Gymnasium Toilet

I still don’t understand the partitions.

Useless walls, and not a single door to hide behind.

Nine-year-olds with widely terrified eyes.

High school girls trying to fold away the heavy reality of their periods.

All of us forced into the exact same line of sight.

There is no poetry to save you here.

If your stomach cramped, if your body demanded it, you just pulled down your tights and shit in front of half the school.

Simple. You stare straight at the opposite wall.

His Apartment

It was the first time I stayed the night.

The silence of his place felt like a threat.

I sat there in the dark, calculating the acoustic distance to the bed.

There is a very specific terror in early romance.

It isn’t about the morning after. It isn't about waking up with tangled hair.

It is the paralyzing, agonizing fear of the splash.

Running the tap water like a desperate static shield.

Building a silent raft of toilet paper.

Trying so hard to remain an illusion, while trapped in a body that demands to be real.  





Iryna Somkina is a Kyiv-based author. She is a Best small fiction and Best of The Net nominee. She works on Sunday Morning Magazine.

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