Category: creative writing

landmark 1

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

The Landmark Indepenent Theatre was falling apart long before the world was. As we were all adjusting to new computer screens in shiny new cars that felt more like spaceships, cupholders were falling off seat arms, the popcorn kettle squeaked ominously, an HVAC drip plagued theatere 3, the shelf in the freezer where the pretzles were kept tilted precariously, joints permenantly unmoored, and the concessions counter was barely temperature controlled at the best of times.

At that point, the lake was already rapidly drying, the arsenic slowly seaping into our air supply. But we were still humming along, streaming our TV shows that refused to pay writers and absorbed in our smartphones full of blood-soaked rare-earth minerals, either ignorant of the end of the world or hoping, naively that it would not catch up to us for a few more years.

An apocalypse is not so much and “end of the world.” instead its more of an ending of a certain civilization, structures and systems we rely on heavily collapse and alternatives must be found.

anatoly 1

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

She sits across from me, studying her straw as if realizing for the first time that someone has chewed on it. She looks back up at me.

“She wants to tell you something, but she can’t”

“Why not?” I ask, gritting my teeth against another cryptic answer.

“Because she doesn’t know how”

I looked down at the greasy linoleum table and shook my head. She shook her head too letting out a soft laugh.

“Why do you care so much about all this anyway?”

“Why do I care? I care because people of your same description have been popping up all over, first just the city, then the state, now the whole fucking country.”

She scoffs.

“Come on, why do you really care?”

chester 1

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

9-7-22

They stared that the sea, watching the waves recede into inky blackness. or rather, she did, and he joined her briefly.

“I was really mean to you yesterday, wasn’t I?” he said, speaking first in a break with tradition. The silence spread between them. It was hard to tell, but she could hear how his throat restricted with self-sustaining guilt, a circular kind that is so often inescapable.

“I mean, yeah,” she replied. “It sucked, what else do you want me to say? But I’ll be fine.” She refused to absolve him. His resulting silence spoke volumes. He hoped she appreciated that he bit his tongue, restraining himself from snapping at her again. Just as she had always hoped he appreciated the benefit of the the doubt she often tried to extend to him, when he was sullen, uncommunicative, and difficult to understand. But both of these burdens were unspoken and were unlikely to be recognized, but both hoped a silent symetrical understanding would ensue.

She, resurrecting tradition, broke the silence this time.

“Look, it’ll all wash away eventually. In the waves of all the good stuff, or even just the waves of time. There’s been way worse and there’ll be way worse.”

His eyes glistened in the solitary glow of the moon. Clearly, she saw the fear reflected in them. Those eyes recalled the ghost of many a guilty expression that passed over the face of a man. It seemed that man’s greatest fear was nothing outside himself but simply the fear of being “bad.” Perhaps a legitamate fear in the face of the asymmetrical power he waged on the world.

snakke

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

a snake is very slowly squeezing its midsection around my neck

so slowly you almost notice nothing

but slowly and surely, you lose your breath, its pathway winking closed, constricting and the muscles of your neck crushed by the force give way to the crushing of your neck itself

You are afraid to acknowledge the pain for you fear it would consume you

and consume you it easily could