Photography © Jennifer Matthews
Summer of 2025
It was the Nation’s Capital in the summer of 2025, and I was dating a doll. Perhaps dating was the wrong term, for when she asked me what we are, which always seemed to be on her mind, I’d dart around the question with a laugh and profess, you’re my lova. Not ‘lover’ in all its vintage mystique, but lova, a joke within a joke. She was my lova, and I would be leaving at the end of the summer to a country where she could not go.
I did like the idea of having a lover, it was like having a secret, except the secret was alive and could threaten to network with my dad through LinkedIn. The Nation’s Capital, and everyone was using LinkedIn. Why did she want to network with my dad? Because any connection is a good connection. I was getting out, out, out. I would never add anyone on LinkedIn again, so help me god.
It was the summer of 2025 and the world was burning. Every day the news spun something more awful, and every day I felt like I was choking. She put her hands around my neck, biting softly. Lova. My British accent was atrocious; hers was worse. I felt hidden within myself. She wanted to show me her, her, her, her, her and I kept myself folded. If I kept myself folded, I couldn’t get hurt.
Tell me your deepest darkest secret, she’d whisper, when we’d both wake up in the middle of the night. It was a joke within a joke. I never responded with anything real. I wondered if she thought I was boring; I was playing at boring. It had to be this way. I was leaving at the end of August, to a place she could not go. It was always like me to take lovers when I knew there’d be a deadline. If I was to be stationary, it would all become too real. Every time I loved, there was always a way out.
Tell me yours, I’d whisper back, and she would. She wore her truth on her sleeve, and what truths they were. Her secrets were far more intense than my own, her secrets were like weapons, they were like bombs, they made her real and they made me feel as faraway as summer rain. It was the summer of 2025 and I felt as boring as salt. The only special thing about me was that I was leaving.
It was the nation’s capital in the summer of 2025 and soon I’d be gone. The truth of this ate away at me like a secret in the night. Alive and biting. I had a lover and I loved her and I would soon be leaving for a country she could not go. It was the summer of 2025 and the world was burning. It was the summer of 2025 and the world refused to stand still. My deepest darkest secret? Lover, I am going to leave. Lover, I am already gone.
Zoe Carver: “I am an emerging writer with previously published short stories in Foofaraw Press, DC Pride Poems, fifth wheel press, and Capitol Letters Magazine. I was recently awarded the Julian Clement Chase Writing in Washington Award, and am currently on fellowship at the American University in Cairo in Cairo, Egypt.”
Poet/Photographer Jennifer Matthews’ poetry has been published in Nepal by Pen Himalaya and locally by the Wilderness Retreat Writers Organization, Midway Journal, The Somerville Times, Ibbetson Street Press and Boston Girl Guide. Jennifer was nominated for a poetry award by the Cambridge Arts Council for her book of poetry Fairy Tales and Misdemeanors. Her songs have been released nationally and internationally and her photography has been used as covers for a number of Ibbetson Street Press poetry books and has been exhibited at The Middle East Restaurant, 1369 Coffeehouses, Sound Bites Restaurant in Somerville and McLean Hospital.