wildscape. literary journal

Reading twilight at the end of the world
by Alexa Brockamp Hoggatt

Bella and Edward are seventeen and certain in a field of flowers and on Pacific Avenue, someone is beating a drum, chanting no justice, no peace. Sirens blare towards the drummers and Edward is carrying Bella because she is so tired, she shouldn’t have to walk and the man with the sirens is out of his car with a shield and a baton and the drummer is a boulder in a stream and both of them are comets burning out on the sidewalk in a conjoined blaze and a few cities over an old  man with a walrus mustache has been denied coverage for a pacemaker. It's been a week since FAFSA said his daughter didn’t need grants because their house is worth $350,000 and if they sold that they’d have plenty of money for tuition, and the siren-man raises his baton and the drummer falls, the river seething over his head, the body cam switched off, a stack of paperwork and two appeals between him and medical leave for recovery, during which time his mortgage payments will bounce and his head will ache with dreams but Bella walks into her cozily decorated gift-cottage, mortgage-free and custom-made. Her favorite books wait on solid wood shelves and her immortal body needs no doctoring. Just days after giving birth, her skin is tight, her body smooth and bloodless.  Opening the closet, she cringes, because she does not like the clothes. 

about the author // Alexa Brockamp Hoggatt