Odyssey Profile (2017)

Odyssey Article Publications

Check out some of my published writings from college. These have not been modified since their original publication dates.

The Odyssey @sahowell

How to Remove a Stain (2017)

 Step 1. Make the stain. This part is simple! Do something wrong. Be clumsy or just plain stupid. Spill a glass of red wine, cry hysterically with cheap mascara on, cook marinara sauce without an apron on, leave your tampon in for too long, drink to the point that you get sick, and then don’t make it to a trash can in time. 

Step 2. Now that you’ve successfully created your stain, you’ll need to get mad at yourself. Shout something, FUCK!! How could you be so goddamn stupid?! You imbecile! That was your favorite dress! You spent much too much goddamn money on it to just toss it in the washer and hope for the best! It’s ruined because you were a sloppy dumbass.

Step 3. Evaluate the damage. Choose your product. Will you go with a common household item, or does the material of the dress call for that heavy-duty shit? Decide on seltzer. The dress is delicate, and you don’t want to stain it with stain remover. You never drink seltzer anyway, and you only keep it in the house for when your mother-in-law decides to randomly pop in with her suitcase ready for a long weekend visit. She bitches that your tap water tastes like mud, so you started with water bottles. Then she bitched that you were ruining the environment with your non-biodegradable bottles. The lecture about your mud water will almost always progress into a lecture about A. why the hell I haven’t put my uterus to good use housing her grandbabies yet or B. how you better not be after her son's money, and she’ll be slightly more polite than that, maybe, but she’ll always scold your husband for the fact that he didn’t get a prenuptial agreement when he married the ditsy gold-digging whore.

Step 4. Pour the seltzer on the stain. Watch the bubbles crash into the fabric as they begin to form their own little puddle that holds above the fabric. In the puddle, the bubble hit the fabric and began to rise. You’re not sure because you were only a philosophy major in college, but you think that the bubbles pick up the stain with it. Let that sit for a couple of minutes. Give yourself a chance to sit, too. 

Step 5.  Run hot water directly over the stain. Not cold, not room temperature, not warm. Scolding hot. Let the water burn your hands while you hold your dress there. Your nimble fingers are always freezing; it’s nice to feel a temperature other than the Arctic, even if it is the other end of extremes. Stare out the window in front of the sink and contemplate how the fuck your life got to this point. Barren, unemployed, and unhappy. There will be so much to contemplate that you’ll lose track of time and feelings. The timer on the oven goes off, and you snap back to reality. Your hands are bright red, and they burn. The skin on your knuckles will start to peel, but you can just bandage them. It’s no bother. 

Step 6. Look at the tag of the dress for cleaning instructions. You’re not sure what temperature water to put the washer on when you run it. Find out that it’s dry clean only. Roll the dress up into a ball and hurl it across the living room. Drop to the floor. Bury your face into your knees. Feel your upper thighs developing rug burn as your shaking body rubs against the Persian carpet your dead aunt gave you in her will. Cry. Keep crying. Let your face feel the sting of salty tears. Let the burning sensation in your eyes echo that in your hands. 

Step 7. Let your breathing slow. Get your shit together. Wipe your eyes. Notice the makeup that’s now staining the inside of your index finger. Look to your knees, where you had just laid your head to cry. Notice the arch of wet mascara that has found a home on the bottom hem of your skirt. 

Step 8. Repeat. 

A Daisy Picked too Soon (2017)

 When I was thirteen,

I bled for the first time.

I cried to my mother

with a congratulatory smile,

and she handed me a flower.

A symbol of my

entrance to womanhood.

One day, I would gift it 

to a man who I loved.

That day could be as far

or as near as I wanted. 

My frown turned;

she wiped my tears,

and I held my new flower.

Womanhood came with 

control.

That flower was mine to give

whenever I wanted,

to whoever I wanted. 

When I was fifteen, I bled again. 

I cried into my pillow.

My mother was wrong,

and you were a thief. 

That flower was mine. 

I was to gift it, 

to the man that I loved.

When you asked for it,

with a smile on my face

I blushed and

told you “one day.”

My smile turned when

you said “today”.

Star Crossed Lovers (2017)

     We fell asleep after shooting up like we always do. I remember watching her eyes slowly force themselves shut in unison with the needle as it emptied into her arm, and then we were asleep. When I woke up, I was sitting on the floor with my head resting against the couch. Juliet was lying on her side, sprawled out across the couch, her right arm limp and hanging off the side. A dried trail of blood accessorized her arm from where the needle had pierced her skin.

    I lifted myself using the coffee table for support and sat by Juliet’s feet on the couch. Brushing her hair from her face, I tucked her golden strands behind her ear, snagging her most recent piercing. She was breathtaking. She wasn’t waking up. High and confused, I put my ear to her chest and listened for a heartbeat. I couldn’t make out the difference between the sound of the refrigerator running in the kitchen and the grandfather clock clicking in the hallway, let alone the sound of her heartbeat. I checked for a pulse, and when I didn’t feel anything, my immediate assumption was not that I missed it. Frantic, I tried her other wrist anyway, and her neck, and the other side of her neck, then I put my finger under her nose to feel for breaths. But there wasn’t anything. There was nothing to feel. No breath. No pulse. No heartbeat. No life. Just the body of Juliet, now empty as everyone assumes when they see someone as pretty as her. They only see her body; they never see her person. Saw. They never saw her person.

    Now these fake assholes are here, crying. Real tears, like they’re sad. As if they even knew her. Maybe they are sad. But they aren’t sad because Juliet died. They’re sad because they have to attend extra drug classes in school. They have to walk by posters daily with gay quotes like “Pet pugs, don’t do drugs!” and shit like that. They’re tragedy whores. ‘Oh Juliet was in my chemistry class, one time she sneezed and I said God bless you.’ I bet you’re really broken up. Her sneeze was cute, sure, but not worth crying over. What about the way she sat in class? How she wouldn’t speak a word, her participation grade was shit. But if you looked at her notebook, it was mesmerizing. My personal favorite is, ‘She was so beautiful, what a shame’. It’s funny because even though she’s dead, they don’t see the tragedy in her beauty. She was beautiful, and I loved her, but neither of those things meant that she would amount to anything. So I don’t really see where the real “shame” of it is.

    Her beauty wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Beauty doesn’t get you anywhere that you want to be. She’d end up in the bed of a frat boy. Not as much as a drink deep, but unconscious nonetheless. She’d wake up the next morning scrambling to find her underwear, walking out of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house with one shoe, frantic and wondering but really knowing why she was so goddamn sore down there.

    Or maybe she would have ended up pregnant at 17. She wouldn’t graduate high school because she fell in love with a fuck up. But she also wouldn’t have the baby. She wanted it; she wanted to give her baby girl a good life, a better life than the one she had. But she couldn’t give it up. She couldn’t give up the one pain that numbed her pain. She wanted to, but she’d shoot up, and eventually, the fetus just couldn’t take anymore. Juliet would be holding the cold corpse of what looked like our child. But that tiny little human would be empty, beautiful, and empty. 

    Her story doesn’t end well no matter how you play it out. I loved her, but now she’s gone. She was my driving force. She was my reason to get up in the morning. Her laugh, her smile, the way she could make everything feel joyous. But with or without her, I’ll never amount to anything. I’ll be that frat boy. I’ll be that fuck up. Instead of letting my own tragedy play out, I think we can draw the curtain here. ‘What a shame’. Scene.