Suze Kay

Joined June 2021

137 stories

Bio

Pastry chef by day, insomniac writer by night.

Find here: stories that creep up on you, poems to stumble over, and the weird words I hold them in.

Or, let me catch you at www.suzekay.com

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Stories (137)

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The Task of the Blade. Top Story - August 2024.
The apron holds all the tools of her trade: permanent marker, thermometer, quenelle spoon, and blade. Of all, she needs the blade the most. Wusthof steel, the length of her hand. She keeps the edge honed, sharp, ready for every task Chef hands her. All day long, she peels apples, supremes oranges, makes even cubes of soft pear flesh, and carves long, curled rosettes of butter. Her hands, fast and sure, never tremble, rarely err.
By Suze Kayabout a year ago in Horror
Riptide
How long did I paddle his riptide, waiting for someone to save me? They knew: desperate souls drag samaritans down, too.
By Suze Kay2 years ago in Poets
MEAT. Content Warning.
My dad lived for the slow kill. Sunday mornings he did his best work. It’d been a tradition when I was a kid: He’d nestle my warm, sleepy body into the cab of his truck, wipe the condensation from his mirrors with a fist, and rattle us to the estate. Usually I’d doze, the scratchy flannel blanket he’d wrapped me in tickling my nose as the AM radio told us about the weather in Seattle. But on our last trip, I was wide awake, resting my forehead on the cool glass, watching as the deep-morning sky saturated slowly over Bear Mountain. The stereo hummed and spat with static. I drummed my fingers on the dashboard. Fiddled with my seatbelt. Scraped at a scab.
By Suze Kay2 years ago in Fiction
a yung pilgrim in London. Runner-up in Travel Snaps Challenge.
I say it often, to myself and my friends: wherever you go, there you are. I mean it in the way that your damage is you, your choices follow you from within, and a new place cannot heal an open wound. London, whose cobblestoned streets I traversed in my mother's red Hunter wellies, did not challenge this platitude in the two summer months I lived there. I arrived sad and left the same. But wasn't it a wondrous, different place to feel the same things, and pursue the same distractions?
By Suze Kay2 years ago in Wander
Hunting Men. Top Story - May 2024.
There were three reasons to play Manhunt and none of them were winning. The first was sometimes, when the whole neighborhood played and not just my cousins, if the right kid was on my team, I got to practice kissing. The right kid changed all the time and I wanted to change, too. When he played basketball, I wore high tops. If he skateboarded on the cul-de-sac, I clipped a chain on my wallet. It jangled while we ran, but that was good: it made him want to keep me still.
By Suze Kay2 years ago in Fiction
Channeling
Often, I beg: Open me. Please. Fill the wound with something I can use Deliver me words like a sunbeam gilding dust. // The words come too much, not enough. I can't
By Suze Kay2 years ago in Poets
Watching the Ground
Even as I wish for paper glasses, I hedge. I Could take it or Leave it, I think. I can trust the moon to Inch around again. It will
By Suze Kay2 years ago in Poets
Women Who Stay, 36 (Epilogue). Top Story - June 2024.
Chapter 1 ... Chapter 35 ______________ Money, I found, made my fear of failure easier to live with. I bought an apartment. I remodeled a bedroom into a writing studio. And slowly, like a spoonful of honey, the money eased my frustration with feeling, once again, like a larger, better story had crossed my path. If life kept feeling like this, I could live with it.
By Suze Kay2 years ago in Chapters
Women Who Stay, 35
Chapter 1 ... Chapter 34 ______________ The Janie I created was a second-wave feminist idol, committed to creating the life she wanted. She fought tooth and nail to get it. She comforted herself with what she could -- children, objects, the picture of a perfect life. She accepted her husband as a gay man and knew nothing about what he did in the shadows of their basement. What happened to her was a tragedy. Her story was a woman's scream of warning: nothing hurts you like what you love.
By Suze Kay2 years ago in Chapters
Women Who Stay, Chapter 34
Chapter 1 ... Chapter 33 ______________ With dawning horror, I realized there was no one left to talk with. Or rather, somehow worse: I could talk about Janie forever -- with her children, with her acquaintances, even with her if she were still alive -- and it wouldn't help me write. Because I was stuck at a crossroads.
By Suze Kay2 years ago in Chapters
Women Who Stay, 33
Chapter 1 ... Chapter 32 ______________ Years ago, I learned about the 'Doorknob Phenomenon' from a doctor I interviewed.
By Suze Kay2 years ago in Chapters
Women Who Stay, 32
Chapter 1 ... Chapter 31 ______________ "I was in the car with Mommy, driving somewhere, and she was angry. She kept calling someone on her car phone and yelling. Finally, we parked. I was scared, crying. I wanted a... I don't know, a snack, maybe? But she left me in the car. It felt like she was gone forever. When she came back, we started driving again. Like nothing happened. Finally, when we were back in Somerset, she took me to the diner. Let me get a milkshake. And then she told me:
By Suze Kay2 years ago in Chapters