Expiration Date

by Kathryn Kulpa

Ian Taylor

I don’t know if what we did could be called love. A furtive scrabble in the dark underpasses between our other lives. In someone’s empty office, in convention center greenrooms. I was always asking you for something. Breath mints. Safety pins to pull myself together. Things you never carried. Our affair was like a tangerine, juicy but just too seedy. We’d try to give each other up, then fly together after two weeks, thirsty, lost, your hands holding me so hard you left indents in the soft flesh of my upper arm, like a spoon resting on clotted cream. The kind of sweet you inhale quickly, knowing it can’t last, knowing even as you lick the last taste from the bowl that it’s one day shy of going bad.

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Kathryn Kulpa’s first ambition in life was to be a witch, and then a writer. It’s possible she is at least one of these things. Find her at kathrynkulpa.com, @KathrynKulpa, @writesofkathryn.bsky.social, and in Bending Genres, Fictive Dream, Lunch Ticket, Milk Candy Review, and other fine journals.