Sophia Judge

ankle socks

see I always felt like knee highs were silly 
such a strange way to essentially wear pants 
and I stuffed my oversized calves into them 
every day to really play on that school girl 
look I had going on with the plaid skirt and 
sometimes even the matching hair bow 
and I swear to God (I’m sorry) that most
days I’d only shave the space between the 
knee high and the hem of my skirt and so
often I’d nick the thin skin on my scarred-
over knees so sometimes I’d bring Dora the 
Explorer Band-Aids back into style because 
as we sometimes forget the almost-fourteen
year old in the knee highs and school girl 
skirt is in fact a little girl and should be handled 
as such but still I got to fourteen and I switched 
to the ankle socks I much preferred and 
retired the pleated plaid to the shelf in 
my closet in favor of pants that offered 
security and safety and an option for far 
more sensible socks. 

Not a crier

After Lydia Davis

The unfortunate thing about being not a crier is that when you do cry it's big and red and stupid. But sometimes it’s little and teary and even more stupid. It would be easier to be not a crier all of the time instead of just most of it. That way when someone is crying you can just feel a bit bad and then get over yourself. But instead you wonder why you aren’t crying at the death of your grandpa or girlfriend or dog but instead you are crying at a speech about cows. You are crying at the speech about cows while eating a cheeseburger and yet you keep on eating. You cry at the kid who lost his stuffed elephant, the dent in the corner of your water bottle, the lack of eggs in your fridge, the fact that you cannot keep the goddamn house plants alive, and you keep crying because you’re thinking of all the things that didn’t make you cry in the first place and now you're focusing on the things you forgot to say to your high school teachers, and the things you forgot to say to your oldest sister, and the things you did say to the other fat girl who people used to confuse you with, and the fact that you only hated her because she reminded you too closely of what you were trying not to be, and all the things you could say to her now if you knew her name or where she was or what she was doing these days. You are not unempathetic, just biologically inclined to feign indifference. If you are a crier then all of it means almost nothing anyway. Crying is just a response to pain and everything fucking hurts. Crying is just a response to love and you love much bigger than you ever used to. It would be easier to be not a crier all the time, but it's impossible. You are born crying in a room full of pain and full of love. 

Sophia Judge is a writer from Akron, Ohio. She recently earned her BA in creative writing from the University of Cincinnati and is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry at Miami University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Short Vine Literary Magazine, the Nassau Review, and the Banyan Review, among others. Besides writing, Sophia loves baseball games, brunch, and board games with good friends.