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Gessy Alvarez

Spotlight: The Last Word

April 17, 2017/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2017 / Gessy Alvarez

[fiction]

I’m wearing my banana-yellow pantsuit and my best ash-blonde, bob-styled wig. He’s an hour late.

One of my fake lashes falls on my lap. The glue still sticky on my eyelid.

He yells from outside my window. You up there?

I press the eyelashes back in place and stumble out of the apartment and down the stairs. The stubborn eyelashes fly off in my haste.

He meets me by the landing and I try to hide in the shadows, under the upper-floor staircase.

I have to go back upstairs, I say.

No, you stay right where you are.

I raise a hand. Stop right there, I say.

Never hide from me, he says. An ambulance siren cuts the tension.

I say, Never tell me what to do.

*     *     *

We’re on our third bottle of ruby wine and his head is on my lap. Greasy hair staining the white skirt draped over my brown legs.

We’re sitting on my mother’s chaise lounge, gold velvet marred by wine stains. My mother’s first American possession.

He bumps my abdomen with his imperfect nose. Like water he absorbs my heat.

What happened to your nose? I say.

A woman broke it years ago, he says.

Did you deserve it? I pull his head close enough to smother his reply.

And he lets me. Rubs his nose back and forth. His arm reaching around me, holding me too close.

That woman taught me something about love, he says. And then he pulls away.

Sometimes I want to eat through your sweet body, he says. He bites the inside of my wrist.

I try to escape him but he drags me back and I curve inside his open arms. My forehead against his scruffy chin.

Stay tonight, I say.

*     *     *

The first time we fucked, I cried and he stopped. I kicked him, maybe. He didn’t touch me again.

*     *     *

I’m bent over the couch. Long nails digging into fake leather skin as he rubs my inner thigh.

Stop, I say.

He stops touching my thigh.

You sure? he finally says, his voice gravelly like he just discovered how to use it.

I look at him when he says this. My whirlwind boy with golden eyes and arms covered in golden down.

I lick his forearm. Pull him into the lip of my orchid.

*     *     *

And when I make the choice, he doesn’t say anything.

He takes out his keys, tugs at each one on his keyring as if the answer to why we’re here is hiding in a locked room somewhere.

I have the last word, I say.

He sits there at the table with his keys hanging from the ring.

Gessy AlvarezGessy Alvarez is founder and editor of the arts and literary web journal, Digging Through The Fat. Her prose has appeared in APT: Aforementioned Productions, Volume One Brooklyn, Entropy, Drunk Monkeys, Literary Orphans, Pank, and other publications.

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Amuse-Bouche Archive

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Friday Lunch Blog

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

Today’s course:

The Night I Want to Remember

December 16, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Sanaz Tamjidi
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From Paper to the Page

November 18, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Annie Bartos
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Confessions of a Birthday Person

November 4, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Meghan McGuire
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Midnight Snack

A destination for all your late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

Mending the Heart and Slowing Down: Reintroducing Myself to Mexican Cooking

October 7, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Megan Vasquez
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The Worth of a Billionaire’s Words

September 23, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Kirby Chen Mages
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Abyssinia

August 26, 2022/in Midnight Snack / JP Goggin
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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

Our contributors are diverse and the topics they share through their art vary, but their work embodies this mission. They explore climate change, family, relationships, poverty, immigration, human rights, gun control, among others topics. Some of these works represent the mission by showing pain or hardship, other times humor or shock, but they all carry in them a vision for a brighter world.

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