Lena (Fiction, June 2017)

She is the type of girl who scratches her breast as soon as it begins to itch, and this is why Kinsey likes her. There are other little things that she does, too – like sometimes she arrives late to class and crosses through the front of the auditorium even though there are open seats in the back. Each time, the professor lowers his presentation remote, freezing the lecture in time to smile and say “Hello, Lena” as she walks by. She always smiles back, and it always seems as if they met one day after class to come up with this routine. There is also the way she fails to shrink in embarrassment when she asks the professor to repeat an explanation, and the seemingly perfect manner in which her vertebrae stack up on top of one another – but he figures that the breast scratching thing sums her up best. 

Continued in Escapism Literary Magazine, Issue 2.