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Celine Shanosky works in nonprofit consulting and currently lives in the local area. She has a BA in English and Public Health Studies from Johns Hopkins University and is from Baltimore, Maryland.

CANNOT VALIDATE

The parking ticket machine
is broken. I say this to the man
behind me but he tucks his arm
around my waist as he taps the key pad
and I walk away because I do not want to know
what happens next. I go back to
Place des Vosges where the
buildings rose like teeth
at the edge of a universe and a man
careened into the grass and splayed
himself to me like a dog or
a siren in her most seductive pose:
“Look girl: A rainbow.”
The sky was so perfect in its
refutation of him that I had no choice
but belief, still he offered “Use my eyes:”
smudging everything with sepia and
expectation. When I gave them back
I placed them in his palm
and he looked at me horrified
that I had deigned to touch him.

I am sleeping
when the child finds me:
 “Feet!”
he says,
his hands
on my feet.

— Celine Shanosky

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