5/17 by Mila Pantelides Sola

Late spring and a strangers camera: everything sticky and hot and sparking. The picture you took of me in the basement that night. I heard the lens shutter before I saw a flash, a thunderstorm, holding my breath and counting the seconds between the sound of your voice and your lips moving and how I tried to kiss you before I could change my mind but missed your mouth by a few inches. How we never spoke of it again, but when I left you pretended to be asleep and I pretended not to notice. How when I got home I heaved sobs against the shower tile and pictured you looking in the rearview mirror, wiping lip gloss off your cheek.

Mila Pantelides Sola is a seventeen-year-old writer from Boston, Massachusetts. She loves writing poetry, flash fiction, and short stories. She has previously had her work published in DePaul’s Bluebook and her school’s art and literary magazine, Mirage.

Photo by Jos Peñarán at Pexels