Profile, Cheryl Pappas
Originally published in Mulberry Fork Review (August 2015).
I really like movies. I enjoy fine dining at nice restaurants. Long walks, etc., etc. What I am really looking for is someone who will crave my attention, over and over again. Who really knows how to dig for me, who can crack a bottle of champagne over a ship with grace. Who has the keys to a Mercedes, who will take me on curvy highways littered with plastic keychains. Who will drive me out into the night sky, filled with stars, and fill me with said champagne with bits of broken glass inside. Who will tear my heart open wide, as wide as the night sky, who will know the names of flowers, and of birds. Who will walk undeterred up a mountain ledge, who will know the secrets of bees. Who will try and try until he gets it right; who will fill and fill until there is no more. He must love his family, and with passion. He must worship family gatherings as if they were church itself. And I want children. Lots of children. With lots of speckled oaks in our yard, and free-loving birds in our driveway. I want velour couches and silver cookware. I want desire to end and want to want no more. You, you will fill up everything for me so that I can finally be what it is I crave, so intense. And I want to lose this desire into the night sky, I want to feel the pressure of the earth’s weight on my back, pushing up into me, lifting me up so that I can no longer see; my children will come out of me like flowers that will drop from heaven, and there you and I will be; seeders, done. I want my hair to be disheveled, to go gray and lifeless. We are the afterflowers, we. We wash our dishes clean, put them away, love from a distance.
Cheryl Pappas is a writer from Boston. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlas & Alice, SmokeLong Quarterly, 100 Word Story, jmww journal, Triangle House Review, Tin House's Open Bar, Cleaver Magazine, and more. Her website is cherylpappas.net and she can be found on Twitter @fabulistpappas.