By Cesar Toscano
You are my feline friend
made of polyster and cotton
One of japanese origin and a name
derived from a drug medically
legal in all 50 states
In a summer where all my friends had an addiction
for plush pets, I had found
you
in an asian supermarket
The one where the burb kids try to pretend they’re visiting
Shinjuku and Shibuya
Navigating between manga and rigged claw machines
When I found you, your yellow fur was like that of
a lemon Starburst and your dark brown eyes hid
inside the sunny roundness of your face
I believe you costed 27 dollars or
2700 pennies to be mathematically precise
It did not really matter, my friend fed the rigged claw machine
60 quarters or 15 dollars
if anyone couldn’t do the math
Though forget about that, money is just a ballon in-
flating and exploding when all we want to do
is to escape to cities of
candy and imagination
Where talking donkeys tell us a tale,
with only their tails and
the roads are floating with
Care bears too full of emotion,
With enough sweets and pizza, I could fly
Fly around this city until everything becomes just
a field of cotton candy clouds—
Or that’s what I would have said when I was seven and a half
Cesar Toscano is a Chicago-based writer; he is currently a senior majoring in creative writing at Columbia College Chicago where he worked as an assistant poetry editor for Allium, A Journal of Poetry & Prose. He also read for the multi-genre magazine, Uncharted. He now runs his magazine, Mystical Owl Magazine, a magazine for strange Fiction and Poetry. His work delves into mental health and identity through a speculative and horror lens. When he is not writing, he enjoys watching movies and playing video games
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