Laura McCullough received her MFA from Goddard College and has been awarded a New Jersey State Arts Council Fellowship for her work. She teaches at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey where she chairs the Visiting Writers Series. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Nightsun, Hotel Amerika, Boulevard, Faultline, Kalliope, Whiskey Island, White Pelican Review, Exquisite Corpse, and other journals. Radiation Laura McCullough Stand on the sidewalk            with a cup of warm soup, curry, the color of wheat in late August, and let yourself be seen. It’s the currency            of the street. Wear nothing or everything you own. It doesn’t matter. They’ll devour you with their eyes,            grateful for your humanity today. What you see when you look back is the depth of space behind each cheekbone,            the distance between the street and an open window where sadness lurks in the shape of a man who found            out today he can’t have children. His face is luminous, the color of curry or yarrow, your finest eye shadow,            the one meant to capture autumn. It’s there in his eyes more beautiful than anything. In the lot of the hardware            store someone watching you sees the color of your brother’s car accident rolling off your shoulders            like heat off hot tar in July. They recognize the smell of unresolved childhood grief, and it fills them            the way good, yeasty bread does. Let them look; you’re busy. The man in the window is stretching now,            his white chest wide, spine cracking and with it the odor of vanilla ice cream on a good man’s beard when he kissed you            goodbye. Turn away, walk along the brick curb radiating all the accrued sunshine you can on the surface of your skin            like a body glove. Greet passersby with a direct gaze. Be confident they see right through you. If someone begins to cry,            tell them a few blocks down is a man in an open window with a chest like a snowy day.