The Anti-Anxiety Notebook
by Morgan Day

Sunday, July 1, 2018 I   haven't written much in my life besides college essays, love letters, and meeting minutes. Occasionally I’ll toy with the syntax of an important email. I’ve started writing now because of a situation that’s beyond my understanding. Before going to bed yesterday, my roommate Charlotte handed me this journal, The Anti-Anxiety Notebook, along with a note that read: For your feelings. She said that she was exhausted and unqualified to help me, then she laughed. ...click to READ MORE

No. 204 20220306 | cover: typography - Viktoriya Banul

“Help!” Prints cried out, in medias res.

“There’s no clear way out of this one, Prints! You’re in quite the snafu!”

How will our dearly-beloved protagonist make it out of this one?! This is quite the rock and the hard place!

in which she swims through desire:

later he will leave and she will wait but for now she is here floating pinioned to an obnoxiously red foam noodle. the waves move her up and down and back and forth. watches forward leaning back on the noodle five friends on a yellow raft. sun catches the wandering water down the all of them all. she watches the water surrounding her dripping over them. she watches her own eyes wander over an array of makeshift bottoms. like they didn’t know they were going swimming but they did. wet cotton sticks outlines stick out. sun reflects off the waves laughs reflect off the air she feeling the heat of it all all in her black bikini bottoms. wetness and heat the recipe of summer. she gazes they turned and talking the heat of summer in her cheeks while imagined images are outlined clearly. away she looks and then back again the shameful shamelessness and sips of drink fueling her. freckles on bellies. hair trailing into covered spaces of all colors and twists. smiles curved in innocence in prey. pushed front teeth. bodies just being bodies. the space of two of these bodies she has occupied one once and the other ongoing. fevered embrace of goodbye igniting one summer last summer. seasons have a way of bringing loss back just to let go again. wishing they could stay here like this suspended in the water the summer always wishing they could stay. the sounds of bodies submerging themselves in bodies the endless desire and water.

Blush-peach flesh
shines in dappled light;
gilded bars hold
her bird-like frame
within its ornate,
metal-fierce hold;
she dangles upon a perch
singing softly sweetened lullabies
to darkened corners,
wishing to unearth hope
in bands of chivalry,
daisy-fragile,
as her outstretched wrists.

“It just seems weird,” Claire said. “I don’t get to decide?”

He smiled like a cop asked to issue a warning instead of a ticket. “We don’t choose the person,” he said.

“Even if I pay you more?” gesturing with her chin at the envelope over on the kitchen counter.