New Prose Poem by Yash Seyedbagheri

Evening Walk

Pale pink and purple wash the sky, day fading. I walk, feet lightened, shadows darting like ballerinas, in and out. I walk among pine trees, down country roads I’ve never traversed. I traverse every road that doesn’t lead homeward, to beer bottles and sorrow, to words hurled, verbal, shapely grenades. To small rooms, disordered, smelling of onions and armpits.  I walk on and on. Up on hillsides, lights come on from houses with open spaces and no constrained rooms, their butter-colored warmth blending with the pink and purple, welcoming night. Welcoming strangers. 

Welcome, they whisper, even as they cling to their space, space so neat and ordered astride a hillside. All are loved here. How I wish I could just go in one of those homes, absorb the warmth of things. The warmth of spaghetti sauce or chicken sizzling on a stove, grease splattering with cheer. Have a conversation, feel personal communion, the exchange of love, a smile, a joke, love disguised as sarcasm. But I imagine myself, an object out of place among the order and connections, someone who doesn’t know the shape of love. How to don love. I walk the hillsides, the pink and purple turning to velvet. Velvet turning black. Only when stars start to stab me, expanding, do I turn and walk home, trying to stride as slowly as possible. But the journey back is always the fastest one.

- Yash Seyedbagheri 2019


Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. A self-proclaimed Romantic and Big Lebowski devotee, Yash is the recipient of two Honorable Mentions from Glimmer Train. His story, "Strangers," was nominated for The Best Small Fictions. His work is forthcoming or has been published in journals such as Unstamatic, Maudlin House, Door Is A Jar Magazine, and Ariel Chart