The Bluestone Review Spring 2022

each fig by its origin story and always push piling Amarena cherries and Brie on wedges of self-deception. When folks gather like flies someone thinks to ask who Icarus’ mother was. Wide-spread whispers fly about absence, silence, they say they saw him trapped and drowning in the sea long before the invention of fatherhood, before it was molded from feathers and wax. Coffee is served. Cappuccino with a caramel drizzle and microfoam. Once the shape is made in it the circle is wide enough to pull through a heart a heart nothing more than the opening of wings. Soliloquy By Marc Harshman I talk to the mirror. I tell you I never talk to the mirror. Believe me, I do. Sometimes I don’t, and then I do. The rain falls, the sun shines, the seed swells and it all seems so easy. Once upon a time . . . I told you once and you believed. I told you again and you turned away. There was once a prince and a princess: happily ever after and all that. The end of the book about the royals said simply that they were perpetually miserable.

I am happy and so I smiled. I was sad and so I smiled.

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