Tamicah Rasmussen

She sits and watches from far away,
but close enough that she can see everything.
She watches you.
She watches you scratch your face and tuck your hair behind your ear.
She watches you close your eyes as you lean against the train window.
She begins to stare intensely,
now that she’s aware you know she’s there.
She wonders if you’re thinking about the inevitability of death
as well.
Rain taps the glass, asking to be let in
and you both look at one another
as a tear runs down your face.
She knows
you aren’t crying to imitate the rain,
but the rusty faucet in your childhood bathroom
where there are permanent blood splatters on the walls
and vomit stains on the floor.
They never came out,
no matter how hard you tried
to hide your pain,
and now you’re looking at the rain, and she knows.
She knows you would do anything for it to go away.
She knows how you clung to those sedatives to do exactly that.
She nods and smiles when you
nod back, and mouth “thank you”.
She disappears into the crowd of people.
You’ve always craved the bedtime story,
where in the end, the bad guy
finally dies, and it’s finally happened.
The nightmare is over.
Author: Tamicah Rasmussen is a twenty-three-year-old writer. She writes poetry, short stories and novels with themes varying but the one thing they mostly always all have in common, is romance. Her lifetime goal is to have her own poetry book and novel published, to travel the world and to be constantly surrounded by animals and art. When Tamicah isn’t writing, she’s reading romance and fantasy novels, or playing cosy video games with her cats being close by.
Artist: Lilian Martin is a writer, poet, and now artist based in Meanjin/Brisbane, who wants to publish their own zines one day! They used to be keen on the art thing in high-school and have slowly been trying to ignite their visual spark once again. They have begun incorporating visual elements into their writing career by designing magazines, doing illustrations, and making graphics for the QUT Literary Salon. You can find both their writing and visual work at https://linktr.ee/lilianjmartin.
Accessibility Reader: Lily Daniels
Editors: Euri Glenn & Brock Scholte