by Naomi James, 2023
And with the opening of the jetbridge doors that sticky stale smell of sweat and skin and oversweet granola bars clocks out of her third eight hour shift of the day, her stateship in the 737 cabin seceding to the steady drip, drip, drip, drip, drip of some muggy, Mid-Atlantic air. People squirm and shuffle, growing upwards to peel their bags off the shelves then carefully shrinking their bodies down like compacting cardboard and worming their way to the front. Others much the opposite; cascading their little limbs about the place, moreso falling out of the plane than anything. Connections, connections, connections…
Sage Mondegreen, a young, tired, and twiggy thing seated in 21A – a beautiful window seat right next to the engine, and the cheapest to boot! – Has spent the past five minutes gazing down the aisle as the people pass her by, wondering whether or not to shake back to life that frail pile of skin who has placed himself carelessly in recline next to her.
“This stupid old bitch,” she thinks, “Who does he think he is? I could beat your ass, I coul–” Admonish the thought. “I’ll just tap him, y’know? Just a nudge. Naught but a nudge, dearie. It’s no bother…” She slowly works her arm over to naught-but-a-nudge the poor man, paws, and nothing. Nothing? A push, this time his skin like Play-Doh beneath her fingers. Nothing! This is it, she decides, there’s simply no other choice. She rises from her seat and tries — ever the graceful dancer — to maneuver herself around the man. A careful toe here, a careful toe ther- Ope!——————————————————
Feeling a good 30% His Majesty George III and 70% Napoleon, Sage has just returned from a self-inflicted Saint Helena in far-off Washington State – not the district. Her suitcase is filled to the brim with tchotchkes, rolled up thrift store slips, her wooden sandals worn down to nubs, and the four books she brought with her that she will never read past page 40. All together, wrapped up and zippered tight, that little box made a sturdy enough stool for her at the Delta arrivals. Here she sits, belting her sermons across the phone line.
“Drinking really isn’t my main problem,” she speaks most every sentence with the conviction of a Southern preacher. Or a minxy private dick. Or a hard-boiled socialite. Regardless of the fact that she’s been out of work for about four weeks now she thinks a third vodka cran can find its way into her budget. An old-fashioned too if she’s feeling particularly ambitious.
“Don’t get me wrong, the drinking doesn’t help. But I have more problems than that. Like how come I can’t find a boyfriend? I’m cute.”
“Dude,” the phone barks back.
“You know I’m gonna kill someone one of these days?” she says. “I mean that.”
Nearby, a smoker pulls out his lighter and smooth-talks his cigarette, makes deals with his cigarette. He signs peace treaties, he handles distribution and processing, he organizes television appearances. The whole shebang.
by Naomi James, 2023
“This voice came to me in the form of this big—this big ol’ warning triangle right on my car dashboard… That ugly fuckin’ screen,” she giggled. “And you know what it said to me?” She took a drag and as she inhaled she melted deeper into the plastic of the patio chair. I leaned in closer to hear her, aaaaand out! The smoke directly into my eyes.
“DIG, baby!”
It’s never easy to tell with her.
“Poor friend,” she sighed. “I’m sickness,” the red of her cigarette pointed, rapping at the air just between my eyes. Another drag, “you are sicker.”
And out. The more time I spent with her the more I came to adore it, hoping for the soak of that perfume to act like a blood transfusion. I’d gotten used to giving myself up to her, with all her winding and her callousness and her caterwauling and her caterpillaring and her cats-out-of-the-bagging.
All I can ever muster is:
by Naomi James, 2024
Above my bed in Wing Two South B, ████ ████████ ██████ █████, Baltimore, MD, rests a fluorescent panel, gently recessed and nicely humming the day away in the ceiling. Dozens of ladybugs crawl or lay or thrash about in the thin gap of air between the panel and a curious sheet of Plexiglas, placed between me and the lamp for its safety (imagine the clean-up!) as much as mine (imagine the clean-up!) The nurse that wheeled me in pointed the bugs out to me, the poor things almost pouring out of their enclosure.
“Yeah, sometimes they just appear on this floor,” she said. “Never seen it like this before though,” and placed a hand on her hip, shaking her head at the whole exhibit.
The other nurse with her, a shorter woman, more comic, with a head of blonde and bouncy coils spoke: “Huh, ladybugs! That was gonna be my next tattoo,” and let out a skittish Ha-Ha.
“Look,” the first nurse again, now tapping my shoulder. “You can see – well kinda see their… like…”
“Skins?” said Blonde and Bouncy.
“Shells?” I suggested.
“Bodies?” We agreed. Bodies.
“You can see their shells–” oh well “– are getting bleached by the light. They’re almost see-through.” And then off they went to wheel in the next.
“You know that was gonna be my next tattoo? A ladybug…”
The next day, I decided, I was going to leave the lights off for those whose skins or shells or bodies remained vibrant and unsunned. Invariably, the ones who got out would fly off, careen about the room, and, determined by either will of god or the need to prove a kindness wrong, find themselves in the bathroom beating into an identical light until their red and black fell unceremoniously into the toilet. Somewhere, a funeral march played: Whomp-Whomp! When I next saw my therapist I told her all about the little ladybugs and their struggle and how I thought it was all so interesting, poetic, “Like an old Archy and Mehitabel!” She looked at the light, then to me like a bad memory, back to the light. “Ew,” she said, and began filing a sanitation report.