This selection, chosen by guest editor L.M. Cole, is from Trick Mirror or Your Computer Screen by tommy wyatt blake (Fifth Wheel Press 2022).
Create a Bulletin
Your Bulletins can only be seen by your Friends. Bulletins have a lifespan of 10 days, after which they are gone forever.
Subject
WARNING: KEEP READING OTHERWISE BAD LUCK WILL COME TO YOU.
Content
A message pinged in a wash of blue screen light. Some Alex Evans look-alike said you were cute. You were thirteen. You dreamed of him looting your bulletins with proof he was real.
He said mirrors perceived you in holograms, brooding in Pixel Perfect pitfalls where the girl never existed, only the thing. He said you could sing when you burned your voice on a homemade CD. He wanted to sink into your skin—not a projection of pale-coded pixels. He ghosted when you responded.
His stories floated from your friend. She knew. She was him. And you still wanted her. Still scorched in MySpace, the realm rewriting this as a longing to be with someone who wanted your touch but didn’t want a secret, who wanted to watch that lo-fi Disney movie from 2004 and didn’t want to distinguish it from what was real.
You grizzled in the sun, ultraviolet sizzling your skin to transparent light until you felt like you never existed, only the thing.1
REPOST OR THESE GHOSTS WILL HAUNT YOU, SLINKING THROUGH YOUR BODY AND INTO ANOTHER—
Comments
1 loosely inspired by the poetry of Gaia Rajan.
tommy wyatt blake (he/they) lives with his partner and fiendishly goofy cats. he is the author of DITCHLAPSE / [REALLY AFRAID] (Querencia Press); So, Who’s Courage? (Bullshit Lit.); NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL HORROR! (Gutslut Press); and other titles. they are currently sifting through digital archives and graveyards and writing about their residual hauntings.
L.M. Cole is a poet and artist residing in North Carolina. She is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Bulb Culture Collective whose writing and art have been published with The Pinch Journal, The McNeese Review, Five South, The Dodge, and many other excellent journals and magazines. She can be found on Twitter @_scoops__ and more of her work can be found at linktr.ee/lmcole
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