Exhibit

By Benjamin Ervin

Featured art: Fragment by unknown

I wish I’d stayed home was written across their ribs in felt pen. Standing partially nude in the park, the models acted as spaces to form and exhibit the People’s words. The teen with the pen was Kevin, though it wasn't their birth name. It was the name they had chosen. As a child, her parents were showered with words that crashed into the soft jelly fields of their minds and slowly trekked through an endless mire of unformed thoughts. Repetition pushed the words to the breach, and that is when they began to stick in their minds. They felt that Kevin's name was fine, but she had qualms with it as she came of age. She didn’t hate the blacksmith but the blade he made.

They were on a school trip to this art exhibit. It was the second week of school, and heat stood between each person, condensing and running like water from the folds of people. The words Kevin wrote along the man's ribs began to run and seep out across his stomach and thighs, as though the words pressed to his body held no weight. They dripped into deep inky pools on the ground and Kevin shook her head. "Stupid," she said under her breath and the living statue next to her turned his face onto her. He looked like a sun bear, his face made up of divots and pronounced features.

"No one asked you."

Kevin didn't respond, she just grabbed the guy's chin and wrote STUPID across his forehead. He began to sweat more, and he had to close his eyes as ink ran over his face. "The art isn't supposed to talk back."

"Nor is art to be tortured, yet here we are."

Kevin turned, took a step, then turned back to wipe away the ink with her sleeve. She ran her thumbed sleeve across his face, then his eyes.

She walked back to the park entrance and took a seat on a bench. The other art students were running around, having fun and drawing a series of images across a series of people. Kevin wanted no part of it. Instead, she sat by herself and made her own art, before wiping it away with a thumb.

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Benjamin Ervin (he/him) is a senior studying English Literature and Writing, with minors in History, Political Science, and Spanish. His stories “Slate” and “Crocodile and Owl” appear in Sphere 64 and 65, respectively. He also writes an opinion column called “The Cat’s Cradle” where his creative forces take form in irreverent columns on horror, love, and video games. When he is not reading a book by his favorite author, Toni Morrison, he is riding his bike, or watching Classic Films. When he get’s older than twenty-four, he wants to be a professional writer. If that doesn’t work, he’ll be a shut-in.