Sharing a super-single-dorm-bed after the club by Kinjal Johri

Tomorrow we will attend the belated funerals of our youth in dress pants and collared blouses. We will give our apologies for the loss and sit in stifling silence and then go home and tell our partners of the people we caught up with, where they work now, how they are, how we knew each other, how we spent our time. We will censor most of it.

But today we are in spaghetti-strap tank-tops and the sun is beginning to rise and we haven’t had a glimpse into mourning. We are addled from the corner-store vodka and the aching soles of our feet. The bed smells of skin and salt. We talk with our eyes closed and our legs intertwined, the fluorescence of the dance floor still strobing under our eyelids. We don’t know yet that this is happiness. Or that it will never come back to us this way.

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KINJAL JOHRI — Kinjal lives in Singapore. Read more at kinjaljohri.carrd.co.

Art by MICHELLE KOUBEK — Michelle is a visual artist specializing in charcoal and digital art. She enjoys combining the real with the abstract, and her favorite pieces to view or create are ones that evoke strong emotions. She is new as a professional artist, but some of her illustrations will be in the next Dark Lane anthology. Outside of visual art, she writes poems which range from the thoughtful to the silly.