Adamantinus

“নির্মলতা // once upon a time III” by Sujash Purna

Inspired by Ravi Mangla’s “Anamnesis”

This was before the town flooded and marsh swallowed the baseball fields, before the beans  yellowed and freckled, before the mine closed and everyone got poorer and angrier; this was before you escaped the local butcher’s snake-handling fingers and ran through a cornfield that sliced warnings into your thin skin; this was before you slept with your best friend after too many strawberry daiquiris with chunks of ice cracking all your weaknesses and before he stopped answering your calls and deleted your messages without listening; this was before you lost your cashier job at Kmart because you showed up high, before you developed a craving for canned chicken soup over a hot plate in an unventilated room, before a precancerous mole was exorcised from your left shoulder where you knew the devil had stayed too long; this was before you vowed silence but broke it to tell your mother how much you hated her and before the switch from a sapling streaked across your bare legs; this was before boys slurred your name into the ether of rotting football bleachers, before your uncle called you a whore for wearing red lipstick when you were sixteen, before you experienced lying on the shower floor and offering your tears to the drain; this was before all that, when you decided you’d leave and never come back, and your grandfather said, Just wait, you’ll change your mind. Where will you go that will be any better than this?

About the Author

Melanie Maggard is a flash fiction and flash CNF writer who loves dribbles and drabbles. She has published in Cotton Xenomorph, The Dribble Drabble Review, X-R-A-Y Magazine, Welter, Five Minute Lit, and others. She has been nominated for Best Small Fiction, Best Microfiction, and a Pushcart Prize recognition, and won an Honorable Mention in the Welter’s Microfiction Contest.  

about the artist

Sujash Purna is a Bangladeshi poet and photographer based in Madison, Wisconsin. He is the author of Epidemic of Nostalgia (Finishing Line Press) and Azans for the Infidel (Mouthfeel Press). His poetry appeared in South Carolina Review, Hawai`i Pacific Review, Kansas City Voices, Poetry Salzburg Review, Gutter, Stonecoast Review, and others. His photography can be found on Instagram @poeticnomadic

Model in নির্মলতা // once upon a time III : Cierra Yakes (Instagram:
@cierrarayne)