Four Levels of Infatuation | Charlotte Hamrick

I.    Breaking Open

Your gaze blistered my exposed neck as I held my hair up in a knot, waiting for a lick of air. When I turned around you were hovering, a salutation of possibilities. 

II.    Building 

Filtered light through cypress. Your rapt audience, my nervous disguise. Our skeletal curtain took on flesh. The layering of our days wavered between seen and unseen, a quartet of magician’s hands. “I’d Rather Go Blind” rolled around my brain where it settled, my daily companion on an unending loop. A flame between my thighs refused to give me peace.

III.    Bleached

A cleansing began unnoticed. A murder of hunger & need. Notes of nostalgia rose in my chest, my rib cage squeezed them quiet over and again. Months passed, the LP of us compressed into a byte.

IV.    Beyond

Sometimes when dust-motes float in autumn light or the night closes in like hands around my neck, that song rolls a long, slow burn while my hands try to stifle the flames. 

Charlotte Hamrick’s creative work has been published in numerous online and print journals, most recently including The Citron Review, Emerge Journal, and New World Writing. She’s had nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction 2021, and was a Finalist for Micro Madness 2020. She reads for Fractured Lit and was the former CNF Editor for Barren Magazine. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and a menagerie of rescued pets where she sometimes does things other than read and write. You can find her on Twitter @charlotteham504