THE 5LIGHTS PROJECT

“I wonder what it would be like to be not particularly pretty. Passable, you know?”  Halfway through my point, I realize it isn’t something you can say out loud, so I look out the window, bite the edge of my straw, wait.
“Like me,” she says, in between stabs at her salad.
“Yes, exactly,” I think, with that part of me that hopes to, one day, be forgiven. I touch her hand and furrow my brow and tell myself that one I’ll go to therapy and be able to say things like, I’m not coming to lunch because I’m not in the mood. But for now I twist my finger through my ponytail and avoid looking back at her and summon every ounce of energy, every bit of me that knows how to lie, and drain it all into my gut and out of my mouth, “”No-oooo!” 
“No, why would I say that to you if I thought you were that? You know how hot you are.” 
“Awwww!” she beams. This, it seems, was all she wanted from me. How often, I worry, are we a stand-in, a warm body to sit next to at brunch? I can’t think about that for too long before wondering if she is the same thing to me— the type of woman you can’t sit across from at a table and look straight in the face. 
We are inauthentic, as my yoga teacher would say. 
“What would that be like?” she says, always game to jump on board with my moods. Maybe this is why I keep her around, to test out the limits of social interaction. 
“I don’t know,” I shrug and shake my head. Once she says it I want to disavow it, but I know I can’t take it that far, so I stutter on, “I mean, I know I’m not hot or anything, but I know I’m pretty,” I shrug and I sigh and I wiggle, but she nods and I go on, “I know I can be…beautiful. Not always, and not to everyone, but I can be. Sometimes. And I know that.” It is hard to answer at first but her approval goads me on, into a different part of myself, a hallway, maybe, where I am unafraid to be threatening because I know I will be anyway, where I both love and hate myself the easy way: in extremes. “But other girls, some girls, you see them trying desperately to be special, to be interesting. I just can’t imagine being that, un-compelling.” I dare myself to look at her but my voice trails out the window. We are no longer having anything resembling a conversation. It is an interesting place to be. 
Always with her, if not because of her, I come to terms with the limitations of my own femininity. As much as we joke and we affirm each other, almost comically, there is a dread. A worry that maybe I can’t, won’t be able to, look a man in the eyes and slay him. Maybe I won’t be able to do it the way I imagine in my head.

by Meaghan O’Connell

Easy To Please King

This was the sun: a broken blood vessel on the arm of the horizon, red and orange. This was the sky: purple and gold and blue, clouds swollen like great bruises. This was the rain: the touch of soft fingertips, the sound of a distant crowd, the smell of damp newness.

This was the king: young and ashen and once handsome, tarnished scepter in one hand, hem of ragged cloak in the other, mud-mottled boots resting with him under a tree. This was his crown: long lost, the jewels stripped from it by his enemies, the gold burned from it by his friends. This was his horse Bravo: once white now gray, head held low to graze, hooves chipped and rough, tail wet and mussed by rain.

This was his castle: not one stone left upon another that was not thrown down, an open field charred with torches, the flags of heraldry flapping from spears in the dirt. This was his damsel: long lost, blue eyes and blushing cheeks and puckered lips, brightly brokenhearted, soft and feminine and delicate.  This was his knight: armor a curious rust color, sword broken at the hilt, shield with coat of arms struck through, heart stopped by an errant arrow, eyes closed by his king, his body stretched on the other side of the tree like a great granite monument to long dead heroes.

These were the stars: misaligned, no constellations to sail by, no signs to pray by, no bright light but the moon. And this was the moon: God’s faded thumbprint on a cobalt canvas, a half-closed eye afraid to look, a holy teardrop dropping, a silver dollar on black paper, a stepping stone in dark water.

This was today: a hill with a view, his brave horse Bravo, and a place to sit in the shade. He was pleased.

By Sam

DEATH CAN BE SWEET

Death can be sweet, he said. Like drowning in blackberry jam.

I met him somewhere between where you are and where I am. It was dark, the stars stark and sudden, our breath colored with cold. Or maybe it was day, bright in the park, the grasses scurrying under our feet, joggers moving along the spider web of sidewalks. He does not look like they say, neither skeletal nor hooded, neither reaper-wielding nor ominously tall. More like Joe Black really, bearded, unassuming, awfully handsome and quiet and gray.

We talked easily of our occupations, me relating the minutia of mail delivery, him detailing the depths of death. I told him about the constant flow of mail in letters and magazines and furniture catalogs; he told me about the incessant demand for death among the old and young and up-and-coming.

I like to park the truck and walk as much as I can, I said. Look people in the eye when I give them their mail. I like to leave the scene before someone finds them, he said. I hate to see mothers approaching baby strollers, sons finding fathers, the ambulance driver at the scene of his wifeís car accident. But the act itself was glorious, he said. Sublime. Just as the sun began to set or the dark began to dawn, he took my hand and I thought of jam, dark and sweet.

by Sam

The Moon Has Eyes

She slept on the dark side of the moon. She slumbered in unearthly silence, no violin of crickets, no braying of the neighbor’s baby, no wind stirring at the windows. She curled under her favorite molehill of moon like a lunar dog, the dust rising and settling with her breath in low gravity. From earth, with a powerful telescope, you might see her as a small hair in the ear of old man moon, nothing more.

He moved his camp every 29 and a half days to stay in sunlight, wondering when he would step into his own footsteps from years before, a journey full circle across a landscape littered with craters like empty eyes. He pulled the foolscap from his rucksack and began another poem. The moon has eyes, he wrote, as his cosmic fire waved silent and smokeless. The moon has eyes, he wrote, and they watch for you. Henry would make the long walk to visit Claire as often as he could, though his eyes never seemed to adjust.

He thought fondly of their next visit, some 207 earth days away. In the darkness, he would fumble like her lost lunar puppy, feeling his way along the ridges of eye sockets he’d made into poetry. Tell me one, she would say, when they had settled into an embrace, knowing that the foolscap would be unreadable in the ink black. The moon has eyes, he would begin. As earth drifted overhead like a shard of stained glass, they would share secrets and make plans.  Stay with me, she would say, her voice breaking, but he’d be asleep.

by Sam