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June/ My iPhone Died Three Years Ago and I’m Still Not Over It

December 4, 2020/ Annette Covrigaru

[creative non-fiction]

June

If there’s blood, I don’t feel it.

Something called providone-iodine does the trick. Google names the reactions oxidizing and chemocauterizing, prompts continuous Google searches until I near satisfaction. All I know is I got a C in high school chemistry and worked fucking hard for it.

All I know is that snipped skin sounds like construction paper snowflakes in summer.

Sometimes Pride means discarding yourself, the excess, becoming pink and raw again and again. I admit to my surgeon I’m still scared of my nipples falling off and she laughs. What I’m really scared of is ineptitude and its illusions.

I tell the surgeon about my partner’s job and the erosion of work-life boundaries, about bingeing Drag Race seasons backwards, about protests, this movement. These stitches will dissolve but my body will remain a monument indebted to ancestry.

Marsha.           Sylvia.             Stormé.           Pauli.               Leslie.

If there’s blood, I only feel it when air echoes and electrifies with Black Trans Power, marching in white with the love of my life, queering Fort Greene Park with revolution.

The surgeon peels off my skin and the next layer of flesh takes a much-needed breath—cool like bay water at sunset, tides skimming soles, the promise of another day.


My iPhone Died Three Years Ago and I’m Still Not Over It

When you find a Polaroid of your dying grandmother, should it go back in the hallway drawer with last year’s birthday cards, or into your wallet? Can leather shelter the dead? Safekeep ashes of past-life?

Remember when you carried the detective’s business card in your wallet, sandwiched between an expired LIRR ticket and a middle school photo of your little cousin, the comic book word bubble backdrop collaged with BOOMs WHACKs ZAPs? It felt sinister holding her face against truth, a one-in-six omen. Did you know justice is 3.5” x 2” beige cardstock warmed in back pockets, passed through fingertips and forgotten?

When your iPhone died, the evidence died with it. Screenshots of text exchanges between you and his buddy, you and him.

What did he do now?

Remember that one meeting at the station? Those three hours of silence? Escorted by the detective, descending to exit, when he finally texts:

Hey, what you want to talk about?

The stairwell turned catacomb.

You told him: My grandmother is in the hospital. Can we talk another time?

You resented being intimate with your rapist.

Remember when you named your assault rape, the way it burned like acid to the core, revelation turned rupture? The detective taught you how to record phone calls, just in case. You never did but came close when you ran into him at the megachurch-sized UFC gym as your friend’s guest. You side-hugged him hello instead. No words worth replaying, but maybe someday.

When your iPhone died, the video died with it—the one where you reveal, Tr*mp won, and your grandma, wide-eyed, Romanian thickened throat, moans:

What, unbelievable! in a way that reminds you of Lola Caricola from CatDog.

Despondence turned laughter.

So, where should that go, now that it’s gone?

Annette Covrigaru is a gay, bigender American-Israeli writer and photographer. They’ve been awarded a Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ Voices Nonfiction Fellowship and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Their poetry, nonfiction, and essays have appeared in Peach Mag, Yes, Poetry, and Hey Alma, among others, and are collected at annettecovrigaru.com. Annette’s debut chapbook, Reality In Bloom, is forthcoming with Ursus Americanus Press. They live and roller skate in Brooklyn.

Issue Archive

  • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
  • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
  • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
  • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
  • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
  • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
  • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
  • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
  • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
  • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
  • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
  • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
  • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
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  • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
  • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
  • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
  • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
  • Issue 2: Winter/Spring 2013
  • Issue 1: Spring 2012

Genre Archive

  • Creative Nonfiction
  • Essays
  • Fiction
  • Flash Prose
  • Lunch Specials
  • Poetry
  • Interviews
  • Translation
  • Visual Art
  • Writing for Young People

Friday Lunch Blog

Friday Lunch! A serving of contemporary essays published every Friday.

Today’s course:

Where Are You From?

August 5, 2022/in Blog / Majella Pinto
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The Old Folks’ Home

July 22, 2022/in Blog / Karen Gaul Schulman
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Peace, Love, and a lot of Loud Rock & Roll

June 17, 2022/in A Transfer, Blog / Sunee Lyn Foley
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Midnight Snack

A destination for all your late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

QVC-land

May 6, 2022/in A Transfer, Midnight Snack / D. E. Hardy
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Escape Artists at the End of the World

April 29, 2022/in A Transfer, Midnight Snack / Lisa Levy
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The House in the Middle

April 15, 2022/in A Transfer, Midnight Snack / Megan Vasquez
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More coming soon!

Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every Monday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

My Mother’s Hands

August 8, 2022/in Amuse-Bouche / Annie Marhefka
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Defy Gravity

August 1, 2022/in Amuse-Bouche / Megan Peck
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Little Shrimp

July 25, 2022/in Amuse-Bouche / Karen Poppy
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School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
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A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
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Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
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Word From the Editor

The variety in this issue speaks not only to the eclectic world we inhabit but to the power of the human spirit. We live in an uncertain world. In the U.S., we’re seeing mass shootings daily. Across the world, we’re still very much in a pandemic, some being trapped in their homes for weeks on end, others struggling to stay alive in hospitals. War continues to wage in Ukraine. Iran and North Korea are working diligently to make nuclear weapons. The list goes on. Still, we have artists who are willing and able to be vulnerable with one another, to share stories and art to help us try and make sense of our world.

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