Fertilizer

by Olivia Braley

Gabriel Jimenez

After the boy who thought himself a man crept inside the room where I slept —  shrouded in moonlight that came through a window with broken blinds —  decided to disregard the whisky on my breath as I told him no, I held a funeral for what was once my body, dug a shallow patch in the side yard, disposed of the girl wearing soiled clothes: the bruise-blue shirt used only once, a pair of gray jeans with a split in the left knee running seam to seam —  the muted hues mirroring the February sky, and in the turned dirt I planted seeds. The girl is still out there beneath the green tomatoes, which are doing especially well now that their roots have room to burrow below the dirt, can take up space instead of being constrained in their old terracotta pots —  they grow not just as the body rots but because of it.

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Olivia Braley is a mostly-poetry writer from Annapolis, MD. She is a cofounder and Editor in Chief at Stone of Madness Press and a reader for Longleaf Review. She is pursuing a Masters of Liberal Arts at St. John’s College, holds a B.A. in English Literature & Spanish from the University of Maryland, College Park (2018) and is an alumni of the Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House. Her work has appeared in Longleaf Review, perhappened mag, The Daily Drunk, Versification and other places on the web. Keep up with her work on Twitter @OliviaBraley.