seastar & hyacinthia by Sarah Butkovic

Sarah Butkovic

Sarah Butkovic is actively looking to put her name out into the creative writing world. She received her MA in English from Loyola University Chicago in 2023, her BA from Dominican University in 2021, and has been published across various zines, literary magazines, and local Chicago papers. Ray Bradbury is her most frequent literary muse as well as her favorite author.

seastar & hyacinthia

loving it all and missing you despite the fact that you only live four miles away. if i really wanted to, i could bound up those concrete porch stairs that spent years getting to know the bottoms of my shoes and knock on your squeaky screen door. the familiar smell of anise and the claustrophobic sound of caged bird wings would greet me.

is your home still guarded by that solipsistic gnome? all alone and unnamed, i remember feeling sorry for him even as a child. he was decrepit, moss splattered across his stone face like acne, his giant red hat bleached pink from the sun by the time we were in fifth grade. 

in my head a surprise visit would end in warm hugs and girlish laughter that sputters out of our mouths like fine glitter. this would happen because you still intrinsically know me, even if you’re not aware of it — because i still read mystery novels with bold female protagonists and like it when people trace intricate patterns on my back with their fingernails.

and even if born to die is no longer your favorite album and poltergeist doesn’t scare you anymore, i can take solace in the fact that for almost ten years it was easy for me make a list of things you loved intimately: three’s company, charlie’s angels, unused school supplies and the sticky, cloying perfume of summer. little house on the prairie, books with yellowed pages and accordion spines, the way swimming at night feels like drowning in layers of navy blue blankets. your mother, your dog, my family’s trailer in indiana.

but despite the fact that we huddled under the cobwebbed planks of my deck and slit our thumbs with sharp pieces of dollhouse plastic, i fear our meek attempt at a blood pact may not be enough anymore. i worry too much time has passed, and i fret over hypotheticals that, in all likelihood, will never come to fruition. because it’s been over a decade since we spent the night on plush bedroom carpet playing with each other’s hair, and now that yours is dyed purple and mine is cut into a bob, it just wouldn’t be the same.

i’m simultaneously in love with and afraid of the past; nostalgia is an abusive partner who can’t quite convince me to pack my bags and leave because reality is the unforgiving world awaiting me on the other side. even after the plum and apricot bruises fade i’d rather sit here and pretend that seeing you again would bridge the gap between 2013 and today, right now, this incredibly protracted moment. it’s a more peaceful death than walking up your porch stairs to find the gnome destroyed and the living room empty. was it romeo or juliet who drank the poison in the end? 

if you asked me to play mermaids in the pool, i still would.