by Dara Goodale
Growing Pains
I’ve never known
what to do with my hands.
I don’t deal in absolutes
but I tend to swallow guilt
like zeros, stuck behind a screen
with my binary mouth encrypted all wrong.
I take the train. There is nothing
waiting for me at the end of the line.
The minimart is always closed.
I’m out of cigs so I press my nose
against the window & pant hot air.
I need to prove I was here,
leave something condensed
on the glass. When I spin
the storefront display stand, I find
myself, filed neat between
postcards of foreign years—cheap
souvenirs of someone else’s past.
I pretend not to notice
the symmetry in our still-frame smiles.
How did it feel to be nineteen
& immortal?
All I remember now
is how to want: the thirst
comes easy, like breaking a promise.
Sober, I chainsmoke on my balcony.
If I hold my breath, I can almost
imagine that you’re still alive.
That you ask to borrow my lighter.
I spend another August
hiding in my room
& nothing ever changes
but the leaves outside.
Poet Dara Goodale (they/she) is a Romanian-American queer multigenre writer and university student living in Lausanne, Switzerland. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, the American Poetry Journal, ANMLY, and more. You can find them on Instagram @daragoodale and online at daragoodale.com
Artist Josiane Kouagheu (she/her) is a journalist, writer, photographer, painter and poet from Cameroon. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Brittle Paper, African Writer Magazine, Kalahari Review, Frontier Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Nomad review, Apricity Magazine, Al Dente Journal and elsewhere.
Gulf Stream Magazine 