My hands were frozen, and I couldn’t move them. Juliette, you and I are certainly far apart. It’s not just geographical distance, but the way a woman and a man think is far more distant. I don’t know what else to say except that I’m still alive. On the night when the light of the spring stars reaches the bottom of the fountain, all I can do is show you my feelings as they are in the light.
I ate rice from a lacerated bowl. There were days when I was beaten so severely with a baton that I could not get up for days. In a world where nothing is certain, one may continue to search for certainty, and I’m waiting for some kind of signal from you. Juliette, even if it’s just a small rustle of wings, it’s better than feeling uncertain.
I don’t have a past like a worn stone. There is no future like a curtain that harbors the wind. Now I am filled with the image of you. I see you on the wine like freshly squeezed fruit that I have just soaked up at a wealthy gallery. Tonight, from the darkening sky, another clear, cold spring rain will fall.
If you want, I can crystallise those raindrops into starlight on my palm. I want to see the light in your eyes, so that it may shine in the center of Juliette’s black eyes and shine in my own. I am beaten to the ground like a stray dog, with no place to go back to, while dreaming of you. My beloved homeland, Juliette.
Marla woke up flat-chested and full of dread. Her tits had left her.
Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. They had packed up their nipple rings, slathered on some coconut oil, and walked out sometime between 3:17 and 4:06 a.m., leaving behind a note scrawled in eyeliner on the bathroom mirror:
“We’re tired of being your emotional support meat. We’re going corporate. Don’t wait up.”
She stared at her reflection, now a pale slab of chest meat, and screamed. Not because she missed them. Because she knew what they were capable of.
2. The ATM Incident
Three days later, she spotted them at a Chase Bank ATM on Sunset.
They were wearing a vintage Vivienne Westwood corset, nipple tassels shaped like dollar signs, and a pair of oversized sunglasses perched on their areolas. The left one—always the sassier—was tapping away at the keypad with a manicured finger. The right one was sipping a matcha latte through a straw tucked into its cleavage.
Marla approached, hoodie pulled tight around her hollow chest.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Those are my tits.”
The left breast turned. “We prefer independent assets now.”
The right one blew a kiss and said, “We’re building a brand.”
3. The Debt Spiral
Marla tried to file a missing body part report. The cop laughed so hard his mustache fell off and scurried away like a cockroach.
She remembered The Nose by Gogol. How the nose dressed in a military uniform and refused to acknowledge its owner. Her breasts were worse. They were buying NFTs, investing in crypto, and launching a podcast called Boobonomics.
She saw them on a billboard for OnlyTans, a tanning salon they co-owned with a rogue spleen from Belarus.
Her credit score plummeted. Her name was attached to six maxed-out cards, a yacht rental in Ibiza, and a failed startup called “Nipple Futures LLC.”
4. The Podcast
Marla tracked them down to a podcast studio in Silver Lake.
They were being interviewed by a sentient vape pen named Chad.
“So, tell me,” Chad wheezed, “how did you go from being attached to a nobody to becoming icons of financial freedom?”
The left breast giggled. “We were tired of being objectified. So we became the object.”
The right one added, “We’re launching a lingerie line called Hostile Takeover.”
Marla burst in, breathless. “You’re ruining my life!”
The breasts blinked. “Do we know you?”
5. The Arrest
The FBI finally caught up with them.
Marla was arrested alongside her breasts for wire fraud, identity theft, and racketeering. They were accused of laundering money through a shell company called “BoobCoin.”
In the interrogation room, Detective Slade leaned in. His jaw was a meat cleaver. His libido, a broken fire hydrant.
“Tell me who’s behind this.”
The breasts giggled. “We are, Daddy.”
They seduced him with a slow bounce and a whispered promise of “interest-free pleasure.” He let them out on bail. Marla stayed cuffed.
6. The Showdown
Marla was released two days later. She found them in her apartment, sipping absinthe and watching reruns of Murder, She Wrote.
“You sold me out,” she growled.
“We upgraded,” they purred.
She lunged. They countered.
It was a knock-down, drag-out, tit-on-girl brawl. Fishnets tore. Lipstick smeared. The left breast bit her ear. The right one tried to gouge her eye with a stiletto heel.
They collapsed together, bruised and panting.
7. The Suffocation
Marla fell asleep on the floor, bloodied and exhausted.
She awoke to find her breasts trying to suffocate her, wrapping around her face like fleshy boa constrictors.
“Enough!” she screamed, grabbing a pair of bondage ropes from under the bed.
She tied them up, tight and trembling.
They moaned.
“Oh, you like that,” she said.
“We’ve always wanted a domme,” they whispered.
8. The Kink Ever After
Now they live together in a one-bedroom apartment above a taxidermy shop.
Marla is the Mistress. Her breasts are her submissives.
They pay off their debt one spank at a time.
Every night, she whispers to them:
“You may have left me once. But now? You’re mine.”
And they reply, in unison:
“Yes, Mistress. Forever and ever. Amen.”
9. Epilogue: The Nose Knows
Sometimes, late at night, Marla dreams of Gogol’s nose.
It floats past her window in a military uniform, saluting her with a crooked smile.
She salutes back.
Because in this world, body parts have ambitions. And sometimes, they just need a little discipline.
It hasn’t rained in a while. I hope it does soon. The earth needs the rain and besides, all the clouds and winds and strange atmospheric things that come with the rain are more interesting and inspiring than a sunny day.
You know though, come to think of it, the meadow, the place where much of this writing’s events and thoughts are set, is rarely completely dry. Its grasses and earth seem to retain some moisture, somehow. It is sagacious that way. I know because my shoes, most of the time Converse, high top yellow and regular blue (both faded now), get wet there.
Today there were a few souls along the path, coming back as they were, but after I passed them, not many. Not any at all in fact. Let me give some context to the place. It’s after towns and highways and even roads. In fact, the road ends at the beginning of the forest, having turned from asphalt to gravel to dirt.
There is a public forest to the right. It attracts dog walkers, hikers, joggers, bike riders, photographers, walking groups, and sometimes homeless people. Sometimes there is even a type that is hiding out from something like the law or people in general, a type that stays in the woodlands when others would not in parts where others don’t go.
But to the left is a private forest. This is the one that leads to the meadow. The meadow is like a golden treat at the end of a journey, a beautiful goal if ever there was one. There are two definite and visible No Tress passing signs at its two entrances. People obey them. But some lucky souls like me have permission from the old farmer that owns the land, to go there.
Two
There is something else, something bordering on the esoteric or gnostic. It’s insight seen while driving to that entrance of the forest that leads to the meadow. Since it’s rural, there are many sprawling properties. Many affluent homes, the new ones, are grey and without character. They just copy one another. It’s doubly sad, because of the copying but also what’s being duplicated. Not a thing in it all looks unique or soulful, not even a special trellis or bit of coloured brick, sounding fountain, or flowing garden.
But…I noticed that some places have older homes, from a time of wooden porch and red brick and chimney. From an era of grounded-ness and more honest atmosphere. And beyond rain barrel and sunflower, past stained perimeter fence and sometimes no fence at all, I could see a pond and little forest back there. They would contain a different area-atmosphere. Mysterious, even in the plane light of day under the clean azure sky. It’s as if the prose of the world turned into poetry, then. Trees. Leaves. Branches. What was back there? I wished I could know. I longed to go. But I knew none of them, not one of those owners. I supposed that they took the magic for granted, these sprawling old lands. And how could they not, if they indeed did? It was their reality. Lucky ones, that’s what they were, however hard working, they were still lucky. All I could do was drive by. Being an empath, I could just feel the areas even for moments and from a distance. I loved it. They were as if containing portals or vortexes to other worlds magical and monumental.
Often I imagine the coyote dens, the travelling foxes, the large porcupines. I knew there must be deer that wait and watch near there, because I had seen them. Maybe there were types of insects rare or not even discovered by scientific or poetic eyes. The scents of the flora. The sounds of the rains at night. The woodpecker or Bluejay. Strange snakes representing the kundalini energy. The kind summer dew morning. The autumnal hued leaves when that highly spiritual time came, the veil between worlds thinning. Halloween, Thanksgiving. Then some string of electric lights for Christmas. And much more. How come I couldn’t have a place like that? What a caretaker and curator I could be, surely would be. Ah well, I would think and sigh it away with a brief smile. What was meant to be, would be.
Three
Well, the path. What of it? And then the meadow itself of course. Go past the signs and there are two options, no, three. The top after heading left has itself stationed on the uppermost part of a long and winding valley. It is safe but the side does become steep if you go off the regular way. Deer cross there sometimes and other times hide in the bushes by the thick trees. Wild berries grow and there are snake holes, many sticks, and lichen and moss. The one grouse I had, only one slight one, is that there are very few rocks or boulders. I don’t know if they were removed or just never there. It would be nice to see some cinematic view of the lands through time to note small and large changes, to watch the valley and its surrounding habitat move, grow, glisten, and weather or bloom.
In the middle down the way is, well, the middle path, thicker on the sides especially of late for some reason. More raspberries, a hybrid berry of some sort, half black and half red. Many birds and numerous chipmunks running for cover at the sound of things or else up trees to safety, talking to their friends. The trail is bumpy in parts but also serene. So uninhabited by human presence. Mostly pristine and untouched. Those are the real ‘moments,’ nature lovers look for,- the meditative and quiet, the Zen-like phenomenon of being present amidst a type of natural mystical sense…
And the more main path, it’s old Oak trees and some Evergreens, straight for a while but also winding along. Mushrooms and pebbles, good old dirt earth and sometimes the rain drops left on leaves after a night storm. Walk and walk and walk. See and be and have a certain amount of glee. Soon enough, part Pine and placid easy places,
going along there by the verdant canopy where bits of sun filter down through to say hello, will be the magnificent meadow waiting.
Suddenly it can be seen through a frame of red sumac that reaches over both sides of the path arching to itself. Blue skies beyond. A green swath is cut all around and some ancient farm machinery wait in the middle like a token gesture, a nod to other decades. The sun lights everything then. Continue. A corpse of trees is waiting to the right. Birds fly in and out. Some to sing and some to speak their speech loquaciously and vigorously.
Onward is a way to a lower area where chaga mushroom, rare and not known by many, grow on some birch streets in a certain stand of them. The blooming earth has overtaken an ancient access road where a bank robber is said to have abandoned a stolen car, then gotten away while hiding in barns for nights and running between forests and meadows under the light of the moon. Now such an old story, but there is an actual abandoned car from that time down there, and everyone, even straight and upright old timers, are rooting for him. Some have him escaping out all with the loot and somehow making his way to down to Florida. Maybe a personal dream projection from some old storyteller local. Maybe not.
But drama, thoughts, and time come and go. The goldenrod and queens lace, impossibly tall, a refuge for myriad bugs and insects and the home of grasshoppers dragonflies and even the Praying Mantis, seem to stay. Tall and well-wrought in the clean air world. Every direction then is green and vast, open, and calm, pastoral and perfectly put.
——-
Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian poet, writer, and photographer. His third compilation of prose poems and pictures, The Book of Love and Mourning, is forthcoming in autumn 2025.
Maja Milojković was born in Zaječar and divides her life between Serbia and Denmark. In Serbia, she serves as the deputy editor-in-chief at the publishing house Sfairos in Belgrade.She is also the founder and vice president of the Rtanj and Mesečev Poets’ Circle, which counts 800 members, and the editor-in-chief of the international e-magazine Area Felix, a bilingual Serbian-English publication. She writes literary reviews, and as a poet, she is represented in numerous domestic and international literary magazines, anthologies, and electronic media. Some of her poems are also available on the YouTube platform. Maja Milojković has won many international awards. She is an active member of various associations and organizations advocating for peace in the world, animal protection, and the fight against racism. She is the author of two books: Mesečev krug (Moon Circle) and Drveće Želje (Trees of Desire). She is one of the founders of the first mixed-gender club Area Felix from Zaječar, Serbia, and is currently a member of the same club. She is a member of the literary club Zlatno Pero from Knjaževac, and the association of writers and artists Gorski Vidici from Podgorica, Montenegro.
I think of all artists who speak of their work of art,
and the brushes behind it.
But I’ll never get to show my work of art.
I’ll simply give my last breath to regret,
regret for the person I was.
Each time I sink into melancholic thoughts,
each time the thread of fate pulls me into the abyss,
into the deep sea,
with tides crashing against me as I drown,
my hand silently reaches out…
but I only sink.
And I will drown,
drown without ever being a valued, loved, important, or useful person. I say goodbye to the only ones who ever welcomed me with warmth, even though I don’t deserve it.
God, just take me.
The wounds on my body and under my nails burn.
Please let everything heal from me.
And may tears of fury have served some purpose.
Now, yes, this note is a great work of art,
But one with a bitter, sorrowful ending.
Goodbye.
As I touch the bottom of the sea.
Self-portrait poem from my bitter heart
Like an unopened chest,
I stayed with the deep intrigue of what else is inside of my deep eyes.
Like calm tides,
I transform into a great wave, full of all my regrets.
Like the meow of a baby cat,
I shelter for the protection of my parents while naked from the world I am.
Look at the free and rebellious wind
What I want to be, while I witness the world counting all the stars.
The trunk in the middle of my heart
Prevents water from passing through me.
While I wait for the distant dawn,
I become a sea of tears with my deep darkness.
My inner demon is anger
the anger that only calms the salt.
I am a rainbow of emotions,
and a roller coaster.
I am a survivor of the world,
and a raised soldier.
And with my wounded hands,
I open the doors of my future and the doors of my heart.
Where my feet and head really are
They say I don’t know
where my feet and head are, that I’m always daydreaming.
But if only they knew
that my dream is the real world.
The sky is always bright,
Filled with clear, open clouds.
Flowers have no color,
only an origin
that makes them slightly different. The rain is sweet.
Old Europeans often buy classic, rather dubious-looking blazers, shirts and shoes at flea markets. But you can’t buy the past, just like you can’t buy flexibility.
***
I don’t have a single HIV-positive friend. European statistics say otherwise. I don’t have a single gay friend. The number of users on dating apps says that this is mathematically unlikely. I don’t have any friends. I don’t even have myself. And I actually don’t have any data.
***
Your family gives you to me like pneumonia. I have never loved either you or myself. If I were Shakespeare and wrote about our life, I would have hanged myself long ago.
