When Bene pushes Marc off the swing, hands
Scrambling and accompanied by rapid gust,
Marc falls on the mush with his shirt speared
Open like a gutted fish, the tattered sleeves limp. Before
That odd incident, he had undressed
In his room alone. Was it private? Bene, at the time, was
Laboring. Marc had forgotten about
The fermenting bird outside his
Window as the small flies feasted.
His hands shook as he
Tied his shoes. I ought to remember how
He thought that one day, he’d be a shriveled
Husk of a man, an old man, unable to
hunch over and put
his shoes on. Yes, yes—that will happen to me!
It’s noon now. A lull. Bene envisions Marc as a pitiable dog.
A litter teeters towards thirteen, maybe more. Flick one pup sideways,
Examine his open belly. How much should one pup ought to
Cost? It should, Bene decides, be more
Expensive than a cup of coffee. She despises the
Flea market. A swarm of bodies plastered against the
Exposed bubble– panic was what her doctor planted
Onto her body. But a diagnosis isn’t always final, he shrugged.
It’s been half a week, yet she refuses to tell Marc. She is
Small and short, perhaps as tall as five pups when you stack them
Vertically like bricks and smother them with plaster. Marc doesn’t
Care that she’s short, not at all.
I think it’s odd– the idea of care. Push
Him off a swing, return with a puckered cut,
And even now he remains silent.
How To Bottle
BY: LEA HAN ’26
step one:
Twist the cap and place it under your shins,
distorting the already-warped picture. Knead the bottle
carefully, with maximum strength, and push it far.
—two:
The scraps from the bottle and cap are
to be thrown away. It’s nostalgic how the
mounds are burning somehow. Didn’t
the bonfire simmer quietly, just like it is now,
sometime last December? The heat pounds
From every angle, but you think it’s mid-winter.
It’s impossible—
when you reach the dumpster,
the man handling the waste has eyes that are
too large, oddly large.
—three:
Hand the bottle and cap to him. Shuffle
your misgivings into a stack of cards, and the dumpster man will
sigh inevitably. No beat
Skipped as his mouth emerges. There’s still liquid,
water, day-old milk Nestled in the bottom, he retorts.
—four:
I don’t agree with him, and neither
do you. But the finger reaches the rigid sides,
lined with leftover curds, the stench pungent,
draped over your temples. You wipe your
finger, surprised pleasantly by the coldness.
—five:
“It’s obscure. Too far-away.”
“No, I think you’ll get there in time. Six minutes
At most. You ought to drive with the pedal down.”
“Isn’t that risky?”
“Yes, but shouldn’t that be needed in this situation?”
—six:
Hurriedly scavenge for a map, because the dumpster
man’s eyes still frighten you. Nausea
simmers below your esophagus, steadily filling the
opening of your throat, the tongue, the teeth.
No leftovers, because
We barely managed to finish it all. We were
Good children, abiding by rules.
—seven:
She hates wasting things. Food, water,
Clothes. On Mondays, she fasts
Religiously. I’m impressed by her
urgency; she always acts
as if someone’s monitoring her.
– eight:
“Looks quite empty. None left.
(what is empty?)…
Mind handing
it over ?”
Lea Han ’26 (leahan@college.harvard.edu) writes Arts for the Independent.