it was a coworker. She jumped you. You dragged her by the hair into the parking lot, slammed her head into the pavement till she stopped moving. The next morning, a pool of blood appeared beneath the drive-thru window. You put in your two weeks’ notice.
No, the first one chased you through the city at night, white smoke rising from the manholes. Cornered in an alley, you grabbed a section of pipe. One swing, and you were sifting through the gravel for her teeth. You wanted to put them all back, wanted her to be pretty at the funeral. Three days later, you bit into a blue jelly bean and cracked a molar.
So many dreams. One pillow smothered, another sink drowned. You begin to believe what people have always said about you, that one day you’ll snap. “It’s the quiet ones,” they say. As if screaming were a choice. As if you haven’t been screaming all along.
No, the first one chased you through the city at night, white smoke rising from the manholes. Cornered in an alley, you grabbed a section of pipe. One swing, and you were sifting through the gravel for her teeth. You wanted to put them all back, wanted her to be pretty at the funeral. Three days later, you bit into a blue jelly bean and cracked a molar.
So many dreams. One pillow smothered, another sink drowned. You begin to believe what people have always said about you, that one day you’ll snap. “It’s the quiet ones,” they say. As if screaming were a choice. As if you haven’t been screaming all along.
Biography
Ellie White holds an MFA from Old Dominion University. She writes poetry and nonfiction. She has won an Academy of American Poets Poetry Prize, and has been nominated for both Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Fat, Up the Staircase Quarterly, The Columbia Review, Foundry and many other journals. Ellie’s chapbook, Requiem for a Doll, was released by ELJ Publications in June 2015. Her second chapbook is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in 2019. Her first full-length collection is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2019. She is a nonfiction and poetry editor at Four Ties Literary Review, and a social media editor and reader for Muzzle Magazine. Ellie currently rents a basement in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia.
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