A.N. Higgins

I wasn’t afraid of the trust falls

but I hated passing the hula hoop from sweaty

arm to sweaty arm, untying

the human knot. All I wanted was to spill

sugar on the tables with her, drink coffee

because it made us feel grown up. We had all

the time our hands could hold

in our dorm rooms like bubbles of light

floating above the rows of houses

Audrey Hepburn peeling off

my wall. I slept through all the fire

alarms. I was drunk. Across the quad

girls gleamed and shone. We skipped

formal dinner, never wore the black

gowns, softened like butter

from plastic cafeteria trays

of wet noodles, so tomato sauce

sweet. On the cover of the paperback

Oxford World Classic, St. Augustine

sat by an orange tree, red-robed

covering his face with his palms

and I loved him because he loved

his friends so much it burned him

up, left him radiant, resplendent, purified

kindled and seized. We drove

to Lunenberg in the low fog just to eat

blackberry scones and smoked

salmon, iced cinnamon buns, I melted

asleep in her bed. Thought we could

hold the ocean in our own two hands.

A. N. Higgins is a queer writer living on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. She is an MFA Candidate at the University of British Columbia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in CV2, Pandemic Publications, untethered, The Maynard, Lida Literary Magazine, and The Anti-Languorous Project.

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