Issue 39: The Tree of Togetherness by Michael Nagle | Artwork by Kirk Read
When I found out I was going to die, he called me every day. I didn’t pick up. I was too pissed off at the whole entire world to bother, and anyways, wasn’t he my past?
The Tree of Togetherness by Michael Nagle | Artwork by Kirk Reid
1. The Trunk
I was his and he was mine.
“I’ll love you til you die.”
2. First branch. The beginning.
Once upon a time, I was his, and he was mine. Now, no longer. The fireworks ended fifteen years ago and our paths diverged. Transitioned from being each other’s present to being each other’s past. From being each other’s meaning to being each other’s story.
When I found out I was going to die, he called me every day. I didn’t pick up. I was too pissed off at the whole entire world to bother, and anyways, wasn’t he my past?
It took me a week and a lifetime and an infinity to pick up the phone.
The message was clear.
“I’ll love you til you die.”
2a. First branch, first sub branch. Visiting.
It took me a week and a lifetime and an infinity to pick up the phone.
But I did…
Read more from The Tree of Togetherness.
Michael Nagle is a queer, Sri Lankan-American writer living in his hometown of Los Angeles, where he’s undergoing treatment for metastatic colon cancer. He is deeply interested in writing as a vector for raw, messy, vulnerability that slips under our collective defenses and wakes us up to the more beautiful lives we know in our hearts is possible. And doing this with humor, joy, and wit. Portland, OR and Cambridge, MA both feel like second homes and if he had a choice he would take rebirth as a well-pampered cat.
Kirk Read is the author of How I Learned to Snap (Penguin) and has an essay in the forthcoming anthology Witch from Dopamine Press. He won a Bronze award from Contemporary Collage Magazine for his series of abstract telephone pole collages and was shortlisted for a series of collages done on the walls of outhouses at Wolf Creek radical faerie sanctuary. He lives in Portland, OR and co-leads the Pacific Northwest Collage Collective.
Issue 39 Highlights
Issue 39: brief moments of infinite delight by Mayur Chauhan
Issue 39: Untitled, IVF placenta print by Anonymous Featured Artist
Issue 39: How to Eat a Spider by Featured Writer Rebecca Evans
Issue 39: The Tree of Togetherness by Michael Nagle
Issue 39: Sensuality of the Freeze by Marina Gross-Hoy
Issue 39: This Litany is an Elegy for the Phoenix’s Friend by nawa angel a.h.
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With galactic gratitude,
Leigh Hopkins
and the Corporeal/KHÔRA squad