By Paige Sullivan
Featured Art: “Unclear Path” by Hannah Hatley

is practicing how to quit.   
She skims racks, holds sweaters up   
to her chest, imagines other lives.   
She walks around testing the fit,   
wondering what a morning feels like  
inside, no dew dampening her socks,  
without the tick of each data point   
when a call or a cry or a song  
is heard. She tells the podcast host,  
This was everything I ever wanted.  
It was always me and the birds. I don’t  
know who I am without this dream.   

I listen to her story on the way home.   
Every now and then, a dream comes  
unbidden. An old boyfriend sits  
and watches me sweep a comb   
through my hair. Or it’s Christmas  
and we watch his son watch the TV,  
where Snoopy and the children  
are a ribbon skating across the ice.   
Soft halogen light. People gazing.  
Who am I if I change my dream?   
she asks, stepping onto the elevator  
to keep company with the perfume   
hanging lightly in the air, the quiet  
double of someone she just missed.   

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Paige Sullivan is a communications professional living in Atlanta. A graduate of the creative writing programs at Agnes Scott College and Georgia State University, her work has appeared in The Journal, Cherry Tree, BOOTH, The Florida Review, and others. She is also a beginner ballet dancer and volunteers with an animal welfare nonprofit.