Jacqueline Young is a working writer living in Orange County, CA, having just graduated from San Francisco State University with a Bachelors in Creative Writing.

snip (September 21, 2009. Issue 9.)

my boyfriend wears a hairtie round his pale left wrist; a blackelasticthing with mousy knots,
with sugardandruff—dry curls and dark brown hair wrapped about like dirty pendants—a charm bracelet
artsncraft kindergartenfuck

remember the weeds? the tiny white daisies that grew in clumps underneath our thirdgrade junglegym? -
bobo-skee-aht-in-taht-in- the thin pettaled oxalis that lived vicariously along the kickball fence? we
had to prick them before the lawnmower did. or what about the long brown blades of shadowgrass
that danced marypoppins by the seesaw? -naynay-i-am-boomboomboom- the threeleafclovers that
hugged the edges of the baseballbases? remember the warts? the boogers? the smell of manure and the
clever scars we used to pick?

dandelion like gold—blowslow and wishwish to the thin white wires that floated katrillion up to god—
lucky was the girl who found the loveblossom and blew

chickenlegs and holeyshorts—he steals the hairties off my bathroom sink, ponies his tail like a pro, like
he’s been doing it for years; sometimes he wears two; sometimes he looks like an ugly donjuan with his
hair pulled back and white soap on his face—it’s too long, i tell him, your hair, it’s too long

sniptrimbuzzcut—when it was over, we found what looked like a dead raccoon lying face down in the tub,
like we skinnedit orsomething; it lay there for tendays melting vinegarbrown, and then we buried it
in my backyard by the trashcans and the weeds

remember on the playground when all the flowers were gone? and all that was left was just that big
expanse of shitbrown because we ate all the luck, plucked each goldvanilla?

remember? how it took the month of june for it to finally grow back?