SmokeLong Quarterly

You use the format of a hypothetical text or email for the entirety of the piece. What drew you to this structure?

At its heart, this story is about grappling with intrusive thoughts of guilt and shame. I struggle with intrusive thoughts on a day-to-day basis that can often lead to obsessive behavior, and they remind me a lot of the email notifications I get on my phone. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing; the emails are always there, popping up at the top of my phone, much the same way those intrusive thoughts do. I think of the “hellos” at the start of each vignette operating this way. Each one is a reminder of the first “hello” email (the refrain) sent by her affair partner and the shame and guilt she feels over this reminder inserting itself into her life as she struggles with the loss of a much-hoped-for pregnancy. After that, the repetition of three refrains and three vignettes was a way to impose structure on the story and stay within the word-count limitations of a flash piece.

There’s poetic repetition throughout, but the language is otherwise straightforward, narrative, and raw—except for the section about monarchs. What led you to this moment, where the narrator juxtaposes the idea of being single with the short lives of monarchs?

I’m so glad you brought this up! Don’t tell the other lines in my story, but the monarch line is my favorite. I’ve spent a long time pondering the fleeting nature of a fantasy. I also currently live in Oklahoma near I-35, which is known as the “Monarch Highway,” so I’ve been thinking a lot about monarchs too. When I was researching monarchs in my free time (I want some milkweed in my yard!) I came across their lifespan, and the metaphor just felt right. Monarchs only live about four to five weeks, yet still they live. I wanted to convey that sense of momentary freedom that the narrator experiences in her fantasy. I can’t say what monarchs do or don’t know, but the narrator knows this fantasy will end; yet still, for a moment, she lives.

Several lines do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to revealing details about the narrator, such as “I tell her my sins, try to decide what I’ll do when my daughter learns I know how to pick a lock, lift a window, and lie,” and “She frowns, checks the computer, and asks if I’m still taking my medication.” I’m curious, were there longer drafts of this piece? How did you decide which details to include or omit in such a tight space?

There were longer drafts, though not too much longer than the piece stands now. In one draft, I had a vignette about the narrator vacationing in Florida with her husband, but I cut it because it felt like a story for another time. But it really came down to asking myself over and over again what this piece was trying to accomplish. About the only thing I’m detail-oriented with in my life is my writing, so I spent an ungodly amount of time tinkering with the small parts. There were a lot of questions: How do I demonstrate the depth of her obsession? How do I convey her family dynamics? How do I establish her affair? If it didn’t lead back to my end goal, it was cut. It ended up being a ton of line-level reworking rather than reworking the piece as a whole.

The ending is swift and seems to turn away from much of what came before. The final sentence moves the narrator (and the reader) out of the piece, both literally and figuratively. How did you arrive at this ending, and how does that turn function within the larger piece?

Oh man. I really struggle with writing endings because, ever the idealist, I tend to want everything wrapped in a nice shiny bow. And while sometimes a story can call for something like that, it didn’t feel right for this story. I wanted to challenge myself to end on a line that left ambiguity and maybe a little dissatisfaction while still feeling the story was complete. The truth is, the relief generated by acts like confessing sins is often temporary. I think, in the end, the narrator realizes this, and in the last two vignettes, she refrains from telling people about her affair. Still though, she waffles in the last one, and the only thing that keeps her from engaging in the act is this inescapable outside force of her plane boarding. However, it brings her (and hopefully the reader) no sense of relief.

What is the most memorable piece of writing advice you’ve received in the last six months?

This is actually the hardest question for me to answer because I am currently in a PhD program, so I am constantly receiving great writing advice. What a cop-out, right? But if I had to narrow it down, I think it would be the constant reminder to write what you want and how you want. Even though I’m a poet at heart, I spend a lot of time in the liminal space of hybrid writing, which can get a little funky, and sometimes I wonder if anyone will care to read it. I tend to get in my own head a lot about this kind of thing, and it all too often leads to me staring at a blank page for hours on end. At a recent conference, I spoke briefly with Diana Khoi Nguyen, whose work has been highly influential to my own, and shared my struggle with her. I’ll never forget her response. She smiled and said, Just do it anyway. Now, whenever I’m feeling nervous about my writing, I hear her in the back of my head reminding me to just do it, anyway.