by Maggie F. Levin, age 15, from USA

(Story "Glistening" copyright Maggie F. Levin, 2000)

Sloth used to watch her as she walked from evening poetry class to her
little house - the one across from the cornfield on Route 212. It was only in the summertime that she walked; every other season her father, who Sloth only saw through the tinted windows, would pick her up in a shiny black Sedan that resembled a massive panther. But in the summer, Sloth got to watch the olive-colored goddess walk in the fading light, and got to stare at the way the sun stained her hair in honey patches as she threw tiny flowers from the roadside into the brook beside her.
Her hair smelled like those flowers. Also like hyacinth. In class, she often whispered to Sloth, just because he was next to her seat.

"You're good," she said once. "Don't let this bitchy teacher make you
think that all of your work has to be an epic masterpiece, though. That's not what writing should be about. Okay, Sloth?"

She called him Sloth because that's what it said on the front of his
punky t-shirt. Every Thursday, when the class leader asked them to read their work one at a time, she would stretch out. First one arm, long and monkey-like, then the other. She'd arch her back like a housecat, bending back just enough that a rim of exposed stomach would show between shirt and jeans. Finally, she would relax and lick her lips until they were shiny red and glistening. When she rose to read, she became a new creature who spoke in tongues that made the listeners insides writhe and wriggle like a snake. Her words danced in Sloth's mind, taunting, teasing like a buzzing luminescent lightening bug.

"Cut her open, ripped her raw, and sent her soul seething
Retreating, reeling Crawling and cradling in abyssmal acrimony
They call it raping."

She looked as though she might float away when this prose met his ears. The class leader often told her there was too little emotion in her work and she needed to feel more. All the power in her poems was detached.

"Why does this always have to be about spilling your guts on the table?," she asked the leader one evening. "Isn't poetry about putting down what pleases? I never read any rule that said one had to divulge every emotion - fill up every poem wih tears and angst and blood."

"Poetry," the leader responded "is about exposing yourself. You obviously have a problem with expression. I cannot critique if I cannot see your mind and motive."

"Why do you need to see my mind? My work is here, critique that! You're
not meant to understand my F*?#$&g soul!"

"Your WORK is muddled, fanciful and messy! You tell us your lover smells like moss and lives like a forest - how do you feel when he touches you? How do you feel when you argue? How do -"

"Feel, feel, feel - F*?# feeling! You feel nothing if you can't read and
see how I feel!"

Sloth, who knew she'd only had one lover, one time, on accident, reached over and cradled her out of reflex.

"I don't care what your opinion is. Since you are obviously as defiant as
your father warned me, you may leave."

With that comment, the leader gestured to the door and watched the girl
run through it - with Sloth trailing close behind.

Down Route 212, to the spot where she usually tossed the flowers on her
walks, she ran and collapsed to the ground. Sloth came up behind her and touched a small strand of the hyacinth hair he had so long admired. Feeling this tiny caress, her head shot up and she looked into Sloth's innocent face; his open cornflower eyes like two bright bleeding hearts. Her own face was stained, her eyes dripping out old agonies. She reached out a hand to touch his cheek.

"Sloth. Don't stay with me. You're so good. And my father…" She paused, tense. "My father would not like it. You."

Sloth looked on, confused and wondering. But he did not move as she rose and brushed her jeans then kept on running. He did not move until he saw her running slow, a black Sedan rushing forward, and that mind the teacher could not understand breaking open in a split second, then leaking onto the road, bright red and glistening.