Hive Ave Fall2024 - Flipbook - Page 30
Fiction
Hive Avenue Literary Journal
sex with a partner–that feeling when there’s no space between
two bodies, you’re so fully melded it doesn’t seem to make any
sense that you once existed apart–that and when I’ve eaten a
veggie Subway sandwich speci昀椀cally the summer of when I was
9.
I dutifully would walk a few blocks over to the VHS store
(a fossil of my childhood–Blockbusters and stores like them
with rickety shelves 昀椀lled with VHS tapes and DVD’s–their cases
depicting who I wanted to be when I “was of age” whatever that
meant–a phrase my mother threw my way when I tried to select
a R rated movie). My taste in 昀椀lms has never been high-brow
except for the brief period of high school when I took a 昀椀lm
class and successfully watched a few of the classics (Run Lola
Run, North by North West, and 12 Angry Men). I preferred classics such as Mama Mia and anything where a girl would inevitably cry, fall in love, and get married all within the span of
90 minutes (turns out that timeline isn’t so far fetched when
you’re a lesbian).
Subway existed between the Mexican bar and a grocery store usually hidden by vast amounts of seemingly never
ending sca昀昀olding–I’m not sure what they were working on for
our time in that apartment building, but I do know the scaffolding sticks out as a permanent 昀椀xture in my memory–there
at least until we moved out when my parents got a divorce and
I headed into the 6th grade. As a 9 year old, I still had a naivety
about me, the world seemed fair enough, and I could successfully 昀氀esh out all of my feelings by taking at least an hour to
昀椀nish a footlong. My order was as follows:
Veggie Delight - add the olives and jalapenos, add olive oil
and vinegar, and top o昀昀 with salt and pepper, the only proper
additions were a bag of SunChips & on occasion a warm cookie
(ask them to warm it up).
I’d prop my youthful body horizontally on the 昀氀oor (a
position I’d love to attain once more, but unfortunately presents head rushes at the age of 31), open the paper wrapper to
my sandwich (eating any straggling veggies 昀椀rst), and insert my
DVD into the tiny player which was the antidote to most of my
bedtime (yes, I had every season of Seinfeld on DVD and dutifully watched it as an adolescent in the same way I watch it as an
adult who can now say she’s “in her 30’s”).
This is an anecdote which I will occasionally brandish as
proof that there was at least one positive memory I have as a
child (there are probably 5 and this is one of them). When I look
up what it actually means when we ask for our “daily bread”
the internet tells me that this is us trusting God to meet all of
our needs and provide all of His/Her/Its comfort. I’m not sure
if I can de昀椀nitively say that God, an AA meeting, or even my
family ever met all of my needs or provided all of their comfort. I’ve learned all too well to isolate myself, to only ask for
help once I’ve worked through the problem and have a solution,
and to count less on other humans, but I do know that it’s a
kind of comfort to 昀椀nd the love you have always lacked in yourself–maybe that started when I was too young to know what I
was doing (a version of self-care or even prayer as a I found joy
in routine), maybe that started when I sat in a plastic chair in
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a church basement and listened to stories that felt relatable,
felt deeply nourishing in the way “me too” or “I’ve been there”
can be, maybe that started when instead of feeling scared, I felt
brave, or maybe that starts each time I sit down, surrounded by
a group of friends, a chosen family of my own making, and pass
the bread basket.
