Amanda Gaines
Amanda Gaines is an Appalachian writer with a Ph.D. in creative writing from Oklahoma State University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Lit Magazine, Passages North, Cleaver, Potomac Review, Barrelhouse, Fugue, december, Witness, Southern Humanities Review, Willow Springs, Yemassee, Redivider, New Orleans Review, Southeast Review, The Southern Review, Juked, Rattle, Pleiades, SmokeLong Quarterly, Ninth Letter, and Superstition Review. She's currently a Teaching Assistant Professor and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tennessee.
AN ANGEL CONTEMPLATES GROWING UP
It all started when God took her to Target. Asked her
to pick out three bras & spare no expense. Adulting, apparently,
requires nipple coverage, plush inserts. The angel was super grateful
until she held the pink plastic bones of a hanger holding a slutty sequined number,
& God was concerned, tutted twice to make the point clear. The angel admitted
she’d always wanted to pop her pussy in a dingy nightclub, crop top drenched
in sweat, but never liked herself enough to do so until now. The irony
is not lost on the angel, who just got a job at a press-on nail factory
hundreds of miles away from all her favorite earthlings & familiar haunts.
The time for bodycons and calf-cupping platforms was over. No, from here
on out, it’s all gray slacks & health insurance & oral sex bans. Did she really think
she could meet a suitable human at a bar dressed like that?
But she & God were on good terms these days, so she left the fantasy
on the clearance rack. The angel is making a concerted effort
at coming to terms with her mortality. She pops an avocado seed out of its green suit
& drops it in a soiled pot. Windexes her bathroom mirror, flosses, fills out
a 401k. Takes a bad selfie, wings slick and splayed around her naked hips & wishes
she had someone to send it to. All the therapists on TikTok keep telling her if she doesn’t learn
how to be enough for herself, the drain will always be available for circling.
Sometimes, there’s no cure for desire. Time tries–distance drafts drunk text messages
that never get sent. But morning can’t declaw the facts: the angel’s loneliness
is a sentence she overnighted from Amazon. God talks to her on the landline
for their standing appointment each Tuesday. The angel knows God’s worried
she’s on the verge. The angel doesn’t have the heart to tell Them every day
is less remarkable than the ones that preceded it. The angel is convinced
hell is an elevator ride. Ellipses dropping off a screen. A cold look of disappointment
when someone the angel thinks is spectacular decides she isn’t anything special.
After her phone date with God, the angel watches a dramedy on Hulu and cries
when a main character becomes a suit person. It makes me feel better about myself, he says.
The angel takes a walk, brushes the trunk of a princess tree, places a blooming bleeding heart
beneath her tongue. A couple of hermit thrushes take her under their wing,
tell her all the hot gossip within her apartment complex & bring her to karaoke.
The angel screams Chappel Roan lyrics while an old biker in a wifebeater
sucks on a cigarette & she thinks how life’s curls look especially beautiful
in this smoky twilight. In this smoky twilight: women in bell bottoms
who love their fur babies. Men in straw cowboy hats complaining about taxes.
An evening moving at the only pace it can.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Image by Gantas Vaičiulėnas from Unsplash
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
© 2025 Iron Oak Editions
Stay Connected to Our Literary Community. Subscribe to Our Newsletter
