Back to Issue Thirty-Nine

High School Sleepovers with Straight Girls

BY JULIAN GUY

In the middle of rain, sunflowers on the fence,
sheets left outside hung heavy with night,
Hanna sleeps. Such soft small breaths, easy.
I love her in my stomach, dream always
of being with her laughter in locker rooms,
passenger seat of her Volvo across sun-bright
desert, collapsed in grass post-soccer practice.
She is so straight. So in love with boys
named Mason, Josh, Andrew. So blue sky,
no worries, no deep untwistable truth.
And I am good practice. When we kiss,
lie on the couch cuddled up, it’s friends.
I spend the night. We wake to snow. Her mother yells
the sheets have froze. They look like ghosts.

 

 

There is a Future

BY JULIAN GUY

There is a future where we dribble to the park,
step on toes, play music off phones,
past the black cows mooing, the long grass
of summer. Apricots: quarter moons, orange,
pinned fat to their canopy.

-Yes.

Can we-

A future where trees bend to be touched
by us. Us. With hands greased black
by bike chains, us—looking like boys,
laughing like girls—there is a future.
Where not even our parents can give us names.
Where we take nothing and run,
spitting pits off court playing HORSE.
A future where hearts beat up faces, faces
so blush, so love, so high-hilled and rolling.

 

Julian Guy is a queer and genderqueer writer born in Reno, Nevada. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in Catapult, the lickety~split, and Lesbians Are Miracles. Julian splits their time between their hometown of Reno, NV and their home in Brooklyn, NY. They can be found on Twitter @lizard_blitz

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