By Natalie Schriefer
I remember not the paperwork
mounding on my desk, staff
stretched thin with the secretary
away, but the background
on my computer—the smile
of my sapphic fictional crush,
a screenshot from a movie,
which I saw whenever I closed
out a window, a task—the soft
stillness of her image as unreal
as the promise of new hires
but appeasing just the same.
I didn’t have a name for it then,
how a glimpse of her nose,
her cheekbones softened the frenzy,
but I know it now as comfort.
Truth. Acceptance. Joy.
Natalie Schriefer is a freelance writer and academic editor living in the northeastern U.S.