Ghost Parachute

A Literary Magazine

say yes to distress

By

say yes to distress

hey everybody’s doing it just let us shove this camera thingy down your throat don’t let your hands reach up to stop it to grab it to pull it back out don’t move your head don’t vomit and most of all don’t cry as you swallow choke in the name of health and your brain goes back to the first time you were forced to take something in you didn’t want or know or understand and water flows from your tightly squeezed eyes, fists, body and all you want is it to stop to not hear the voices of comfort of yes of hands on back on head on arms and you leave your body like you did before and you don’t ever want to come back

About Melissa Llanes Brownlee

Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work published and forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Moon City Review, Redivider, and The Adroit Journal, and honored in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. Read Hard Skin (2022) and Kahi and Lua (2022) and check out her new collection, Bitter over Sweet (2025), from Santa Fe Writers Project. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at melissallanesbrownlee.com.

Artist Credit:

Amy Marques grew up between languages and places and learned, from an early age, the multiplicity of narratives. She’s been nominated for multiple awards, longlisted twice in Wigleaf 50, and has visual art, poetry, and prose published in journals such as Streetcake Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, Fictive Dream, Unlost, Ghost Parachute, BOOTH, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Gone Lawn. She is editor & visual artist for the Duets anthologies, author & artist of the chapbook Are You Willing? and the found poetry book PARTS. More at https://amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com.