Small Talk

Steam on the glass fogs over your image,

shrouding you from your own scornful gaze

the corners of your lips raise, forced.

Parents divorced at a very young age, broken

arms and bloody noses even younger,

the school ground a battlefield scattered

with chalk instead of bone.

Alone, on hands and knees. Tattered

grass-stained once-white tee, scuffed up

palms wiping blood on old flood jeans and your

Spiderman kicks with the frayed-out laces.

Dreaming of played-out places far from there

and here you are. Away at last, staring

into a blurry mirrored glass, into the eyes of where

the war

followed you.

Cheyenne LaRoque is a senior at USC studying creative writing and linguistics. She is the president of the USC Literary Society and has always had a passion for the written word. Fiction tends to be her genre of choice, but she dabbles in poetry and nonfiction thanks to mostly workshop courses. She hopes to pursue her MFA and later her PhD to become a professor.