{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-post-js","path":"/5-5-26","result":{"data":{"contentfulPost":{"title":"Limerence Dingus","body":{"json":{"nodeType":"document","data":{},"content":[{"nodeType":"paragraph","data":{},"content":[{"nodeType":"text","value":"I fantasize about running into my ex at the grocery store. In this fantasy, I am very metropolitan and thin. I do not wear a puffy, practical Lands End coat with grease stains at the neck. I am holding a basket instead of pushing a buggy (thus establishing my superiority through strength and lack of want/need/etc.). When he turns the corner he sees me standing there with great posture, reading the ingredients on a bottle of some exotic sauce. It probably has truffles and algae in it. He watches me from afar. He is quietly impressed. He sees that I have become formidable. ","marks":[],"data":{}}]},{"nodeType":"paragraph","data":{},"content":[{"nodeType":"text","value":"Eventually, he says my name. This breaks me out of my deeply intelligent reverie. I look around—","marks":[],"data":{}},{"nodeType":"text","value":"who, me?","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"data":{}},{"nodeType":"text","value":"—wide-eyed and ethereal. A doe in fog. A doe shattering fog with Kevlar under her tawny hide. He is amazed because I look younger than the last time we met, five years ago, even under the store’s twitching, humming fluorescent lights. The only shadows on my face are the sexy kind. ","marks":[],"data":{}}]},{"nodeType":"paragraph","data":{},"content":[{"nodeType":"text","value":"It doesn’t make sense for us to bump into each other like this; he, career military. Me, not that. I stride up to him with unfamiliar confidence and he thinks I’m gearing up to hug or kiss, and so he opens his arms to me, but instead I poke him right in the sternum with a finger that definitely doesn’t have an unidentifiable crescent of brown gunk stuck under the nail, and I say: “You’re an asshole. You know that?”","marks":[],"data":{}}]},{"nodeType":"paragraph","data":{},"content":[{"nodeType":"text","value":"He dips his head down like a punished dog. Sometimes I fantasize that his hair is thinning at the crown (it would serve him right), but usually I imagine that he is also much more handsome than would be realistically possible, given time and testosterone and genetics and war. He certainly doesn’t have a beer gut, a girlfriend, and a wife. That’s the old him.","marks":[],"data":{}}]},{"nodeType":"paragraph","data":{},"content":[{"nodeType":"text","value":"I trace my finger up his chest and to his chin, tilt his face toward mine. Eye contact the likes of which this world has never seen. “Don’t do it again,” I tell him. ","marks":[],"data":{}}]},{"nodeType":"paragraph","data":{},"content":[{"nodeType":"text","value":"“I won’t do it again,” he says.","marks":[],"data":{}}]},{"nodeType":"paragraph","data":{},"content":[{"nodeType":"text","value":"My brain won’t let it go any further. Whether out of self preservation or a failure of the imagination, I couldn’t say. Probably both. Or neither; maybe I’m just waiting for him to round the corner and say my name. ","marks":[],"data":{}}]}]}},"author":"Gretchen Uhrinek","type":"5-5-26","nextTitleAndAuthor":"\"Scenery\" by Rachel Sherman","nextSlug":"/4-28-26","bio":{"json":{"data":{},"content":[{"data":{},"content":[{"data":{},"marks":[],"value":"Gretchen Uhrinek lives in the woods north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she spends an inordinate amount of time combing her dog for ticks. She is a fiction editor at The Hopper and writes across genres, with work appearing in Folklore Review, Rat Bag Lit, and elsewhere. Her website is ","nodeType":"text"},{"data":{"uri":"https://www.gretchenuhrinek.com"},"content":[{"data":{},"marks":[],"value":"www.gretchenuhrinek.com","nodeType":"text"}],"nodeType":"hyperlink"},{"data":{},"marks":[],"value":".","nodeType":"text"}],"nodeType":"paragraph"}],"nodeType":"document"}}}},"pageContext":{"slug":"/5-5-26"}}}