Through The Looking Glass
I had a dream last night that you were waiting
at my grandmother’s.
A huge tree was in the middle of the kitchen,
trunk so huge you had to climb it to get from
the oven to the stove top,
and you were using the apples hanging firmly from the ceiling,
to make a pie.
Your body was full and flush again and your eyes—
The eyes you got from my grandmother
and that my mother got from her
and that I got from all of you,
stare back at me like a looking glass.
Light catching on the layers of hues
embracing and floating in your iris like oil and water—
Dark navy blue jeans and the sky blue dress I tore
jumping from the back of your green pickup
the day it wouldn’t stop raining—
Before I speak, you smile
and you ask me how my day was.
I say good and do you need help with the pie
and you say yes and we talk.
We’re slicing apples with our fingernails,
little fruits and buds we pluck from our kitchen tree
and I am loving it, loving you, so much that I don’t notice
that the apples are growing brown,
or that your white blonde hairs,
bleached from 1000 Finnish nights,
are falling, calmly,
on the crust.
Emily Tuttle is an English undergraduate at the University of Maryland, minoring in Creative Writing and Neuroscience. She is part of the campus’s living and learning program for writers, Jimenez-Porter Writers’ House, and managing editor of Paper Shell Review, the on campus journal of analytical essays. She has an upcoming publication in Stylus, the University of Maryland literary magazine, and has been awarded the honorable mention for the Jimenez-Porter Literary Prize.
I had a dream last night that you were waiting
at my grandmother’s.
A huge tree was in the middle of the kitchen,
trunk so huge you had to climb it to get from
the oven to the stove top,
and you were using the apples hanging firmly from the ceiling,
to make a pie.
Your body was full and flush again and your eyes—
The eyes you got from my grandmother
and that my mother got from her
and that I got from all of you,
stare back at me like a looking glass.
Light catching on the layers of hues
embracing and floating in your iris like oil and water—
Dark navy blue jeans and the sky blue dress I tore
jumping from the back of your green pickup
the day it wouldn’t stop raining—
Before I speak, you smile
and you ask me how my day was.
I say good and do you need help with the pie
and you say yes and we talk.
We’re slicing apples with our fingernails,
little fruits and buds we pluck from our kitchen tree
and I am loving it, loving you, so much that I don’t notice
that the apples are growing brown,
or that your white blonde hairs,
bleached from 1000 Finnish nights,
are falling, calmly,
on the crust.
Emily Tuttle is an English undergraduate at the University of Maryland, minoring in Creative Writing and Neuroscience. She is part of the campus’s living and learning program for writers, Jimenez-Porter Writers’ House, and managing editor of Paper Shell Review, the on campus journal of analytical essays. She has an upcoming publication in Stylus, the University of Maryland literary magazine, and has been awarded the honorable mention for the Jimenez-Porter Literary Prize.