A Man’s Guide to Writing a Love Letter in Twenty Easy-to-Follow Steps by Devin Walsh

1. Fall in love – swiftly and uncontrollably, if you can manage it.

2. Acquire pen and paper, or pencil and paper, or crayons…really any kind of manual writing utensil will do. A computer is not an acceptable substitution.

3. Sequester yourself. A silent room is preferred. If a cat is present, allow yourself to indulge the little critter’s sybaritic wants. This will help facilitate the kind of affection needed to write love letter. Other pets should mostly be ignored.

4. Destroy anything and everything that distracts you from the surging tidal waves of love you feel for the intended recipient of love letter. If setting fire to things, exercise caution. A large and sturdy garbage bag will generally suffice.

5. Contemplate the meaning of human existence. Try and conceive of a world in which your love didn’t occur. Probe the depths of suffering this image entails. Ascend refreshed, enthused, spirited and grateful.

6. Consider your previous relationships. Quell the uneasy feelings that arise upon remembering that you have been in love before, and look how that turned out.

7. Terminate consideration of past relationships. Avoid looking in any mirrors. Wipe sweaty palms on something – but not on the cat. If you wipe sweaty palms on cat you’ll get hair all over them.

8. Take a deep breath. Apply pen/pencil/dry-erase marker/Sharpie/crayon/own-lacerated-finger-bleeding-your-rapidly-pumping-heart’s-overflow/other-servicable-manual-writing-utensil to paper.

9. Execute love letter opening. Resist urge to use Romantic Poet shorthand (i.e., “O” instead of “Oh;” “ere,” “ore,” etc.) in introduction. “Dear [Insert Lover’s Name Here] will suffice.

10. Disregard minor heart palpitation or murmur. It’s nothing to worry about. You’re in love, remember?

11. Commence first paragraph. Do not fret over how corny it sounds, unless it sounds too corny, in which case you should start over. In this event, wad-up entire page and start fresh. Tabula rasa.

12. Remind yourself that you too began life as a tabula rossa (or, blank slate,) and that you like very much – love very much – the way your slate looks now that your lover has been added to it. Begin writing again with renewed confidence. Refrain from using too many foreign-language terms.

13. Do not write “yonder,” “swells,” “aching,” or “piston.” Avoid any and all plagiarizing of Shakespeare. Do not use the word “tempestuous.”

14. Get into a rhythm. It may help to put on some music, but this is a last-case, worst-case scenario. You need your mind clear.

15. Adhere to A.P. style rules of grammar, but refer, if necessary, to Strunk and White. Remember this isn’t a research paper or scholarly article. You don’t need footnotes and outside sources. MLA is out the window. Calm yourself. Have a beer or some nice cold iced water. Stop using so many fucking adverbs. People don’t actually think it’s funny when you describe yourself as “totally madverb.” They’re just laughing because you are. It’s always been like that.

16. Don’t worry that maybe your lover doesn’t think you as witty as you thought she did. It isn’t your sense of humor she’s in love with. It’s you. Recommence writing.

17. Banish from your thoughts the suddenly proliferating herd of concerns over why exactly she’s in love with you – a drift of worry that leads directly to the even more terrible question: Is she in love with you at all? Put on some music. Step outside and light a cigarette (non-smokers advised to light something else, exercising caution). Don’t get too worked up about it. It’s only a stupid letter.

18. Contrive ways to test your lover’s quote-unquote love for you. Put her on trial in your mind and see how she responds. Silence your mental objectors. Wield a large and sturdy gavel and use it liberally if her testimony gets out of hand. Call her “a harlot” or “a Philistine.” It is right and proper that you should know for sure before doing something as foolish as spilling your heart all over a lousy piece of paper. Give her a call.

19. Be guarded, like a dog kicked by its master. Be oblique, avoid direct answers. When she asks how you are, say “Oh, you know…” or, with an edge in your voice, “I’m fine.” When she pursues this line of questioning, change the subject briskly, as if the very last thing you want in the world is to discuss your feelings. Affect indignation at her weak and mothering tendencies. Insist that you aren’t “a baby,” and that you “don’t need coddling.” Laugh haughtily at her bewilderment. Who does she think she is? Who does she think you are? Who does she think she’s fooling? Terminate the relationship and destroy everything in your dwelling that reminds you of her. If setting fires, exercise caution.

20. Refer back to step one. But don’t worry. Everything will be fine.

Devin Walsh is a student at the University of North Carolina at Asheville and creator and editor-in-chief of a literary magazine called METABOLISM.

Sensophrenia by Christina N. Ayers

After staring at the sun for only an hour, the center of his pupils started to grow, to eat away his eyes. Liquid eyeball dripped down his face, hot and sticky.

I don’t have to see anymore, he thought.

With no eyes to accompany his deaf ears and mute voice, his journey was complete.

"Now I can concentrate." he mouthed silently. Fumbling his way to the desk, he found his pen. Everything came flooding out onto the page, just as he knew it would. Bracing the slender pen over the page, darting back and forth, his face erupted in a gleeful smile. Between the gaps in his teeth there was only the dim empty cave of his tongueless mouth.

His forgot his world of pain.

The writing on the page, small and perfect, dipped slightly in a diagonal slant across the unlined paper. For hours, he sat at his desk with the feverish pen pouring out a steady stream. Even when his hands began to tremble with exhaustion and he grew parched with thirst, he did not budge from his chair. When he felt the blinding sun of noon pressing against his face like an iron, he rose.

He made his way to the bathroom, walking until his shin made contact with the edge of the tub. He aimed at the drain and urinated. I need to get some air, he thought, as the strong smell of piss wafted toward him.

Feeling his way to the sink, he rinsed his hands, then scooped up several palms of tepid water to ease his screaming throat. He straightened and faced the mirror and ran a hand across it. His smile returned. It is such a fucking chore, he thought, but at least I don’t have to see it anymore.

He had to escape the empty rooms of the tiny, airless house. All the windows were painted shut and covered in black spray paint. All except the window in his office, the secret place where he did special things. Already, every sensation of touch had become exquisitely intense. The texture of the grass tickled against his ankles. The eye-melting sun slapped against his skin like warm oil.

Outside, the ends of his fingers sang as they contacted prickling bark. Hands cramped with writing, but already reading the universe in a kind of braille. His skin absorbed every stimulation. The wind floated through his pore. The tempo of his heart began to increase with his awareness of its rhythm, and his skin throbbed in unison with it.

It is too much, said his tortured mind.

Collapsing, he leaned against the grooves of the tree trunk. Days passed and still he sat there. Unnoticed, a spider crawled into his left eye socket, leaving a webby clump. A silvery stream of drool dangled from the corner of his mouth.

Herman tried to grasp his way out of catatonia, shaking his head vigorously to rid it of cobwebs. Weak with hunger and dehydration, Herman doubted his ability to rise. Damning the absence of his paper and pen, idea after idea swept through the tired circuitry of his brain. Cracked and dry, his soundless lips worked incessantly. The hands that rested on his lap were bloody and raw, anything to dull the sensations. Behind him the oak stood like a sentinel, painted with blood.

It is useless. How can I be a pure vessel when I am preoccupied by my own distractions, he thought.

Herman drifted once more toward oblivion, toward the shadowy places where his mind still wandered. He was writing a story in there, a story for the world. No darkness or tragedy took hold there, none of his own amplified sensations. Instead there were perfectly formed women with flawless skin and brown eyes that never looked directly into the sun.

Somewhere, closer to the surface, the characters in his head have clearly defined, melodious voices. They speak in tender phrases, such as: "I love you too." "Spring is near." "Come over here and kiss me." Muddling up and down in the swampy depths of his head, he can almost hear the nearly forgotten tones of his own voice again. It speaks to him with one familiar sentence.

"It is too much."

Foggy and unraveled, the web slips down his cheek, a dry, cotton-candy tear. Weeping cotton, soft and clingy as Velcro against his stubbled face.

I’ll have to try again. Perhaps this way.

The chain dangling from the lowest tree branch chafes his wounded hands. Rust flakes off as he grabs on. His feet work against the trunk of the tree spastically as he pulls his weakened body up with all the power left in his atrophied limbs. An eternity ticks by, measured by the burning breaths he takes as he climbs. Then for a brief moment, at the highest branch that will support his meager weight, he feels the empty space behind his body. Suspended for only a millisecond, a champion diver against a backdrop of brilliant sky, he lets go.

Everything in that moment of release is unseen, unheard, and unfelt by Herman; the sound of his spine as it snaps, the sight of the painfully blue sky, the terrified bird that brushes inches above the top of his head. There is only a cloudy sense of pure thought descending upon Herman’s crumpled body. Finally, no distractions, not even the redundant ramblings of his own mind. The narrator within his skull is free to tell someone else’s story now.

Still, there is something nagging at the back of his mind. Perhaps something left undone.

How could I have forgotten?

He smells something. It is the scent of grilling meat from several doors down. It pulls him back, flailing, into the realms of consciousness. The aroma of charred cow brings an avalanche of memory. A mental filmstrip of barbecues, picnics, and bloody T-bone steaks.

Slowly the sharply defined characters dissolve, and leave Herman alone and paralyzed. To remember and to remember and to remember.

Bio: I am a reformed gypsy who has finally found a home. I moved to Asheville two years ago, and occupy my time as a student, aspiring social worker, writer and free spirit.

Visions of Rita Hayworth by Chall Gray

When I was living in Endiscott, I befriended the Head Engineer of the city. His name was Abel. Abel was a fey, a visionary of the first order.

He had the idea to rearrange all of the electric poles of Endiscott to form a famous picture of Rita Hayworth (the one where she’s wearing a black evening dress and has her chin resting on the fist of her right hand as she stares off into the distance). It would be seen only by airplane pilots.

“This will make us into the premier vacation destination for pilots,” he boasted to me. I told him Marilyn Monroe might have more appeal. He didn’t listen. His predilection for Rita Hayworth bordered on unhealthy if you ask me. He wanted the whole thing to be a surprise for the mayor; he seemed to be under the impression that the mayor shared his ardor for Rita Hayworth.

Abel assembled a massive team of workers from all over, paying them exorbitant premiums, the result being that the work was to be completed in one night. They began their work shortly after dark on that fateful evening, each motion tinged with a surreptitious fervor, every worker equipped with the knowledge that it had to be finished before daybreak, none of them aware what the purpose of the project was.

The poles were extremely concentrated in some places, such as her hair or dress--only three of four feet apart in many cases. The work continued through the night and, at just after 4:30 a.m., the construction supervisor brought the news that they had finished. He was given his remuneration and in turn took leave of us.

Abel sat back in his chair. “You did it,” I said. “Sit back and envision it.” He leaned back even further, closing his eyes. A smile came upon his face. I noticed an erection forming. I became a little uncomfortable. I mean we weren’t that type of friends or anything. His face contorted with his climax. I rose, about to say that I would come back by later. He screamed in ecstasy. He fell back, out of the chair and onto the floor, now motionless.

I went over to him; sure enough, he was dead.

A victim of the joy that kills. In the morning the entire city was in upheaval, the mayor speaking of the misappropriation of some $14 million dollars, the possibly suspicious death of the Head Engineer, etc., etc. I left town before lunch. Sometimes I still wonder if they saw Rita, and if the airline pilots ever ended up flocking to Endiscott.

Chall Gray is a student, writer, and sexy young stud, living in Asheville, N.C. If he were writing this bio, no doubt, he would come up with several unique, multi-syllabic words to describe himself. But he's not writing this bio. AF is.

Chall needs to learn that, in the computer age, sentences are separated by only ONE space. Otherwise, he's remarkable, in that I called him yesterday asking for a submission, and I received TWO last night from him. Two submissions, one space.

The Cabin

Taking the stairs two at a time, they'd been silent. Silent, as they faced one another in the dusty cabin bedroom. No words, but unspoken - would there be a turning back?

Facing her, holding hands, he pulled her to him as he sat on the bed's edge. She stood still, inside the space of his legs spread wide, but he could feel her entire body vibrate. Their eyes adjusted to the inky darkness as the silvery September moon struck through the window.

Both knew this time would come. Wasn't it the reason the girls had set up the dinner in the first place? The girls, best friends forever, ready to celebrate their return-to-school-year reunion, had set the date. What better way for two best girlfriends to revel than with two boys in a rustic hideaway?

Rustic - a euphemism for no working toilet and no electricity, but that was nothing a walk in the woods and a few candles couldn't cure. The foursome served up cheap cabernet from a carafe and feasted on spaghetti and crusty bread, all the while telling stories of friendship. Ribbing. Flirting. Somebody rolled a joint. All the while, they laughed the laugh of unencumbered youth. It was a heady night.

Conversation quieting and dishes forgotten, they paired up and moved away.

Upstairs, the two held back, each waiting for the other. Not a word was spoken. Their gaze, unbroken. Each knew the other's thoughts, complete. This is our time.

He released her interlocked fingers and moved his palms to her hips, working each index finger through fabric and beneath the waistband of her panties. He circled the line to the small of her back, then frontward. He undid the button of her jeans, already loose on her slender frame.

As he pushed the faded denim down, he leaned to the left and his head brushed her thigh, casual as mountain laurel on a high pass. She swayed, stepped out, then back inside the V of his legs.

His eyes back in hers, he forced himself to move slowly down her front, releasing each catch of the cotton blouse deliberately. After the last button slid through the last thin slit, she dropped her shoulders and the shirt fell away.

She felt him on her stomach. Their scents mixed, with the cabernet breath hanging in the air, heavy as honeysuckle. She moved ever closer, then pulled the edges of his T-shirt up, over and off. Taking his face in her hands, she paused, then moved to caress his smooth, broad shoulders. I could lean on these shoulders, she thought.

She crouched down to his waist and felt, her fingers those of a careful weaver undoing a sacred knot. She slipped the belt away. Up again, her hair fell into his face, remindful of the gentlest waterfall.

He couldn't hold back any longer. He clutched her to him, falling back onto last winter's old quilt, pillowy and frayed. Nose to nape. Lashes to lips. They kissed.

She strained away from the embrace as the bedsprings creaked. They listened, heard a rhythmic thumping, and laughed. She fell into him, and they rolled. The mattress complained again, loudly.

There would be no turning back.

by Ash