by Brenna Kischuk

Jonathan Daly, Untitled, digital photograph, 2025. Courtesy of the artist.

Intermission

Brenna Kischuk | AUG 2026 | Issue 54

FLASH

I rub my hands over hot sand the way I would my husband’s back, pausing over the imperfections and careful not to kick up dust. I rub my hands over his back, too. Faster and without pause. Anticipation of discovery that’s only possible between two strangers ready to learn each other in real time.

An antidote for expectations: walk the trail, check your teeth, slather your skin with coffee grounds then sweat it off. Swing in the hammock, pour some wine, and close your eyes to stare at the sun.

Wait.

We start a fire and I draw a midnight bath—Epsom salts and almond oil steam into desert air, already hot. In heat I feel the parts of me that need to be filled and I want to find a way to fill them. With anything or anyone. Sometimes even the idea of someone is enough. Sometimes it’s even better.

I invite him in because filling myself with a warm body works better than anything else I’ve tried. Instead, he sits beside me, pretending to stare at the flames or the stars or anything other than my breasts floating above the bubble line.

When I’ve had more heat than I can handle he holds the towel out wide, ready to wrap me round. Something fatherly about it. A kind of love inside terrycloth threads.

I let him hold me, towel around my body and arms around the towel. I feel him hard against my back, and from where his hardness hits I guess he’s six-foot one, maybe six-foot one-and-a-half. I skip the cold shower and we go straight to bed, towel wrapped and arm bound. Both of us now held by thin white sheets and each other’s breath, shallow. We breathe like that for a while, careful not to let his hardness in.

I want to know the ways he’s like my husband and the ways he isn’t. I let my hands go places they shouldn’t, at least not without a conversation, and his hands go where I need them. I want to know his sunned skin and motel room stories, his favorite albums, why he talks of his mother often and never his father. Why I do the opposite.

I ask him to stay, the way I can only when I know he won’t.

We go to town in the morning for smoothies and wellness shots to undo what can’t be undone. For two writers we’re surprisingly comfortable outside definition. It’s ninety-six degrees and at the bottom of the hill it’ll be ten more.

He tells me about his cross-country trips on the Harley, the two-finger wave, how it feels to have a bike between your legs. He calls me sweet the way only a poet can and I want his hands on my hips, again. I want more than the hardness on my back and I want a deeper breath.

Brenna Kischuk received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was also a Teaching Fellow. She is the founder and editor of pioneertown literary journal (established 2014), and her work has appeared in STORY magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, MUSE/A Journal, The Empty Bottle Chicago: 21+ Years of Music/Friendly/Dancing (Curbside Splendor), HTMLGIANT, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Matchbook Literary Magazine, and elsewhere.