Angie Chau’s daring 2010 short story collection, Quiet As They Come, has been adopted for classroom curriculum at universities and high schools across the country–including at our own City College of San Francisco.

Finalist for both the Commonwealth Club Book of the Year and the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Book of the Year awards, Quiet As They Come explores the lives of Vietnamese immigrants as they struggle to adjust to life in San Francisco. Three families share a house brimming with secrets, dreams, and desires. Some thrive while others are destroyed by the false promise of the “American Dream”.

Chau, winner of the 2009 UC Davis Maurice Prize in Fiction, has been published in many distinguished literary magazines. Her work has earned her a Hedgebrook Residency, an Anderson Center Residency and a Macondo Foundation fellowship.

Chau was born in Vietnam and traveled throughout the world before settling in California. She earned a BA in Southeast Asian Culture and Political Economy from UC Berkeley and a Master’s degree in English with emphasis in Creative Writing from UC Davis.

—

How old were you when you left Vietnam? Where did your family move to?

I was three years old when we left and four by the time we arrived in San Francisco.

In many immigrant stories, most people are caught in between two cultures and trying to find harmony with both. What was your experience of leaving home and moving to another country? Or if you don’t remember, what was it like for your parents or the rest of your family?

Your question is beautifully put and it’s an eternal question. How does one find happiness, balance, harmony, and live life gracefully? I think it’s a question that every individual struggles with regardless of country or creed. Maybe this question comes to the forefront in immigrant stories because the differences in cultural norms and tastes can be so striking when a person is uprooted from one country and put into another. It sets up tensions that are accessible for good storytelling if done right. In practical terms though I whole heartedly confess to picking and choosing what I like best from each culture, whether Vietnamese or Western, and selectively integrating what I like.

Are those experiences parallel to those in your book? Are the characters inspired by people you know?

The book is a work of fiction but of course it draws from life. It’s inspired by what I’ve lived, seen, heard, smelled, remembered, forgotten, dreamt about, run from, all of it… The journey of exile, of finding where you belong and where you can call home, is at once terrifying and exhilarating. This is some of what I wanted to capture in the book.

Why did you pick San Francisco as the setting for your book?

San Francisco is beautiful and complicated and full of interesting texture. It is also where we arrived when my family first came to America. It’s what I know.

What inspired you to write Quiet As They Come?

First off, it was reading really good books that inspired me to want to do the same. I wanted to contribute to the conversation and shift the dialogue. I wanted readers to get to walk in shoes they would not normally walk in. In this case the shoes happened to be Vietnamese refugees.

There’s a lot out there about the Vietnam War in books and movies but it’s almost unanimously from the perspective of the American veteran or the American politician. There was very little in the world of art or literature on Vietnamese families, the people most impacted by the conflict. This was a war fought in their country, the same homeland from which they had to escape.

I was inspired to write my book because I wanted to show a more nuanced image of the Vietnamese experience and not one that catered to the Western fantasy of it. I once heard that if you’re going to be a writer, you have to have a unique perspective to share and so this prompted me to take a stab at it. I wanted to offer something different for people to chew on beyond the stereotypes from Rambo or other war films. And yet after saying all this, I wanted it most of all to be a good book, readable, juicy, provocative, something you’d react to and you’d recommend to your friend. It’s not meant to be a moralizing tale or an after school special. It has meant a lot to me that Quiet As They Come is taught in English Lit courses at different universities and high schools. I want it to be an approachable book for interested smart readers. I hope that’s not asking too much.

Is there a message you want your readers to walk away with?

Come away with me. Enter the pages. Let’s laugh and cry together. I want you to see how we are different and yet so much the same.

How did you start writing Quiet As They Come? Do you have a writing process?

I quit my day job. I moved to an island. I used a paper and pen. Gradually it became a laptop. Then I let my imagination soar. That’s how I started writing. I wrote what I wanted to read. I created characters that I was attracted to or curious about. I used these characters to explore themes that I was fascinated by or wanted to dig deeper into.

For example, the title story, “Quiet As They Come” is one of the first stories I ever wrote. I wanted to explore what it’s like to be smart but not have the language skills to express yourself–a not uncommon dilemma that many immigrants are faced with and one that I eventually encountered in my own way when I moved to Italy in 2005. But we’ve all met them, former academics and professionals in their old country and driving a cab here or working as a janitor here.

If you have the intellectual capacity but people don’t get it because English is your second language, then are you still smart? Or how does your identity shift because of perception? It was a way to get at and raise questions regarding observation and knowledge of reality through story form. Back to the old, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Where/When do you usually write?

In the morning, in my home office looking out into the garden. Daily if possible.

Do you ever experience writer’s block? What do you do to help get rid of it?

I haven’t yet experienced writer’s block where I have no concept of what to write next or no words to express the thrust of the story. My challenge is usually working out the intricacies of the plot and subplot and varying agendas and how things will layer together to create the theater of the story. It’s akin to figuring out a puzzle, working through the labyrinth of endless possibilities or playing with a Rubik’s cube. It’s my favorite part of the job. The divine moments are when things click in place. It’s like being a thief hearing the ticking of the lock and all of a sudden treasures abound.

When getting your Master’s degree, what did you learn that you consider to be the most useful advice for young writers?

On my first day in my Master’s Program one of my teachers said to the class, “You should only be here if you can’t do anything else.” I would probably adjust it to, “You should only be here if you can’t imagine doing anything else.” That is to say if you want to give your life to writing and your goal is to be a published writer then you have to want it badly. It takes a lot of hard work, fortitude, and a true burning desire. There will be dejection and rejection and existential crisis and not much money. You’d make more money and have less gray hair selling cars or whatever else. So you have to want it so badly you can’t imagine doing anything else.

And lastly, Do you have any other projects you are working on that we can look forward to?

I am working on a novel set in Vietnam at the height of the American War from 1968-1975. If you’ve read Quiet As They Come, you will know a little of the story of about Kim and Duc. The novel revisits them before he was ever imprisoned and before she ever arrived in America as the single mother of two. I wanted to see what it was that made them so special. What was it about Duc that kept Kim committed and faithful despite all those years of uncertainty?

I wanted to explore how war and policy from worlds away impacts one family, one love relationship. Marie Colvin an award winning journalist I admire once wrote, “For my part, the next war I cover, I’ll be more awed than ever by the quiet bravery of civilians who endure far more than I ever will.” This resonated with me. This is a bad-ass who has covered wars in Chechnya, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Libya. This is a woman who has seen it all. And yet, this is her line, her truth, and I can see it. My novel is an attempt to capture this which puts so aptly, the “quiet bravery of civilians” who must endure the hardship of war day after day.

Katerina Argyle’s interview with Angie Chau will be published in our Spring 2013 issue.

Sarah Hoenicke’s Fire will be published in our Spring 2013 issue.

Copyright © Sarah Hoenicke

When the fires went up on the last day,
the embers flew into the sky, crackled
like the stars that were no longer there.

Words went into the flames
lives, records, whole stories
consumed in the heat of change —

they fueled our endings, threw
up the hot air that stirred our sails;
they were funerary offers to a dead world.

When did it start? When they left us?
Now we leave each other
and I stand alone with strangers

on the last beach, sand on the edge of some hell.
We will leave in the black ships lost out
in the darkness, riding at anchor.

I hold the jar against my body,
the glass warming almost as if
it has already been touched

by the flames
the paper charring inside
gasping out its last light before falling to ash.
I unscrew the lid, put the jar down,

tie the packet of papers to the smooth stone
I hold in my pocket.
In firelight

I glance again at the words,
the black ink, all the things
I can remember, all of me,

all of us. I toss it toward the fire
and soon it is gone and
all the world is doomed.

I turn and walk in the sand,
not sure I want to sleep,
not sure I want to wake.

The sky is black.

Ayo Khensu-Ra’s Ilium will be published in our Spring 2013 issue.

Copyright © Ayo Khensu-Ra

For the rest of you who have not yet caught up with the 21st-century e-reader revolution, like myself, Forum is also available in print as always at the Ocean Campus bookstore and from the CCSF English Department.

was asked why she can’t complete

a sentence

before going onto

the next- continuously

confusing her listener-

she considered for a moment

before responding:

that she thought too fast-

she thought too fast

and by the time the words were

free, had flown from

her mouth and lingered

long enough to be heard,

that she was bored by them.

Her dialogue was

in effect old news,

and she was ready for the next

morsel of information

as it was ripening in

her mind. The pathway,

the expressway from thought

which moved at the speed of light,

bottlenecked

in its conversion to sound.

Consequently her listeners

could never enjoy the velocity

of her internal brainstorm

and were never privy

to a fully realized

sentence.

C. S. Hall’s Incomplete Sentences will be published in our Spring 2013 issue.

Copyright © C. S. Hull

When: Sunday, April 14, 2013 @ 5:30 PM
Where: Cafe La Boheme (3318 24th Street)

I looked up.

Clouds spread out across the sky, covering any blue the atmosphere usually reflected, resulting in a range of dark and light grey.  The mottled sky peaked through treetops and around rooftops.

I was walking to the lake, the usual sounds of gunfire absent today. The gun range across the lake was only open on Wednesdays and Sundays. I think it was a Tuesday. I always wondered why the lake in the city would have a gun range attached to it, but the lake absorbed any missed rounds. Plus the water acted as an excellent surface for the gunshot reports to travel on, and I enjoyed the periodic noise of the firing range.

Without the noise of pistols and shotguns, the lake was silent. Silent and unmoving. It reminded me of a postcard. The boulevard that ran alongside me provided enough noise to shatter the picturesque quality of the lake. I made my way to a bridge near the south end of the lake.

Runners moved by me on the bridge. Several dog owners ambled across the overpass.  I saw who I was looking for.

A group of young adults stood near the center of the bridge, smoking, talking, staring at the lake with arms propped up on the concrete railing of the bridge. Three girls and two guys. I only knew four of the five of them, the guys and two of the girls. My best friend Sam stood hunched over the bridge railing with a cigarette smoldering between his fingers. Next to him was Tyler, someone I hadn’t gotten to know very well. Standing near the two guys were Alisha, Corine, and the girl I did not know. Corine was holding hands with Tyler.  They looked like a bunch of high schoolers that had just ditched class. I walked up to them.

“Hey.” I said.

“And he graces us with his presence,” Sam said, as if he were announcing to the runners and dog walkers.

“Thought I would treat you all to a real surprise.” I said.

“Oh we are so touched,” Alisha said, placing her hand on my arm in a display of false sincerity.

Laughs were had, pleasantries exchanged.

“Think I could bum a smoke?”

“Hell yea man. Here,” Sam handed me a cigarette. “Need a light?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Oh, I fucking mind,” Sam said with a smile and the flick of a lighter.

I inhaled, the tobacco stick wavering in the butane fire. The cherry flared up. I thanked my friend for the provided poison.

We stood on the bridge, six kids wasting time waiting for nothing on the lake in the city.

Nobody ever swam the lake. We seldom saw boats. I always expected more people would want to be on the lake, out in it. Living in the city could leave one craving nature: trees, birds, water, air–anything not man-made. Then there were the days where all I wanted was to look out my window and listen to the gunshots outside, to look at the never ending, always moving line of cars on the boulevard.

Living in the city could make you confused, could make your head hurt. Whenever I started feeling like that, a good stroll by the lake always leveled me out.

“Hey man, you alright?”

“What?” I looked to the girl who asked me if I was alright, the mystery girl. “Yes. Why?”

“You’re just standing there. Creepin’ me out.” She said this while looking away.

I looked down to my cigarette, the cherry barely alive, the tip of the stick a lengthy cylinder of ash.

“I’m good. Just need to get my head right. You guys wanna blaze in the bushes?”

A consensus was agreed upon quickly and the six of us began walking back the way I had came. We took a lesser known path that ran closer along the lake than the road and dived into the brush, navigating overgrown dirt paths, avoiding small crustaceans while we walked.

Eventually the path opened up to an embankment on the lake, an excellent view of the placid water. It reminded me of a great and natural mirror.  The reflection captured the mixture of grey sky and bled the colors into each other. It looked like a painting.

“Shall we?” the girl who had received “the creeps” from me said.

“Oh. Right.” I pulled a pipe out of my coat pocket, a green leafy mix packed into the wooden bowl. “Somebody have a light?”

Four lighters appeared, held out towards me like weapons.  I chose a red Bic.

The flick of the flint. The depression of the bright red button. The hiss of butane escaping. The flare and ignition of it. The fire. The flame got low. The green leaf sizzled and popped. I inhaled. I exhaled. I passed the pipe.

The lake was beautiful.

We stood in a loose circle, some of us closer than others. We looked out on the lake, the silence punctuated by the metal flick of the lighter.

In the distance, a cluster of long boats sat low to the water with rows of people manning the paddles. They worked in time to row in unison with one another. I could see that one boat with less than a full crew was stationary, the group of boats rowing in a wide oval pattern around the vessel. Someone stood in the center boat while a couple people huddled on the other end of the boat, around what looked like a burlap sack.

“Hey. Dude. Hello?” Someone said to me. I was holding up the circle. I took the pipe, hit it, and passed.

“What’s got you in a trance sleeping beauty?” one of the girls asked. I didn’t look to see who it was or even bother to answer. I just kept looking at those boats, rowing in a giant oval round that middle boat.

“What are those boats doin’ out there?” I asked no one in particular.

“Looks like they’re, uhhhhh, boating around?” Sam said.

The group laughed.

“Why in a circle like that?”

“Why do you care?” Corine asked. I could tell it was Corine because of the nasal whine that accompanied her voice.

The pipe came back to me.

“Why doesn’t anybody ever go out on the lake, or swim it, or anything?” I asked, ignoring Corine’s question as effectively as mine had been.

Some misplaced chuckles and shuffling of feet. Nobody wanted to talk to me about the lake.

“I don’t know dude. Maybe it’s a disgusting, disease-ridden bog, unswimmable and dangerous to children under the age of four years old?” Tyler said, laughing by the time his statement finished. Laughs passed around the circle with the pipe.

I didn’t laugh. I hit the pipe. The smoke slipped from my mouth and nose then filtered into the open air.

“This is out.”

I took the pipe and smacked it against my hand several times, clearing the bowl out. Its resin innards winked a dull pitch color. I searched my pocket for my weed, intending to load another bowl.

“Why do you think nobody swims on the lake, Thomas?” The mystery girl said to me.

I was looking down, focusing on the pipe and its contents. I didn’t speak for a long while, not till after the bowl was sparked and on its orbit. I turned away from the lake, to the group.

“I think there’s something at the bottom of the lake.”

The group answered by way of silence, the lighter the only response in the crowd. No laughs. No looks of dismay. Almost no change at all. Maybe mild interest, but only on a few of their faces. I looked back at the ground.

“The boats, they’re out there and they’re dropping guts and fat and meat down there to feed it. The gun range is here to keep it scarred. And the boulevard.” I said.

One of the girls fell into a coughing fit for a minute, hacking and choking on the smoke. The only human response I had garnered so far. I looked back to the lake.

After a bit Sam said, “You know I heard they were gonna open that range up on Mondays soon?” which bagged a, “No shit? Boy, I’d sure like to get me a gun. Something big like one of those Dirty Harry shooters, you know the big mother fuckers.” from Tyler. The group fell back into the banter from the bridge and forgot about the thing at the bottom of the lake, the boats with the bags of feed, the gun range.

We finished smoking.

With everyone pleasantly buzzed, the pipe went away. The group became anxious. A suggestion to get lunch was made. I stood by the lake and looked out at the boats returning to wherever they had come from, shrinking away into the distance.

A hand appeared in my vision, waving up and down. “Hello? We’re going to Buzz’s.”

The statement met no response. I just stood.

“Soooooooo…. you wanna come?”

Counterpoint; silence.

“Alright man, see ya.” the group departed.

I stood by myself, but not really alone. There was the lake monster.

“How long you think it’s been down there?” the mystery girl said, startling me away from my thoughts. I turned and saw her standing behind me, alone. I tried to remember her name, to think if I had heard it somewhere at some point, but there was nothing.

“Oh.” I thought about it. I looked back out to the lake. “Longer than anybody in this city can remember. Probably before the city was even here.”

“How long before?”

“Ages. Decades on decades.”

“How big is it?”

“The size of… the size of…” I said it like I was going to sneeze. “…of those hills in the distance. It’s down there buried and blanketing the floor of the lake, its appendages slithering in and about pockets in the lake bed–an intelligence that’s never still, always curious and feeling.  Every so often a tentacle strays near the surface, that faint blue green where the light still matters, before the backfire of an engine or the concussion of a twelve gauge ripples through the lake and scares it off. It goes back down. What if one night, when traffic is light and that gun range is empty, the thing at the bottom of the lake gets too curious? What then?”

Counterpoint; silence.

I looked over to the girl. I wish I could read minds sometimes.

“You really believe that?” She asked.

“A guy can dream can’t he?”

The girl laughed. I sighed. The city chortled about, cars and buildings playing in the din.

And the lake was still.

Jordy Lynch worked on Forum during the Fall 2012 semester and his story Holding Up the Circle will be published in Forum‘s Spring 2013 issue.

Seth Luther, Managing Editor
Seth Luther is the managing editor this semester for Forum Magazine. He is currently reading Kobo Abe. He also likes very much Kafka and Vonnegut. He is also the mastermind behind Magicwear Manwear Underwear: a manufacturer of manly magical underwear designed specifically for men who are magicians. His efficiency studio apartment receives no light causing mold to grow on his face instead of facial hair.

Nick Witstok, Fiction Editor
Nick Witstok is in his third year at City College and is a fiction junkie/editor at Forum. He has taken a handful of creative writing classes, reads Cormac McCarthy almost religiously, writes surreal/dark fiction, jams at local metal shows, and is currently working on a story which will undoubtedly drive him insane. Also enjoys Faulkner, Hemingway, Thomas Harris, Dennis Lehane, Stephen King, Joseph Conrad, Tim O’ Brien and The Art of War.

Shelby Borofca, Assistant Fiction Editor
Shelby is a second-year student at CCSF and previously studied at SFSU earning a BA in Political Science. Before attempting to be practical, however, she studied Creative Writing, and is very glad to have found a home at Forum, as well as on the CCSF Rams Softball team where she pitches and plays first base.

Katerina Argyres, Poetry Editor
Katerina Argyres transfered to CCSF last semester and is the poetry editor atForum. She enjoys reading mystery, sci fi and fantasy along with most graphic novels and a lot of comics. Currently she is reading/re-reading Tom Robbins, Ross Macdonald, Warren Ellis and Christopher Moore. When she is not face first in a book her mind tends to wander into the dark abyss of crime and murder as she attempts to write the greatest action movie screenplay of all time.

Taylor Herrera, Visual Arts Editor, Club Treasurer
Taylor Herrera is the visual arts editor and Forum club treasurer. His origin: Hawaii in the early ’90s. His reading preference: Salinger, Bukowski, Kerouac, Palahniuk, Vonnegut, Klausen, etc. He is currently reading Nina Simone’s autobiography I Put A Spell On You and Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws Of Success. He reads often, takes pictures every day and is studying book binding at CCSF.

Sierra Taoatao, Assistant Visual Arts Editor
Sierra, a part of the visual arts team at Forum, is in her second year of college. She is waiting to transfer to the California College of the Arts to pursue a degree in Graphic Design. Overall her passions lie in typography and she finds much interest in how messages can be conveyed through various types of art forms using very minimalistic ideas.

Marcus Green, Assistant Visual Arts Editor
Marcus is in his first semester at CCSF and has recently separated from the military after six years. Marcus hails from Sacramento and is enjoying his experiences in the Bay Area. He likes looking at photographs, although he does not have a background in photography, and hopes to gain more of a knowledge of visual arts and photography during his time at Forum.

Stephen Kral, Online Editor, Non-Fiction Editor
Stephen Kral is taking his first semester at CCSF and is this semester’s online editor, non-fiction editor and ICC representative. Originally from Minnesota, he has lived in California now for eight years, the last two of which have been in San Francisco. (The realities of rent, however, might soon lead him to the East Bay, an idea he is warming up to.) A reader at heart, some of Stephen’s favorite authors include Fyodor Dostoevsky, Thomas Merton, Flannery O’Connor and, most recently, Junot Diaz. The books currently commanding his attention however are Angela Y. Davis’ Are Prisons Obsolete? and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. When not reading, Stephen tries to find time to draw, listen to records and dance, some times all at once.

His alarm sounds loudly. She barely reacts. She was already awake. The sound of waves crashing outside their window and wind swirling reminds her of a childhood memory; a day at the beach when she lost her beloved stuffed animal. The memory ends as soon as it begins. It was just an image of a little girl in a bathing suite crying next to a woman holding her hand. The smell of brine precedes the sun peeking through the open window of the tiny room. The smell comes through the screened window down the bedroom wall across the carpeted floor and up the mattress lying on the floor, up the other wall and out the window back to the ocean. She is never up this early.

He exhales as he lifts the blanket off his body and then lifts himself up and to the edge of the bed, then turns the alarm off on the floor. The blanket folds over back towards her and a breeze from the open window kisses her exposed thigh. He stands up and leaves the room quietly. She throws the cover over herself and slips underneath. The bed is cold without him. Her body follows a current of sheets moving towards the foot of the bed. She finds a spot still warm from where he was lying and rests her body in the space he left behind. She is listening to him getting dressed and then him moving his things down the hallway to the front door. She wonders if he noticed that she was awake. She feels the undertow of her sensitivities and hopes it will pass and lead back to sleep. Instead she resurfaces to the edge of the blanket at the head of the bed to listen to him leave. He opens the door and carefully carries two bags with him. His keys jingle as he turns the lock and then she listens to his footsteps fade away. It’s too early to say goodbye.

Twenty minutes pass quickly. She lay still except for the flutter of her eyes opening. She considers lifting the blankets and getting out of bed. But covered in blankets trumps starting the day. She rolls over on her back and stretches her arms over her head. It’s too late now to try and find sleep. She moves her eyes back and forth between looking at the white ceiling and the open window above her head. Her hands rest next to her body and she tries to hold her breath so that she doesn’t move at all. She imagines lying in a coffin- still, forever. Finally her lungs force her to take a deep breath. She gasps for air loudly and when she exhales all the sound leaves out through the window where it came. She’s struck by how apparent the silence is and how it makes her feel uncomfortable. She cups her hands over her ears to hear her heartbeat, but there is no sound. For a moment there is total silence. No waves crashing. No birds chirping. No wind swirling. Motionless, she waits for something to happen.

Then she sees him walk into the room. This is unexpected.

She tries to remember something while their eyes catch each other. He pauses for a moment. She can’t tell if he’s surprised to see her awake, but she knows better than to ask him why he’s returned so soon. She feels an unexplained empty space in her chest where her heart should be and a bubble of air trapped in her throat. The room is still silent. Her eyelids close slowly. When she opens them again he’s closer to her, slowly removing his jeans. She watches him take in deep breaths as he looks at her- as he looks past her and searches for something to say as if he might find the words behind her, tucked in the space between her and the wall. She searches his face and notices his eyes filled with tears. It’s unbearable to watch him struggle. In two years, she’s never seen him overwhelmed by any emotion. Now she knows and her eyes fill with tears at this revelation. Before she can catch them, the words tremble off her tongue and fall to the floor.

“It’s my mom, isn’t it? She’s dead.”

He nods his head yes and lifts the cover to lay in the bed next to her and grabs her just as the tears rush from her. Suddenly all the sound rushes back into the room. The vacuum that removed all the air sends it quickly back again. All the sounds- the ocean, the wind, their breathing, their heartbeats- it all rushes towards her and explodes against their bodies. She is overwhelmed by tears and convulses as she struggles not to breathe. But her body is unwilling to let her go and forces her to be present and take in air. He pulls her in closer. The moment drowns her and she unravels in his arms.

After awhile she’s shipwrecked and the sobbing pauses. Her chest deflates into her body. She feels lifeless. Her eyes stay closed and buried into his chest. Everything seems unreal. She searches for something tangible to ground her- something real and far from this moment. Without any thought to what conjured the sensation, she presses up against him. She focuses on how warm he is. She touches his face and opens her mouth to kiss him. His lips are soft and his moist tongue touches hers gently. Their hands meet and she puts his between her legs. She knows he can’t resist if she’s wet. Instinct overpowers logic. They’re merely human now, with carnal desires. She rolls on her back and lets him climb on top and enter her. He holds himself up over her on his forearms and breaths heavy as he slowly pushes into her. She keeps her hands around his face and clenches her hips around him and pushes back into him. Her chest becomes warm and she hears her heart thumping. Her breath is heavy and smooth. Lungs fill and empty like waves crashing on the shoreline and then running back to the sea. Her hands run down his back. The muscles stretch and contract. His back is warm and moist with sweat. She pulls him into her and rolls on top of him. She uses her hands to press against the mattress and slightly over his head. Her pelvis pushes harder into him. He lifts himself up and kisses her warm breasts. The sensation makes her arch her back and drop her head back. Sea breeze passing through the window brushes her face and cools her flushed cheeks. He grabs her waist and pushes back into her. Nothing proceeds this moment. Time escapes them. They continue to follow the rhythm until they are both exhausted and satisfied. He wraps his arms around her. She lays her head on his chest with her legs tangled with his- panting and still. The breeze against their naked bodies cools them. She listens to the waves throw themselves against the rocky shoreline and charge up towards the sky to catch the wind swirling above them. She closes her eyes again and sees that little girl crying on the beach but this time no one is holding her hand.

Natalie Enright is a CCSF and SFSU English Literature student by
way of Kenya, Africa. She lives in your closet, so she can eavesdrop on you and write fictional stories inspired by your secrets.