BOND GIRL
Bond Girl was published in the Fall 2020 issue of The Foundationalist, an intercollegiate journal sponsored by Bowdoin College, Yale University, and The University of Iowa.

Enjoy the excerpt below and find the full story in the link. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, only digital copies of the Fall 2020 issue are available.
DO NOT FEAR

I come into this world with the inevitability that I will die another day.

If God wound up the clock, then is it not the snake who set the world into motion? The snake hissed at Eve to take a bite, for an experience she never would have known. The world was born off of Apophis' back, a black void of nothing. Taking the form of a serpent, Apophis chases the sun god, Ra, across the sky each day, the gods of Ancient Egypt battling the chaos he brings with each night. Shiva dances, standing on one leg in a circle of fire, the continuous creation and destruction of our world. A serpent coils along the lord of dance's right arm – there are evils in this world with a license to kill. Shiva's hand extends past the snake, gesturing to the viewer with his palm raised; abhaya mudra. Fear not of change. Fear not of the evils lurking in the darkness, for tomorrow never dies and we must be undone before coming closer into being.

Plates are shifting, the world is always becoming and undoing. We are all wandering away, returning home, dancing in solitude with the serpents hissing at our ankles. Do not fear the change, since the shift of the world is always underneath us, and all we can do is live and let die.

My first dance studio is in a small college town large enough to be coined on the morning news as "The Hollywood of South-Central Kentucky." The high school girls have their group dance to Live and Let Die by Paul McCartney, shimmying in gold 70's costumes and pulsing red lights, reaching up to the sky with their arms and posing back-to-back with pistol fingers like a Charlie's Angels pose. I want to be up there with them. I know their whole dance because I sit in the auditorium and never miss a chance to watch their rehearsals, sitting crisscross-apple-sauce, eyes wide open. One of the girls is kind enough to teach me the chorus step, so I wiggle along in the back of the auditorium with my gun finger poses – Bang, bang!

I am not afraid. I can be the Bond Girl.
He Never Needs to Know
Prospectus Literary Journal
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He Never Needs to Know was published in the winter 2022 issue of Prospectus Literary Journal. The artwork by yours truly was also in the issue and was selected as a featured artist.

Copies of this issue of Prospectus are no longer available, but prints of the artwork and more are available for purchase on my artist page found through the home menu.

Our conversation drifts, and I notice the rats the man warned us about. There are three of them, scurrying around the plaza, making their pilgrimage to the inky pond. The three must have been sent out as scouts. An entire herd of them follow, waking from their daylight slumber in the fountain and scuttling towards their ritualistic bath in the moonlight. Rats are mothers too and need to bathe their children. I suddenly wince and bend over. I thought these bloody cramps had finally stopped. Maybe it's a good thing. Ninety-five to hundred, ninety-five to hundred. Scout notices.
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Tilda