I Do Not Want to Live Without You by Cathy Ulrich

The motel with its raggedy bedspread and tottering TV that only plays 17 channels, two of them Spanish, and a swimming pool near the parking lot all concrete deck and swim at your own risk and we are swimming at our own risk, broken pool heater and all, chattering teeth when we come out onto the sun-warmed ground, and maybe later there will be consequences and police cars, maybe later it will be like our parents said, but now it is us dangling our feet in cold water and sucking on dripping grape popsicles we got from the little store down the street and our shoulders going brown, brown, brown in the sun and the sound of the TV through our open motel window, No quiero vivir sin ti.

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CATHY ULRICH — Cathy actually likes the cherry popsicles the best. Her work has been published in various journals, including Alien Lit Mag, Lumiere Review and Invisible City.

Art by TCLARE — TClare is a greater New York area artist who currently is creating works that express and celebrate the healing energy of the natural world around us. Tee grew up in New York and spent half his life in the San Francisco Bay Area where he taught “Expressing Grief through Art and Music” workshops. When he isn’t creating art or listening to music, he can be found wandering the deserted marshes and bogs of the Northfork, East End of Long Island, along with his faithful black lab, Karma. More of his work can be found at www.tclare.com.