Recital

My mother cried
when I told her
I didn’t believe in God.
She smiled
when I told her
I still believed in fairies.

I like to see my mother smile.

Her eyes light up
into a phosphorescent brown,
sunshine radiating off the pupils
that somehow
still believe in everything
without seeing anything.

So I put on my toy wings
And danced around the living room,
like a monkey
made to perform.

“There is no God” said my feet.

“There is no fate” said my arms.

I twirled round and round
and she laughed and clapped.

And she didn’t hear a thing.

---

Love story

He caught me at the end of a party
with a cup full of Ava’s parents’ good scotch
I know he wasn’t actually drinking.

“Do you read theory?” he slurred out,
smirking with the confidence
of a boy who occasionally gets told
he looks like Timothee Chalemet.

I stared back at him apathetically.

“Karl Marx.”
He spelled it out for me like a child.
“Fuck Capitalism.”

I smiled
like I thought it did any good
to burn Ayn Rand books
you bought on Amazon.

“Have you read Sylvia Plath?”
I asked through my over-glossed lips.

I only received a jingly laugh
that made me want to punch the freckles
off of his face.

I made out with him anyway.

---

Alice Wenzlow is a first year student studying English and creative writing at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She enjoys re-reading Kurt Vonnegut novels and climbing trees.