SCRIPT

Camp Good Time

After a night of innocent fun with her crush, a free-spirited and naive teenage girl is convinced that she’s pregnant and begins preparing for parenthood, all while keeping the situation a secret from her Christian camp counsellors. 

244 Marshall Street - One Pager

Michael and Jessica, now roommates instead of partners, need to find a way to cohabitate while dealing with their own, and each other’s, broken hearts, social blunders, and financial struggles.

POETRY/PROSE

Ugly Doll

I am the prettiest doll that has ever lived in this 12 by 18 cabinet. I have the prettiest, wonderfulest shoes, dipped in blue paint with heels like spider’s legs. My legs are smooth and hairless, and I pay 60 dollars a session to keep them that way. They are clean and polished and they have no marks or bruises from running or hiking or falling. All my cuts are healed and the scars have been painted over. I have the prettiest legs out of any doll that has ever lived in this 12 by 18 cabinet.

I have the prettiest dress I have ever worn. It’s red and white, and it falls like water around my hips. It is perfectly fit for a nice young man to drown in. The lace was stripped from my mother’s wedding dress, the red from my first blanket. They were always meant to exist together, to adorn my frame, to ease the transition from girl to woman and back again. The lace will rip and my dress will become a cleaning rag. The life cycle of beauty. 

I have a yellow ribbon around my waist and I cannot undo it. I’ve never dared to try. It’s cinched tight by my mother’s hands as we loom over recipes, gingerbread women shaping perfect sweet men. I made a beautiful chocolate cake and I ate it with my hands. I made my sweetheart a batch of lemon cookies and he fed them to me, one by one. I made a croquembouche that touched the ceiling and I swallowed it in one bite, opening my cavernous maw, slobbering and steamy. I made a tart that earned me a kiss on the forehead from the first boy I loved. The food I make never returns to the kitchen. Once, I licked the spoon of the brownie batter, and I liked it so much, I ate the glass bowl I had used to mix ingredients. 

I have the prettiest chest of any girl that has ever lived in this 12 by 18 cabinet. Stout and strong at the ripe age of 13. My hips are the prettiest, my breasts, my blowjob lips. The prettiest blowjob lips that have ever lived in this 12 by 18 cabinet. I am a girl, made of girl parts, not anything that can be touched or held. I am made of prizes to be claimed and skin to be unraveled. 

I have the prettiest smile of any doll that has ever lived in this 12 by 18 cabinet. I have chiseled it from marble, and I have placed it in the gallery for greedy hands to slide over. I do not get kissed as much as I wish I was. I am beginning to think I am the wrong kind of princess. The old kind, the sad kind. The kind whose stories get buried.

I am the prettiest little girl dressed like a doll who has ever lived in this 12 by 18 cabinet. My mind is an overgrown thicket, ripe with thorns, and my body is a sandy beach being pressed against and shifted by the waves. I have been painting my nails since I was eight years old, and I have been buying the right products to make me cold, make my skin hard, make me fragile. There is no such thing as an ugly doll. There’s no such market for them.

shell of a man

life was weary and tiring, but it was not a matter of her feeling like a “shell of a man.” quite the opposite, actually.

she is stuffed to the brim with personhood, forgotten lunches and secrets like ink stains and the messy business of going in and out your front door. shoes go on the plastic mat, and if you hand me your coat, i’ll find a spot for it in the closet.

she is in a sudsy cycle of cleaning and being clean. she has a streak-free shine. her clothes are warm and loose, and she’s able to melt into the couch in the evenings. fresh sheets don’t feel as good as she thinks they will, but she won’t deny the excellence of sleeping in a cold, cold room under a fat duvet. 

she washes her hair in the bath, sitting in the ceramic tub and remembering when she used to be small. she steals lavender shampoo from her oldest sister and she rubs rose oil onto her legs, making them smooth and decent. she sits in the water, steeps herself, like a cup of tea or a bowl of soup desperate to be shared.

this is perhaps what makes her human. that, or baked sweets. she hasn’t decided yet.

she has 100 pages left in every book she has started and not finished and she doesn’t know how to convince herself to read when all she wants is to be a reader. she is not a singer, a dancer, or an actor. she is a student and that is about to stop being enough. she calls herself a writer, but she doesn’t write. she doesn’t know how to end this paragraph in a way that’s honest but still hopeful. // she still has hope. she knows nothing is over.

she is looking at the people on the bus and she is judging them and it is making her sick. she has swallowed the ocean and it sloshes horribly in her stomach as the bus takes her to her next stop, which takes her to her next stop, which might eventually take her home. it’s a gamble.

when she’s home, she will sit down and not get up for many hours. her phone drains her battery, and her lungs deflate and lie dead. personhood seeps out of her, oozes. the seams of her body are struggling to contain how much she is alive. she is bursting, overflowing, overflooding. her library books are a week overdue. someone has to take out the trash. her prom dress has slipped off the hanger in the closet. the snow falls more than once. she’s never seen a sunrise properly.

it’s exhausting, the push and pull, the give. but what else could it possibly be? what else would you want it to be? nothing will replace the humanity of aching, hurting, hugging, sleeping, and waking up, grateful to do it all again.