‘just fucking talk to your girlfriend, man’ & ‘the third stage of limerence’

Jack Bordnick's sculptures and photography incorporate surrealistic, mythological and magical imagery often with whimsical overtones — aimed at provoking our experiences and self reflections. Aiming to unbalance our rational minds, the predominant imagery deals mostly with facial expressions of both living and “non-living” beings, and things that speak to us in their own languages. They are mixed media assemblages that have been assembled,
disassembled and reassembled, becoming abstractions unto themselves

just fucking talk to your girlfriend, man 

he sighs into his drink, says 

he doesn’t know what to do, like 

the answers aren’t buried in 

the seams of her silence. he stares 

at ice melting, like it might tell 

him how to fix what he refuses to 

name. she has stopped filling 

the space between them with soft 

affirmations, easy laughter, and he sits 

there, a monument to self-pity, waiting 

for the girl who never asked for 

anything. he says, ‘she’s been 

distant.’ she thinks, ‘you’ve been blind.’ 

a girl who has become fragments of 

a puzzle, waiting to be solved by anyone 

but the man seated across her. yet 

she still lets him pour his soul into her 

as though her heart were a vessel, instead 

of a beating thing of its own.

the third stage of limerence

who calls at two just to talk glazes and 

kiln firings, coiling and scoring, bisque versus 

greenware— teasing their sculpting of hands 

harder than searching for the right shade 

of ashy brown? a man, at the end of a long 

day, plays a song, her name woven through 

lyrics, laughing, they must have written this 

for you. what do you call him as he ruffles hair, 

wraps arms around shoulders now covered 

in slip— when another woman waits 

in a darkened loft, her lamp the only glow 

he follows? who she wants to like, seems 

nice, maybe rougher where she’s too soft, but 

his girl— don’t dwell. don’t be 

the friend, the ‘hey can we talk?’ recipient. don’t 

pretend the way he lingers means more than it does. 

step back. 

let silence settle where laughter used to be. pretend

not to care even as his name still maps 

in condensation on a fogged-up window. palm 

to the glass, pretending the warmth belongs to— 

but he is not coming back. she will 

turn corners, disappointment 

and relief flickering at the sight 

of empty space— 

Brianna Roberto is a 22-year-old artist and writer based in Fremont, CA whose work has been featured in multiple publications and exhibitions. Having just finished her undergraduate program at Santa Clara University, earning a B.A. in both Child Studies and Studio Art, she is continuing her graduate studies at SCU to earn a Masters in Education. More of her work can be found at colorbybri.com.