after Dylan Landis
A dog food bowl, empty of water on account of my boyfriend’s foot landing in it while playing basketball with my brother. The bowl spilled everywhere, and the floor was soaked until I cleaned it up without assistance from him or my brother.
A basketball, lying on the couch. A ball left there after hitting me in the face.
Two empty bowls of food from my favorite restaurant, Koi. One bowl, missing perfectly fried chicken surrounded by long flavorful noodles, empty despite the too-large portion. No $50 steak in his despite complaints of its imperfect tenderness. I paid for both.
A DVD of the movie Jurassic Park, placed on the coffee table in an attempt to find some sort of activity to do. The movie, his favorite.
A pair of shoes, still on his feet, even after the mention of watching a movie. Shoes that told me he had no intention of staying longer than necessary. Shoes that almost always came off the second he had the opportunity to remove them. Shoes that remained on his feet even now as he begins a round of some video game with my brother.
A sweatshirt from Coco Beach, a size too small with a coffee stain down the front, dirty, and draped over a stool. A sweatshirt he had bought me after a trip with his family. A sweatshirt not my usual style but overworn, neglected.
A vase full of flowers, slowly dying despite my efforts to keep them alive, brought to me a week prior when I had been sick with the flu. Flowers handed to me on the porch. Flowers I knew his mom had bought and begged him to give me. Roses. My favorite flowers are tulips, a fact he knew.
A painting depicting a woman, Princess Diana, tied to a throne with her eyes covered and mouth taped as a hoard of paparazzi shoots pictures through the barred windows of the room she’s in as she sits in the foreground in a spotlight she never asked for. A painting I fervently composed days before.
A phone, now lying facedown after revealing a notification not intended for my eyes. A phone, his, that usually only lights up with a message from my name. A phone that had ignited to announce a notification from Snapchat, an app I did not know he had.
Two pieces of paper, sitting next to empty bowls, titled “My Life Plan,” deriving from an assignment we had been given in our AP Literature class this morning. An assignment through which I admitted I would go to college and become a traveling author, so that I could easily be with my husband, who hoped to be a plane pilot. An assignment to which he admitted that he would be attending flight school in Florida, eventually becoming a pilot, leaving his family, including a wife and child, to stay at home away from him because he would be a “bad parent.” There was no mention of my name, even though his was written in bold letters on mine.
Maggie Kitzmiller is a sophomore at University of the Cumberlands pursuing a degree in Communication Arts with an emphasis in PR and Advertising and a degree in Marketing. She is an English minor and plans to graduate in 2026. Past her graduation, she intends to find a career in the publishing industry. Her dream is to become a creative director for the marketing team of a publishing company, advertising novels and poems to society and encouraging them to pursue the inspiration that comes from reading books.
Pensworth 