Wayward Literature Issue 2: You

Issue 2

WAYWARD LITERATURE M A G A Z I N E

YOU

PAWEL MARKIEWICZ PAGE 2

Grammatical Human Deep Crash

MATTHEW DAY PAGE 3

An Anachronistic List of Things I Have Lost

VOX PAGE 5

My Voice is Blue

JOSHUA BARNES PAGE 6

Do I Deserve to be Wanted?

ALAN SWYER PAGE 7

Jail Break

CONTRI BUTORS

CONTRI BUTORS

ELDER GIDEON PAGE 20

Arrow of Time

THOMAS KLODOWSKY PAGE 23

Mechanisms of Action

JOAN MAZZA PAGE 25

When They Called Me Skinny

JANIS BUTLER HOLM PAGE 26

Imprisoned Books

SISALA KATAMBI Sisala is an English and history graduate currently undertaking his MA in English literature at Leeds. He has written several pieces of YA fiction centered on identity and belonging. He values all things related to equality, inclusion, and diversity. Sisala is deeply visual and loves watching films at the cinema as well as immersing himself in fantasy and historical worlds through fiction.

ALEX CHAND From California, Kentucky, and Texas, Alex Chand is a writer currently studying English Literature at the University of Leeds on a Fulbright. She is also a Barbican Young Poet. In 2022, Chand graduated with a BA from Lawrence University in physics and English, where she was awarded the Diderrich Prize in Creative Writing and earned summa cum laude honors for her thesis, Charting Autistic Voices.

NOLA PREVOST Nola Prevost (Nola Marley in some written works) is a poet, writer, and editor from Bangor, Maine. She has a B.A. in Creative Writing, from the University of Maine, and has been published in Beyond Words and The Open Field, later becoming its editor. She received the Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King Memorial Scholarship for outstanding creative writing. Currently she’s working on a collection of feminist fairy tales.

SHANIA N. SOLER Shania N. Soler dabbles in most genres but has a genuine love for, and connection with, historical and contemporary fiction. She aims to bring female voices and culturally diverse characters to the forefront of her works. Through the challenges she creates for her characters, Shania hopes her readers will be inspired to always keep trying and never give up on their dreams and goals.

REVIEWERS

Well we found out. We theme our issues in order to encourage diversity of submitted work, and this volume was no exception.

Issue 2 is themed “You” - the lived and embodied identity. One of the genres that literary magazines tend to see submitted the least is creative non-fiction, which we noticed with our first volume. So, we asked writers from all over the world to think about who “you” are, what “your” lived experience has been like, and who “you” want to be. Enclosed in this issue are their remarkable, heartfelt, intense, thought-provoking, twisted, and beautiful answers.

We at Wayward are thrilled to be a part of such a vibrant creative PAGE ONE | WAYWARD LITERATURE

EDITORIAL LETTER

I am grateful to be able to introduce this second issue of Wayward Literature. Thinking back to how it started and where we are now, I am astounded by the capacity of what we’ve been able to achieve, and by all the creative work I’ve seen come through our submission window. When we first discussed the idea of creating a literary magazine, we wanted it to be a space where writers could feel unrestrained by publishing criteria.

What would writers, poets, and artists submit if there were, effectively, no rules? What would be unleashed?

community. We hope to not only encourage new breeds of creativity, but to contribute to the existing culture of online creative writing!

Thank you to our amazing reviewers for your time and your feedback on each and every submission. That kind of personal touch, I believe, is what makes Wayward so meaningful and what helps set us apart.

Thank you to our contributors for this issue, for without you we would have no magazine. A special thank you to one such contributor, Janis Butler Holm, for submitting this issue’s cover art, “Imprisoned Books.”

Sincerely, Nola Prevost Editor

PAWEL MARKIEWICZ Grammatical Human-Deep Crash-Poem

The Israeli God didn't trust the human.

The Australopithecus must have crashed at midnight.

The nights must have been embraced by felt butterflies.

The Grecian God hardly believed in a human being.

The homo erectus may have plummeted at the Morning Star.

The genuine indulgence may have been thought up by the Silence.

The Hindu Deity no longer enchanted man.

The homo habilis may have fallen at dawn.

The wings of picturesque feelings may have been flown away.

The Lord of Egyptians never loved man.

The Neanderthal is said to have crashed at Blue Hours.

Numinous homeland should have been sung about by the bards.

The African God didn't like him at all.

The homo sapiens claims to have crashed during sunset.

Happy weeping may have been infatuated with the breath of spirit.

PAGE TWO | WAYWARD LITERATURE

MATTHEW DAY

An Anachronistic List of Things I Have Lost in response to Brian Arundel's Things I've Lost A game of pool against my father, during which I scored no points and he told me I needed to practice. A DS cartridge for Kirby Super Star Ultra in my mother’s blue, buglike car, on a trip home from the grocery store. My favorite pair of pants, circa tenth grade, and then a poem I had written about those pants. My mattress, at sixteen, when my mother decided she wanted a new art exhibit—she picked the skin and cleansed the bones with fire, and she hung my mattress’s springs on her wall, believing I would be unbothered. At seventeen, during the plague, a compass and a trowel, both deep in the woods. At eighteen, the expectation that my sister wanted anything more to do with me than cosplay family in front of her friends.

Red hair, gradually between the ages of three and four, as I grew into brown. In early 2019, a half-read copy of Les Miserables, a shortened version that had pictures from the film. That same year, my first therapist, who was hardly any help, when he decided to move to Washington unannounced. One of the two copies I had of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a game that I once spent a whole summer playing and replaying. My grandmother, when dementia took her memory, and again three years later on Groundhog’s Day, when her body gave up. (This was the first time the cloaked, undying drifter visited me.) My grandfather, as well, on a foggy May morning, in a claustrophobic white hospital room, after eight years as a widower. (His second visit; he is no longer a stranger.)

An annotated version of the Haftarah and Pentateuch (a gift from my grandmother), a copy of the Aeneid (signed by my favorite teacher), and other books of varying importance (including a complete collection of Shakespeare’s plays), right before I started college—all donated by my sister, without my knowledge, to a Goodwill.

Recently, the ability to play the piano the same way I used to. The desire to play Franz Liszt once I realized my hands—and many people’s hands—were much too small. Any interest in listening to or playing Jazz. A concern for wealth when I decided I valued my health and comfort more than monetary gain. A year ago, during an in-class analysis of James Merrill’s “The Broken Home,” my distaste for poetry. A rigid plan for my future, roughly a month

PAGE THREE | JOURNEY

into my first semester of college, after fully realizing the world would end in fire and my career would neither support me nor save me.

Any love for the winter during a snowstorm two months ago. An untold amount of buttons and pins in various odd places during road trips to Ohio. Myself, once, when I had the bright idea of jumping head first into a bank of freshly fallen snow. Old classmates, thrice, twice to a car crash and once to a brain tumor, and consequently, while the cloaked, undying drifter still holds me under his thumb, the belief I will live forever. Often, my heart, but most memorably in high school, when I discovered my first love had been cheating on me (or, rather, on his girlfriend with me) for two years. My freedom, when I got my license and was forced to give up extracurriculars to support my younger brothers.

In 2015, when I learned the world was not kind to people like me, the ability to sleep soundly. In early 2021, the ability to painlessly survive a sleepless night, and in late 2021, the ability to sleep without hypnotics. In the stillness of midnight and the light of the watching moon—upon the sudden and malicious realization that my most cherished friends care for me only as far as my ability to provide—any and all faith in friendship, personal value, and solicitude. My mind, on a Sunday morning during a neurotic episode in front of co-workers and customers, after which my boss dropped me off at the emergency room, where the doctors somehow lost a cup of my urine. After the doctors decided they could not help me, instead sending me away and placing me under a crude mockery of involuntary commitment, two weeks of my life. Since then, sweet comfort, that elusive goddess, to the faceless devil that rages deep, deep in my mind, body, and soul—to the beguiling traitor who conspires with the cloaked, undying drifter—to the venom-spitting, never-satisfied gatekeeper of my seventh heaven and my seventh hell.

Chapstick: constantly.

PAGE FOUR | JOURNEY

VOX

My Voice is Blue

"My Voice is Blue" is how I envisioned the flow of invisible words and thoughts and how they would appear when spoken into the universe. The color would be influenced with how you were feeling in the moment they were spoken.

PAGE FIVE | JOURNEY

JOSHUA BARNES Do I Deserve to be Wanted?

I stand on the strobing dance floor, a spectacle of stillness surrounded by live wires arcing in the storm.

Before AIDS, this bar was a playground for sex, after AIDS, this bar is a playground for sex.

Except he plays at violence.

He touches my scar and notices me shy away.

He lingers there anyway.

He says something in my ear that I can’t hear, his voice wet and hot.

This is a rehearsal for what I thought I wanted, as if he were a new book, published on a Tuesday, with my name on the jacket.

PAGE SIX | WAYWARD LITERATURE

ALAN SWYER Jail Break

Chuck Stone often told friends, only half in jest, that if his wife Carolyn had been in charge, the Hundred Year War would have been no more than a Hundred Day Skirmish. As for Covid? With Carolyn running things, it would have ended quickly and been forgotten. As for homelessness, if anyone could possibly find a solution, it would be Carolyn.

His wife's organizational skills, Chuck proudly boasted, were second to none. It was Carolyn who organized the Hollywood Community Garden when they were living nearby. And reinvigorated a failing reading program for inner city kids.And repeatedly got out the vote for issues and candidates she deemed important.

When asked about his role in Carolyn's endeavors, Chuck often chose words like accomplice, Sherpa, and partner-in-crime. What he failed to mention was that when a project seemed to be going south, or when Carolyn had a rare bout of self-doubt, the role he assumed was cheerleader, buoying her selfconfidence and reminding her of how often she turned defeat into victory. That, however, ignored the times – such as when a city official failed to deliver a promised truckload of mulch for the Community Garden, or when the landlord of the building housing the reading program threatened eviction, or when some NIMBY types objected to one of Carolyn's Thanksgiving dinners for the downand-out – that he used guile, bombast, or even trickery to come to the rescue.

In their private life, not surprisingly, it was Carolyn who was the master planner.

She oversaw the scrimping and saving that allowed them to contemplate leaving their cramped apartment for a house. She chose a neighborhood on LA's Westside, then went on countless forays until she found the appropriate fixer-upper. With Chuck serving as combination truck driver-laborer, crisscrossing LA County, then lugging, painting,

PAGE SEVEN | WAYWARD LITERATURE

grouting, and tinkering, Carolyn selected the color schemes, furnishings, and art that would adorn their walls.

Remodeling was relentlessly stressful – surviving on take-out food while the kitchen was being updated, plus towels next to their bed to wipe their feet when the floors were being redone.To handle the pressure, Carolyn and Chuck pretended their lives were a comedy routine. “Adore this faucet?”

Carolyn would playfully ask. Or “Are you in love with this sconce?” “Now my life is complete,” Chuck would respond, or “I've been dreaming about this doorknob my entire life.”

At other times Carolyn and Chuck made believe their life was a sitcom. “Okay with you?” Carolyn would ask about a paint chip, a rug, or a set of glassware.

“Yes, dear,” Chuck would reply. “Sure?” “Yes, dear.” “No misgivings?” “No, dear..”

When they turned their attention to landscaping, Chuck started responding to questions in a different way. “He-haw,” he would playfully bray, calling himself the family donkey as he removed unwanted shrubs, dug holes for citrus trees, or toted bags of peat moss and fertilizer.

But whenever a problem or dispute arose – with a merchant, or a delivery that arrived broken, or a plumber who stood them up – it was Chuck who went to war. Crises were turned into triumphs, transforming a nondescript cottage into a bright, comfortable place that was a reflection of their life together. ~ A charming house, for Carolyn, was only a step toward what she desired most: a family.Nevertheless, with her toiling away on what she hoped would be her second published children's book, and Chuck putting in long hours on an animated TV series about a talking dog with an attitude copped from old Richard Prior routines, it was only while splurging on Champagne and caviar for a stay-at-home New Year's Eve dinner that the

PAGE EIGHT | WAYWARD LITERATURE

subject was finally addressed.

“Think it's time?” Caroline asked coyly after they toasted.

“To get a puppy?” teased Chuck. “Or buy a Hockney? Or take a trip to Puerto Vallarta?”

“You know –” “As in having some fun?” Chuck asked suggestively.

“Let's call it fun with a purpose,” specified Carolyn. ~ What was supposed to be fun took an unexpected turn when one, two, three, four months in a row Carolyn's period arrived.

Each time, Chuck tried his best to console her. But still, hope gave way to tears. “l'll never happen,” Carolyn sighed one night over Vietnamese food.

“Sure it will,” insisted Chuck.

“How can you say that?”

“Because like everything else, we'll make it happen.” ~ A visit to a fertility clinic was scheduled, followed by a battery of tests: sperm count for Chuck, then hormones, a trans-vaginal ultrasound, and an examination of post-coital mucus for Carolyn.

PAGE NINE | WAYWARD LITERATURE

“This is too much,” whispered a disconsolate Carolyn as the two of them were leaving yet another round of trying sessions.

“We'll get there,” Chuck assured her.

“With our bedroom a science lab?”

“If that's what it takes.” ~ In the weeks that ensued, Chuck was on-call twenty-four-seven.Whenever Carolyn's basal temperature was optimal, his priority was to race home.

That continued until Carolyn made an announcement over strawberries and granola one Saturday morning. “I'm not sure,” she began, “but –” “But?” “I think I missed my you-know-what.”

“That calls for a celebration!”

“Not until I get tested.” ~ “Now we can celebrate,” said Carolyn, guardedly elated, when the result was positive. “Sushi? Champagne at that new French place?”

“With you pregnant?”

“One little fling won't hurt.”

“Still –” “Chuck,” said Carolyn, “women in China have babies in fields.”

PAGE TEN | WAYWARD LITERATURE

“Glad we're not in Xian.” ~ A couple of Saturdays later, after shooting baskets at a local playground, Chuck and his friend Stu Bressler stopped for a beer.

“How's Carolyn feeling?” Bressler asked once they were served.

“Yours truly's become a world champ at squeezing grapefruit juice.”

“You lost me.”

“It helps her morning sickness.”

“And otherwise?”

“Truthfully?” asked Chuck.

“Sure.”

“The guys who prepare for a space launch? Or invented electric cars?”

“What about 'em?”

“When it comes to preparations, they've got nothing on her.” ~ Day after day, week after week, new items were added to Carolyn's to-do list, then checked off once accomplished.

Chuck, whose duties now included smoking a turkey breast every Sunday so that protein would be readily available, entered a whole new world as he accompanied Carolyn on mission after mission. Pediatricians were quizzed about breast-feeding, vaccinations, and their willingness to allow PAGE ELEVEN | WAYWARD LITERATURE

the baby to stay with Carolyn in the hospital rather than being sent to the nursery. That led to the selection of an easy-going guy named Dr. Meeker.

Diaper services were investigated. Agencies representing women who could help with housework and shopping were contacted. Then came expeditions in search of a crib, blankets, and other baby needs.

Through it all, Chuck asked few questions until one Sunday morning. While the two of them were eating steel-cut oats with blueberries, he broached a subject gingerly. “What about your mother?” he asked.

“What about my mother?” Carolyn responded, suddenly on=guard.

“Do you want her here?”

“Right,” said Carolyn with an exaggerated sigh. “A drill sergeant is all we need.”

“Sure?”

“Beyond sure.” ~ The second semester, aside from periodic checkups and repainting the baby's room, became a time of waiting. Carolyn was gaining weight, but not too much.

Her vitals seemed fine, and the same was true of the infant. Then a decision was made. Despite the ultrasounds, they would keep the gender a surprise.

What mattered was to them not boy or girl, but a healthy baby.

Then, one Saturday afternoon while they were headed for a stroll along the beach, Chuck repeated a question. “Still certain about your mother?”

Carolyn winced. “Don't you know the joke?”

“Which one?”

PAGE TWELVE | WAYWARD LITERATURE

“At the first female President's inauguration, a reporter asks her mother how she feels about her daughter's success. Proudly the mother answers, 'Her brother's a doctor.'Do you really think I want her to tell me not only how to parent, but how to dress and furnish my house, all the while reminding me how much my podiatrist brother makes?” ~ As the third trimester approached, the soon-to-be-parents found their lives switching gears. Childbirth classes were added to their weekly schedule. An exploratory trip was made to the hospital chosen by them, during which their desire to have the baby remain with Carolyn was definitively reaffirmed. ~ “Two-and-a-half weeks to go!” Chuck announced on a Tuesday morning as they left their final encounter with the Ob/Gyn before the big day. “Confident?”

“I guess,” replied Carolyn.

“If ever anybody's been prepared, it's you.”

“Not us?”

“You're the mastermind.” ~ That evening, the so-called mastermind looked far from certain as she and Chuck ate a sagacious dinner of salmon and salad.

“What's up?” Chuck asked as Carolyn gazed off into the distance.

“I keep feeling like something's about to go wrong.”

“Hey –” PAGE THIRTEEN | WAYWARD LITERATURE

““Like I missed something. Or there's something out of our control.”

“Dr. Seigler says everything's fine.”

“Easy for him to say, having gotten on a plane for Maui.”

“As long as he's back for the birth.”

“But will he?” wondered Carolyn.

“Think he's going to be abducted by spacemen?”

Carolyn frowned. “Know what I'm going to do?”

“Those pelvic exercises?”

“Go to Costco.”

“Don't we already have everything?”

“We can always use more napkins, paper towels, and stuff.”

“If I ask a question,” said Chuck, “promise not to bite my head off?”

“Depends on the question.”

“Is this what's called nesting?”

Carolyn shook her head. “Not funny.”

An hour-and-a-half later, when he heard Carolyn return home with what turned out to be a trunk full of paper goods, sponges, detergent, and soap, Chuck was immediately given a warning. “Not a word,” said Carolyn.

PAGE FOURTEEN | WAYWARD LITERATURE

Silently, Chuck unloaded the purchases, then sat down in the living room with his iPad. “Want to watch an episode of “Peaky Blinders?” Carolyn asked a few minutes later.

“Only if you really want company. Otherwise I'm going to sack out early.”

“What if I twist your arm?”

“It won't take much twisting,” Chuck responded with a smile. ~ In need of a good night's sleep, Chuck climbed into bed after the episode. But just as he was about to nod out, he was startled by a series of shrieks.

“What's wrong?” he hollered as he dashed into the bathroom.

“My water broke!” answered Carolyn.

“B-but you're not due –” “Tell that to the baby!” ~ His drowsiness gone, Chuck did his best imitation of a race car driver as he sped to the hospital.

At the reception area, people were chatting amiably when Chuck charged forward. “My wife needs attention!”

Sir,” responded one of the women on duty, “we'll see her in due time.”

“After she gives birth right here?”

PAGE FIFTEEN | WAYWARD LITERATURE

Carolyn was admitted instantly. ~ Further evidence that the best planning in the world can go awry came with the realization that instead of the vacationing Dr. Seigler, the baby would be delivered by someone they had never met.

Fortunately the fill-in, a young man who introduced himself as Dr. Kaplan, calmed Carolyn with a confident manner, accompanied by assurances that all would be fine.

During the delivery, which proved to be anything but easy, Carolyn was at her best: diligent, determined, and willfully upbeat.

Chuck, in contrast, found himself vacillating between jubilation and nausea.

Still, when it came time to cut the umbilical cord, he rose to the occasion.

Carolyn then held their newborn son for several moments before handing him to their pediatrician, who did a quick examination.

After bidding a fond farewell first to the substitute Ob/Gyn, then to Dr. Meeker, Carolyn at last started to nurse the baby, whom she and Chuck announced would be called Jeremy.

The peacefulness in the delivery room ended abruptly, however, when in stepped an officious nurse whose name tag read Sheila Sullivan.“Time to take the little one,” she proclaimed.

“Take him where?” asked Carolyn.

“To the nursery.”

“He's supposed to stay with me,” explained Carolyn.

PAGE SIXTEEN | WAYWARD LITERATURE

“Only,” replied Nurse Sullivan, “if you were going to the maternity ward,” “Whoa!” protested Chuck. “Where exactly is she going?”

“It's overcrowded, so it'll have to be in another ward,” insisted Nurse Sullivan.

“Let's step into the hall,” Chuck demanded.

“It won't make any difference, since rules are rules.”

“Oh yeah?” said Chuck, ready for battle.

Taking the nurse's arm, Chuck led her into the hallway. “First and foremost,” he then said, “my wife's not going to any ward where there are sick people.”

“Sir –” “I haven't finished. Second, there's no way in hell our son'll be separated from her.

“Sir, who's in charge here?”

“Me,” insisted Chuck. “It was arranged that mother and child would not be separated.”

“But you have to understand.”

“No, you who have to understand. We get what we were promised –” “Or?” “Jail break.”

Nurse Sullivan froze. “S-sir –” she muttered.

PAGE SEVENTEEN | WAYWARD LITERATURE

“You've got five minutes to make something happen.”

“To do what you're suggesting, we'd have to call the pediatrician –” Chuck pulled out his iPhone. “Okay. And?” “Call my supervisor –” “You want to do it? Or shall I?” The nurse glanced at her watch. “I-it's nearly 2 in the morning.”

Chuck frowned. “Now you've got four minutes.”

“Sir,” pleaded Nurse Sullivan, “you're putting me in a no-win situation.”

“Correction,” insisted Chuck. “You put yourself in that situation.” ~ Victorious, Chuck watched as Carolyn and Jeremy were moved to a private room. “Happy?” he asked Carolyn once the three of them were alone.

“Ecstatic,” Carolyn replied, “as well as hungry, thirsty, and exhausted. But –” “But?” “You realize that the nanny's not ready to start –” “Chuck nodded.

“And the diaper service needs to be alerted –” “Yup –” PAGE EIGHTEEN | WAYWARD LITERATURE

“And there are half a million things still to do.”

“So what do you want me to do first?” Chuck asked.

“Truthfully?”

“Truthfully.”

“You won't get mad?” asked Carolyn.

“I won't get mad.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Call my mother,” said Carolyn with a shrug.

PAGE NINETEEN | WAYWARD LITERATURE

ELDER GIDEON Arrow of Time

(—end)

cooling heat dimming light clocks face stop in one direction forward in disorder

candles can’t unburn sea waves don't uncrash systems won't fall up

seeds scatter shattered glass aging mirrors one direction forward in disorder

the math says that we can remember the future

faith says we are more than we remember

PAGE TWENTY | JOURNEY

(—middle) A river flows out of Eden to water the garden

All-That-Was-Is-&-Ever-Shall flows out of Wisdom to suckle worlds

World that is Coming, constantly coming, never ceasing out from inside gathers shatters

PAGE TWENTY-ONE | WAYWARD LITERATURE

(beginning—)

overwhelming river universe a vessel breaking remaking only forward—

we more stream than stone are more than we remember

PAGE TWENTY-TWO | WAYWARD LITERATURE

THOMAS KLODOWSKY Mechanisms of Action

I. Amlodipine Besylate You don't feel right today. The fast-graying hair on your head just isn't sitting the way you'd like it to be. You wish that t-shirt you're planning on wearing fit just a little bit better. It hasn't felt the same since it ran through the dryer. Now, the front of it seems shorter than the rest of the fabric. You fear that this might expose your stomach to the world.

You look at your skin, dry and flaking. All those creams and moisturizers just aren't doing their job. You notice the flyaway hairs in your mustache. It's too hard to trim those. And that patchy beard. What a mess. No matter how many times you shave, you always miss spots.

You put on a button-up shirt. You joke that it's a tablecloth with arms cut into it. Though sometimes, that's what maneuvering your body around feels like.

Like you're dragging a kitchen table everywhere you go.

II. Losartan Potassium You'd love to wake up one morning with all this extra weight, literal and figurative, gone. Though you know it doesn't work that easy. Nothing ever seems to, even on days where the sun hangs high above the clouds and blinds you with its light. The seatbelt is still tight. The pants are still ill-fitting, and you can barely bend at the waist to tie your shoes.

You tell yourself these things everyday, in the hopes that it'll just click and you'll finally get your shit together. You have so much to work on. Not for everybody else. For you. And to lose the pill regimen you've been on since PAGE TWENTY-THREE| WAYWARD LITERATURE

you ended up where you are now.

You take medicines a man in his sixties might take. You feel like a man in his sixties. Your twenty-six year old brain trapped in an insufficient body. You worry about your already slightly enlarged, overworked heart one day just stopping. You say you can't let the worry win. But some days, it does. Some days, it fights dirty. It headbutts; Throws strikes at the end of the round; Hits below the belt. Today is one of those days.

III. Hydrochlorothiazide You're standing in front of the bathroom mirror, forcing a faint smirk after you brush your teeth. Staring into your own eyes, all these thoughts run through your head. Their noise is drowned by the rush of water from the faucet.

In reality, you've felt better overall the past few months. You got a bit slimmer in the waist, and made an effort to break old habits. Though your blood is still pumping too hard, and your heart is still overworked, that feels like a win. Just not today.

You open the magnetic cabinet behind your reflection, remove three pill bottles, and put on some cologne. You swallow down the cocktail of medicine, check your watch, and look down at the clothes you’re wearing. Good enough. Time for work.

PAGE TWENTY-FOUR | WAYWARD LITERATURE

JOAN MAZZA

When They Called Me Skinny

In a brown paper bag, lunch from home— a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper, before Saran Wrap or Tupperware.

Not like the other kids’ lunches, who brought colorful metal boxes with PB & J or baloney and cheese, which I might have eaten.

Mine was an omelet with the leftover vegetable from dinner: spinach, cauliflower, or broccoli with grated Romano cheese and pungent garlic and herbs.

At the lunch tables in the school basement, next to the only bathrooms, kids complained about the stink of my homemade food, simulated gagging sounds, puked eruptions of disgust, reminding me I had no appetite at all.

I rewrapped my mother’s labor and chucked that bag into the trash.

PAGE TWENTY-FIVE | WAYWARD LITERATURE

JANIS BUTLER HOLM Imprisoned Books

"Imprisoned Books" is my reaction to the current vogue of censoring books with which one does not agree. Books were my solace during a difficult childhood and helped to form my identity. We humans need the enlightenment that reading widely provides.

PAGE THIRTY-SIX | WAYWARD LITERATURE