Alex Munteanu explores what it means to be fenced in – even when we think we are not. Munteanu is a junior at Endicott College, studying Creative Writing and Photography. She has been published in The Endicott Review, for which she is an editor. Alexandra enjoys writing poetry and fiction.

Alex Munteanu

We Live

They live behind gates that they built for themselves,

out of mud and grit

crusty mutterings: “in my day we didn’t have a damn tv”.

They live behind

old metal ones with the lock rusted over,

jammed into place,

no one ever tried to remove it.

She lives behind her boyfriend’s gate,

he tells her,

“this place is ours”

as he puts a PBR to his lips,

feet against the couch, hand on her thigh.

She looks out the slit in the gate;

pretends she hasn’t already left.

I like to think

I live outside of the gate,

but I don’t know what that means.

To be outside of one thing,

is just to be trapped within another.

— Alex Munteanu