“Over the Rainbow” © Robert Fleming

 

switch & kiss & wish

A celluloid divergence, film razor-sliced down the middle, splitting off to form a new scene, a new life, hitting it off with a cute and nerdy transfem named Maxine who propositions Clare for a slice and a Coke at a pizza joint around the corner, her treat. And how can Clare say no to that?

Maxine sops up the extra grease with a napkin, Clare opting instead to eat it as-is, let it burn in her belly. Maxine looks up after a bite:

“You know, I usually would never do something like this. I’m shy most of the time. Painfully so. I think, in another life… I wouldn’t have approached you.”

Clare smiles in the soft light, a fine mist of rain taking the windows in streaks. She has a bold eye and a vibrant dark purple lip, her impeccable wings creasing as she smiles.

“Yeah, well. I normally wouldn’t let myself be wooed on the job. But you’re just too much fun, aren’t you?”

“I’ve been known to have fun on occasion, yes.”

“Only on occasion? Why not all the time?”

“I’m working on it. And, I thought…”

Sipping from her straw, lips an O, looking up her seduction at Clare. Drinking down to the ice: bare.

“…maybe you’d like to teach me.”

The rain lashing the windows. Steam. Heat.

Not even bothering to turn the lights on in Clare’s apartment, wet shoes on quickly-soggy carpet. The heat of their breath as mouths meet, part, fumbled clothing falling around them, Clare nearly tripping over her leggings, Maxine giggling, holding her up, then stumbling herself, over her own leggings bunched at the ankles, a motel sign across the street the room’s only ambient light, a deep red that buzzes and flickers, making both of them seem in a stop-motion dream, or a 16mm home movie with missing frames, this moment already archived, immediately classic. It will be, Clare decides in the moment, utterly unforgettable.

They fuck right there on the floor, under the unpredictable glow of the motel light, wrapped as tight as they’ll go, and it’s still not close enough, even with Maxine inside of Clare as deep as she can get, their tongues entwined, Clare’s legs wrapped behind her back, this isn’t as close as they want, as they need in this moment. But they’ll both keep trying anyway.

They switch and kiss and wish for this irreal moment to somehow go on past its natural bounds, that, somewhere, someway, somewhen, this moment will play out, again and again, forever.

It’s more than just that moment, and if she wants, Clare can view her numberless days, more nights like these, then more than even that. It’s them renting a U-Haul, getting an apartment together by the lake, later adding Rhea to the lease as well as the bed, mattress directly on the floor, moving it by degrees with their lovemaking, barely able to keep the lights on but not caring, not really. It’s walking out on Lake Michigan’s shelf of ice in January, walking way out to the edges of the piers, where in the summer the three of them would swim, avoiding the crowds, summer sun glinting off the surface, Maxine’s hair gathering in a single, glistening rope over her left shoulder, the golden brown of her eyes looking to Clare like portals to another world: a better one. Splashing and laughing and wading back to shore, Rhea in the middle as they walk, completing their circuit, Maxine’s right hand in her left, Clare’s left in her right. Clare kissing Maxine’s neck till bruising, biting then kissing where she just bit.

It’s now not remembering the moments so much as reliving them, or maybe even living them for the first time. It’s them in the mall, then receding the way its hallways do, endlessly recursive mental architecture, twisting, winding, folding gray labyrinthine paths, and then the mall is gone entirely, back to the beach, hot sand sticking to bare wet feet, algal bloom smells in the midday sun, top 40 playing out of a speaker somewhere, Chicago dogs sold out of a stand nearby, scent kicking up, grill smoke with it, the high insistence of sunscreen, and it’s here and now Clare knows this moment will be etched into her mind forever, is etched, the associations so strong this could be a million years from now, piped out of a bootstrap human emulator, and she’d feel it just as strongly, this cognizance of an experience beyond self but in self, sensory data without the frontal lobe to intrude, just one endless moment set to play out forever, and if Clare looks up, she can see the impossible glinting of stars in afternoon blue, silver pinpricks brought in before their cue, ruining the illusion but revealing the sleight of hand, the smoke and mirrors behind the trick, all the things that gave it away but which no one ever really noticed before.

 

Liza Olson is the author of the novels Here’s Waldo, The Brother We Share, and Afterglow. A Best of the Net nominee, Best Small Fictions nominee, finalist for Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Award, and 2021 Wigleaf longlister in and from Chicagoland, she’s been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, Cleaver, Pithead Chapel, and other fine places. One of her proudest achievements was getting to run (mac)ro(mic) for four incredible years. Her fourth novel, Boundless and Bare, dropped in March and is available here.

Robert Fleming (b. 1963) is a visual poet and digital artist from Lewes, DE. He is an editor @ Old Scratch Press and Instant Noodles magazine. His books are White Noir, an Amazon best seller, and Con-Way in 4 in 1, #4. He is an award-winner: 2022 San Gabriel Valley California-broadside, 2024 and 2021 Best of Mad Swirl poetry; nominations: 2025 best of short fiction; 2023 Blood Rag Poet, Delaware Press: poem: 3rd place and 2 poetry honorable mentions (HM) and 1 graphic design HM, and 2 Pushcart/Best of the Net. Follow Robert here.