Current
Issue
Volume 12.1
Theodora Ziolkowski
—
Halloween
A gimlet at a bar across the country,
a ticket to the Colorado
Symphony. Rachmaninoff in E Minor,
intermission champagne. After,
I accepted the editor’s invitation,
arrived at the hotel ballroom
wearing a backpack, like Dora
the cartoon character. Later,
I stumbled out with my neck
looped with beads, received
texts from a man old enough
to be my father, the gifs he sent
tragic then scary. Back in Houston,
I blocked his number, took selfies.
Pinching the screen until my face
became grainy and progressively
less familiar. I never felt unwatched
in my garage loft apartment,
the bathroom sink clogging
with hairs that weren’t the right color.
For weeks, I blew my stipend on curbside
pickup and tipping generously.
The fug in the drain got stronger.
When you and I met at that poetry reading,
I was in costume. Of course, I was.
Theodora Ziolkowski is the author of the novella, On the Rocks (TRP: The University Press of SHSH), winner of a Next Generation Indie Book Award, and Ghostlit (TRP), a collection of poems. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in The Writer's Chronicle, Short Fiction (England), Prairie Schooner, The Normal School, Oxford Poetry (UK), and elsewhere. She lives in Kearney, Nebraska, where she teaches creative writing as an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. She also serves on the faculty of the University of Nebraska, Omaha, MFA Program. theodoraziolkowski.com
