Fiction from Jessica Sadler

Photo: Adam Solomon

Baltimore Speak

To describe this accent on paper is impossible except through seemingly unrelated comparisons: it sounds like a hand gliding up my thigh, starting at the knee and slowly gaining pressure midway at the meat of muscle and fat, then drawing a semi-circle with the thumb at the base of my pelvic bone, and doing it all over, again and again, until it’s all I can think of. It sounds like reassurance during hard times, a crutch in a crisis; it sounds like a good, empty fuck which, when everything boils down, is all one needs anyway. It sounds like snowball stands and scorching summers and Keno and mom-and-pop sub shops and piss beer and all shades of sea creatures and sweaty neck tattoos and cigarettes under starless skies and bottled passion and home.
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Jessica Sadler is a Baltimore-based fiction writer and charcoal artist. She lived abroad for several years in Amsterdam, Bangkok, and the greater Tokyo metropolitan area as a Fulbright Grant recipient and Global Teaching Fellow. Her stories have been published in Drunk Monkeys, Bartleby, and Enizagam, and she won her alma mater’s Malcolm C. Braly Fiction Award. At international conferences, she presented education and literature research. Her hobbies include meditation, yoga, and exploring the multitude of ways to prepare oatmeal.