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SmokeLong Quarterly

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strangers breathe air into you

Story by jj peña (Read author interview) December 16, 2024

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strangers dressed as a tarantula, an angel, & a puerto rican ghost are drinking the night into quicksand, & they are hoping to pour tequila shots in me, screaming, COME ON! BE FLEETING WITH US. i drink & drink & drink, & we dance raw, all as rivers in cumbia. when our hips ache & tire, a boy barbie shouts, slurs, stutters, LET’S TELL SOME WHOREOR STORIES, which gets everyone going, squealing & spilling: we tell tales of growling married daddies, smoking & smashing in the backseat of trucks, nights zoom zooming between big dicked men. when it’s my turn, i head to the bathroom & don’t share because the last boy i touched broke into rainfall the moment i embraced him, right after he told me he was just diagnosed with hiv, right after saying he’d understand if i didn’t want to sleep with the sick. i held him, a giant, all night, my bones soft yarn—like i hoped someone would do for me—& tried to remind him that his body was only in free-fall if he believed it. & in the morning, he kissed me, licked some of his fingers, & shoved them deep inside of me, whispering, let me breathe air into you too.
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“strangers breathe air into you” was a finalist in The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest 2024. 

About the Author

jj peña (pronouns he/they) is a queer, burrito-blooded writer. jj’s one of 92NY Discovery Contest winners (2023) & has won a few creative non-fiction flash/hybrid contests. jj’s work is included in the Best Microfiction 2020 anthology & Wigleaf’s Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions (2020). jj’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Washington Square Review, Cincinnati Review, Massachusetts Review, & elsewhere. jj serves as a flash fiction reader for SplitLip Magazine.

This story appeared in Issue Eighty-Six of SmokeLong Quarterly.
SmokeLong Quarterly Issue Eighty-Six
ornament

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The March Micro Marathon 25

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We’re doing it again! We’re homing in on the micro: 100-word, 250-word, and 400-word stories. In March 2025 SmokeLong is hosting The March Micro Marathon, a 24-day workshop with a new writing task each day, peer review in small groups, 3 webinars, a reading and interview with Michelle Ross and the editors of 100 Word Story, and 3 competitions with cash prizes.