(Kanya Lim Panyavong graduated from Middle Tennessee State University with a bs in Journalism, with an emphasis in Newspaper/Magazine Writing. She is a local actress in Nashville and has worked with Actors Bridge and The Olde Worlde Theatre Co. She also represents an artist and sell art at Andrew John Gallery.)

The WITCH DOCTOR

She rolls out the heavy red carpet,
And tells me to lay down

The rooted incense burns on the shelf,
Where I see smiling faces in picture frames,
Her four daughters,
All unevenly mixed with Cambodian, Laotian, and Chinese…

“Why do you burn the incense?” I ask.

“They’re for entities that gave us birth, whom
we’ll never get to meet,” she says.

I shrug. I hope she wasn’t offering the fruit of her massages to them. I don’t
want my healing sifting off to another world. I want them where they belong,
in my bones.

An American told me once that chiropractors were witch doctors.
This masseuse seemed more like one to me.

Her big, dark hands dug into spots that she said punished me.
Luong toad.

The veins and muscles loosen.
My blood flows.

CHEATING

I never told him that I loved the smell of dead flowers.
I enjoyed them scraping my hands, the petals breaking sharply apart. 
“I love cheap thrills,” he told me the first time we met, but
it was I who went after them. It was me. We used to sit there, the dinner table between us, and he looked straight at me, with
Those eyes singing a love song, steadily, smoothly. No, no, of course you didn’t bore me.

But I wanted a distracting love, a different kind.  I wanted something you weren’t.

I glance over the pier, wind stinging my face. The boys from Tabor Academy were there with their maroon ties and dark navy jackets, all boisterous captains of their sailboats. I smile and watch their unguarded freedom.

I close my eyes. It’s that wintry night again and your cold, frozen lips pressed against mine.

Why do we choose momentary replacements? Why have I forgotten you?

The lady in the corner of Café Rouge told me we all have similar spirits, lovers entwined within a group of friends, so that our souls still walk together.
I believed her so I wouldn’t kill myself in indifference and guilt.