by Alicia L. Gleason
As a girl I often dreamt I was digging a hole. It wasn’t the type of hole meant to bury roses for the winter, or to mine worms after a heavy rain. It was a hole wide and deep enough for me to stand in. It was a hole dug for me to be alone. As I dug, my muscles felt supple and I saw the soil was richly layered: shadows atop agates atop red soil atop grey. The air swirled coolly around me, a summer heat descending into the pit. This place was quieter than sleep. I dug easily until I hit a patch of hard ground. I cut the tip of my shovel into the earth and water simmered from the incision. The wound opened quickly, the pressure forcing the water into a high arch, a boiling geyser. As I stood beneath it, feverish, sweating, I thought: this hole will fill, and I will drown.
– Alicia L. Gleason is a graduate of George Mason University’s MFA program, where she studied fiction. Her work is forthcoming in Cleaver Magazine. Alicia teaches first year writing at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Oblong 