PULPA

KENDRA PINTOR

Our world has become a writhing mass of flesh. There are no bones. No hard edges: just frenetic hands and feet, open mouths sputtering with saliva, and slippery limbs slicked with sweat. When people touch me, the air hitches in my lungs. I have lost count of the men who, brushing past me on a crowded street, have placed their hands on the small of my back, blaming it on the lack of space. We all walk to work shoulder to shoulder; a herd of naked bodies marching down the streets, briefcases clutched, one-seated strollers made of iron and piled high with babies, breasts swinging, phallus’ dangling – some pointed to the sky – while our bare feet tread sizzling cement, unfelt because we have become numb to touch, only shocked now by the rare occurrence of space, of absence, of truly being alone.

I do not know what my love language is, but I know what it isn’t.

It is not packing into a supermarket like sardines. It is not being forced to sit in someone’s lap on the subway. It is not becoming a seat for someone else. It is not cramming into the doctor’s office and squatting on the reception desk, yelling my name over the noise. Once, a man lifted himself onto my shoulders and sat there, crushing my head between his legs, just so he could breathe something other than the recycled air of a million other people. We have forgotten what things smell like. All we can smell is each other; body order, bad breath, flatulence, piss and putrid feet. People crawl between my legs to get through, they use my head as a steppingstone, to get a leg up, to reach for the fire escape, unwilling to fight the congestion of the stairs or elevators. One thing about this grossly overpopulated world; if you bend, if you stop, you will become a part of the pavement. Our sidewalks are layered with trampled flesh. I have learned how to make my spine as hard as stone. I have picked teeth from between my toes.

Kendra Marie Pintor (she/her) is an emerging author from Southern California with poetry appearing in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and stories in Lunch Ticket Magazine’s “Amuse-Bouche” series, Fast Flesh Literary Journal, FOLIO Literary Journal, LEVITATE Magazine, and CRAFT Literary. Her story "THE SLUAGH" is featured in the Best Small Fictions 2023 anthology and is a Best American Science Fiction/Fantasy 2023 nominee.

Kendra studied creative writing at the University of La Verne and is a graduate of the 2022 UMass Amherst Juniper Summer Writing Institute. Blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, her writing style favors eerie, atmospheric language that seeks to combine the mundane with the magical until both worlds are irrevocably intertwined.