When Marie Parrish isn’t writing, she can be found baking, hiking, and advocating for social justice.

Heritage

• He sits
• Frozen
• Bent over a book
• A beaker
• He stands on steps
• And looks to the future
• My future
• The one he doesn’t know I’ll have
• Lips tight, determined forehead
• He sits
• On a bench frozen
• Black in a white frame
• In a White
• Place
• There’s no name
• And then one name, Oscar
• Then two, Oscar Valdez
• I watch you as hazy memories of my mother hover in my eyes
• Oscar
• Valdez
• An uncle
• A medical student?
• There’s no one to answer
• But the dead
• And the history lays forgotten
• In a crumbling album
• Frozen in black and
• White

Seducing Seduction

• The rumors have already settled in her ears
• Whispers pulled away the covers from curiosity, arousing her from her slumber
• Now his hands run under the covers where she lies
• Drops of sweat decorating her body

• Her moans lick at his ears
• Fingers frolic lightly down his back
• Burning the Kama sutra on the stretch of skin,
• A manual that leads to numerous tangents
• All with the same result

• He dips down, a lion,
• Drinking in her nectar of choice
• Coco Mademoiselle, letting it sink into him
• Like the smell of gasoline;
• He sparks it aflame

• She looks up, eyes half mast
• Catching him like moth to a light
• She leans up, he lets her,
• As her lips write a never-ending story,
• He helplessly provides the blank pages.

• This is why she came back,
• The woman as elusive as the wind.
• She was supposed to be irresistible,
• Uncatchable,
• But a forever continuing story kept bringing her back.

Marie Parrish is a Los Angeles native. She received a bachelor’s in literature and writing as well as a degree in music from California State University San Marcos. When she isn’t writing, she can be found baking, hiking, and advocating for social justice. She is currently working towards her M.ed in education literacy and language at the University of Washington.