Issue 8 by Chaotic Merge Magazine

Art | Fiction | Poetry| Plays| Screenplays | Films | Interviews

Find works from 31 different creatives from around the world ranging from art, fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and plays.

© 2025 by Chaotic Merge Magazine. All Rights Reserved. All rights to all original artwork, photography, and wri en works belongs to the respective owners as stated in the a ributions. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmi ed in any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior wri en permission of both the copyright owner and publisher.

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS FOLLOW

Hi Readers,

Welcome back to another issue of Chaotic Merge. This time around, we have 31 contributors. This might be a record for us, but it feels right. Our editors from each category have fallen in love with these pieces, from the rhythm to the sentiment to the vivid characters. We sometimes find ourselves reminiscing about pieces over and over, thinking of the significance of a line. We have thought about what bug a poem references to feeling like we were teenagers a er reading a piece. We hope these pieces do the same for you and that you find at least one that makes you think about it for several days. With that, I hope this is the most Chaotic and most Merge issue you have read yet!

Best, Jasmine Ferruﬁno Editor in Chief

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Feel Everything Feel Everything Feel Everything

by Katey Funderburgh

In New Mexico you purchased a bundle of sage and lavender tied up with blue string from a man selling bouquets out of the back of his truck. A three day’s drive to Virginia with the owers dehydrating on your dashboard, your cat in the back seat, your yellow duvet in a trash bag. For a whole year you don’t die and this is because of the owers. eir slow disintegration. Unending rain marks spring in the East and your favorite lighter is weak against the old stalks. Smoke without ame. You stand in a Trader Joe’s googling the spiritual meanings of plants wrapped in plastic. Eucalyptus for divinity and rice owers for health and you have to leave again. You have to. Cans of co ee from the gas station. You swear o cigarettes. In Colorado you’re still alive. In Utah you’re still alive. On a picnic table, A. teaches you to fold tiny paper cranes from tea bags. You keep both birds on the dash with your new owers. While you light the camp stove and cut the eyes from potatoes, A. says Sometimes things just happen without meaning anything, A. says Maybe it’s just harder for you than it is for other people. You cook the potatoes in oil and chili and you will love A. forever. In Kansas the plywood billboard will decay into “Food Gas Die–”. Rain will fall in faraway elds on both sides of the highway.

Alternate Definitions of Depression by Anna Zilbermints

I’m sitting at the doctor’s o ce, IPad heavy on my shaking leg, mental health screening dancing in front of my eyes

0. Not at all

1. Several days

2. More than half the days

3. Nearly every day

again. Sure, depression can sometimes feel like a boomerang, but nobody warned me how tedious this god damn questionnaire would be when I nally started answering it truthfully.

e word depression didn’t exist in my house growing up, so when you go undiagnosed for over ten years, you don’t really know what Normal™ looks like, but you become really good at excuses—

footnotes written in quick succession when the word depression has been written out of your vocabulary. But you don’t really see things clearly.

Like how it’s not that I’ve lost interest in things I’ve always loved, it’s just that within a few months, I quit tennis a er twelve years and piano a er thirteen. It’s not that I lost interest, it’s just that…I… didn’t want to anymore, and yes there’s a di erence.

Like how it’s not that I’m having trouble concentrating, it’s just that when Net ix calls to me to sit and breathe, I don’t know where to put my hands or my legs or my eyes, so I can’t even watch a new show properly.

Like how it’s not that I’m isolating myself, it’s just that I believed too strongly for too long that what I maybe thought I found in him was what he was looking for in literally anybody else, and maybe that’s a reason why I haven’t slept with anyone since. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I don’t want to……………………………ruin anyone else’s night.

Sometimes, abandonment and attachment are so hand in hand, my skin still tingles a little when he touches me.

Like how it’s not that I believe I’m a failure, it’s just that my grades started slipping sometime in early high school just when things were getting hard, probably because I’m just so lazy.

Like how it’s not that I feel tired or have little energy, It’s just that… wait.

No, that one’s true.

Like how it’s not that I’m going to kill myself, it’s just that

3. Nearly every day

I’ve considered opening the window and letting my birds go so it’d be easier so there’d be less responsibility le over, see I must just be so fucking lazy.

Instead I got a cat. But when the cliché saying goes “Pain is how you know you’re alive,” I kind of understand why we’d prefer to die.

But the question isn’t:

How passively do you think about suicide?

What the hell made you think getting a cat when you already have birds was a good idea?

Why don’t you like to talk about your old GPA?

How emotionally available are you to the emotionally unavailable?

How does it feel to be able to mouth every problematic word of How I Met Your Mother?

Why were the things you trained for for most of your life the rst ones to go?

ere is no extra info section on a PHQ-9, but I’ve got like 5 minutes to ll out this god damn questionnaire as truthfully as I can.

Tragedies and Disappointments of a Happy Youth by

N.L. Jorgensen

In each category, look for two truths and a lie. One point for every correct answer.

1-9 points = Not paying attention 10-27 points = Passing grade 28-33 points = Top of the class

1. Childhood trauma

a. I had very few friends.

b. My friends and I smoked Lucky Strikes.

c. My best friend was killed in a car crash.

First, our house. en, the McHenrys. en, the Meyerses. One sunny summer a ernoon, Becky Meyers’s friend, a brand-new driver, picked her up. Maybe they were going to a movie. Apparently, her friend never saw the other car. Becky’s mom remembers hearing sirens.

Six days later, I listened from an over ow room—the church too small for too many, Becky’s pastor jarring and abrasive, like metal on metal.

2. Wisconsin weather

a. I shoveled snow before school.

b. I always wore a dress, even in below-zero temperatures.

c. It never got warm enough to swim outside.

From December through March, Wisconsin plunged below zero, blasted biting winds, and buried every street in banks of snow. For the walk to school, I wore snow pants under a

dress. For Sunday church, no matter how red my ankles, no matter how cold my knees, no matter how bitter the sting against my thighs, I wore bare legs. Jesus didn’t approve of girls in pants.

Past Is Prologue

by Brittany Micka-Foos

CHARACTERS

ARIEL. 30s or 40s. Any gender. NOAH. 30s or 40s. Any gender.

FIGURES IN BLACK. 3 or more individuals. Any age. Any gender.

A post-funeral reception. ere is a table with pictures of the deceased and owers. Possibly plates of food, boxes of tissues, etc. NOAH and ARIEL stand center stage. FIGURES IN BLACK linger in the background, mingling, attendees at the reception.

NOAH

You okay?

ARIEL stares directly ahead and does not respond.

No one’s eating anything. I stayed up ’til 2 a.m. cutting kiwi into these perfect little owers—it was almost impossible to get the petals right— and no one’s even touched the fruit platter. en, I woke up early and made a few extra charcuterie boards, because I knew there were going to be a ton of people, and I really, really didn’t want to run out of food. Not today. Mom said we should’ve just bought some sandwich plates. From Costco. God, can you imagine? With those little imsy plastic trays? He’d be livid. He’d be literally spinning in his grave.

Still no response.

I got the Corfu gs special. I had to visit three separate grocery stores to nd them.

A pair of FIGURES IN BLACK approach and make consolatory gestures towards the pair before moving away. ARIEL does not engage with the FIGURES IN BLACK and appears unnerved by them.

You okay?

A wailing sob is heard o stage. ARIEL and NOAH look at each other.

Dad’s here.

NOAH exits. FIGURES IN BLACK move closer to ARIEL. ey continue to carry on like guests at a reception as ARIEL speaks, not facing them.

ARIEL

(To audience) I’m stuck in this play. Acting out these same scenes, over and over. Trying to trace my grief back to some source that makes sense. is is the reception a er my brother’s funeral. (Gestures around) ey say what’s past is prologue. But, it feels so present. I live in the past now. I come here all the time, resurrecting all the old ghosts, trying to understand my brother and his death…

FIGURES IN BLACK begin to dismantle the scene around ARIEL and construct the next one: a table, a chair.

Here we go again…

FIGURES IN BLACK continue transitioning the scene while ARIEL speaks. Once they are nished, FIGURES IN BLACK sit on the oor, an audience.

In those early days, they give the family a set of tasks. e obituary has a print deadline. Everyone sorts through family photos for the slideshow they insist on playing at the reception. (A FIGURE IN BLACK brings ARIEL an open laptop) Arrangements must be made. Do you want a viewing? A headstone? What sort of owers for the funeral? I guess they have to keep you busy. Otherwise, you’d be le thinking about what you could have done di erently.

ARIEL sits at the table, sets down the laptop, and starts to type. One or two FIGURES IN BLACK hold newspapers, which they read.

Jacob Tyler Barrett was born on November 28, 1993. He graduated from Western Washington University. (Pause, reading back over her words) No. (Shakes head, deletes and restarts typing) He was born in Olympia, Washington, the son of …. (Frustrated pause) He is survived by… (Deletes again) Who cares? Who am I writing this for?

e FIGURES IN BLACK ap their newspapers and whisper to each other, disturbing ARIEL.

(To the audience) e obituary. A pithy biography that will encapsulate him for the news-reading public. An accounting of his life. e truth is: I feel unquali ed to tell the story of my brother. How can I explain what led him to that point? My brother was twenty-nine when he died. When I close my eyes, I see di erent versions of him in time. e uncle who launched rockets with his nieces and nephews. e teenager who dismissed therapy because he was—and I quote—too self-aware. e man who wrote poetry and computer code. e kid who would cry when he got water in his ears. Memories of my brother appear to me like ghosts, slithering out of the sideboards of the ranch house we grew up in. I’m constantly constructing him. And yet, every time I’m here, I struggle to think of what to say. (Pause, then resumes typing) Jacob Tyler Barrett passed away on June 21, 2023. (Nods, bracing for the task ahead) Okay.

NOAH enters the scene with two plates of food and puts one down on the table in front of ARIEL.

NOAH

Made you a sandwich.

ARIEL doesn’t look up from typing. NOAH sits down and starts eating. A er a pause, NOAH speaks.

NOAH

What do you have so far?

ARIEL

Jacob Tyler Barrett passed away on June 21, 2023, following a long battle with depression…(Stops reading) Is depression what killed him? For all I know, the depression kept him alive, kept him apathetic and inert. Maybe it was the anxiety that did it. Or, I don’t know, the drugs? e childhood trauma?

NOAH picks at their food, says nothing.

(More to themself) is makes it seem like he had cancer or something. Depression is not cancer. ere’s no blood test for depression. It makes it seem like it was this unlucky thing, something he accidentally contract-

ed. It makes it seem like there was nothing anybody could do.

Stares at the screen for a moment.

Can I just say suicide? Can you at out say suicide in an obituary? I’m pretty sure that’s what killed him.

A brief, re ective silence.

What about dad?

NOAH

ARIEL

I’ll just leave it. (Resumes reading from laptop) … following a long battle with depression. He was twenty-nine years old. He played guitar, and wrote music and poetry. He loved Taylor Swi , computers, and hot sauce.

Puts head in hands.

Computers and hot sauce? I write for a living, and I can’t think of a better way to describe his life? It’s so super cial. He’d be crushed, to know this is how I memorialized him. I can hear him:

FIGURES IN BLACK yell the following lines in succession. NOAH cannot hear them, but ARIEL reacts.

FIGURES IN BLACK

(Mocking) anks a lot. Do you even know anything about me? (Derisive laughter) I haven’t written a poem in years. Where have you been?

NOAH

I don’t know … He really did love hot sauce.

ARIEL stares at the laptop screen until the FIGURES IN BLACK rise to dismantle the scene and construct the next one. ey place a few cardboard boxes on stage, along with other assorted clutter, including a candy bar wrapper and a spray bottle. NOAH is in the background, sitting on the ground, looking through the contents of a box.

ARIEL

(Speaking while FIGURES IN BLACK transition the scene) It’s funny, all these little tasks that make up your life in the a ermath. Did you know, a er a suicide, someone has to clean up?

One of the FIGURES IN BLACK hands ARIEL a half-full garbage bag, then joins the others encircling the scene, watching. As the scene unfolds, a FIGURE IN BLACK will periodically move through the stage scattering crumpled newspapers from the previous scene, visibly frustrating ARIEL.

e police don’t do it for you. Maybe that’s self-explanatory, but you don’t think of these things until they happen. (Looks around) My brother’s apartment. I come back here all the time. A er they took his body away, a police o cer handed me the keys. It was the rst time I’d been inside, even though we lived in the same town. (Pause) e place was a mess. Full of all the stu he le behind. Every object, a memory. A million little painful reminders. I would have kept it all if I could have. Even the garbage.

Picks up candy bar wrapper and examines it.

is might have been his last meal. It’s proof of something. Each time I’m here, I scour the place for clues, like I could uncover the secret of his suicide. I haven’t found it yet. Just a pile of unpaid bills, months old. A computer hard drive wiped clean. Guitar picks, scattered around the room like forgotten dreams. It’s the little things that really get me.

ARIEL gestures to spray bottle.

A bottle of all-purpose cleaner. He le it sitting on the counter, half-empty, or half full. In his bathroom, I found hair growth formula. I look at all that stu and I can’t help but think: he was trying. Even towards the very end, he was trying to live.

ARIEL puts the bottle into the trash bag.

Still, somebody’s got to clean up the mess.

NOAH moves downstage, holding a pot and a trash bag. NOAH drops the trash bag at their feet.

NOAH

Do you want his sous vide? If you don’t want it, I’m going to keep it. (Holds up the pot, sadly inspecting it) is is the tagine I got him for his birthday. (Li s lid) It’s really moldy. (Sets down the pot and pantomimes opening a refrigerator) Oh my god. Is that a squid in the crisper drawer?

ARIEL keeps putting stu in the trash bag as the FIGURES IN BLACK remove the boxes and clutter and set up a row of folding chairs. ARIEL and NOAH sit in them, alongside a few FIGURES IN BLACK. One FIGURE IN BLACK stands in front of the chairs, gesticulating.

ARIEL

(Speaking to the audience, while FIGURES IN BLACK transition the scene) I barely even registered the funeral. Just one more thing in a long line of logistics. He would have hated it, though I guess that doesn’t matter.

e funeral home provided the o ciant—sorry, the life celebrant. I was not ready to celebrate his life. She kept name-dropping Jesus, even though we told her my brother was an atheist. It felt too tidy, too neat, all these terrible canned cliches. e life celebrant never spoke of his death, what it meant, how it might have been di erent…

ARIEL pauses to observe the increasingly emphatic o ciant, then their fellow audience members.

All these people I haven’t seen in years telling me how sorry they are. It was a circus. It was a performance. And then, the celebrant asked if anyone else would like to say a few words. I imagine myself standing up in front of everyone and yelling: look! Look what happened to him! How could we not see how much he was su ering? What are we doing here? (Pause) I would say it to the audience, but mostly I’d be saying it to myself.

NOAH gets up and replaces the life celebrant.

NOAH

I feel like I should say something, but I don’t know what. I’ll just say that I miss you. I’ll miss cooking with you. I keep thinking about that time you brought a blow torch over to make crème brûlée, so you could get the crust just right. (Pause, gathering themself) I keep talking about food. I guess it’s like a shorthand. is small thing that always leads me back to

him. He was so caring, and food was how he showed it. He’d cook for you. He put a lot of himself into it. (Pause) One of the last things we talked about was sh. He had read something about how they feel pain and he said, “I’m not eating sh anymore.” Because they su er. Even if we don’t like to think about it, they do.

NOAH, at a loss for words, sits back down. FIGURES IN BLACK look at ARIEL expectantly.

ARIEL

No matter how many times I relive this scene, I never address the crowd. I don’t trust myself. I don’t have anything useful to say.

e FIGURES IN BLACK move again to change the scene. We are back at the post funeral reception from the opening of the play. Instead of speaking during the transition, ARIEL re ectively arranges the owers and photos once the table is in position.

NOAH

You okay?

ARIEL does not respond. Instead of looking straight ahead like in the opening scene, ARIEL turns towards FIGURES IN BLACK, trans xed. NOAH talks as though nothing as changed.

Still no response.

I got the Corfu gs special. I had to visit—

ARIEL and NOAH —three separate grocery stores.

A pair of FIGURES IN BLACK approach and make consolatory gestures. is time, ARIEL engages with them, accepts their condolences, and o ers them each a ower from the table.

NOAH

You okay?

ARIEL speaks the following lines while o ering a ower to each of the other FIGURES IN BLACK.

ARIEL

It’s been a whole year. And I’m still here, still stuck in a time loop, playing back these events. One a er the other. Trying to make sense of something I can’t. It’s hard. It’s hard to keep looking back. When I close my eyes, I’m at the viewing, then I’m back in his apartment, or I’m on the phone when I rst got the call, when I rst heard—

A wailing is heard o stage. NOAH and ARIEL exchange glances. ARIEL and NOAH

Dad’s here.

NOAH exits. is time ARIEL initiates the scene change and directs the FIGURES IN BLACK as they reconstruct the obituary scene with the table and the laptop. Once the scene is reset, ARIEL ushers FIGURES IN BLACK o stage.

ARIEL

(As the FIGURES IN BLACK exit) He’s gone, and we’re stuck here in the a ermath. I’m still looking for the path forward, trying to understand a future without my brother in it. Constantly rewriting his obituary, trying to get closer to the truth.

ARIEL sits down at the laptop and begins typing. NOAH enters with two plates of food, stopping to listen to ARIEL.

ARIEL

Jacob Tyler Barrett was my brother. He died by suicide on June 21, 2023. He was twenty-nine years old. ere is still so much we don’t know and probably never will. We don’t know why he died, not exactly. We don’t know if we could have changed his mind. We are haunted by what he

le behind: guilt, anger, regret, and an unshakable sense that he should still be here. More than anything, I wish we’d talked about suicide while he was still alive. To take that version of the future and speak about it openly. Not to minimize or blame or dissuade, but just to hold his su ering with him. To be there with him, to tell him directly how much I care about him. I wonder, if I could have done that, maybe we would be in a better place now. (Pause) I do not want to mythologize my brother as an extension of my imagination, as an emblem or idol of something he was not. I want to face the cold hard facts of his life and his death head on. What else can I say about him, other than that he was my brother and I loved him? I miss him like I miss a part of myself.

A moment of silence. NOAH Is it nished?

I don’t think so.

What's That Bug Called by

Devon Neal

that makes sounds like a frying skillet in the lung-swallowing humidity on a bleary summer day? What spines does it wear in the trees, in the hot wind, or does it wear a vest of bones, ﬁsted and hollow, possessed by the rumor of evening? Do its antennae, twisted like desert weeds, feel the dirt cracking, the ﬂowers wilting, hear the whisper of water vaporing into the sky? Does it have wings, dry as bones? Does it bite like broken bo les on a drained lake bed?

There’s some name, I know, like a foreign curse, or, worse, just some name I’ve heard a thousand times but never made the connection. Sometimes, I don’t want an answer, the mystery to stay pulsing in the shadows and deep. Give me this skull-voiced sca erer, this ﬂipping pale switchblade in the trees, give me its language scratching freehand in the sun, just don’t give me its name.

dear aiden

by Jane Lee

who defended kanye west one green text message at a time, even though i insisted that i would never listen to him.

who once le his parakeet alone in the red co age during his hometown visit to Korea. aiden of daily strawberry milk teas— 50% sugar—and patches of Busan sand, without me. without me— even though he knew i wanted to smell the salt on our skin & preserve it on his vintage kodak. we never did, even though we lived next to the ocean. aiden of black baseball caps like middle school haloes

even though the fabric frayed long ago, & the logo is longfaded. aiden, do you remember this: i was going to wear a hat today? do you remember smiling with your dimples? i told you i was glad you didn’t in fourth period, breaking the news of parking lot construction for the Falcon. aiden of drum enthusiasm. aiden of wordle obsession. aiden, the only partner i’ve ever chosen for book reports & chemistry projects; my co-conspirator for every quadratic equation problem set. aiden of precalculus questions, of anything

but graphing conics. & aiden, the version of him i found at 10 pm, at school—when i was still there, sweat-slicked & knees wobbling from lacrosse practice, but smiling at him—the one who looked up with the glossiest eyes & the longest eyelashes. (that aiden, king of joking

he’d curl them one day.) aiden, with the shiniest cheeks, feet crossed under his knees, no jacket even when it’s almost christmas.

aiden, i waited

with you. i pa ed your permed hair. i promised to text you. i had to drive home, but i wanted to kneel next to the stone bench, rest

A Version of Us Exists in a Small Apartment in Brooklyn by Elana Walters

Deep in the Financial District, there’s this letter strung up on a clothing line about a girl moving to Los Angeles and the boy she’s leaving behind in New York City to do it. I think I’ve fallen in love and I’m fucking terri ed was the last line I read of hers before the curator cut into my silence to ask if I wanted to write something too.

I’m fucking terri ed, I repeated to myself as I hovered the pen over the page, and I thought of how I was going to write about you.

e right words swept in and out, again and again, until my vision tunneled back into that car ride where you said you would have pursued me two years ago if I wasn’t living so far away. And only when I said I felt the same did you remind me, we’re in the same position again, until I’d nd myself back in the installation, still waiting for our position to change, still waiting for the right words to form on the page.

To cope, I told myself that I actually didn’t want to write about you at all, because I resented you for leaving New York in a month, and for always having an open inbox to send my writing to, and for once saying that I reminded you of summer moonlight, and for always choosing me as your partner no matter the game, and for saying that I should call you if I ever needed anything, and for always having a hair tie on your wrist just to give it away, and for telling me the truth—that you won’t pursue someone you don’t see a future with—and then, I resented you for being so hard to shape in a handwritten letter.

So, because it was all I could think about, I wrote about your move to Los Angeles and how much I was going to miss you, and there was a brief moment where I wasn’t

writing, and I listened instead to the curator explain that every page in the installation is photocopied. e real versions live in multiple boxes inside of his apartment in Brooklyn, and a part of me sunk at the realization that the version of us that might be strung up for everyone to see is who we really are. A snapshot, a dream—not the real thing.

But I still handed in the paper, because it would be too tragic to never breathe a version of us into existence even if that version only exists in the bottom of a cardboard box in an apartment somewhere in Brooklyn—buried underneath a bunch of other versions of people who don’t exist anymore either.

Upon the sea, at night

by Raymond Berthelot

No one believed us at the very least, no one cared when we described how we came to be late for we were in the middle of the ocean calm, black, extending forever ﬂoating as if in warm amber under a million stars interrupted occasionally by the shadow of a tail of one lone whale, breaking the surface extinguishing points of light, for a moment, then back down into the deep and only the sound of her breathing as an air leaves a balloon in the night I reached out and grasped a ra yellow, as if I could only guess and I and you, in our yellow ra , our womb within space made our way back to the crowd leaving the universe and all creation far, far behind us.

Jell-O Night by Logan Markko

e old people at Lakewood Retirement Home go crazy for Jell-O. ere’s something about the way the processed gelatin slides over their dentures and down their throats, slippery and wet, that gets them all excited. Plus, there’s almost no risk of choking.

I’ve been working here as a resident care aide for less than a month, and I’ve already seen two old guys bite it. One from natural causes, which for somebody over the age of seventy- ve basically means any type of death that’s not murder. e other, because he simply stopped eating. In this place, where living sometimes becomes a choice, a cup of Jell-O can make all the di erence.

“I put a little extra sugar into this batch,” Chef John says, giving me a conspiratorial wink. “It’s like speed to these old geezers.”

Chef John looks the part of a reformed junkie badass with his missing front teeth and tattooed forearms, but whenever we’re working together in the kitchen, he mostly talks about what'll be on the menu at the Michelin three-star restaurant he’s going to run someday. So far, his plan includes a lot of soups and stews, with a seafood gumbo as the specialty dish that’s supposed to be out of this world.

He’s stacking Jell-O cups and going on about tomato bisque when the big boss lady enters the kitchen, a clipboard in her hands and a frown on her face.

“Mikey!” Chef John hisses, pushing a tray into my hands. “Do your fucking rounds!”

I hop to it, carrying the Jell-O around the dining room with a dopey grin plastered to my face, trying to seem friendly. e residents smile like we’re long-lost friends, even if most of them can’t remember my name. eir hands shoot

up when I ask who wants a Jell-O cup, then dig deep into their pockets. Maybe searching for a sympathy tip, I hope. But no, just used tissues and cough drops.

As much as I hate to admit it, this shitty job is sending me to college. My parents are helping with tuition, but I have to cover books, housing, and food. Lakewood pays twelve bucks an hour, which is enough to bite my tongue and clean up a er these old bastards until August. en, I’m quitting.

e dining room is mostly empty since most of the residents prefer to eat in their rooms. Ms. Gladys touches my arm as I pass her table. “Mikey, dear, could I trouble you for another cup of Jell-O? You know I love Jell-O night.”

She utters her eyelashes and gives me her best old lady pout as if suggesting she’s willing to do anything to get more of her precious Jell-O. Normally, I’d stop and irt with her for a bit, but yesterday we spent an hour arguing over shower time, so I’m not in the mood to play games. I dump a few cups in front of her and keep moving.

Next up is a table of retired doctors, lawyers, and bankers. eir leader, Mr. Harold, the former vice president of a now-defunct electric company, grabs my elbow.

“We want the girl,” he says, gesturing towards Shayna, the head aide, who’s busy wiping Jell-O o another resident’s chin. “She waits on us. at’s how it goes.”

We watch Shayna collapse into a nearby chair, exhausted from standing. e strain of her pregnant belly is hard on her back, so she sits whenever she can. She’s only a few years older than me, pretty in a girl-next-door type of way with big green eyes and long brown hair that she pulls back into a bun. Although the belly slows her down, she's been working at Lakewood for a while and knows the place inside and out. She’s the one who trained me on all things old people.

Still, there’s not that much to know outside of feeding and cleaning them.

I can’t help but feel a twinge of resentment. Just yesterday, I sat and listened to Mr. Harold’s whole life story. His harrowing tale of eeing war-torn Poland, crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a cardboard box with his younger brothers

and sisters. Now, I’m not good enough to serve Jell-O.

“ ere’s still a few cups le ,” I persist, showing o my tray.

Mr. Harold stares past me. “I said, we want the girl.”

I try to remember the training videos that Shayna forced me to watch during onboarding about how to best deal with grouchy old people. You’re supposed to de-escalate them by acknowledging their frustrations and proposing solutions.

“Shayna’s with someone else, Mr. Harold,” I say, crouching awkwardly to meet his eyes. “But I'd be happy to help you.”

His gnarled, liver-spotted hands are holding tight to the arms of his chair, squeezing the cushion with murderous intent. Watching those hands, I can’t help but wonder if Mr. Harold’s ever killed a man. He’s de nitely old enough to have fought in a war somewhere at some point. I imagine his younger self creeping through a dark jungle, his face blackened with war paint, slitting the enemy’s throat under the cover of night.

Suddenly, his hand ies through the air until it’s right in front of my face, where it seems to pause for a moment, hovering at the precipice of assault before slamming into the tray of Jell-O I’m holding, sending the whole stupid mess to the oor.

His table erupts with maniacal laughter. ey look like wild animals about to descend on my rotting carcass as I drop to my knees to clean up the fallen Jell-O.

“We want the girl!” Mr. Harold screams, his neck veins straining against wrinkled esh.

I feel the big boss lady’s eyes boring holes into my back. Somehow, this will be my fault.

I’m on my hands and knees for what feels like hours, picking little red chunks o the linoleum tile. When I nally look up, Shayna’s whispering so ly into Mr. Harold’s ear, and Chef John’s on his way with a special bowl of Jell-O from the kitchen. Later, he’ll joke about subtracting the lost Jell-O from my paycheck and I’ll laugh like it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.

Eventually, the laughter dies down, replaced by the distant sound of gentle piano music playing over the dining

room speakers. e residents go back to eating, I am forgotten, and everything returns to normal.

And then, I see something out of place. In the corner of the dining room is an emergency exit door. In the case of a re, we’re supposed to wheel the residents over to the McDonald’s parking lot across the road from the nursing home. Otherwise, the door stays locked.

An old man I’ve never seen before is staring out the exit door, gazing at the outside world like a zoo animal trapped behind glass. He’s wearing a wide-brimmed fedora, a suit and tie, and a wool overcoat. His out t almost seems to suggest that walking through the emergency exit door has the power to transport him back in time.

I feel a sudden urge to go help him. To tear o my apron and throw my sanitary gloves and gait belt in the trash. I’ll drive him around the city until we nd his house and all the people that love him will be waiting inside. ey’ll explain that everything was just a big misunderstanding and that they’re so happy he’s back home where he belongs. We’ll eat cake and sing songs, drink champagne and toast our guest of honor.

Chef John’s glaring down at me. “Come on, Mikey. We’ve got to get this place cleaned up.”

I look over at the exit door, but this time no one’s there.

At the end of our shi , Shayna and I sit in the breakroom, watching a courtroom drama on the TV with halfopened eyes, waiting to clock out.

“Sometimes this place feels so depressing,” I say a er the show goes to commercial. “Every day is a reminder of what’s waiting at the end of your life. You work forty, y years, save up enough money to retire, and just when you’re able to enjoy it you forget your own name.”

Shayna slips her shoes and socks o and props her swollen feet up on my chair. “Quit complaining,” she says. “If you hate working here so much, go ip burgers at McDonald’s instead.”

“You’re being unfair. I’m just blowing o a little

steam.”

She puts her hand up to stop me. “I’ve never understood why people whine so much about their jobs. Sometimes a job is just a job.”

She’s missing the point. I look around the cramped breakroom, taking in the beige wallpaper and tacky plastic appliances. is place drips with mediocrity. Shayna’s been here so long, she’s forgotten that there’s more to life than cleaning up a er geriatrics.

“What is it?” she asks, kicking my shin. “I can tell you’re thinking about something.”

I’ve read about the mood swings pregnant women have. One day they can’t get out of bed, the next they’re cleaning the house top to bottom. ey get cravings for weird stu like ice cream with pickles and mayonnaise. Mostly, they feel like shit.

I stare at Shayna’s turquoise toenails, inches from my knee, and think of her in a few months, cradling a newborn in her arms.

“ e new guy,” I answer. “Who is he?”

“Oh, that’s Mr. Arthur. He has advanced dementia, so he’s not much of a talker. His family moved him down from Toledo earlier today.”

“ at’s a relief,” I joke. “Since he’s moving from one shithole to another, he won’t know the di erence. It’ll feel just like home.”

Shayna sti es a smile. “Have you ever been to Toledo?”

I shake my head. “Don’t have to, everyone knows it’s a shithole.”

She laughs and a strand of hair falls across her eyes. “Mikey.”

“What?”

“You’re stupid.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d think we were falling in love.

Shayna o ers me a ride, but I don’t want to push my luck. I walk the two miles home, cutting through neighborhoods with ranch style houses and gravel front yards until I’ve reached the yellow house at the crossroads of Lee and

Grant where I’ve lived my entire life.

On the way, I think about Shayna’s baby. How she can always tell the di erence between when it’s sleeping and when it’s awake. How it kicks especially hard when she’s laying on her back at night, and how singing lullabies is supposed to make it a more emotionally resilient adult. Her doctor says the baby’s twelve inches long and weighs two pounds. It has hair on its head, ngers and toes, can open its eyes, and even hiccups. Shayna doesn't want to nd out the gender before it's born, but she’s told me that if it’s a boy, she’ll name him Jayson. Celeste, if it’s a girl.

She never mentions the father. I imagine he’s a construction worker who gets dirt and grime all over her linen bed sheets. en again, maybe he’s a bohemian artist who impregnated her a er a twelve-hour nude painting session. He could be a blind man in a wheelchair, a soldier on leave, a drummer in a rock band, the president’s son, or none of these men. Maybe, there’s no father.

Maybe she’s doing everything alone. Mom and Dad are waiting for me at the kitchen table when I get home. He’s drinking a beer and she’s got a glass of white wine. It’s weird seeing them together in one place like this. ings have been di erent ever since my older sister, LeAnn, moved to California a few years ago. My parents used to argue all the time. ey’d yell and throw things at each other, then disappear into their room for hours, only to be back on the hamster wheel a few days later. Now, everything is quiet. ey hardly ever ght at all.

“Honey,” Mom says, her voice drowsy from the wine. “We need to talk.”

I realize that I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.

Dad pats the chair next to him. “Pull up a seat, son.” His cheeks are ushed crimson red, either from the alcohol or the embarrassment of the situation they’re about to throw me into.

“Let me guess,” I say, ignoring his o er. “You’re nally getting a divorce.”

Mom and Dad exchange a look. He takes a swig of beer, the carbonation immediately bubbling up from his

throat and into a burp he fails to suppress.

She reaches for his hand. “Your father and I are seeking alternative options. However, in no way does this re ect our feelings about you and your sister.”

Good, I think. I’m ready to get the hell away from these people.

“What your mother’s trying to say,” Dad stammers, “is that it’s not your fault. Sometimes people who love each other stop loving each other in the same way they once did. I know it sounds complicated, but it’s that simple.”

Mom’s nodding along to Dad’s words like he’s Martin Luther King Jr. giving a speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. She has a typical mom haircut, a helmet of dyed frizz that looks fake and stupid now that I’m really looking at her. I wonder if she’ll let it grow out a er the divorce is nalized.

And then there’s Dad, balding and fat. My future self, staring at me with beer on his breath, trying to explain to his eighteen-year-old son why his getting dumped is a good thing for the family.

He’s holding his beer like he’s about to make a toast. “Nothing’s going to change, son. Of course, we’ll have to sell the house, but that just means double the Christmases, double the presents.” He chuckles. “Really, you’re making out like a bandit.”

“ ere’s one other thing, sweety,” Mom interjects. “Getting a divorce takes time. ere’s paperwork and attorneys, and a lot of boring details that you don’t need to worry about.”

Her words are like hot wax in my eardrums. I want to go to my room. I’ll sleep for a month if they let me.

Mom shakes her dye job. “Our nances are going to be tied up in court for a while, which means we’re all going to have to make sacri ces in the meantime.”

en she drops the hammer.

She says there’s no money for college. Apparently, their savings need to be reevaluated and their assets frozen so the lawyers on both sides have enough time to properly settle my parents' a airs. It’s standard divorce procedure, they say. Everyone does it this way.

“We’re going to have to ask you to be patient, sweetheart,” Mom says. “You can still enroll in the spring.”

I nod in agreement because there’s nothing else to do.

“ anks for understanding,” Dad says. “Want a beer?”

I wake up in the middle of the night, sweaty and confused. It takes a moment to separate myself from the fog and accept that I’m back in my room.

Like everyone else, I thought I’d go to school in Columbus or Athens, make a few friends, learn enough to get a job a er graduation, and then talk about how great my college days were for the rest of my life. I picture myself in ten, or twenty years, swapping holidays between my parents, a bedroom in each of their basements. Forever, uneducated and stupid.

As I fall back to sleep, I wonder if there’s any chance they’ll change their minds. ey could see a marriage counselor. One who wears tweed jackets and tortoiseshell glasses and knows how to x all their problems. I imagine the three of them talking in a dimly lit o ce, Mom and Dad seated next to each other on a leather sofa, while the marriage counselor smokes a pipe at his desk. For the rst time, they’ll really listen to one another, and by the end of the hour, they’ll be hugging, promising to do whatever it takes to save the marriage.

In the morning, I wake to the sounds of Mom and Dad switching places in the house. She goes downstairs to the kitchen to make breakfast. He goes upstairs to the bathroom to shower. I stay in bed, my muscles tensed against the sheets, feeling stupid for thinking there was anything le for these two strangers to discover about one another that they didn’t already know.

When I get to Lakewood for my a ernoon shi , Shayna isn’t there and I wonder if she’s had some kind of terrible emergency. e big boss lady pokes her head into the breakroom. “ ank god for small miracles. I’m trying to nd extra coverage, but for now, you’re on your own.”

I’ve never had to work a shi by myself before, but when the big boss lady asks if everything’s okay, I smile and nod just like I’m supposed to.

“Do you know if Shayna’s coming in later?” I ask, but the big boss lady’s already disappeared around the corner. I think for a moment. e hazy plan formulating itself inside my head isn’t fully crystallized. I’m not even sure it makes sense.

A er double-checking that the big boss lady isn’t about to come back, I slip my hand into Shayna’s locker and root around until I nd her employee badge. Attached to the lanyard is her photo ID and a master key given to the head aide that opens every door in the building.

I stand there, waiting for Shayna to come bursting through the door. “Whoops,” I’ll say, noticing for the rst time that I’ve accidentally grabbed her keys instead of mine. She’ll joke about the bags under my eyes and chalk the mistake up to sleep deprivation.

But she doesn’t come bursting through the door. She isn’t going to save the day.

e rst-shi aides have wheeled all the residents back to their rooms from lunch. A few mill about, but for the most part the retirement home has fallen into the sleepy stupor of mida ernoon.

I move from room to room, handing out extra blankets and searching for lost TV remotes. Some people need help bathing or getting dressed. Others simply want someone to talk to. en there’s the residents who never leave their beds. e kind who can’t speak or communicate and have to be rotated every couple of hours to prevent bed sores. e ones that spend every day sitting in the dark.

When I get to Mr. Harold’s room, he’s sitting on his couch, wearing an undershirt, boxers, and black compression socks pulled up past his knees. e few remaining hairs on his bald head are uncombed and pointing in all directions like he’s just awoken from a nap. It takes him a few seconds to register my presence.

A er yesterday’s Jell-O asco, I’ve mentally prepared myself for this moment. If he tries anything I’m going to give him a dose of his own medicine.

e room is neat and tidy, everything exactly where

it should be. I notice the grainy photos covering his walls. Family members, children, and a young woman with jetblack hair and bright red lipstick.

“Give me a hand,” Mr. Harold mutters, waving from the couch.

I ready myself for the inevitable verbal attack.

When I turn to face him, his compression socks are rolled down and he’s holding out a prosthetic leg. “Here,” he says. “Put it by the bathroom door.”

e stump of his leg is pink and swollen from being forced into the plastic piece that connects the prosthetic to the remaining part of his upper leg. I stare at the missing space where his leg is supposed to be. My eyes icker over the rest of his body, the drooping skin hanging from his bones. His sallow complexion. e hunched back and curved spine, jagged against his cotton undershirt.

“Blood clots,” he says, massaging the stump with both hands. “Started in my knee, then made their way down the rest of the leg. Doctor said he had to take the whole thing.”

I hesitate. Instead of taking the prosthetic, I go for the door, closing it so ly behind me.

Mr. Harold’s phantom leg isn't my problem. He’s still a mean old man.

Nobody answers when I knock on Mr. Arthur’s door. ere’re still a few residents to check on before dinner, but they can wait.

I hurry to the dining room. Like yesterday, Mr. Arthur’s standing in front of the emergency exit door. He’s wearing the fedora hat and wool coat. His hands are buried in his pockets and he’s looking through the glass with the same expression of worried concentration.

From the kitchen, I can hear Chef John whistling as he stirs a big pot of French onion soup.

Several residents are already sitting at their usual tables. Ms. Gladys waves at me, but I pretend not to see her. I make a beeline across the room for Mr. Arthur, ignoring the arthritic hands shooting up to get my attention. Someone calls my name, but there’s no stopping me now.

Mr. Arthur seems surprised to see another person

standing so close to him. He tries to push past me, but I block his path.

“Don’t worry,” I whisper, fumbling in my apron for Shayna’s keys. “We’re getting you out of this place.”

e door unlocks with a satisfying click and the handle turns easily under my forceful grip. A warm, almost tropical breeze hits us full on. Beautiful sunlight streams into the cold, dark dining room.

Across the street, a line of cars trickles through the McDonald’s drive-through.

Mr. Arthur isn’t moving. He’s staring through the open door, blinking stupidly into the sunlight.

“Come on,” I say, grabbing his arm. “We have to leave.” I try to shove him forward, but he’s not budging.

“Please,” I insist. “ is is what you wanted?”

From behind, I feel Chef John pulling me back from the door. I’m screaming, kicking, begging him to let go, aware that everyone is watching me make a fool of myself. e big boss lady is running towards us.

And still, Mr. Arthur remains standing in front of the door, refusing to move.

Back in the kitchen, the big boss lady and Chef John speak in hushed tones. Her posture is perfect. He is her opposite, shoulders slumped, nodding along to every word.

My stomach growls.

I untie my apron and head for the fridge. ey watch me, uncomprehending, waiting to see what crazy thing I’ll do next. He’s lost his mind, they’ll tell everyone. He was too young to know how to properly compartmentalize the responsibilities of adult life, what with his parents’ divorce and no money for college. Not to mention the co-worker who didn’t love him and the old guy he tried to run away with. e refrigerator is one of those expensive monochromatic stainless-steel numbers with impeccable temperature control and translucent French doors. e shelves are stocked with Chef John’s Saran-wrapped creations. At the back of the fridge is a giant plastic container of last night’s red Jell-O. I scoop out a bowl of the stu and take a bite. Delicious.

Postcard by Tamra

Plotnick

What I want is a postcard from the a erlife.

“Who knew?” you’d write. “Life goes on.

ose angels you mentioned. . .they’re here. Shooting pool, playing poker, tap dancing on carpets of cloud.

Before I came here, my mind’s eye lacked the pallet to paint such an in nite horizon. I saw in black and white. Actually, everything looked a shady grey. Dingy, elderly, leaden pewter.

And, of course, grayish green. But you said money is no object in a place like this.

Mercifully, I have the decency not to say, ‘Wish you were here.’

Sorry I spit on your mitzvah.”

Houseguest by Mads Kinnison

Lately, I have been coming to terms with the fact that I have a body. I have this thing that I inhabit, made of bones and other bits, ranging from eshy to not- eshy. And I don’t just inhabit it, I am it. All of it. Even the gross bits. e ugly bits. I say ‘lately’, but in reality, I come to this realization every couple of months, and when this happens my writing starts to get visceral in the literal way. Grosser than usual.

And there are times, admittedly, where I feel like I’m dreaming, where nothing feels entirely real. It usually happens a er some kind of big change, like I can’t completely comprehend that things will be di erent, so I shut down. Don’t worry, I’m not in an existence of extremes, where I’m either far too grounded (Undergrounded? Overgrounded?) in my own skin or spaced out in derealization. Sometimes I’m just normal. It’s fun when that happens. is on-and-o relationship between my mind and my body is starting to annoy me. ey need to pull it together. It’s been twenty-one years, put a ring on it.

“Cotard’s syndrome is a relatively rare condition that was rst described by Dr. Jules Cotard in 1882. Cotard’s syndrome comprises any one of a series of delusions that range from a belief that one has lost organs, blood, or body parts to insisting that one has lost one’s soul or is dead.”

I think the concept of “Body Horror” is redundant. I would argue that the act of having a body itself is a kind of horror. ere’s something frightening about inhabiting something so squishy and fragile as the human body. Something so complex and grotesque that, before modern medicine, could have been obliterated by disease, and even with modern medicine, still very much could. It must be attuned to speci c environmental conditions, such as temperature, air pressure, and oxygen levels, or could be destroyed. On another level, the act of being constantly on display against your will, the ability to be perceived about something that is mostly beyond your control. I don’t think I've ever met a single human with a great relationship to their body, or at least, has ever felt content with it. But that

is mostly because of external factors, of a desire to look a di erent way or to t an unreachable standard, stemming from the act of being perceived and existing in a social environment. And what is that if not horror? I may not be transforming into a grotesque y-man-hybrid ala David Cronenburg’s e Fly, but to be honest with you, it’s not like I’m having a great time, I don’t think anyone really is. *

e Tenants of a Haunted House

• A haunted house is four walls and a feeling. A good, solid foundation, caked with dirt and overgrown weeds, oorboards lined with secrets and wallpaper hiding women beneath it.

• A haunted house is where there is something that there shouldn’t be.

• A haunted house is where something is missing. Where something once was but is no longer there, or maybe was never there in the rst place.

• A haunted house is structurally impossible. e inside must be larger than the outside, whether slightly or in nitely.

• A haunted house is where you are right now. *

In Julia Kristeva’s in uential work Powers of Horror, she proposes the theory of “abjection.” e “abject” is the human reaction to something scary or gross and the loss of a distinction between the subject (self) and the object (other). Another part of her theory is that we have a distinction between what is inside the body and what is outside of the body, and seeing something gory or gross (gore, vomit, etc) is another loss of this distinction. Here is a helpful, detailed diagram:

Essentially, when you see something scary, Kristeva suggests that you’re thinking “that could be me! I could be guts and such!” or “that’s supposed to be inside of me, not outside of me!” and that’s why the reaction is so intense. e line of distinction is blurred between you and the

revolting.

When I was a kid, I went to one of those museum exhibits where they have real human remains, cut up and shown o in jars and behind glass cases, to educate the masses on the vitality and inner workings of their own bodies. I remember two things best:

One, a fetus, calci ed and cut in half to show o its intricate anatomy, its halfway-formed organs and skeleton frozen in time, in a limbo of stagnated growth. ere were other fetuses there as well, in varying stages of development, from a tadpole to a scrunched infant.

Two, a nervous system: white, thin roots that transmit signals throughout the body, somehow carefully extracted and put on display in a glass case. Like Snow White, if the apple stripped her down to her literal barest form. A sign on the case read “this is you!” “ ey’re all fake, right?” I asked my mom.

“No, it’s all real,” she said, “these all used to be a part of people.”

My experience with inhabiting a body has felt rocky. I think “dissociation” is one of those words that has been completely stripped of its meaning, gutted and hung to dry, shriveled into something that only vaguely resembles what it once was. Because of this, I don’t quite know if I would call what I experience “dissociation”— it’s more like a certain kind of confusion. I have no idea what I’m doing, how to do any of it.

My mom says I was quiet as a baby, just like I am now. I barely even cried, she says, I’d just stare at people with my big, brown eyes. When she tells me this, she puts her thumbs and pointer ngers around her eyes, widening them for e ect. When I wanted something, I would stare at her.

ere is an argument to be made that the version of you that exists is limited to the perceptions of others. Yourself—the person that you are inside of your skull—is nonexistent, and your true self is the one that is witnessed by those around you. Humans are social creatures, a er all. You exist only in the eyes of other humans. If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

People are mysteries to me. How does it come so naturally to some people, that existing?

I love ghosts and haunted houses. I think there’s something special about a being that sticks around, despite everything. Something not quite fully there. Something that lingers.

e house I live in right now might be haunted. It’s a hundred years old, almost comically tiny, and has uneven oors that make my bookshelf tilt a bit, but not quite enough to be a huge concern. I saw the bathroom door move on its own, once. Sometimes I hear odd noises in the night, thumps and bumps. It could also just be the shitty old pipes. If there are ghosts, they seem to be okay with my roommate and I being there. Maybe they’ve moved out.

When I was een I posted a picture of myself on the internet. Someone with a self-proclaimed “necrophilia kink” commented on it and said that I looked beautiful. Hot, even. I deleted the picture.

Top Five Terrifying Signs a Ghost Could Be In Your Home

Right Now, In Descending Order

5. Unusual Nightmares –Forget dreams about losing teeth, what about your friends and family hunting you for sport and planning to eat you? What about a replay of your body getting hit by various large vehicles? What about a conversation with your father? Ghosts love to haunt inhabitants with horri c visions – this could be the rst sign there is something deeply wrong.

4. Feelings of Loneliness – Do you ever feel alone in a room full of people? Like there’s something out of place, and it just might be you? is could be another sign of a ghostly presence.

3. Bad Taste in Music – Do you nd yourself drawn to objectively bad music? Like something that sounds like silverware in a blender, or perhaps an industrial rail accident? is could be due to a connection with frequencies only the dead can detect – something commonly found in music that sucks, but somehow not to you.

2. Unexplained Aches and Pains – If you’ve felt an increase in headaches, stomachaches, heartaches, toothaches, earaches, back pain, side pain, leg pain, foot pain, jaw pain, shoulder pain – this isn’t a sign you’re getting older or you should spend less time on your phone – this is a potential indicator of the dead being nearby.

1. Remembering e Past – is one is pretty much a guarantee that there’s a ghost in your house. A ghost is an embodiment of the past making itself known, and unfortunately, it’s probably in the room with you right now.

When I was twelve, our family stayed in a hotel in San Antonio for a

weekend. e bathtub turned on by itself, and that’s the only super-paranormal thing that happened during our entire visit. e hotel was, allegedly, extremely haunted, and the particular room we stayed in was the most haunted out of all of the haunted rooms in the haunted hotel. It probably had to do with the several framed pictures of John Wayne on the walls. It was located right next to the Alamo, whose historical signi cance I unfortunately can’t recall. I know there was a battle. In fact, a reenactment of that battle was happening right outside when the bathtub turned on by itself. As the gunshots went o , so did the bathtub. How spooky. e bathtub is pretty intimate, though; it makes sense that it was haunted. I think true hauntings can only occur in places that are intimate, where intense emotion or pain or catharsis have taken place. Or just nakedness. It’s probably why I was afraid of showers with glass doors when I was a kid.

During winter break my mom and I spent a lot of time talking in the kitchen, usually over a glass of wine. We somehow got to talking about the Local Mall, which is a mall in the same way a hot dog bun is a sandwich. Its emptiness is overwhelming, and the few stores it harbors feel incredibly out of place in a mall environment: the BMV, the judo dojo, the antique mall. e Bath and Body Works is somehow the odd one out in the bunch, much too bright and colorful for the overgrown liminal space of the Local Mall. Every time you do see people inside they’re always sparse and spread out, usually waiting for their number to be called at the BMV.

“I found this video on reddit,” she told me, leaning over the counter, “of what it looked like in the 90s. Here, I’ve got to show you.” It was taken on a shaky camcorder, by a few teenage boys, their antics typical of what you would expect, Botched skateboard tricks in the parking lot and all. ey brought their camcorder to a busy mall, it wasn’t anything special, but seeing the mall lled with people, with busy stores and Radio Shacks, was deeply strange, almost unnerving. Maybe old shaky home videos are always a little scary, although that might just be because I watched e Blair Witch Project at a formative age and am more used to the polished clearness of a smartphone camera.

Mark Fisher has this idea of the “weird” and the “eerie” in the context of horror. To put it simply, the “weird” is when there is something in a place where it shouldn't be, and that is where the horror comes from. For example, think of a masked killer in a suburb, or a grotesque creature in a peaceful lagoon. None of these things should be there, yet they are, and it's scary. On the other hand, the eerie is where there isn’t something where it should be. For example, a forest with no sound, or a person with no face, or a mall with no people. e Local Mall, I think, somehow manages to pull o being both weird and eerie at the same time, where the presence of what shouldn't be there and what’s missing come together into something extra unnerving.

As there was a prolonged shot of the boys walking with the camcorder down a long hallway, towards the blinding light of the glass doors ahead, my mom said, “It’s like looking at a dead person.”

At my Great-Grandma June’s funeral, the preacher, while gesturing over to her pale, formaldehyde- lled body in the co n next to him, said, “For her body was a mere vessel, a temporary home for her spirit in its short, loving time on earth, and her soul is now in eternal paradise with Christ.”

In the car ride to the post-funeral meal of fried chicken and steamed green beans, my mother and uncle discussed the events that had just taken place. Whenever they talk shit about someone, their voices get quiet and a little high-pitched, like they’re afraid of the person in question overhearing them. My grandma does it too. It must be hereditary.

“Good lord, the mortician did a terrible job,” she said, “It hardly even looked like her.”

“I know!” Eric said, his eyes widening, “Aren’t they supposed to use a picture for reference or something? Did they even have one?”

“It looked like she was hardly wearing any makeup. Anyone who knew June knew she never le the house without a full face of makeup.”

“I just, like… I don’t know. I didn’t want to say anything in there, but I know everyone was thinking it.”

“Oh, I know everyone was thinking it, probably even Grandpa.” *

I have trouble talking about myself, which is why when I write non ction it can come o as emotionally stunted. ere’s something terrifying about being known. ere’s something terrifying about speaking. I’m a quiet person, I always have been, and I’ve come in and out of blaming it on the fact that I don’t have anything to say. I don’t know if I don’t have anything to say, or that I don’t know how to say it. I envy people who are well spo-

ken, whose words come out like something smooth and so , like jazz or something. I think my words come out like a cover of “Wonderwall” on an untuned guitar.

ere was this weird type of pity from a lot of my teachers and peers growing up because of my quietness and just-being-kind-of-weirdness, a kind of oh, she must be stupid kind of mentality, one that I’ve internalized. You start to notice it when they’re doing it, that taaalkinnggg slowwwllyyyy and raising their pitch in voice like a kindergarten teacher to explain something to you, or to “encourage” you. I just wanted to be treated like a normal person. I wanted to grab their heads and scream “I’m just like you! I promise I’m not a baby, please don’t talk to me like one!” At the same time, I don’t really understand this attitude from them. In my seventeen years of education and twenty-one years of being alive, there are plenty of people who make their lack of meaningful things to say quite loud and available to anyone within earshot.

I didn’t think I was going to get into college, and I almost dropped out a er a trainwreck of a sophomore year. To be honest with you, I don’t really know why I didn’t go through with it. I was convinced I would just embarrass myself if I continued. But I went on, not really knowing what to expect for my upcoming junior year.

I think it’s hard to write about di cult times and mental health without sounding too saccharine about the good things that happen, but I did cry when a professor told me good job on a piece of writing I handed in.

Emma, my girlfriend, likes to take naps in my bed. I still have a twin, despite being this old, with a faded pink quilt that's for a much bigger bed draped over it. She calls it my tiny bed, and it’s a funny contradiction compared to her bed, which we call e Boat. e Boat is a queen nestled in a giant bed frame inherited from her stepdad’s mother, a sleigh-style frame that took her two brothers to haul in. It takes up roughly a third of her entire room. So, with this comparison, my bed is tiny. When she sleeps in my tiny bed, she curls up under the pink quilt, usually with at least one arm out, grasping the quilt to get it closer to her body. Her curls fall over her face, and if you brush them out of the way, you can see her eyes moving underneath her eyelids, caught in a dreamscape. When she eventually gets up and leaves the tiny bed, there’s always something of hers that’s le behind—a black curl, an earring, the smell of her Dove bar soap. She lingers, she stays, even when she isn’t there.

• I want to be something completely unknowable. I want to be mysterious, to be an enigma, something that no one knows, so there is therefore no danger.

• I want to be a structure that’s abandoned. I want to be something outside of myself, something that isn’t me. Something that has already existed, has history inside of it, that has ghosts and carpenter bees eating at the wood.

• I want love. I want to be loved. I want my chest to be so heavy with love I fall over. I want someone to miss me when I’m away for the weekend.

I think my fascination with haunted houses exists because I feel like one, or I want to be one, or something like that. I feel like a vessel, something strange and not fully understood (not even by myself), that’s haunted with love, fear, and hunger. Something with history, a hushed history, an intersection between the past and the present. In a typical way of contradicting myself, I feel like the ghosts within it, too, wandering and unsure. At the same time, a haunted house is something that I’m not. Due to the existing horrors of having a body, of being aware of my mortality, of being perceived, of just existing—I have a deep desire, at times, to be something else. A haunted house is beautiful, a structure with reverence and the kinds of ghosts that are easy to see. e ghosts in a haunted house exist there for a reason, and they are known because they make themselves known. In spite of this, a haunted house is lonely. I do not wish to be lonely, despite the fact that I am at times. I just want, like any lingering ghost, to be loved.

"zhàn zhí"

by Su-Ling Dickinson

zhàn zhí still resounds in a daydream at the rhododendron garden her words whispered in each petal blooming losing time in translation zhàn zhí to avoid the curvature of age to wear your armored dress to bring your eyes to meet the moon her words the cool air that makes leaves wail and dance alike

zhàn zhí, dad ﬁnally tells me is about posture but i knew by the way the wind howled our inherited pain zhàn zhí was liberation.

Translation: zhàn zhí means “stand up straight” in Chinese

Shaina Maidel by Adina Polatsek

e drive from the airport was sickeningly familiar. Shira knew her city too well, the crisscross of cement streets, the bare grass of the median, the parking lots stu ed with cars. People pushing carts and unloading their groceries into the trunk and driving home and then unloading the groceries from the trunk into their house. Kids with scraped knees scootering down the block and falling and scraping their knees. She hated that she knew this city so well. Everything about it was a reminder of why she had le in the rst place. She ran her hands over her thighs, picking at the threads of her jeans. Already certain that it had been a mistake. All the courage she had felt when she’d gotten dressed had worn o . She stared out the backseat window.

“It’s this one,” she said, and watched the taxi leave before making her way up the driveway to the side door. It seemed like every house on the block was staring at her, watching her odd silhouette, the way she stood out from the rest of them. She was glad the driveway curved out of sight. She punched in the combination code to the door and called out for her mother, but no one answered, which irritated her more than she expected. When she got to the guest bedroom, she unzipped her carry-on, staring at the contents. She knew she’d chicken out, which was why she didn’t pack any skirts. at way I have to do it, she had told herself. She hated her past self so deeply she could kill her. “I have to,” she muttered, sitting cross-legged on the oor. is was her life now, and her mother needed to face it. She hadn’t been able to make it home for the yahrzeit, so she came the week a er, giving in easily when her mother asked. But this time, it had to be di erent; this time, she had to come back as herself. She showered and laid on the bed, her hair wet. Her

ngers traced the yellow- owered wallpaper. It helped that she wasn’t staying in her room, even though it was insulting that her mother had converted it into storage space. She wasn’t surprised — she used to spend so much time there. Her mother hated it. Her parents would beg her to come out. “Are you even a part of this family?” her father would say, mussing up her hair. As if it was so easy to come and go. She’d frown and her mother would joke about teenagers, and all the while she would sit in a feeling of wrongness, her stomach turning, watching her family laugh. When she stopped praying in ninth grade, the school called her parents, who demanded to know whether she believed in God. “I do,” she had said, but her voice wavered, and her father cried. A er that, she cut her hair short, started wearing skirts that didn’t fully cover her knees, and pulled her sleeves up past the elbows. Her parents pretended like these were mistakes. “Your skirt is getting too small for you, sheyfele,” her mother would say. “Why don’t we go shopping over the weekend?” She played into it sometimes, telling them that she just forgot to daven, that she didn’t realize how low the neckline was of the new shirt she bought. But when she could get away with it, she was blatant. Or when she couldn’t bear it anymore.

Shira stood and dressed. She stared in the mirror, sick of her re ection, sick of the shape of her legs through the pants. Always sick in the mirror. She gave herself a tight smile and heard someone moving about in the kitchen. Her stomach uttered and then she was angry. Why shouldn’t she live how she wanted? She was twenty-two years old. She had the right to be happy.

Her mother, at the counter, looked her up and down as she came in from the hall.

“Shira’leh,” she said. Shira gave her a hug, bending down. Her mother’s shoulders were thin, and she could smell the perfume on her neck. “How was your ight?”

“Not too bad,” said Shira, quieter than she had hoped for. Her mother was staring at her, and Shira’s face burned.

“You got set up okay in the guest room?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“ ere’s some food in the oven,” her mother brought out a warm kugel and cut her a piece. “You must be starving.” “ ank you.”

“Come sit,” said her mother, going over to the kitchen table.

Shira sat, keeping her eyes away. She focused on eating. Her mother watched with her hands folded before her.

“Shira…” said her mother, her forehead crinkling, “did the neighbors see you?”

“What?”

“When you came in, did they see you?”

Shira bit her tongue. “No, Ma. No one saw me.”

“You can dress how you want,” her mother said. “I just want you to remember that the people here know me.”

Shira shook her head. Her mouth was dry. She stood and started rummaging through the cabinets for a cup. “I’m an adult,” she said, looking away from her mother. “I am allowed—”

“Don’t give me a speech. I know you prepared a speech, and I’m not interested. I told you I don’t care how you dress. But this is my house.”

Shira lled her cup in the sink, took a long sip, and turned to her mother. ey stared at each other for a moment. Her mother’s eyes so ened. “Please, sheyfele. ink about your father.”

“I’ll change,” said Shira.

“Your old skirts are in a box in your room.”

Shira pulled at her ngers as she walked to her old bedroom. She opened the door. Her bed was gone and in its place were cardboard boxes haphazardly stacked atop each other. e old desk that used to sit in her father’s o ce was in a corner. e bookshelf from the living room—one shelf cracked—stood next to it. Each box was titled with a sharpie. Sfarim. Sukkah decorations. Ephraim clothes. Look, they said. Your father is gone. So what? She had c, she had cried, she did her time. She pulled the boxes aside until she found the one with her name on it, tore it open, and grabbed the rst skirt she saw, a navy pleated midi from her high school days. She changed into it, the waistband digging into her stomach. She caught a glimpse of herself in the closet mirror, her brown sweater harsh against the blue, and turned away, leaving her jeans on the oor.

Back in the kitchen, the kettle whistled. Her mother pulled her close to kiss her head. Shira could feel the heat of

the stove on her hands and the warmth of her mother’s body. “ ank you,” said her mother, and Shira stood there as she prepared two cups of tea. “Come sit with me in the study.” ey sat on opposite chairs. e curtains were drawn back to a grey sky and a row of pale green lawns. Shira’s mother sipped at her drink, and when Shira followed suit, she burnt her tongue.

“How is work going?” asked her mother.

“Work is ne.” She was a receptionist at a veterinarian clinic. “I just sit behind a desk all day.”

“Is your apartment still infested with cockroaches?”

“I moved out of that place in March. I live in Brooklyn now.”

“Do you ever visit Bubby and Zeidy?”

“Sometimes.”

“No, you don’t.” Her mother raised an eyebrow but she was smiling. “ ey told me last week that they haven’t seen you in ages.”

“Alright, I don’t.”

“Do they know about your…?”

“My what?”

Her mother watched her for a while. “Your lifestyle.”

“Oh my god.”

“It’s just a question.”

“Can we not do this?” Shira asked, putting her teacup down on the side table so hard that the tea spilled and burnt her ngers. Her tongue and her ngers. Maybe she should pour it in her eyes next.

“I thought you wanted to be open about this. You came to my house in pants.”

“ at’s because that’s what I’m used to wearing. I wasn’t trying to make some big statement.”

“I just want to know you,” said her mother. Her voice was gentle. “I’m not going to pretend I’m happy about it, but I still want to get to know you.”

Shira sighed. “ ey don’t know,” she said. “ ey don’t need to. It would just hurt them.”

“It hurts me.”

“It’s my life.”

“It hurt your father.”

“ at’s sick,” said Shira. “Using him to guilt-trip me.

at’s totally sick.”

Her mother ignored her. Shira gripped the sides of her chair. She wanted to rip the skirt right o , sit there in her underwear. Her mother looked perfectly comfortable. “What part of it makes you unhappy?” her mother asked.

“I just prefer things this way.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“I don’t want to have this conversation.”

“Your brothers never did anything like this,” said her mother, staring out the window. “ ey went to yeshiva. ey married good girls. ey learn Torah.”

“I’ll marry a good girl,” said Shira.

Her mother’s gaze snapped back at Shira.

“I don’t want to have this conversation,” she said. She stood. “Put your teacup in the sink when you’re done with it.”

Friday came with an odd stillness. Shira thought back to the rush and bustle it used to be—her mother in the kitchen, a million pots on the stove, her father running last minute to pick up his suit from the dry cleaners, her brothers screaming at each other for using up the hot water. All of it, going and going, a petri dish of chaos—right up until her mother lit candles, and her father le for shul, and everything slowed down. e Shabbos queen, her father would say. She’s come inside.

Now, she woke up late. It was past ten before she got out of bed and dressed, but there was no noise coming from the kitchen. When she entered, she found the cholent prepared in the crockpot, and the chicken soup simmering on the stove, but there’d be no big feast. It was just her and her mother tonight, her brothers with their families in Passaic and Monsey and Teaneck, and her father, a year gone. She set the table and took the challahs out of the oven when the timer rang. She borrowed olive oil from the next-door neighbor so her mother could make a salad dressing and hung about between the kitchen and the bedroom, making idle talk. She made her bed. She folded her clothes. She ran the bath and laid in the hot water till her vision went all black spots, and then got up and laid on the cold tile oor. She examined herself in the mirror, thinking of the long stretch of Shabbos ahead, the way peace so easily turned to boredom. Or maybe

that was just her always spinning good things away. When she came out of the bathroom, she found one of her mother’s dresses lying on the bed. It was blue, loose, with a high neck, long sleeves, and a long skirt, the hallmarks of Jewish modesty. She put it on and did her makeup, blinking too hard and then wiping mascara o from under her eyes. e smudge stayed dark, but she le it. She smoothed the dress down. It looked wrong; she looked like she was een. She tugged at the collar.

Eighteen minutes before sunset, she found her mother standing before the candelabra in the dining room. She lit the ames and waved her hands over them, covering her eyes. Her body rocked back and forth as she whispered the blessing. In Brooklyn, Shira’s candlesticks sat dusty in a cupboard, and the lines between weekdays and weekend blurred together. She was indi erent to the Friday dusk; it came in like any other night. When she went out on Saturdays, she’d see men walking back from shul, one hand on their hat to keep it on in the wind. She’d see mothers pushing strollers to the park, girls in fancy dresses dawdling on the steps of their duplexes. Her stomach turned when a Jew looked her way, scanning the immodesty of her clothing, the short cut of her hair. She was halfway to teshuva at all times, harshly swallowing it back down like bile. She always had the urge to beat her chest. To recite a Vidui she didn’t believe. Her mother looked so peaceful standing before the candles, praying. Shira took her skirt in her sweaty hands. She wanted it. at ease of faith. And she wanted to be free of it, all the same.

Her mother looked up at Shira and smiled. “Good Shabbos,” she said.

When it was time for the meal, her mother made the blessings, her voice low and her hand shaking wine from the kiddush cup. Shira stood when she was supposed to stand, drank when she was supposed to drink, washed her hands. Her mother cut the challah, still warm.

“What do you do when no one’s home?” asked Shira. “You don’t eat by yourself?”

“I usually go out. I wanted to have dinner tonight with you.”

“I’m honored.”

Her mother poured them each a glass of wine. Shira

brought out the soup.

“I wish we got to spend more time together,” said her mother. “Sometimes I feel like you disappear on me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.”

eir utensils clinked. ey chewed and sipped. e candles burned their way down.

“You’ve never been like either of us,” said her mother, re lling her glass. “Not me, and not your father. I wonder where you came from.”

Shira shrugged.

“I tried so hard to connect with you. I was so excited to have a girl a er three boys. You didn’t want me, though. Even as a baby.”

“ at’s not true,” said Shira.

“You wouldn’t nurse from me. I had to use a bottle.”

“Maybe I liked the taste of plastic. Come on, Ma. at doesn’t mean anything.”

“It hurt me,” said her mother. She picked sesame seeds o the challah crust with her nail. “Mothers aren’t supposed to say this, but you’ve always hurt me.”

“You’ve hurt me plenty too. Let’s call it even.”

Her mother gave a short laugh. She drank a long sip of wine. “We should, shouldn’t we? But you’re not the forgiving type.”

“ at’s not fair.”

“You loved him when you were a kid,” said her mother. “ at’s why I thought you’d make up. Set things right.”

“It was complicated.”

“Do you regret not xing it before it was too late?”

Shira brought a spoonful of soup to her mouth. “He was never going to x anything.”

“He wanted what was best for you.”

“He called me disgusting. And worse.”

“It’s against the Torah,” said her mother. Her voice was heavy, sad. “What did you want us to do?”

Shira’s throat burned. “I just want to be happy.”

“ en why do you always take the hardest path?”

“ e soup is delicious,” she said, not looking at her mother.

“ ank you,” her mother said. “You look beautiful in

that dress. A shaina maidel.”

“ ank you,” she said. She wanted to skin herself alive.

“Do you remember,” said her mother (her second glass nearly empty and her face ushed), “when you found a puppy in the backyard and snuck it into your room?”

“Beaver,” Shira said. “I’m still mad you made me give him up.”

“You knew I would. But you brought him in anyway. You tried to hide him.”

“And then you woke up in the middle of the night from the whining.”

“I woke up,” said her mother, “and I wasn’t sure what I heard at rst. I thought it was coming from outside. I went to the kitchen to get some water. I was walking down the hall, and it was dark, and all of a sudden this—this thing, it just attacked me.”

“He was trying to play.”

“He was licking me. Jumping up on me. I nearly had a heart attack.” She chuckled into her glass. “I don’t think I’ve ever screamed so loud.”

“I was heartbroken when you made me give him away,” said Shira.

“I know. You cried for a week. You refused to talk to me for a month. How old were you—thirteen?”

“Ten.”

“I thought you were older.”

Shira shook her head.

“ at was the rst time you’d ever been so angry with me,” said her mother. “ e silence scared me.”

“I just needed space.”

“I know,” said her mother. “I know that now. But I thought, what happens when it’s something worse? How long would you go without talking to me?”

“I came home,” said Shira quietly. “You asked me to spend the weekend with you and I came.”

“Are you still angry?”

“About Beaver?”

“Sure.”

“Oh, yeah. Huge grudge. You really messed me up, you know, in the head.”

Shira’s mother smiled. “I think we’ve got it wrong,” she said. “ e shidduch system, getting married right out of high school. Maybe twenty is too young to start a family. I was a kid.”

Shira’s head ached. She pushed away her wine.

“I’m going to take an early night,” said her mother, draining her glass. She kissed Shira’s head on the way out. Shira watched her walk down the hallway, her step so , closing the bedroom door gently. She pictured her mother as a tiny shrunken version of herself, an uncanny baby: frail, with the same wrinkles and textured skin and dry hair. Her arms were heavy for a moment. en she got up and went to sleep.

Shabbos brought in a clear, cold day. When Shira came to the kitchen, still in her pajamas, to eat cholent, her mother said, “Will you come with me to shul?”

She agreed. Hesitantly, she never liked the synagogue, the services, the drone of prayers she had memorized but didn’t understand. e mothers chatting by the strollers parked outside, the kids running with their tzitzis ying and their kippahs held in their hand, the busy preparation of the kiddush. ey walked the ten minutes together, their arms linked. Her mother warmly greeted everyone she saw on the street; Shira muttered, “Good Shabbos,” at the faces passing by, never looking too closely.

e women’s side of the shul was populated by grandmothers and teens. ey sat down near the front, and over the mechitzah, she could see the rabbi. He sang, his eyes closed, shuckling on the bema. He guided everyone to stand, to sit, to bow. Shira’s mother opened a siddur and began to pray, but Shira just sat, her lap empty, watching the movement of the ritual. She hated that she could follow along, that she knew it so well. She could put on the clothes and walk right in here and know exactly what they were doing and pretend that things hadn’t happened how they happened. She could have a place here, so easily, if she wanted it badly enough.

She ran her hand down the side of her dress and ngered the zipper. It was too hot, too su ocating. She wanted to rip it o . She could undress and stand naked, tits facing the bema, and she could say, ‘Tell me how to be a part of this place

without wanting to melt o my skin. Or tell me how to leave for good.’ She could watch her mother inch, and the rabbi cover his eyes as if saying Shema. She had been here too many times. She had learned the prayers too young, and now there was no chance of anything else. She was always here.

e men stood, a sea of black hats, tallises hanging over their shoulders. Some faces she recognized; others were unfamiliar. She was looking for her father. She remembered when she was young enough to run through the rows of the men’s section and get a lollipop from the gabbai. ‘No,’ her father had said. ‘ is isn’t you; you’re just acting out the way you always do, your grandparents survived the Holocaust so we could live in peace, is this what you give them, is this what you give me, I’ve loved you even when you didn’t make it easy, I still love you, I can’t bear this.’ She used to hold to his coat, lollipop painting her tongue blue, as he shook hands with the rabbi and said, “Good Shabbos,” to his friends. He wasn’t in the crowd.

“I’m going back,” she whispered to her mother. “Alright,” said her mother. She patted Shira’s hand and then held onto it even as Shira stood. When Shira pulled away, her mother gave a tiny nod and lowered her head. Shira’s chest burned as she walked down the aisles and pushed through the door.

e outside air was no relief, and the house didn’t feel better. She got the bottle of vodka down from the top shelf of the pantry, where her father kept it. e lid was dusty. She took a shot and opened the door to her parents’ bedroom.

e recliner was still in the corner, half-dead with age. She kicked the foot of it and hurt her toes. She thought that a er he died someone should have le the mirrors uncovered and trapped him here. And then she could confront his ghost, lying comfortably in the recliner, his legs stretched out.

Instead, she sat down on it, leaned back, and closed her eyes. She wasn’t happy gone. She wasn’t happy far away from here, walking Ocean Parkway, the Orthodox Jews looking right past her. She wanted to be invisible to them, and then she became invisible, and then she became angry. What the hell was she supposed to do? What the hell was she looking for? She didn’t know which side of herself to kill; maybe both, she thought, lying perfectly still. When she heard

footsteps, she didn’t bother getting up. Her mother took o her shoes and sat on the corner of her bed. “ ank you for coming home this weekend,” she said. “I know it’s not easy.”

“Sure.”

“I want to see you more o en. A year is a long time.”

“I’ll try.”

“I love you so much. You know that, right?”

“I know.”

“Were we really horrible? When you told us.”

Shira swallowed. “Come on, Ma.”

“You used to be so happy,” her mother said.

Shira shrugged.

“You were such a happy kid.”

“I grew up.”

“I don’t recognize you anymore. I look at you and I don’t know who you are.”

Shira was quiet. Her mother put her head in her hands.

“Where did I go wrong?”

Shira pulled at the peeling leather of the recliner, cracked and rough.

“Was I too young?” her mother asked. She was crying now. Shira felt sick watching it.

“I just want to know. What did I do? I’ve always tried my best. I tried so hard to be a good mother. Where did I go wrong? I want you to be happy. I know it’s my fault. I just want to know what I could have done.”

“You break my heart, Mommy,” said Shira. It was quiet. Her mother didn’t look up, didn’t do anything to show whether she heard. Shira watched her with her head down. Her hair was gray at the roots, her cheeks narrow and carved. Her hands looked so bony over her face. Shira squeezed her eyes shut and imagined herself in her mother’s clothes, with her mother’s traditions. If only they could switch places, and then she could rock her mother to sleep. Sing hamalach hagoel hand in small hand. Her mother seemed so frail; she would die sometime, and once Shira thought that would end things, but now she knew. e shame was in her bones. She was plain rotten. She got up from the recliner but couldn’t bring herself to kneel, to kiss her.

Her mother looked up at her and seemed to collect

herself with shock. She wiped her tears and tried to relax her face. “ at meshuga dog,” she said, and laughed. Shira turned to the window. “Your father tried to convince me to let you keep it, but I said no.” Outside, a girl had fallen o her scooter, and her mother was helping her out of the street.

Icarus on the Swing Set

by Kate MacLauchlan

The cage I abandoned houses a vase, which holds a bouquet: Bluebonnets, ﬂowers the shape of a hat that shields a woman’s eyes from the sun. You’re not supposed to pick them, like you’re not supposed to cling to the past. I do both. A prison can contain beautiful things, like a swing set, or a sibling. That’s right. Icarus had a sister, or he does for the purpose of this poem. And in it, the chain of our swings snaps us back to earth; our feet form silhoue es above our heads. A er it rains, we shake sodden branches of peach trees. We laugh when, with your fractured speech, you call popcorn “copcorn.”

As I burn and plummet, you roll, like a boulder, through the folds of my memory. Punishment for leaving you in the labyrinth.

Career Counseling

by Elise Scott

The man who broke me became a physicist (or tried to) because to him, engineers were the meatheads of science.

He wanted to transcend his father’s visions of backpedaling chickens and his mother’s fascination with his stained sheets.

His search for pure being in math and Sanskrit, in anyone else’s herbal tea or yoga or poetry was his proprietary brand, his found scrap of self: guileless furry shy prodigy which he pedaled from a stolen trench coat on campus or oﬀ. It came down to buying a label that would make him glow as he once nearly had. It didn’t ma er to him that

all the pages of his encoded existence baffled him, that he didn’t know the difference between tousled and unwashed, that his fear of the unlovable extended even to earwigs, crushed beer cans, ba ered toys. He liked to break things so he could fix them. Or not.

I think it was my brother always beating him at chess. Or his father. The evangelical men. If that doesn’t make An engineer, i don’t know what does. He was prodigal.

The son. The lost. The talented. The ﬁrstborn. He was these and less, a skin of titles laid over a broken scaﬀold, crumbling, full of vitriol and terror.

But then, he never wanted his own tiger lily genius, his unique script of ﬁst and psyche. He wanted to be a modern Descartes, but nicer and more tortured.

He wanted to be the vibrant ﬁnal line in each, the one from his own poems; the one that draws you into stillness. The one that belongs here.

The Road Through Richmond was Paved with Diamonds

by Claudine R. Moreau

At ﬁrst, loving the narcissist made life feel electric & warm. His brand of love-bombing— three a.m. walks, drinking champagne straight from the bo le, stargazing along the Tar River’s muddy banks, reading me to sleep at dawn with On the Road & Howl & Hesse.

Endless fusion of our passions: poetry & politics & science— the it’s the end of the world as we know it way we made love a er

President Clinton’s press release: a Martian meteorite found with possible signs of life!

[all of this before Monica & the dress, before frenemies like Linda Tripp, before narcissism was a meme]

The slow morph began–his laggard white lies, tiny wave forms, clocking in & out of phase, to build something just beyond the visible spectrum. Of course, I measured each lie & hooked them up to multimeters. The data added up to mirage or phantom, he’d say. Oh, so smartly, he’d magnetize me back with his charm, let Julee Cruise ﬂoat(ing) us into the night & a scratchy-throated trip hop album coo us into Dummy(ied) LSD dreams.

I remember ﬁnally waking up during a trip, to Bizarre Love Triangle playing on his Pontiac Sunbird’s 6 disc changer. The view through his ﬁst-cracked windshield— the snaking asphalt road through Richmond paved with diamonds.

That spring night, Hale-Bopp stretched through our bedroom window. I watched the comet burn & dissolve in sunlight, its tenuous veil pointed away from the Sun as its core–nucleus of rock & ice— crumbled & released two tails, one of vapor & one of dust.

The email inbox of a dead mother

by Maggie Bowyer

Hey, how are you?

I just heard the news. Your order has shipped. There are ﬂowers and tissues strewn across every surface in a house I now own, alongside the debt you le me with. Your credit card usage has improved! I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you Here is a picture of the cherry blossom blooming in your front lawn; I am sending messages to a ghost and somehow that is not the strangest part of you being gone.

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Eighty-Three Reasons I Write About Death by Blair Kinsey

1. My dad’s favorite color is purple.

2. My dad does yoga and knows the names of dozens – maybe hundreds – of birds. My dad does not like to be woken up from naps; he has always enjoyed sleeping.

3. My dad is a y- ve-year-old white man who loves to kayak. He’s tried getting into y shing, but I don’t think that’s gone so well.

4. My dad used to push me on the swing for hours because I couldn’t get enough. He would take me on the trampoline a er dinner. He would pick me up and throw me in the pool. He would watch me do hundreds of underwater back ips in a row. He would take me to the ocean and boogie board with me and sit back under the tent next to his siblings and drink a beer. He would share what was most important to him – the stars, the birds, his parents, and his calm acceptance of all that came and went.

5. He is a relatively so -spoken man. Not that he’s quiet so much as he is monotone and hard to read. You can’t tell how he feels by hearing his voice. You must see his face, watch it crack and fold, to know what he means.

6. He does not yell and he does not cry. Not in front of me, at least. Sometimes he does sing though. He would sing me to sleep every night – Johnny B. Goode and Summertime and the Living is Easy were my favorites.

7. My dad put me down, one day, to never pick me back up again.

8. My dad’s dad is dying. No one talks about it like that, but that’s what’s happening. He’s dying, and my dad doesn’t like to talk about it. My mom’s more blunt about the situation. Maybe she’s just far enough removed.

9. My mother has many superpowers. She is a woman of extreme dedication – to her loved ones, to her well-being, to her vision of a better world. My mother was born the black sheep of her conservative, Catholic family. My mother was valedictorian of her high school

and college. My mother has never met a microphone she didn’t want in her hand. My mother has never given a toast that didn’t leave the audience misty-eyed and sore from laughing, all at once.

10. She has never been shy about dancing in public. She has many thoughts which she loves to share, sometimes in the form of metaphors that don’t quite check out. She has taught me how to behave badly, in a very good way.

11. My mother does not sweep anything under the rug. In my freshman year of college, she sent me a series of letters – typed, multiple pages long – on the ins and outs of personhood: sex, drugs, how to do laundry, tips for e cient grocery shopping, the works. She o en asks me about my spirituality.

12. Recently, I have been thinking about my grandmother’s death. I think about it o en. I relive those last few weeks – surrounded by cousins in my father’s childhood bedroom, writing what I would say at her funeral; sitting by her bed, talking to her; and my mom assuring me, it’s okay to be sad.

13. Right now, as we read and write and sleep and breathe, my grandfather is dying. Right now, he sleeps in a hospital bed and I imagine he waits for peace. I imagine he is nding peace. It is too sad to imagine anything else. Right now, I have trouble focusing because I know my granddad is dying. He has been dying for a few years now, but the dying has picked up the pace and the living seems to be slowing down. I have trouble focusing and I keep nding myself staring blindly at the ames in front of me. Two candles burn on my desk – my two warm, fuzzy, dangerous friends. I made these candles with my best friend and her mother and I like to think of us together, making a mess of the kitchen, acting foolish, whenever I light their wicks.

14. I’d like to say I’m comfortable with mortality’s nitude. But I am a planner and an over-committer. I am a person who thinks that, yes, everything is owing and enigmatic but not entirely – there still exists some pattern. And if there is some pattern, there is some way to characterize the pattern, and then to own it, to control it. Death seems to disagree. Death does not care if today is Wednesday and I have a big assignment due tomorrow but all I can do is stare at a candle and feel lost.

15. One of my two candles burns with dangerously little wax le . It is hard to know when a candle’s time is truly over. ey seem to hang on to their ames far longer than I would think possible.

16. A week ago, my grandfather died. People keep telling me things like “I’m sorry” and “he was a great man” which is nice except, I don’t

care what they think. People ask me how I’m doing, and I have to say “good” or “alright” or “I’m making it” because I cannot say “I fear I am drowning but I have not yet realized or maybe my brain has made drowning feel alright for now because it can only take so much so I guess I am alright because in almost every way I am exactly what my brain decides to be at any given moment.”

17. You’re right. I could say that, but I do not want to.

18. My grandfather died a week ago and now I am in the airport next to strangers and screaming babies and all these women with the same bangs who look like that lady I used to see at church who was friends with my granddad and I think also his accountant?

19. On Saturday, in my dead grandfather’s house, Pat Hays – my grandfather’s former colleague and friend – came up to me and put her hand out and said, “Pat.” And I said “Blair,” and she said “I know. He talked about you all the time.” And that was something better to say than “I’m sorry.”

20. My grandfather died a week ago, almost to the hour (that’s one hundred and sixty-eight hours) and my grandmother died about twelve years ago but no one ever told me what time of day she died and I sometimes have nights when I know I need to just think about her and cry. I have not yet gured out when exactly it is appropriate to cry about my grandfather. But I have a long time to work that out.

21. ese have been the rst one hundred and sixty-eight hours which I have walked this earth while my grandfather does not. I do not know what to do with this fact, but it is a fact that cannot be denied, so probably not deny it. However, it doesn’t feel quite right to accept it either.

22. On my walk home, I see a dog whose paws are so u y that his legs look like tree trunks. Today’s that sort of in-between winter and spring a er the groundhog saw his shadow and the air can only be described as brisk. I wore too many layers today because it was cold when I woke up and now it is warm and I’ve been carrying my jacket around for hours, from room to room. I realize on my walk through brisk air that this is the rst time in eight hours that I’ve been alone with my thoughts and suddenly I wonder if I am okay. I’ve been repeating the story I’ve written for myself in every free moment, rehearsing my answer to that question everyone has – are you okay? And in my head, I keep saying things like it comes in waves and I’m doing my best and all of that is true but it hilariously fails to convey what I mean. I have to be ne, eventually, enough, to live a life. But I am experiencing the beginnings of a grief so big that my best might

not be enough anymore. But it is all okay and we’re practicing forgiveness and acceptance and meeting ourselves where we are giving ourselves breathing room and slack and nding the joy in the little things.

23. I’m practicing walking home when I met two dogs whose paws look like tree trunks and we all make eye contact. It’s a seven-minute walk home if I keep it moving, and both of my shoes come untied along the way. A er seven minutes of cold air dappled sunlight and the feeling of pants on my legs, I am at my front door, and both of my shoes are untied. But now I am home, and I open the door and the cat is on his couch (everything here is his) and then I start crying, almost immediately. I text my mom and she is kind but she cannot x this and I hug my cat and he is cute but he cannot x this and my shoes fall right o because they’re already untied and my pants follow them onto the oor because I no longer have use for them and I cry until it hurts, as it hurts because it hurts, and I decide to write because I cannot be alone anymore. I must duplicate myself so that someone will hear me, help me, and hold me when I am home alone and the cat does not want to be covered in any more tears.

24. I am scared of life, of death, or maybe, of wasting it.

25. I do not understand what it means to live or die.

26. Experiencing grief is hard in a big way unlike anything else I have ever experienced and I want to know why.

27. My grandfather died last week and less than twelve hours later my cousin gave birth to a baby and named it Jamie Glenn.

28. I spread my grandmother’s ashes in the ocean and now she is everywhere.

29. I feel like I know my grandmother better in her death than I did in her life.

30. My mother o en says she would like to take a trip to Scandinavia for a purposeful ending of her life when the time comes.

31. She says it will be a fun trip.

32. "No way Dad will be okay with that," I say.

33. She laughs. "I’m going to outlive your father."

34. My mother is o en correct.

35. I do not believe in Christianity’s heaven but I do believe in something and it is thrilling and terrifying to think about what that might be.

36. I have never died before that I know of.

37. I have probably died before but I do not remember.

38. It has been at least twenty-one years, eight months, and three days since I last died.

39. It has now been roughly three hundred and twenty-six hours since my grandfather’s body ceased to be animated, and living. Of these three hundred and twenty-six hours, I would guess that a dozen have been spent crying.

40. It has been almost two weeks since my grandfather died and it has been one week since we sent out his obituary, which I wrote with my cousin, and every day I get a di erent text from someone saying something like “ is is what an obituary should be” or “you should be proud, I’m sure your granddad is” or “such a moving tribute to an amazing man,” and I start to wonder if I have a future in obituary writing or if perhaps I just love him very very very very much and the best way I know how to say that is in words.

41. My mom and I sat down together last ursday and tried to write the obituary and it did not happen because we did not have the words. Instead, we ordered lunch.

42. Friday morning, I sat down on my best friend’s bed and wrote ve hundred and eighty-three words while she drew pictures at her desk for her girlfriend. ese words were the result of twenty years of love from a man who somehow knew everything and especially he knew how to love. And then my mother picked me up and we met up with my cousin and we read what I had written and my cousin said “I forgot he used to call us mustard men and duck people” and we laughed together because why did he call us those things? But of course, he was right, and that’s what we were.

43. I wish that I could hug him. I wish I could grab onto his ngers the way I imagined I did as a baby. In my mind’s eye, I still see his thumb in vivid detail. What a strange thing to remember but now it is these strange things that I have to remember so that I do not oat o into space to be lost forever. I need the feeling of my small ngers against his so hands. If not the feeling, at least the image.

44. I can’t help but write about death because there used to be an old woman named Arvinelle who lived down the street and had concrete bunny statues in her yard, between the wild owers, and I would walk past and stop to look at them, sometimes to talk to them. And I don’t know how it happened because I was four, but soon she became an old woman I baked with and her small, curly dogs would circle the stool I stood on as I mixed the batter to make who knows what and who even cares. And I don’t know much about her, like if she had kids or cousins or friends, but I know her husband is very very tall and he still lives in that house with the concrete bunnies and I see him tending to the wild owers because he has tamed what is wild so that

the kids who walk can past marvel at the world’s beauty. What I also know is that, years and years ago, Arvinelle gave my mother yellow daisies, and my mother planted them in our backyard and they lived for a bit and then they went away for a long time. But then Arvenelle died, and a few days later the daisies had sprouted back up in the yard and that was the rst time I had ever seen them I didn’t understand how they knew it was time to show their faces, but they sure did.

45. Jamie Glen is now roughly 14 and a half days old and she doesn’t know anything.

46. I have one hundred and seven things to do this week and one of them is to mourn my grandfather because now that will be on my to-do list every week for the rest of my life and I think I’m starting to see what it means to live with grief.

47. Two years ago my best friend’s dog had some sort of a brain tumor or an aneurysm and the least I can say is it didn’t end well. It very quickly and unexpectedly didn’t end well. But it just so happened that I was in town that week and I don’t think my being there xed anything because these kinds of things are not xable, but what it did mean was that we got to eat soup and draw pictures for a few hours, and I did see her dad crying, which is something I was never meant to see, and I’m sure she thinks about those hours much more o en and with a much heavier heart than I do, but I still think about how Olive had extra toes and I was there the day they met her and then they decided to adopt her and then everything was lovely for a little while but then it got really sad, way too quickly.

48. Sometimes really sad happens way too quickly.

49. My brother has a table saw that my grandfather gave him years ago. He approaches it with caution because he knows it’s old and it has seen more than he has and it has earned every right to take o one of his ngers if he doesn’t pay attention. But the kicker is that his brand new chop saw is the one that tried to steal his ngers and sent him to the ER and splattered a good bit of blood around the house.

50. My grandpa – the living one – has had only nine and a half ngers ever since I have known him. He lost a half to the hood of a car.

51. My granddad (dead) once called me and told me I no longer had any grandfathers with ten ngers and that was the night he went to the ER for a ngertip. I think they sewed it back on but I can’t remember.

52. e men in my family seem to have complicated relationships with all of their ngers. Skips a generation though. My dad has a full set of ten. As do his brothers.

53. ere exists, in this world, an obituary for my mother. Do not worry, my mother is still alive. She wrote this obituary for herself. She let me read her obituary and she was there watching me, so I couldn’t act too touched, but it was the kind of thing that brought tears to my eyes. My father came over and he wondered what the hell was going on, and I said, don’t worry, she asked if it would fuck me up to read it before she handed it to me.

54. My (living) grandma’s mother died when she was nine, and my mother once said, "I think that shaped my entire life – not just hers."

55. My mother had two sisters and ve brothers until 1979 when she only had four brothers and two sisters. She was twelve.

56. My mother once told me that she thinks she was raised by trauma, and something like that never struck me as possible until she said it.

57. My mother was raised by trauma and I was raised by two loving parents and a grandfather who always had chapstick in his pocket.

58. On the last nights of his conscious life, before he went to the hospital and slept and slept and slept, my grandfather would sit in his bed and talk to his wife, who had been dead for twelve years.

59. I write about death because my grandmother died and then my grandfather and now I have two living grandparents but they are not the ones I see eye to eye with.

60. I write about death because, barring religious speci city, I think death is something my living grandparents might agree with me on.

61. I think we would agree that it is hard.

62. I need you to know that my grandfather watched me eat a grapefruit once; the next time I saw him, he gave me eight grapefruit spoons.

63. I need you to know that my grandfather used to hold the hymnal at church and would sing along to every single song with me.

64. I need you to know that I never asked a question my grandfather couldn’t answer.

65. What I need you to know is I once rode on my grandfather’s back through knife-like rain and I was crying and I was sure we were all going to die as my cousins ran with bare feet on sharp gravel beside us but I am the baby of the family so I was on the grandfather’s back and I was sure we were all going to die but we didn’t because my grandfather wouldn’t have any of that. In truth, we didn’t die because even though there was a lot of rain, it was nowhere near enough to cause real danger but I didn’t know that because at the time I was the baby of the family and all I knew was the sharp feeling of rain on my back and my grandfather’s hands under my little butt and my hands

wrapped around his neck.

66. What you need to know is that one night, we sat on his bed in the middle of the night as a thunderstorm tore up the world outside and we looked out the window and watched the lightning split the sky into broken glass over and over and he said"it’s beautiful, isn’t it?" And this feels dramatic to say but it’s also true: those words changed my life.

67. I have a hunch that I am writing about death because when my grandfather died on January 29, 2024, around eight pm in Austin, Texas, I was in Memphis, Tennessee and it was also eight pm but on that night, eight pm in Austin had di erent consequences than eight pm in Memphis.

68. For instance, I did not get to say goodbye to my grandfather, nor did I know the last time I spoke with him.

69. For instance, the last time I was in the same city as his living body, it was only for a few days and I was busy and I did not go to his house and I did not bring him lo mein and I did not think I needed to take the time to sit down and break bread with the old man who was once, and always will be, no less than a God in my eyes.

70. I decided not to see him then, and I decided to y home on Tuesday instead of on Friday because I thought maybe there was a little more time and maybe I would be going to a funeral that Saturday, but now the funeral is in May and I decided to stay in Memphis until 2:30 pm on Tuesday, eighteen and a half hours a er my grandfather was already dead.

71. And I guess I’m saying those series of decisions may haunt me forever.

72. And all this means that I have no real images of the end for him – I do not know what the hospital room was like, what his face was like, or what it was like to breathe the air he was breathing just once more.

73. What I do have – all I have – are fabricated visions of sitting by his bedside and holding his hands and rolling his thumb between my ngers and telling him, just once more, in that earthly way that is the only one I know, that he is, was, always will be, a God in my eyes and even though I don’t believe in the god I used to believe in, I mean this word – God – with the same weight I would’ve always said it with.

74. In elementary school, over spring break, my family would drive to Crockett, Texas, and stay at a ladybug-infested house in the hill country. is house was owned by an old couple named Gale and Wade and they took us out on their property in their ATV’s and they even let my brother drive and I was thrilled by the feeling of wind in my

hair and the taste of rural Texas air in my nose.

75. Grandmommy and Granddaddy would come with us on those trips and I have a picture of the three of us in Gale and Wade’s ATV together and in that picture, in my entirely ecstatic smile, lives the premonition of the tears I have shed on account of being the only human person in that picture who is still alive.

76. e year my grandmother was dying, we had a trip to Crockett planned and we decided to still go even though my grandmother was dying. Gale asked me how my grandparents were doing and I said "well" even though that was a blatant lie because I was nine and I did not yet know how to say my grandmother is dying.

77. Now, I have no trouble saying my grandmother is dead. O en, in that same breath, I say "so is my grandfather," but that part usually catches in my throat a bit.

78. My grandfather lived for eighty-four years, ten months, and eight days. And today, he would have turned eighty- ve.

79. ere is not a moment – awake, asleep, laughing, sitting, crying, dancing – that I do not miss my grandfather. But there are moments when I can miss him quietly and when I have to miss him loudly. Sometimes I miss him mostly in my hands because they are not in his. ere are times when my neck goes numb and my face starts to ush and I miss him from my toes to the crown of my head in a swirly way that feels like jumping into a black hole. And there are moments where I miss him and I wish I could hug him again and I miss him and I’m glad he’s moved on. ere are moments where I miss him and I smile about the life he had and the granddaughters he helped raise and moments where I’m so sad I can’t move.

80. I write about death because there are moments in which an undeniable urge to put my ngers against his bubbles up inside of me but that is no longer an option. And in these moments, I have to put my ngers somewhere.

81. For ninety-three days and sixteen hours, my grandfather has been dead.

82. And what I mean when I say this is that he no longer breathes and eats and sleeps and laughs and carries his grandchildren around on his back in the earthly way that he used to. And what I need you to know is that this fact has made its home inside my body. And no matter how many hours I’ve tried to dissolve it in saliva, or how many days I’ve let it steep in stomach acid, it does not seem to be going anywhere. Most days, it slips into my veins and disperses to the edges of my limbs, and then contracts again and oats up to the tippy top of

my skull where it tries to escape, but can’t. So this fact has to sink into my mouth where it tastes like thumbprint cookies from my granddad’s pantry and splintery chopsticks that he taught me how to use and when I try to spit it out, it crawls back down my esophagus and starts all over again.

83. But some days, it just sits in my body and I just let it sit there and we all sit together like that for a while, or maybe forever. And as we sit, we think about all the streets I’ve crossed safely in my life and all the hands I held to do so. And we take a moment to appreciate that I owe my life to all those hands and their holding. And we think about growing up in a world where grandparents give you cookies and chapstick and unconditional love and then having to keep living in a world where grandparents are now dead. And we realize, over and over, that living in this world is not a quanti able task; even if we count the streets and hands, deaths and the breaths, something will still be le out, something that cannot be numbered or listed or checked o . And we realize, over and over again, that the feeling of pants on legs and the sight of dogs and yellow daisies is one of these somethings, just like learning to love lightning and nally understanding the meaning of the word unconditional.

Dresser Street

by Kevin B

He’d come by while the kids were at the beach.

She told him how comfortable she was with coming and going. Her whole life it was a series of short-term love a airs. Her rst two boys were the product of a navy guy who was stationed in town for several years before being sent back to Japan. He paid o the house and pecked her on the cheek, and that was that. e boy stopped asking about him a er he stopped sending birthday gi s. e twins were the result of another summer ing with a rich guy from Long Island in town for a wedding. e girls looked so much like her, she sometimes thought she could have gotten away with telling them they had no father. Some kind of miracle that gave her a matching set of little despots. e boys were a good six years older than their sisters, but you’d never know it from the way the girls bossed them around.

Every day in the summer, the girls woke up, and stomped down the hallway in the way only eight-year-olds can, bursting into their brother’s room demanding that they get to the water as soon as possible. ey knew she was not a beach person. How ironic to grow up on an island and not like the beach--except that was exactly why. You can take anything for granted if you see it enough. e four of them looked at their mother all the time and thought every parent made high-fashion knocko s for their kids to wear to school and bought them professional cameras for their birthday so that their social media accounts could look as impressive as possible. She knew some people balked at the way she let her kids engage with the online world, but the way she looked at it, you had no control over the reality your children existed in. Your job was to teach them how to conquer that reality. ey were ve broke people living in a house on Dresser Street in

one of the most expensive places in New England getting by on a bartender’s salary. at was the reality. e other reality was the one they created. Her daughters in what looked like Prada on their rst day of second grade. Her sons wearing fake Belsta leather jackets standing next to a car that wasn’t theirs. By the time they were ready to leave the nest, they might not be able to y, but they’d have everybody thinking they were hawks.

He never asked about her kids other than the rst time when he wanted to know how long they’d be gone. She told him they stayed out until sunset, and sometimes beyond that. e boys complained about having to watch their sisters all day, but she knew she could trust them not to take their eyes o the girls. Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. e twins had taught themselves Krav Maga using nothing but YouTube videos. One time while roughhousing with her oldest son, they’d nearly crushed his esophagus. She pitied anybody that would try and kidnap those two.

When he showed up, he brought donuts. Half a dozen from Ma’s. ey watched tv. Something about murder. Something about cults. She met him one night dancing at Pelham. He was in town for the two music festivals. First folk, then jazz. He handled the sound equipment. Now the festivals were over, and, despite the calendar promising another month of summer, one couldn’t escape the feeling of a wind-down. ere would still be sunny days and warm weather, but there would also be back-to-school displays at the CVS and patio furniture being pulled inside. September was getting warmer every year, because of climate change, but seasons aren’t just about temperature. ey’re about who stays and who goes.

Laying in bed, a thin sheet covering up part of her and nothing on him, she traced a Tic Tac Toe grid across his chest and played a game against herself. He snored lightly, and she felt a deep urge to let him sleep. To let the kids come home and nd the door locked. To ignore their knocking and be the worst mother on the planet with a strange man in her room. To wait until they nally gave up and went to their rooms

and only then would she wake him to tell him that he could stay the night. is was all the stu of dreams. Nowadays, all her fantasies involved shirking responsibility. ere were no tropical islands or winning lottery numbers. Just knowing what she was meant to do and doing something else. Worrying about the next twenty minutes instead of the next twenty years.

A er a half hour or so, he woke up on his own. He swung his legs over the bed, and muttered “Oh shit.” Not about anything speci c. Just one of those acknowledgements that you’re old and naked and acting like a kid. She liked the way he pulled up his jeans. She liked that he didn’t wear underwear. She loved watching him cinch his belt. He turned around and smiled at her. How many more days until he was gone? He leaned down to kiss her goodbye. How long before he was in some other woman’s bed? He pulled back, pouted his lips a little, and leaned forward to give her another kiss. How long until he could only remember what her name sounded like, but not the name itself?

She put on her robe to see him out. She thanked him for the donuts. He said he’d text her tomorrow. His pristine rental car pulled away slowly, then turned the corner with some speed behind it. She considered making herself more co ee. en, she’d be up all night, asking herself questions she didn’t want answers to. She could envision herself failing at activities all evening. Sitting with a sketchbook, uninspired. Trying to focus on a book for a book club she hadn’t attended in months. e twins screaming about small patches of sunburn they’d gotten, because the boys had missed a few spots. e boys playing a video game that involves murdering as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time possible while talking on a headset to some guy in France who was probably a human tra cker.

ere were so many things she was supposed to worry about, and she couldn’t bring herself to work up a fret. Not about anything that wasn’t September. at was the only thing that scared her. at was the only thing le that made her quake.

The Night Kitchen

by Franz Jørgen Neumann

Marlee’s father shoves a slice of carrot cake into his mouth, his teeth plowing through icing. She o ers a napkin for his frosted mustache before he reaches for the next slice.

“Watch your cholesterol,” she says.

Her father died ve years ago from a heart attack. In her dreams, he sits in restaurants like this one, or at banquets or celebrations—a personal Valhalla where a ghost can eat.

Awakened by hunger, Marlee jabs herself in the buttock with the injector her doctor prescribed. She repeats the process weekly. Numbers dance around her like a cloud of gnats. She loses 32 pounds over the next 28 weeks. Her BMI drops nine points. Her belt tightens three notches. She begins a couchto-5k jogging regimen and increases her resistance training to the 10-pound weights.

e dreams continue. In one, Marlee’s mother savors a strawberry milkshake, despite her lactose intolerance, her jumbo straw clotted at the end as she spoons herself a pink dollop. Her mother adds a second straw and pushes the shake toward Marlee, tempting her to the other side during REM cycles.

Marlee sheds another ten pounds, largely because eating has become a chore. Her loss of craving spills into other realms. TV bores her—she’s become inured to swelling music and hyperventilating laugh tracks. e internet reveals itself to be mostly pixelated junk mail. Alcohol seems pointless. She is inundated with free time, but no desire to ll it.

She drops another ve pounds. Matter into energy, desire into…she’s not sure what; her desires seem to have vanished. An intervention is called for. She places a fresh box of Krispy

Kreme doughnuts on her bed, a mug of hot chocolate with a dash of Kahlúa on the nightstand, porn queued on her laptop and split-screened with Etsy’s jewelry landing page with her $100 gi card preloaded. She holds out her arm and looks at each temptation in turn. But it’s as though she’s dowsing in a dry eld. Her hand is drawn to nothing but the palm of her other empty hand. She wonders if she has inadvertently attained a state of Zen but without the enlightenment.

On the insistence of her colleagues, Marlee goes out on her rst date in ve years. It’s ne—but hardly feels worth the awkward conversation, the so-so dinner, the noisy, clumsy sex. She wonders if she should work the word ambivalent into her dating pro le. She loses another ve pounds.

A bird thunks against her kitchen window. She feels a gray nothingness at the sight of the black and yellow bird stunned motionless on the ground. When she remembers to check back, she sees that it’s done for. At night, she dreams of empty skies and deserted restaurants. e dead have vanished. She decides to taper o the prescription.

Within a few weeks she nds herself indulging: snacks while watching TV, online shopping, drinking—though all in moderation. She goes on a date with another man who’s more her type and who arouses desire. But having gone without, she’s suspicious of what she feels. Desire is less like a reclaimed state of mind and more like an imposed force, the product of billions of cells and bacteria banding together to convince her to do the heavy li ing, like now, as she brings a second square of dark chocolate to her open mouth. Matter into matter.

Marlee goes o the drug completely. She gains ten pounds but no more. en two additional pounds, but then really no more. en another three pounds. She skims articles about desire written by physiologists, psychologists, and philosophers, but they only muddy her comprehension of why she wants what she doesn’t want. Go deep enough, she’s learned—past her body’s organs, cells, molecules, atoms— and you arrive at conjectured bits of vibrating string, whether you desire or don’t, are alive or not. She comes to believe that

desire exists somewhere between thought and theory in the realm of koans. It is the drone of a hive of bees contemplating the drone, the quivering of a nest of ants contemplating the quivering.

She sticks to her new habits: shopping mostly the perimeter of the supermarket, eating only at her kitchen table. She rediscovers the drama of stovetop popcorn, and what it tastes like without butter and salt. She drinks only water. But it’s not a cloistered life. She jogs before work while listening to a podcast about birdsong. She can recognize the oriole, the towhee, and the gold nch without needing to see them. On weekends she does yoga in the park with yoga friends and becomes the downward dog, the cat, the cow, the cobra, the corpse.

At night, they return. Marlee watches her father eat rhubarb pie in a vast kitchen. Her dead mother is whisking a béarnaise sauce. Her late uncle is slicing a duck. Great-grandma May is frosting a cake. Unlucky cousins who were taken early are spilling drinks at the kids’ table and laughing. All around the food-laden banquet sit the family she knows, feasting but not gaining an ounce, alive, well again, for as long as her night kitchen remains open.

To Be Fed Well

by Audrey-Anna Gamache

We are what we eat, that’s what Mother used to say. at’s why Mother was always eating liver, rotten potatoes, swollen lips and bloody knuckles. Yes, Opal thinks, head bent between her knees, Mother eats bloody knuckles.

We are what we eat, that’s why Opal eats anything. And yet she is only a jutting rib cage, peeled skin, open wounds on the backs of her feet. Daddy eats peaches, she thinks, watching the chickens ap their wings, feeble attempts to escape their fate - the cage. I bet Daddy eats tangerines in Florida. I bet his blond hair glistens in the sun while mine is falling out. He couldn’t know hunger, not in the way I know hunger. Her father is sated, and she gures she too should be sated. What’s the use of blood and broken teeth if not to be fed and be fed well? It is this that sent her to the circus. ey tell her it is no job for a lady. ey gawk and scorn, but it’s all that gawking and scorning that gets her 25 cents extra. All that disgust, through liquor and fruit, always lands its way into her pocket. It’s no star act, but it’s act enough.

“Does your mother know what you’re doing?” e Strongman asks. He leans in close, the whiskey on his breath a whi of fresh air in comparison to the overwhelm of chickenshit at her feet. Perhaps if she were prettier, if there wasn’t meat stuck between her teeth, he might stroke her face the way he strokes the faces of the acrobats. Instead, he joins the patrons in their ogling.

“Line up! Line up!” Mr. Troubadour announces. e crowd disperses, the way the chickens do when you scatter their feed. It is hard sometimes to tell them apart- the chickens and the people. e way they gawk and bob and squawk, animals of their own cage. She knows as soon as the act begins, it isn’t just the chickens she’ll be eating. e women always scream when they see what she can do. ey shield their faces and cower into their husbands

arms. It’s no matter to Opal. She knows they eat in their own way. ey go home and guzzle cracked knuckles, salt, whatever their doctors will give them in little glass bottles, anything to tune out the mania. At least it’s better than the hospitals. She remembers the way they held her wrists behind her back. All the poking and prodding, faces fading in and out of her blurred vision. ey gawked at me, too. e cold metal of machinery between her teeth. Yes, eating then was worse than eating now.

Mr. Troubadour begins the show, and the spectators wait with mouths agape. e men in the crowd share her father’s indecipherable disposition. Fat with fruit and cigars, but empty in the way men have become accustomed to being empty. e children she can understand. At least their venom is sincere. ey, too, are only eating what they’re told to.

“What would cause a girl, so young as she, to become so abominable? To give herself to the most perverse desire?”

Bloody knuckles and swollen lips, Opal remembers, reaching out to pluck a chicken from the ock. It squawks once, another ration accepting its place. She wraps her ngers around its neck, feeling the so ening thump of its heart beneath her ngertips. e spectators squirm, waiting for a mouthful.