‘Roseshell’

Eric Calloway is a photographer in Hartford, Connecticut who’s study is the city around him. If the sight of something makes him stop more than two seconds, he knows that’s a moment worth capturing. Reflections intrigue him the most, especially when they let a viewer exist in two realities at once.

Roseshell

I dreamt of you falling from the sky,

a raindrop of gargantuan proportion.

I assumed your purpose was to water

the plants in our backyard, and as you

crashed into the rose bushes, I only

lamented that the petals would be

destroyed. You were not real to me.

In my mind, you could not feel pain.

When you rose, you were covered

in thorns: sticking out of your arms,

lodged into your cheeks, one

planted into your tongue, which

you pulled out with ease. The bushes

were mangled, the shape of your

body imprinting the leaves that

stayed on the ground. In the moonlight,

I believed you to be an angel; rose

petals crowned your head, pounded

in by sparse thorns. When the blood

dripped down your cheeks, it was

as if you were blushing at something,

though the yard was filled with silence,

and I wished not to speak.

Lydia Pejovic is a writer and alum of the English MA/MFA program at Chapman University. She received her BA in English from the University of San Diego. She writes both fiction and poetry and has been published in Tab Journal, Bluepepper, the Maine Review, and more. Check her out at https://www.lydiapejovic.com/.