Eastern Exposure 2016

EASTERN CONNECTICUT STATE UNIVERSITY

EE_2016_Cover.indd 1

Eastern Connecticut State University

Student Literary Journal 2016

Alexis Ballirano Nathan Boutin Jonah Craggett Alex Cross Dakota Dolan Tashanna Edwards Quincy Farrow Sean Gilmartin Amanda-Marie Goode Nicole Green Kevin MacVane Lyla Maus Christopher Morris Robin Morris Elizabeth Pelletier Amanda Perreault Kyle Pratt Julia Rathbun Rebecca Rubin Rachel Scrivano Emily Shields Renae St. John Ash Wolk

EASTERN EXPOSURE

This edition features the works of:

Student Literary Journal 2016

4/15/2016 4:12:00 PM

Eastern Exposure 2016

Eastern Exposure Eastern Exposure, Eastern Connecticut State University’s student literary magazine, is published annually by the Eastern Writers Guild of Eastern Connecticut State University, English Department, 225 Webb Hall, 83 Windham Street, Willimantic, CT 06226. website: http://www1.easternct.edu/writersguild/ email: easternwriters@my.easternct.edu Phone: 860-456-4570 Fax: 860-456-4580 Faculty Advisor Dr. Daniel Donaghy, Professor of English 2015-16 Eastern Writers Guild Executive Board President: Dakota Dolan Vice President: Seth McCullock Secretary: Rachel Scrivano Treasurer: Rebecca Rubin 2015-2016 Editorial Board Assistant Editors: Nathan Boutin, Justin Burak, Shannon Carroll, Amanda DeMaio, Sean Gilmartin, Amanda-Marie Goode, Colleen Hart, Delia McCarthy, Joshua Measimer, Christopher Morris, Amanda Perreault, Julia Rathbun, Emily Shields, Sharon Suchecki, Mikayla Zagata Copy Editors: Nathan Boutin, Amanda DeMaio, Dakota Dolan, Brendon Duffy, Kathryn Jankura, Fatima Kazmi, Kaitlyn Macisco, Darianne Mastricola, Seth McCullock, Kelsey Nixon, Christina Rossomando, Rebecca Rubin, Rachel Scrivano, Emily Shields, Natalia Torcaso, Lily Vu, Heather Walther, Amanda Wilson Cover Art Angela DiLella, ‘14 Eastern Exposure showcases the literary work of Eastern Connecticut State University’s student writers. In doing so, it promotes the university’s mission to be “the state’s public liberal arts university” and “to be a model community of learners of different ages from diverse cultural, racial, and social backgrounds.”

SUBMISSIONS: Eastern Exposure accepts submissions of student poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction from the beginning of the fall term until 4 p.m. on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. All Eastern students are invited to submit their work (up to five pieces, up to ten pages total) via our Submittable account: https:// easternwriters.submittable.com/submit.

Eastern Exposure is distributed free to members of the Eastern Connecticut State University community.

Current issues are available in the campus bookstore, the Student Center, Smith Library, and the English Department Office. Back issues may be available through the Eastern Writers Guild Faculty Advisor and the English Department.

All print rights for individual works revert to contributors upon publication. However, the editors of Eastern Exposure reserve the right to feature work printed in journal on its website.

Special thanks to Miranda Lau (English Department), Kevin Paquin (University Relations), and Chris Ambrosio (Student Activities) for their guidance and support.

© 2016 Eastern Connecticut State University. All rights reserved.

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy.

––Walt Whitman from Song of Myself, Section 1

CONTENTS Alex Cross

Even When I’m Iced

6

Sean Gilmartin

A Hint of Cold

8

Rebecca Rubin

To Kill A Jew

Renae St. John

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Freckles

10

Quincy Farrow

Brown Girl Dreaming

12

Kyle Pratt

Letter (7): Poet’s Future Lover

13

Alex Cross

After the Queer Poet Spoke

14

Amanda Perreault

Gloria Never Smiled, 1948

16

Rachel Scrivano

Tennessee Aquarium, 2003

17

9

Amanda-Marie Goode Listening to Music with My Father 18 in a Red Toyota Tashanna Edwards

Jefferson Avenue

20

Emily Shields Watching the Destruction of the Elms Hotel, 2015

21

Julia Rathbun

A Nun Observes a Girl

22

Amanda-Marie Goode

Growing Up, Growing Old

24

Elizabeth Pelletier

My Grandmother Knew Love

25

Rachel Scrivano The First Time

26

Rachel Scrivano Think Of

28

Nathan Boutin Night Shift

30

Rachel Scrivano Midnight Crawl through the Forest of Forgotten Fruit

31

Amanda-Marie Goode

32

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Things They Don’t Teach You

CONTENTS Jonah Craggett

The Chess Game

34

Ash Wolk

The Art of Losing

36

Nathan Boutin Working Hands

38

Rachel Scrivano Katherine

39

Alexis Ballirano

I wanted to dream of you

40

Amanda Perreault

Everything

42

Ash Wolk

The Sound of Mourning

43

Robin Morris

The Eleven Commandments

46

Nicole Green

Alice the Elephant

52

Robin Morris Two Halves

55

Kevin MacVane Wrong Numbers

58

Christopher Morris

65

Here’s to Looking at You

Dakota Dolan The Night I Killed a Man after Drinking 72

a Bottle of Absinthe; or Le Louche

Lyla Maus PassĂŠ

79

Contributors Notes

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Alex Cross

Even When I’m Iced When I die, I want you to cover my body in tea, So when I decompose the fluids from inside me Will create an ammonia-based rooibos for the gods to drink.

Bury me with my mug so that the world can see That through my blood stream runs green tea And honey.

Weave black tea leaves into the hems of my dress, Or white tea into the knot of my tie; Leave Earl Grey in my pockets.

Let the world see me for what I am: A boiling kettle of water ready to explode, Creating nothing but warmth in the process.

Let the steam rise up from my dead hands to pour you a cup, Let my ghost spill your bitter coffee on the floor, Let tea reclaim my body before the earth does.

My dead fingers will be burned from pushing Tea to those who need a hug But won’t let themselves be touched.

Let my mugs be spread out to them, Give my tea to them, Let my teapots sit on their counters So they know that I love them, So that they know that I will give them warmth And refuel them when they cannot go further.

The great life juice of the earth Will give you what you need and it Will bless my skin as I rot.

Like using the same teabag twice, My love is not to die with me, It is to live on.

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Alex Cross The kettle of my life will keep pouring into another.

Let my teachings and my causes Fill your cup and your saucer.

My essence will steam out of every sip, You will learn how to brew the perfect cup, I promise, Just let the tea keep you going.

Eastern Exposure

7

Sean Gilmartin

A Hint of Cold A hint of cold is in the air tonight, Promising that autumn closes in.

But in my bones, I feel a colder bite That says I will not see red leaves again.

If dying leaves should mark my dying hour, So be it, and let me fall with fall, And let the fallen leaves become my bower, and let not those who love me mourn at all.

I leave, good friends, to go I know not where, To step into a country still unseen.

I need not know that which awaits me there; It is enough to know where I have been.

We die alone, and death is now in view, But it is well, for I have lived with you.

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Rebecca Rubin

To Kill A Jew To kill a Jew, he said, is easy.

Lay her in the dirt, Douse her in gasoline, Throw a match onto her soaked clothes.

A smile creased his freckled face.

He probably made a joke About roasting marshmallows On the Holocaust he so admired, The one he wished to recreate.

That “Good Catholic” boy Who delivered the chalice by my side One Monday morning Mass, Who would later ask if my grandparents were alive, Or if they’d burned.

Who said he’d like to put me in an oven, Because that is where I belong.

Who had no idea he’d fucked with The wrong Jew, And who never stepped foot in that Catholic school again.

Eastern Exposure

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Renae St. John

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Freckles I. In my fourth year of life, God created the freckles upon my skin, the proof that I have since lived happily.

II. At eight years old, shaving for the first time— a penguin losing its downy feathers— I meet asymmetrical lonely freckles on the insides of my calves.

I push my legs together. They almost meet.

III. There are young boys and girls whose freckles are so dark they form another layer, peeling back to reveal their true faces.

IV. There are young boys and girls whose freckles are so dark they form another layer, peeling back to reveal their true faces.

V. There are also young boys and girls whose freckles are so dense their specks are marshes, thriving with plagues of orange-brown gnats.

VI. Mom used to tell me that freckles were angel kisses. I wonder if they often fell in and out of love with me.

VII. Perhaps a sensual kiss from the sun or her gentle caress splayed across my bare shoulders, fiery fingers flaking sundrops down my arms freckled me, speckled my flaming skin unable to absorb her blush.

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Renae St. John VIII. Athena once traced them as we twined our legs under the sheets.

Upon my arms I bear Andromeda.

On my face, another universe.

In the palm of my hand, Spica.

IX. She says the river is my face: Clear water reflecting sunlight over tiny pebbles, worn down as if they too bear freckles from sunshine and chattering.

X. The city lights seen from space are flickering luminescent freckles humming with life, never sleeping.

XI. Orange-brown stars grafted along the cut of my jaw, my freckles are galaxies clustered atop my shoulders.

XII. The city lights seen from space are flickering luminescent freckles humming with life, never sleeping.

XIII. I feel small in cities and beneath stars on the velvet expanse of the evening sky, stretching forever over galaxies and suns that barely meet.

In those moments I am a freckle, too: an orange-brown speck on the face of God.

Eastern Exposure

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Quincy Farrow

Brown Girl Dreaming I was raised kneeling, sleepless, on mahogany floors listening to Schubert, reading Jane Eyre, memorizing Maya Angelou to recite at dinners; little monkey’s party trick.

The women in the church tut-tut-tutting their tongues, wondering how it is that a black girl could be so white educated, scratching papery fingers through my nappy hair, stepping back in dignified disgust.

Living in an area where houseboy is still a term and white people say “nigger” as if their hooded teeth are not cutting into your flesh, where they excuse you over and over again for the mistakes of your DNA. So I prayed to god to help me find my people.

Sure enough I found them, people that unapologetically wear midnight on their skin and speak like soft jazz.

They met my curiosity with mistrust my confusion with conniptions and turned me away, citing I belonged elsewhere ‘Cause I couldn’t possibly be black.

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Kyle Pratt

Letter (7): Poet’s Future Lover You should be warned, future lover.

The love of a poet is a love like no other.

Their meter will mend mangled hearts and The stanzas will sing of sultry beds.

They will orchestrate outstanding odes and Their prose will proclaim perfection To you, their muse.

But should this love crash and burn, You will have quite the lesson to learn.

For hell hath no fury like a poet scorned.

You will be left bloodied, bruised, and torn.

So heed this letter, do not ignore The writer who will write a war.

Eastern Exposure

13

Alex Cross

After the Queer Poet Spoke You asked me how low I ever got and I said, “Professor, we all try to die once in a while.”

Because I honestly believe that you haven’t lived until you’re:

Waiting for that too fast car to come around the corner

Dropping that razor in the shower

Looking too deeply out that window

Running for your life in a town just too, too small Or fighting for something that’s just larger than you.

Professor, you ask these things because you want to get to know me, But there is no me.

My story is not unique.

Because I am not a snowflake And I am not alone.

We all stand on the ledge of the colors.

Hoping for Red to pass by and push us off

Because maybe we are just too yellow to do it ourselves.

And there is that blue knife in my pocket ready to fight off strangers on the street.

Those orange lockers could be smeared with our blood any day of the week And we live in violet vivid fear.

That’s no way to live.

Because it doesn’t stop here, It learns to grow on our hearts, On our brains, and it lives on

As long as we do.

As long as our children do.

So, Dr., how low have I gotten?

Why don’t you ask him.

Ask her.

Ask them.

Ask all of them. Any of them.

We’ve all been green deep in fear

And in hate.

We push ourselves in front of the indigo cars to eliminate the chance of someone else

doing it for us.

I’ve seen my blood say hello to the Earth,

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Alex Cross But worse yet, I’ve seen their blood on the carpet, On the bridge, On the wrong lover’s bed, On the church steps.

Why should they all be subjected to the same. Exact. Fate?

A fate that does not even want them . . .

A fate that I can’t let them have.

And so, I never carried that knife for myself again.

I carry it for them now.

Because I am not alone.

And I never will be.

Because they can all see the fear in other’s eyes, It’s impossible to live this life on your own.

And I know they need someone to protect them now.

Because I’ve seen queer adults wracked in fear Of losing their life

Their homes.

When you find a queer professor, Listen when they say “you’re not a snowflake, I am just like you. We all grow up on

the same Earth, in this same goddamm society.”

Because when you find someone who’s made it that far, hold on to them, Become a role model for them.

The blue knife protects us all.

Because someone has to.

So Professor,

Don’t ask me how low I have been But ask me how high I am willing to go for them.

Eastern Exposure

15

Amanda Perreault

Gloria Never Smiled, 1948 She wore a tan coat, shielding herself from the cold, snow at her feet.

She looked as if she were going out, to a diner maybe with her friends, or maybe grocery shopping wither her mother on a Sunday morning, right after church, her ankles exposed to the world, pant legs rolled up, socks peeping out of her shoes.

She was immersed in light, face strained, eyebrows furrowed, lips set in a thin line.

Gloria never smiled.

Gloria, seventeen, didn’t know what was coming: that at nineteen she would bear a child, the father—a soldier at war—unknowing, and at twenty-one, she would giver her two-year-old daughter away.

That her husband would perish a year into their marriage, she would be left as a widow at the age of twenty-two, now knowing where to go, what to do next.

Gloria would not see the tuberculosis coming, a sanitarium consuming her life for two years.

When released, she would come to find her three children and her second husband gone.

And most certainly, seventeen-year-old Gloria didn’t see herself dying at the age of seventy.

If seventeen-year-old Gloria knew what was coming, if she appreciated the lightness of that moment, if she understood the importance of happiness, and the harmonious times of childhood, she might have smiled more.

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Rachel Scrivano

Tennessee Aquarium, 2003 I was the happy kid who got excited over star stickers crookedly placed on homework assignments, smiley stickers stuck to the bathroom wall for flushing the toilet & washing my hands— with soap, I might add— SUPER! stickers for bedroom English classes & SpongeBob stickers from the doctor’s office after a shot.

Yes, I would be scared like any other child— I’d clench a fist around my mom’s hand till it turned red, face my head to the window, squinting my eyes, & scrunch my nose until the nurse would say all done—but nothing scared me more than entering the same room as my brother without talking, sitting beside him and coping with the potent air between us until it was time for bed, to depart into our rooms to better places.

Tennessee was our better place; I was 9, he 11.

My hair swayed past my ribs, sweet brown like peach marmalade.

I hugged my ankle so my knee hit my chest and smiled because I was happy, not because I was told.

My brother had a buzz cut and sat like he did in class, legs crossed, hand-over-hand.

I remember that bulldog shirt–– it was too big on him, but made him feel older.

A lonely crab parted us from the glass tank; its long legs leaned toward us, parting our differences, pulling us together into a moment we shared, frozen by a click and captured with a flash, but gone just as quickly.

Eastern Exposure

17

Amanda-Marie Goode

Listening to Music with My Father in a Red Toyota I don’t remember the song or how loud it was as it poured out of the speakers of my dad’s red Toyota on my fourth birthday.

It was a pickup truck with a covered bed and two seats in the cab that I was still too small to ride in.

He lifted me anyways into the passenger seat and I remember rolling down my window while he searched for a station that wasn’t sports talk.

He must have settled on classic rock because I remember he drove slowly to make the mile to Main Beach last long enough to hear one favorite song or another.

Maybe it was “Simple Man” playing, my father drumming along on the steering wheel with his fingers, belting out the lyrics.

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Eastern Exposure

Amanda-Marie Goode I remember sticking my head outside to feel the wind sift through my hair, something that might have been Skynyrd ringing in my ears.

Eastern Exposure

19

Tashanna Edwards

Jefferson Avenue Never sat pretty in a dress for too long.

After church, I was in shorts and a T-shirt, racing through the streets, on foot, with the boys who lived up the block from me.

I could keep up; sometimes I was faster.

Climbing the huge boulder, a rock wall, running through the woods because we knew were weren’t allowed.

Some days, we only rode our bikes, making laps around the identical apartments.

We waved at the mothers of our friends, their eyes watching us like moving targets.

Never on the sidewalk, the street was our race track.

On bikes, we pedaled until our legs, frail and weak, stopped working.

We cruised down the steep hills.

Under-aged and uncertified, we helped them anyways.

Spiders, insects, injured pigeons; we always did our best.

Garden snakes, not too often hurt, my favorite.

The adventures went on for hours.

Sometimes hours, like days, dragged on.

Streetlights took their time waking up.

The anticipation for sundown came through sleepy eyes and growling tummies.

Still I waited. We waited together.

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Eastern Exposure

Emily Shields

Watching the Destruction of the Elms Hotel, 2015 They didn’t ask me, Wiping sweat from their brows, From beneath their neon hardhats.

They didn’t ask me As they conjured up cranes, Tractors, Wrecking balls, The machines like cobras ready to strike, To pierce through the gray flesh, The historic roof peaks, The bay windows.

They didn’t ask me If they could crush the tower, Where the ghost of Eliza Bronson Waited at the widow’s peak For her husband for 83 years.

They didn’t ask me As they tore up the hydrangeas That lined the front porch like king’s guards, The ones I used to catch monarchs in.

They didn’t ask me If they could bust down the door Of room 238 and grind it to bits, The room we stayed in since I was four.

They didn’t ask me that day, The July weather hot and windy, As I sat on the bench of Crescent Beach Across the street from the Elm’s, Feeling something wet and hot Dripping from my cheeks, Watching my childhood disintegrate Right before my very eyes.

Watching a part of me Drift away with the ocean breeze.

Eastern Exposure

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Julia Rathbun

A Nun Observes a Girl Through stained glass, I can see you under the apple tree.

Girl in the white slip, I saw you discard your dress like a rag.

I saw you tug an apple from the branch, and I saw that branch shoot backwards, appalled. Please, do not hang from them.

You are hardly graceful as you dance from pigment to pigment.

A leap left into the red of our Lord’s robe, and then your hands rise up to meet His golden, ethereal light. They drop to your side, and you cast the core of your apple to land at His feet.

I planted that tree you covet. I sunk my hands into the soil, and I pulled from it rocks and weeds. I made it dark, made it rich.

With care, I placed an apple seed, the same as the ones you idly toss.

When I was your age, I left the house of my father and I entered the house of our Heavenly Father. Daily, I prayed that I could save my sisters at home from what I had endured. That, through prayer, He would hear me and eradicate my father’s evil.

One by one, my sisters entered the abbey, and they arrived haunted, hobbled and hollowed.

We never said as much, but I knew that in the end, our Father could not change our father.

In the valley, there is a man, once a boy. He had begged me not to go, for we were in love. His father was a drunkard and beat him daily.

The night that I ran towards the abbey on the hill, I fled through their rotting garden and past my boy’s palm on the window.

Girl, tonight, when you meet your lover by the tree, when the two of you have plucked the last of the fruit and you have returned to the foothills, hand-in-hand, I will hang my habit from the barren branches and I will follow you.

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Eastern Exposure

Julia Rathbun I will follow you past my barren tree, the piece of myself that I had nurtured back to life.

I will go to the village, walk past my broken home, and through the dewy garden.

I will find myself face-to-face with a broken pane of glass to look through the condensation on the window to discover whether my boy’s palm still waits for me. If it does, my hand will mirror his.

Eastern Exposure

23

Amanda-Marie Goode

Growing Up, Growing Old I’m trying to picture you leaning over your workbench surrounded by sawdust, screwdrivers, and drill bits as we construct a Navajo village out of empty Jell-o cups and red clay.

It should be easy to walk myself through that evening— opening your heavy front door, calling up the stairs to Grandma, bustling around her tidy kitchen, running down the basement steps to your cluttered shop— but every time I imagine tugging open the door, you aren’t leaning over paint-stained wood, printing capital block letters onto graph paper, prepared to sketch the layout of my grade school project.

Instead, I’m twenty-one and you sit in a hospital gown, pale and tired, your shaking hands fiddling with your hearing aids, trying to remember what they are for as you look up at me vacantly searching scrambled memories for my name, telling me, a stranger, to leave.

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Eastern Exposure

Elizabeth Pelletier

My Grandmother Knew Love She knew the love of handpicked rose bouquets tended by his thoughtful fingers.

She knew the love of their house, built of oak and faith, constructed by his callused hands.

She knew the love of fresh crĂŞpes and blueberries, breakfast plates that warmed her palms.

She knew the love of what he could give.

As his mind slipped away, she left him the love of reminders on mirrors and patience when he forgot her name.

She knew the love again as he proclaimed her beauty, boasting of a young woman to an old woman, not knowing they were the same.

She knew his love, witness to his pain, while he clung white sheets like a child, with her reflection flickering in his eyes for the final time.

She knew the relief of letting his love go.

Eastern Exposure

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Rachel Scrivano

The First Time I held the rose between my limp fingers, rubbed the stem so the flower twirled back and forth, back and forth, trying to distract myself.

I clenched my teeth and bit down hard on the insides of my mouth tasting blood, swallowing hard.

I put my head down and stared at the black leather seat beneath me.

It was the first time I had ridden in a limousine, but it wasn’t how I wanted it to be. I wanted pretty dresses, disco lights, champagne dripping from fancy glasses, or a beat pounding through my head.

The only beat pounding through my head was my heart and I couldn’t get it to slow down.

When tears started dripping down my cheeks, you were the one to hold onto my hand for the first time.

You smiled at me and rubbed my skin, whispered something to me but Goddamnit! I can’t remember what you said!

I just know I squeezed your hand tight and cried.

I cried because I never had anyone’s eyes shed such concern––and I find it funny because you are my grandmother, the one supposed to unconditionally guide me through this world, the world that took your son away, my uncle, too early, too fast, without warning.

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Eastern Exposure

Rachel Scrivano We stood in a circle around his grave where his body rested, surrounded by dirt and worms and why is it that such a beautiful man has to be in such an ugly place? Why did I drop my rose onto his casket instead of laying it next to his name? Why did he have to leave before saying goodbye?

Eastern Exposure

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Rachel Scrivano

Think Of Hospitals scared me, made me feel like spiders were crawling down my back after nesting in my hair, laying eggs—white specs glued to my scalp— and even when I try to shake the memory of it, those webs chain me in the sterile halls next to a cart filled with toilet paper, throw-up trays, garbage bags, anything a custodian would carry. Think of that, think of sweat or think of boogers oozing out of a kid’s nose in a pool on a summer’s day, think of chicken pot pie with slimy peas, or think of a hair found in your favorite dessert or even sandwich.

In short, I felt gross.

I felt gross walking in and seeing my brother’s head stitched up and puffy, with thick thread popping from his skin staring me in the eye, and I tried to turn away, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t get myself to ignore the fact that this was life. My life sucked for those few months, living without a mother and pushing away my grandmother because I was frustrated, confused, terrified that death would become a thing. Loneliness looked like nervousness, so my teacher tried to cuddle with me, which was the weirdest experience I’ve ever had—besides the time when another teacher coddled a life-sized doll in the classroom— yeah, that was weird.

It was weird bringing my homework in the playroom and watching kids with IVs walk around me; it was my “mother-daughter bonding time”…in a hospital, the same one that opened my brother’s head up at the age of 11 trying to make him seizure-free—which they did—but sometimes family forgot about me; they always asked about my brother and how he was doing, but I would get ignored. Or at least it felt like that. Think of the workers who package your favorite cookies, you know, the sugar ones with creamy frosting on top.

Everyone forgets about them.

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Rachel Scrivano Forget about me for a second, though, because I want to take this time to remember dressing up in a cowgirl costume visiting my brother and hugging him, who was smiling—actually smiling—while he had a bulging bandage wrapped around his head, and it makes me think that I had no excuse not to smile; think of the last day of school when the bell rings and you have two whole months to yourself without tests or quizzes—yeah, you can’t frown in that situation because life is short and the good times are even shorter.

Eastern Exposure

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Nathan Boutin

Night Shift My father tinkers with computer parts, Toils with tiny chips for tiny paychecks.

He is shocked by static from splicing wires, Pinched by screws, drained by the monitor glare, All while scoffing at noisy graveyard-shift Gossip over walkie-talkies. Arching Over a table, he makes odd faces At some odd broken contraption, cursing.

My father strolls home when the sun rises, His eyes low, hands scratched from jagged metal, The curve in his back more crooked each night.

He sips brandy and smokes a Marlboro as He fires up the Marshall amplifier, A violet-black Fender Strat in hand Gleaming as he plucks, taps his heel, and hums The same melody played a hundred times.

Everywhere: electrical plugs, pairs of Tossed headphones, scattered song sheets, small shreds of Black hair stained gray and white by the weight of Weeknight work. One morning he drags on home, Leans, sleepy, against my bedroom doorway, Gazes at me, smiles, and bobs his head like I were a song scribbled in his notebook.

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Rachel Scrivano

Midnight Crawl through the Forest of Forgotten Fruit I never wore my new sneakers over your house because your yard was littered with shit.

Sticks were always too weak to scrape it off so the smell lingered, trailing behind like Pig-Pen’s cloud of dust.

But that time I wore sandals, exposing my toes to the bloodsucking mosquitoes and tall grass that hit my ankles, scratching them as we waited to run for the forest of forgotten fruit.

A limb snapped off your tree during a lightning storm.

It was our only protection from the other lurking somewhere behind the shedding shed–– White paint flecks fell like snowflakes between the covered truck and stoned pathway.

We waited for our neighbor’s porch light to dim before running to collect more ripe fruit from the forest—our ammo— hiding them beneath our shirts so the juice oozed upon our skin, sticking to us and staining the fabric.

We crouched behind the garage with beer bellies, shining a flashlight at bushes whenever we heard a sound.

It was dark, but we weren’t afraid.

It was dark, but the fruit— were they mangos or avocados?–– those green grenades grasped in our grips, just waiting to be thrown.

Eastern Exposure

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Amanda-Marie Goode

Things They Don’t Teach You They don’t teach you why kids are vicious— not until you’re much older, college maybe, maybe when you have kids of your own, or maybe you just figure it out along the way while getting sprayed for cooties by classmates whenever you walked by, even in the fourth grade and eating lunch alone in fifth surrounded by seven empty seats.

But, really, that doesn’t teach you much either.

You end up assuming it’s something about you, innate, unchangeable— that you deserve getting called autistic when you’re twelve or asked to the school dance when you’re thirteen, hearing laughter around corners, between lockers, hearing She thought you were serious.

You look at yourself in the mirror and no matter how many times your mother tells you how beautiful you are you can’t convince yourself to believe it, to love yourself, can’t teach yourself to look at your face— round, young, sad, dark purple bruises under your eyes—

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Eastern Exposure

Amanda-Marie Goode and see potential.

All you see is what your best friend must have been looking at when you were thirteen and she told you she couldn’t be seen with you anymore.

Or maybe you just missed the point, missed that somewhere between the pages of Pebble in the Sky and episodes of X-Files and Twilight Zone you found yourself, you made yourself, made you who you are.

They don’t teach you how to grow up.

They can’t. It’s just something that happens when no one is looking.

Eastern Exposure

33

Jonah Craggett

The Chess Game I remember you asked me to play chess with you.

I was surprised you even knew how to play.

You told me that you were in the school’s chess club And you smiled giddily, eager to win.

I remember you thinking Long and carefully.

You knew it was a game of patience.

You thought much longer than me.

I remember a close match and me winning.

You shouldn’t have moved your rook.

“Save the pawns,” I said.

You asked for a rematch And we played until we were content.

I remember you winning and me losing Then me winning and you losing And “let me move that piece, I didn’t mean to put that there” And “nope, no redos.”

I remember you asked me To play again and again And I said no, Another time, Later.

And now there are no more times, No more agains, No more laters.

Just regret and wishes That I had been more patient And opened up the board

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Eastern Exposure

Jonah Craggett Where I’d fight to defend you With all my rooks.

Call me bishop And I’ll crown you my king And make gambits to protect you.

I’ll say yes to every game And there’ll be no need To buy a chess set in your honor.

Eastern Exposure

35

Ash Wolk

The Art of Losing Part I: Reckoning I do not want to estimate or calculate.

I do not want to establish or accept.

I want to laugh; I want to cry.

I want to pound the ground I walk on.

Dying is not living; living is not dying.

I walk in circles trying to grasp What has actually happened.

What is going on?

Part II: Regret This is not a missed opportunity.

This is a lifetime, A true love, a career, a home, A lifetime missed.

There is no saying sorry, No take-backs or rewinds.

There is only what could have been.

My brother is dead.

Part III: Remembrance The never-ending splash of the bay Upon the rocks we would climb on Together, wrestling and picking fights Because we only had each other.

I smile because I love you.

I cry because I miss you.

I scowl because I’m mad at you.

I look ahead because I’ll never forget you.

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Eastern Exposure

Ash Wolk Part IV: Ritual I suppose there is a prescribed order, A certain way I tilt your picture On my bed-stand before I sleep, A look up to the sky before I play.

I avoid conversations about family, for now.

I have my perfect escape: “Do you have any siblings?”

“Yes, but tell me about you!”

Part V: Recovery Nighttime is no longer my enemy, Nor are the brothers of sisters I know.

My heart is still smaller, but not small.

Wounds that reopen will heal again.

A normal state of mind, of health?

Maybe not yet, but the light is near, And though receding darkness draws slow, I am not afraid anymore.

Part VI: Redemption In this case, I don’t know what redemption means.

Perhaps starting over, a new beginning, A chance to enjoy the happiness.

A life lived without weight or gravity.

Register, repent, reflect, restructure, regain, live.

Eastern Exposure

37

Nathan Boutin

Working Hands My mother’s hands are callused, Tough skin shields slivers of copper wire Trapped in her flesh, the long mill days Carried beneath her fingers like shrapnel.

Her hands are Polish, white half-moons Shadowed by machine grease And muddied as they delve deep In autumn lilacs and sun-dried coleus.

She’s got a beat-up pair of claws, but What woman wouldn’t after working 12-hour shifts, tending the vegetables, Burning fingertips on galumpkis and kielbasa, Dropping plates and gathering glass Shards with an arthritic touch?

My mother’s not ashamed to wear Jewelry on those mangy things, Tacky, oversized bracelets, golden rings, And emerald-stoned trinkets.

She gilds her hands and paints nails blue To highlight on experience, Each valley of her skin aged, worn-in With tradition and eroded by overtime.

I see her now, on an autumn afternoon, Fringing the house with red impatiens and geraniums, Mulching the flowerbed, planting marigolds By the porch, her palms familiar with each earthen crevice.

She is delicate and exact. She looks at me, Another of her creations, her straw hat Tipping over, toppling onto the grass.

I did not help her.

My hands were too small, Too soft, too young.

Only hands so rugged and worked Could make the world come alive.

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Eastern Exposure

Rachel Scrivano

Katherine She used to wave to us from her screen door as we passed by the trimmed hedge, the frog that croaked in the sewer below the poorly paved street, her husband who wore that yellow hat, “Old as Dirt,” because he was and he was proud of it.

We passed by every day, twice a day, three times; we would walk across the stone sidewalk to the screen door, bring in her groceries, hold up one of her shaky arms as she wobbled with her black cane to climb the steps. . . one hesitation at a time. . . one break at a time.

“Sit, sit,” and we sat at her tiny kitchen table under the antique chandelier— candies scattered in a basket and Tiger in the windowsill or on the bed all curled up— always that lingering smell of worn skin and white hair, Velcro New Balance sneakers and long floral nightgowns. Always.

We always had to push hard on the screen door to leave; her two fingers touched her pursed lips and pointed out to us—her eyes squinting from the stream of light passing through the holes in the door onto her wrinkled face.

We continued to pass by every day, twice a day, three times; pass the overgrown hedges, the stealthy sewer on the newly paved street, the stone sidewalk gradually being replaced by a scarlet brick path leading to a wooden door where a young couple kiss in the doorway and ignore us passing by.

Eastern Exposure

39

Alexis Ballirano

I wanted to dream of you in colors that didn’t exist.

Instead, the Polaroid shows stern faces permanently printed on a washed out backboard of black borders.

Achromatic, you stare out blankly to a reluctant recipient, your charcoal aura protruding the page, the white of your smug smirk flashing at me in warning— white T-shirt shielding your blackened heart, capturing you in feigned innocence, posing perfectly still, smoldering in the heat of your own presence.

I wanted to see kind eyes popping blue on a square page, pleading for a troubled soul, ivory hands gently in place, grasping pale jean pockets, shrugging subtly, not reaching out from the film toward me, knowing that the gray grin spreading across your face didn’t mean to hurt me.

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Eastern Exposure

Alexis Ballirano I look at the photo now— the edges, brown and curled, incendiary at the corners, the orange of the flame tickling at the base of your core, reaching up, scratching out the demonic red rage shone through the reflection, the flicker in your retinas.

There’s a fire in you, but you’re all burnt up.

The hiss and sizzle crack across the empty airwaves, muted as I crumble the snapshot in my hand the stiff backing becomes flimsy beneath my touch.

I started the fire, I’ll put this one out.

Eastern Exposure

41

Amanda Perreault

Everything I told the police officer I was fine.

But he didn’t see the moment of impact and the tears and the glass pricking my face.

He didn’t see my mother carried away on a stretcher, a brace around her neck.

I told the officer I didn’t hear the motorcyclist coming until he collided with our Mustang.

But he didn’t hear my repetitive chanting oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, as if God could take the moment back.

He didn’t hear the motorcyclist’s head crack the windshield, and create an intricate web of glass.

I told the officer I didn’t see the motorcyclist’s passenger.

She summersaulted over the top, landing thirty feet away.

I only saw him lying motionless on the pavement.

I only saw fragmented glass, and the sideview mirror that collided with my knee, and my mother’s nose gushing blood.

I told the police officer with a lump the size of a grapefruit in my throat with trembling hands with tears threatening to spill out of my eyes that I was fine.

The truth was I saw the moment of impact, and the tears, and the glass.

I heard my cries, I heard the cracking of the windshield. I wasn’t fine.

I saw and heard everything.

42

Eastern Exposure

Ash Wolk

The Sound of Mourning Mom misses you, you know.

“Do you want something to eat?” she says.

“I can make you anything you want,” she says.

You know the way she tries to please us with food.

It makes me think of the time Penny jumped up on Mimi’s chair at Christmas dinner and snagged her prime rib off the table.

You remember Penny, our beagle, don’t you?

Or are you too far away now?

Too far away that the memories you once held repel from you like radio waves, traveling through space for eternity, never dimming, only moving on and on.

I wonder if you still remember how cold you felt before you died, the hollowed look in your eyes before your final heartbeat.

Did your whole life flash before you like they say it does?

I bet you don’t remember that night on Lorraine Street.

I had just gotten home from practice. You sat on the floor, your back slumped against the couch, “Come here, Ashley,” you mumbled, your voice cracking, crashing down on me.

“I want to show you something.”

Your eyes wandered all over as you pulled off your sock.

Do you remember what the needles felt like, piercing the webs of your toes that left holes as black as your brown eyes were that night?

Our parents screamed at each other in their bedroom.

“If you don’t put your son in rehab, HE IS GOING TO DIE,” I screamed at a closed door.

I left with tears on the backs of my hands.

I didn’t return home for five days.

You didn’t care to remember that.

I remember how warm you felt inside the bag when I picked you up from the crematory, the December wind cracking my knuckles

Eastern Exposure

43

Ash Wolk as I gripped you in my arms.

I can barely remember planning your funeral, but all I know is I wouldn’t let mom plan her baby’s “going away party.”

That’s what she called it, didn’t she?

I can barely remember when I realized our family was different, but I know the boys in school never let you forget, nudging you and flicking your too-big ears that heard girls snicker at your hopes of ever getting them, ears that could tune a guitar and hear my crying from my bedroom when you and Mom and Cally would fight.

Help me remember when you were nice to me.

Doesn’t it feel like a dream?

A bunch of little laughs and sunshine, hands sifting through tall grass in Mimi’s yard on the Cape, racing each other through ponds and wooded paths.

I always was faster than you, so you stopped trying.

Why? I remember the first hockey practice without you, I remember thinking, Will we still hang out?

No. So many things. So many things.

God damn it, Dylan, why did you leave me here?

Why couldn’t you have waited for me to say “sorry”?

How sorry I am for being a “bitch” like you and your friends called me simply because my friends were bitches?

How sorry I am for trying to succeed and be the best, leaving you behind.

How sorry I am for hanging out with your older guy friends, the very ones who picked on you in school lunchrooms, The very ones who only wanted to get in my pants.

(They never did, by the way.)

How sorry I am for not asking you how your day was or what your favorite band was.

What the most recent drug you had done was.

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Eastern Exposure

Ash Wolk I’m sorry I didn’t save you.

I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.

I swear to God, I’ll give you anything you want because I don’t know what to do here without you.

I don’t know what to do when pieces of my soul fall away.

When I realize I haven’t talked to my brother in almost three years.

I don’t know what to do when I try so hard to remember every. little. thing. only to find myself asking, What did his voice sound like again?

That silence, that silence that broke the mold of pointless words in the church pew.

I remember our mother mourning in the night, small chokes that traveled down the stairs, waking me from my restless sleep, your footsteps through the kitchen the night after you died, smiles echoing like those radio waves around and around in my head.

“I love you, Dylan Miles.”

The words I wish I said.

Eastern Exposure

45

Robin Morris

The Eleven Commandments CAST: God––President of Heaven, Inc. (age: 50s) Gabriel––Angel and Assistant to God (age: 30s) Jesus––Son of God (age: teenager) God sits in his corner office in Heaven, Inc., typing on his MacBook. Gabriel enters.

GABRIEL We had to make a few changes to the Commandments, sir.

What kind of changes?

We took out number eleven.

GOD (stops typing and looks up) GABRIEL

GOD (annoyed) What do you mean you “took out” number eleven?

GABRIEL We cut it. Deleted it. Erased it. Number eleven is no more.

GOD (voice raised) That was the most important one! Now what, there are only ten commandments?

That’ll never catch on.

GABRIEL (shuffling papers) I’m sorry, sir. It wasn’t a problem with the content. We were all on board with the idea of number eleven. It was more of a space issue.

What do you mean?

GOD

GABRIEL We just can’t fit eleven commandments on the two stone tablets. We have room for five on each.

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Eastern Exposure

Robin Morris

Well, what about getting another one?

GOD

GABRIEL There isn’t money in the budget for three. Plus, UPS has really jacked up the shipping prices from Heaven to Earth and the cost depends on weight these days. And I’ll tell ya, it’s expensive enough sending two of those bad boys down there.

GOD You’re the one who said we should go with stone! I was ready to write the damn commandments on a piece of paper with a sharpie and fax ’em down to Earth.

GABRIEL Faxing is a little old school, God. And for the record, stone tablets make more of an impact; they’re permanent. Anyone can get piece of paper and write a list of rules on it.

GOD They aren’t just a list of rules, they’re guidelines to get into Goddamn Heaven!

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend—

GABRIEL

GOD (cutting him off) So why don’t we switch to another delivery company, like FEDEX? GABRIEL Well, last year you said FEDEX was the antichrist of the shipping industry.

GOD Okay, whatever. I really want to keep number eleven. Can we just switch it out for another commandment? How about number six? I never loved number six.

GABRIEL (reading notes) “You shall not murder.” I don’t know, sir. I feel like that one’s kind of a biggie.

GOD (using air quotations) Number eleven is kind of a “biggie,” too. There’s got to be a way to get it onto the tablets.

Eastern Exposure

47

Robin Morris Jesus angrily bursts into the office, pushing past Gabriel.

Dad, are you fucking kidding me?

What is it this time?

JESUS GOD (sighing)

(crinkles nose in disgust) And why do you reek of alcohol?

JESUS (throwing hands up in anger) I don’t know, Dad! Maybe because, lately, whenever I try to take a shower I end up standing under a fountain of Cabernet.

You do look a little purple.

GABRIEL (giggling)

GOD (to GABRIEL) Did you not send him the fax about the whole water-to-wine experiment I wanted to try?

GABRIEL (quietly) We got rid of our fax machines back in ’08. I sent him an iMessage, though.

JESUS Yeah, my data’s been turned off all week, so I never got that memo.

GOD Maybe if you didn’t spend so much time on your phone, you wouldn’t go through your data so fast.

JESUS (sarcastic) Why don’t we just get an unlimited data plan like the rest of the world?

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Eastern Exposure

Robin Morris GOD Well, if the rest of the world jumped off a bridge, would you?

JESUS Probably! At least I’d turn the water below us into wine so we could get drunk before we drown.

GOD I’m talking about a bridge so high up that you’d die on impact, but nice try!

Good one, Dad!

JESUS

GABRIEL Okay, let’s all calm down. Jesus, why don’t you take a seat?

JESUS (to God) Tell me why you did it. Why you made it so I turn water I touch into wine.

People need to see miracles, Jesus.

GOD

JESUS Ha! That’s what this is about? Miracles? People see miracles everyday on Earth!

What’re you talking about?

Ever heard of Steve Jobs?

Yeah, he works in IT here.

GOD JESUS GOD

JESUS (annoyed) Well before he came to Heaven, Inc., he was a damn miracle-maker on Earth.

Eastern Exposure

49

Robin Morris GOD (defeated) Fine! If you don’t want the water-to-wine trick, I’ll give it to someone else. (to GABRIEL) Can you call Noah and see if he’s interested in turning water into wine?

JESUS WHAT? You’re giving it to Noah? First he gets a yacht, now unlimited alcohol?

GOD Jesus, please. It was an ark and the unlimited alcohol is not the point.

JESUS (muttering)

Fine.

GOD Okay, now that that’s settled, let’s go back to this Commandment issue.

JESUS What’s wrong with the Commandments?

We can only fit ten on the stone tablets.

GOD

JESUS (laughing) Stone tablets?! What is this, 10,000 B.C.?

GABRIEL What do you think we should do, Jesus?

JESUS What about a YouTube video of Dad going, “Hey wassup, I’m God and this is a tutorial on How To Get Into Heaven.”

GOD and GABRIEL look at each other.

GOD Well that’s not a bad idea. And I can fit all the damn commandments I want

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Eastern Exposure

Robin Morris in a video–– GABRIEL PR only approved the eleven you gave them so don’t get carried away.

Scene ends and cuts to God’s Eleven Commandments Video on Youtube which already has hundreds of millions of views.

GOD (in the video) And number eleven: Just fucking floss, guys.

Eastern Exposure

51

Nicole Green

Alice the Elephant

Mommy says I shouldn’t worry. It’s not ladylike. So I’ll try not to. She told me today that I am sick. Not like when I have the sniffles. Real sick. The kind that icky grape medicine won’t fix. Which is good, I guess, because I don’t like drinking grape medicine. Daddy says I have to be a big girl. I told him I am a big girl. I don’t use a sippy cup anymore and I color in the lines. But he says I need to be as big as the moon.

Daddy says funny things sometimes. I went to the doctor’s yesterday. They poked me a lot and put me in a machine that made lots of noises. I saw mommy crying, but I don’t think I was supposed to. Maybe the noisy machine scared her too.

They keep telling me not to worry, but I’m not worried. Mommy puts my favorite dress on me. We’re going to the doctors again. We go there a lot now. I put the bow that daddy likes in my hair today. He gets upset when we go to the doctors.

I tell him that the doctor isn’t scary, but I don’t think he believes me. Sometimes he cries when we are there, but I don’t think I’m supposed to see that. He doesn’t normally cry. The doctor says a lot of big words. Mommy looks scared, but she always listens to what they say. I bring my stuffed elephant, Alice. When I feel scared, I hug her really tight. When we get in the car, Mommy and Daddy whisper a lot. It sounds like they are whisper-fighting. I don’t like it when they do that.

They take me to Friendly’s on the way home for a strawberry milkshake. We always eat healthy. When I ask mommy why we are there, she just says, “Special treat!”

They tell me again that I am sick.

“I already know that!” I explain. I am a big girl. I listen to what they say.

“You might not get better this time,” Daddy says.

I don’t understand. You always get better when you’re sick. Don’t you?

Mommy closes her eyes. She does this when she’s upset. “You’ll get better sweetie. I promise.” She darts her eyes towards daddy as if to tell him to shhhh. “The doctors will do their best.”

They tell me I’m sick with a really big word. I don’t know what it is, but daddy says it’s a kind of cancer. That sounds scary. Sort of like the monsters that sometimes have tea parties under my bed. At least that’s what mommy says. It makes them less scary.

I wake up in the middle of the night. My head hurts so bad that mommy can’t kiss it better. Daddy holds me as mommy drives to the hospital. I can tell that he loves me. We don’t have time to get dressed, so I still have my pajamas on when we get there.

I must look silly. Everyone keeps running around and whispering, but I fall asleep. My head hurts too much to stay awake.

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Eastern Exposure

Nicole Green

When I wake up, I am in a bumpy bed. Everything is white. Really white.

My favorite color is purple, like the color of my mommy’s favorite sweater. Mommy brought Alice for me, so I hug her really tight. Alice tells me everything will be okay.

Only I can hear Alice, because she is really quiet. Mommy and Daddy are gone, so I just keep hugging Alice until I fall asleep again. I feel really tired all of the time.

Mommy brushes my hair today, but it falls out. Mommy starts crying, but I just stare at it. I look a little funny without hair. I giggle and squeeze Alice. She giggles with me. I tell mommy not to cry. She sniffles and kisses my head. “You’re still beautiful, my love.” My mommy is the best. She says she will buy me a wig. I miss my old hair, but maybe now I can look like a movie star, just like mommy.

Mommy used to be famous. She is the most beautifulest person I have ever seen. I want to like just like her when I grow up. We watch one of her old movies, and she starts to cry. Sometimes I don’t understand grown-ups. She tells me a secret. She says that she doesn’t miss being famous because she loves me so much. I think when I am older that will make more sense.

Daddy goes to get coffee a lot when we are at the hospital. I pretend I live here now. Maybe I can bring my dress up for when I feel better. Doctor Megan tells Mommy and Daddy something sad today because they cry a lot and aren’t talking to me. Auntie Karen sits with me when they are gone now. Auntie Karen is really nice because she reads me stories about princesses who are pretty and strong at the same time. She tells me I am pretty and strong too. I want to be just like the princesses in my stories, but I’m stuck in this bumpy bed. Auntie Karen makes me a really pretty purple blanket for when I get cold. I get cold a lot from my cancer medicine. There’s a grown-up word for it, but I can’t remember it. Daddy buys me a wig so that I can look like a movie star. It’s not as pretty as the movies, but Mommy says it’s perfect.

I don’t wear the pretty dresses Mommy likes anymore. Daddy dresses me in pajamas because I’m always in bed. Alice is always with me. Even in surgeries, she is waiting for me when I wake up. Alice is not afraid, so I am not, either.

Mommy says I am going to heaven soon. I want to stay with them though. It’s not fair. She says I will be better in heaven. I will get to meet her daddy, Frank. Mommy says he is a nice man. Frank will hold my hand when I walk into heaven, Daddy says.

He is crying now. I think it’s okay for me to see him cry now. He has seen me without hair and he still loves me. I want Alice to come with me to heaven. I am strong when Alice is holding my hand. Even though mommy tells me she is just a stuffed elephant, I know she is special. She’s like me, but pretend.

Eastern Exposure

53

Nicole Green

Everyone is around my bed. I want to hold everyone’s hands at once, but I can’t. So I reach out for Mommy and Daddy. They’re crying, but I am not. I am just tired. I wish I didn’t have to leave them to go to heaven. I don’t need Alice anymore. She needs to help Mommy and Daddy now. “Alice is kind of like me,” I tell them, “so you can hug her when I am gone.”

It’s quiet now. I feel very tired. Mommy and Daddy are waving to me, but I’m on my way to heaven now. I see Frank holding out his hand.

54

And I take it.

Eastern Exposure

Robin Morris

Two Halves

They found me under a crab apple tree, surrounded by rotten, little apples and covered in bruises. On my right hand, they found another human’s flesh stuck under four of the French manicured nails. The fingertips on my left hand were blackened and caked with dirt from digging into the ground. The bruises, the coroner concluded, were caused by the apples. Perhaps someone had shaken the tree while I lay below it with enough force that they had begun to fall, but that wasn’t what killed me. It was all speculation, but he was pretty much right. The cause of death, the coroner also determined, was a stab straight through my abdomen. The kind of stab that happens when you’re already almost dead—beat to near oblivion—where the blood pools and you can’t muster up enough strength to bring your hands to the wound and stop yourself from bleeding out. A stab powered by one final rush of adrenaline. A stab to finish the job.

My wake had a big turn out—one of those “she died too young” kind of incidents where everyone you’ve ever breathed near shows up with teary eyes and a wad of tissues shoved into their pockets. Of course, I did have a relatively big family—two sets of twins and a sister—and we were from a close knit town where everyone knew each other, so any time someone died, the funeral home would be stuffed to its capacity.

A couple of summers ago, we went to a funeral at the same place for a girl in our high school. She had died in a drunk driving accident and it was horribly tragic.

Another service overflowing with bawling teenagers and distraught family members.

Our school’s acapella group did a grim rendition of Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young” that made my brother and I burst into a fit of laughter. Even though it seemed like a cruel joke of a song at the time, I secretly hoped someone would get our church choir to sing it for my funeral.

Back in the viewing room, I saw my vice principal from high school and my older sister’s ex-boyfriend and my first roommate from college—who, I swear, hated my guts. They all stood in the line, wearing shades of gray and black, waiting to pay their respects—or to stare blankly at my dead body and admire the mortician’s ability to cover up the crab apple marks like they were never even there.

Judging by my corpse’s initial state, I was surprised my parents went through with the open casket. But they were Catholic to the bone and apparently nothing says, “we go to church every Sunday and say grace before meals,” like an eerily alive-looking body in a pink polka dot dress waiting to be buried.

That pink polka dot dress was my mother’s favorite and, much to my dismay, she’d ended up picking it as the uniform I would be laid to rest in. Usually, I’d be angrier that she had chosen something so childish to bury me in—but since I knew she was drowning in heartache and pain, I let her off the hook. It reminded me of when I was five and she had dressed my brother and I in color-coordinated outfits for the first day of kindergarten and for every year after until we realized how embarrassing it was. I wondered if he was wearing a pink polka dot tie today.

Eastern Exposure

55

Robin Morris

There were two detectives at the wake. From their outward appearance, they didn’t necessarily look like police detectives, but rather a pair of middle-aged men wearing tired, gray suits. They stood beside my parents, holding Kleenex boxes and staring into the crowd with narrowed eyes—the kind of focused glare only cops have.

They hadn’t caught the guy yet. They hadn’t the faintest idea who did it. They kept mulling over the case in their heads. A crime scene in a park. A body under an apple tree. A stab in the stomach. Not a witness, not a surveillance camera, not a single fucking clue.

My mother was sobbing quietly into a tissue that was already so tear soaked she’d needed a new one three cries ago. My father stood next to her, his arm around her waist, kissing her head every so often. He clutched a Bible to his chest, muttering prayers to himself as he observed the crowd with somber gray eyes.

“It’s okay,” he whispered to her. “We’re going to be okay.”

I wondered if he actually believed that or if he was just trying to comfort his weeping wife. When I was a senior in high school, my brother had gotten arrested for shoplifting and assault at our local convenience store. He stole two Kit-Kat bars and a lighter and, instead of paying, he punched the cashier square in the jaw. Turns out, he was drunk and barely remembered a thing afterwards, but the cameras caught everything. My mother was an absolute wreck—horrified her son was heading down some sort of dark path. My father told her the same thing he said today, “It’s okay. We’re going to be okay.” It was his mantra. It’d become such a regularly used sentence it was no longer uplifting, but just expected.

I saw my younger brothers in the room with the casket. They were fighting, as seven-year-old twins do. They playfully pushed and shoved and my parents were too preoccupied with grief to keep an eye on them. The pushing and shoving, however, turned into actual fighting; fists were thrown and the twins were wrestling dangerously close to the white-flowered wreath that rested on a stand beside my casket.

When the wreath toppled over onto the carpet with a thud, it caused the buzz of quiet conversation to cease altogether. The room was washed with silence except for a couple sniffles from my mother. Everyone remained frozen, unsure whether to resume their casket-viewing endeavors or wait until someone picked up the wreath and put it back in its place.

My older sister, who had been standing with her fiancé, walked over after another couple seconds of uncomfortable silence and ruffled the twins’ hair. They giggled, perfectly oblivious to the disturbance they had caused, and she smiled back.

She had always been good at smoothing things over. She put the wreath back on its stand and the crowd collectively sighed in relief.

This is when I saw him. He was in the background, leaning up against the wall, casually waiting around like the rest of the people in the room. He had on a button up shirt and slacks, no tie. He could almost go unnoticed if it wasn’t for the obvious scratch marks on his face. The kind of scratches that could’ve only been done by a person with freshly manicured fingernails. It had been almost a week now and they had

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Eastern Exposure

Robin Morris started to scab over, but I could tell there would definitely be scarring.

It felt comforting knowing that the evidence of my last attempt to escape death was going to linger forever in the form of a couple of white lines on a cheek. He walked over to where my parents and the detectives stood and gave my mom and dad each a quick hug. They seemed confused, as if they weren’t expecting him to be there.

He put a tissue up to his nose and blew into it—even though it didn’t look like he’d been crying at all.

“It must be so hard,” one of the detectives said to him, “to lose someone so close.”

“It’s like losing part of yourself,” he replied, looking out into the crowd with indifferent eyes.

“I’m sure it is. You guys were close, huh?”

“Close as people can get, I’d say.”

The detective, however, wasn’t being empathetic. He was digging. “Did you go somewhere in the past week? We noticed you haven’t been home.”

“Had to do some thinking. It’s been a rough couple of days.”

“I see.” The detective nodded. “Do you mind if I ask how you got those scratches on your face?”

The question went unanswered, though, as he backed away slowly from the prying detectives and my grief-stricken parents and sauntered through the crowd— passing my wrestling brothers, my sister, and her fiancé. Past the white flowered wreath and the open casket where my body rested in its pink polka dot dress.

They say twins are two halves of a whole—that sometimes their minds are connected. That’s how my twin brother and I were. The kind of bond we had is unimaginable to some, and now looking back, the connection feels more and more like a fading memory. Two halves of a whole, until his half snapped and I ended up a corpse under a crab apple tree in the park one Saturday afternoon.

Eastern Exposure

57

Kevin MacVane

Wrong Numbers

A jolt of ice-cold adrenaline shocked Ellen awake. The clock on the nightstand read 10:22 in dim-green numerals. The phone was ringing. She reached to hold the edge of the blankets, ready to jump out of bed and run to the phone. It would ring five times, then the machine would play her voice asking the caller to leave a message. It was an old recording. She should have changed it a long time ago, but toward the end, if you listened very closely, you could hear James laugh in the background. At four rings, she kicked the bunched blankets free of her feet. Five rings. Her voice came from the kitchen, muffled by distance. She couldn’t hear James’s boyish laugh, but she knew it was there, and that knowledge sent a bittersweet pain into her heart. When she heard her younger self say, “Please, leave a message and we’ll get right back to you,” she held her breath and made herself still.

The voice that echoed down the hall from the kitchen was that of a woman old enough to be her mother, to be James’s grandmother. “Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?” Her voice was plaintive, pleading. “This is Sophia King. I need a refill on Hank’s prescription. He’s in a great deal of pain. Please, I need help. I don’t know what to do.”

The woman took two shaky breaths into the receiver and hung up. Ellen closed her eyes tight and let herself breathe again. Another wrong number.

In the morning, Ellen checked the machine. The caller ID flashed “Unknown Caller.” They were almost always unknown, the old people who called from nursing homes and assisted living communities. Most were hang-ups, but enough didn’t listen to the outgoing message to get through. People suffering too much to really register the recording, too consumed with their questions. Ellen’s phone number was a digit off from the oncology department at Norwich Hospital. She had thought about changing it, even called the phone company, but changed her mind at the last minute when the man at the phone company said they would have to change the listing from her husband’s. Somehow, that didn’t sit right with her. Since he had passed, she had changed so many things out of his name. She didn’t have the heart to do it again, to change the number she had called so many times before they married, to delete him from the white pages. Plus, it was the number James knew. Between David’s name and phone number and James’s laugh on the answering machine, there were too many reasons to leave things as they were. Too many ghosts.

She sliced a grapefruit and ate it with the day’s first cup of coffee. The dog circled her chair, hopelessly sniffing the dining room rug for scraps. Since retirement there wasn’t much structure to the day, barring a three times a week exercise class at the senior center. It had been a major adjustment from a nurse’s frantic schedule to being a homebody and an even bigger one to living alone. She washed her bowl, rinsed her mug, and put on a light jacket in anticipation of walking the dog. The terrier, Charlie, knew the routine and bounded down the stairs. She could hear his nails clattering on the tile inside the door. The wall of the stairway was decorated with family photos. Ellen

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Kevin MacVane smiling at the camera with David and James. Good times in Disney, the Big E, Skiing in New Hampshire. Before James had grown up, walked out of rehab, and vanished.

Before David’s heart had its fill of sorrow and just gave up.

On her way out the door, the phone rang. She held her breath and waited. It was a young woman, her voice brittle. She had forgotten what order to take her new pills in and was having trouble keeping food down. Ellen climbed up the stairs, but the girl had hung up. The ID read “Number Blocked.” Ellen had answered those calls before David had passed. She had told people that they had dialed the wrong number and they had politely thanked her, for the most part. When they left their numbers, she had called them back and let them know. It had seemed like the right thing to do, but she had stopped when James had disappeared. She would race to the phone and answer, but it hurt too much when the voice wasn’t his. After David’s heart attack, there were too many calls, wrong numbers, and people looking for David. Companies, clubs, and organizations, mostly. He had been so active in charities and veteran’s clubs. Every incoming call was a reminder of what she’d lost. The girl would call back. She would call again and get the number right. She would reach someone who could help her.

After walking Charlie, there was another Unknown Caller, but no message.

Ellen went to her regular Thursday lunch with Gayle, a friend from David’s Army/ Navy club. They were both widows who had been military wives and they got along well, though Ellen always felt something move in her chest when the conversation moved to Gayle’s grandchildren. She had often wondered what James’s life might have been before alcohol and heroin had washed away all his promise. She had gone over every decision, every moment, trying to figure out what she and David could’ve done differently. You tried so hard to raise them right, to give them every advantage—

“Ellen!” Gayle had put down her fork and was staring at her, eyes wide.

Ellen shook her head. “Sorry, I was miles away. You were saying?”

“It doesn’t matter. How are you?”

“I’m okay. I know, I know, but all evidence to the contrary, I’m all right.” She pushed her salad around the plate. “I—well, there are good days and bad days. You know how it is.”

Gayle nodded. “I do.” They ate in silence. Ellen hunted the last of the salmon in the salad and nibbled at it. “It’s just . . . it’s a lot to bear. Have you considered talking to someone?”

Ellen huffed from her nose. “Someone? Like a,” she whispered, “therapist?”

“I suppose. I meant to ask if you’d considered coming back to church. Even just getting your toes wet. We’re doing the clothing drive again; we could always use more hands.” Gayle reached out and took her hand. “It’s been almost a year. Oh, don’t give me that look, it helped me a lot after Francis went. It would do you good to get out of that house.”

“I know. It was really more David’s than mine. It’s just not for me. Not anymore.”

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“Are you still angry?” She pointed toward the ceiling, but kept her hand close to her body, as if sharing a secret. “You know, at him?”

Gayle had thrown herself into her faith and church activities, after her husband had died, with gusto. She had transformed herself from the very picture of a woman in mourning, into a hurricane that left bake sales and food drives in its wake. The Sunday after David’s funeral, Ellen had driven to Saint Mary’s, intending to find some solace in the rote and ritual, but hadn’t been able to get out of the car. It was as if her grief had wrapped itself around her like a wet blanket, forcing her down into her seat. She remembered sobbing, great heaving sobs so powerful she felt the car rock. No tears, though. No relief.

“No, hon. I’m not angry. I’m not anything, really. Just . . . tired. Tired comes closest, I think.” She pulled her hand from Gayle’s and patted it with a small smile. At Gayle’s pained look she added, “I’ll think about it.”

When she got home there was an automated message from a travel agency, one from her sister in Oregon that would need to be returned, two hang-ups, and one from the girl, pleading for help with her medication. Her name was Sarah and she didn’t know which pills to take with food and which to take without, or which was for the mornings she had a treatment and which wasn’t. She needed someone to explain it all to her. She didn’t have anyone else to call and why wouldn’t anyone call her back? Ellen reached out to delete the message but instead just laid her hand on the machine while it played. It was warm to the touch, and she could feel it vibrate ever so slightly with the girl’s voice. Sarah left her number and coughed, a hard, wracking cough that sounded like it rattled her bones before hanging up. When the message ended, the house was silent, except for the sloppy little noises of Charlie drinking from his bowl. Ellen made cup of coffee. When it was ready, she played the girl’s message again. She wrote the number down on the pad near the phone. When it was done, she played it one more time and just listened.

That night she made herself a hamburger and sat in the living room to eat.

She ate less than half and fed the rest to Charlie, who devoured it with joyful abandon.

She considered calling the girl, Sarah, but it was, perhaps, too late. If she was as sick as she sounded, she needed her rest. There was a trial of a movie network available, so she half-watched a film about an art heist while reading a novel from the local library. She had become an expert in listening to the television while she read. She suspected she just needed something to drown out the silence. The movie had ended when she woke up to the ringing phone; she didn’t remember seeing the end of it. The phone rang and rang until the machine picked up.

“Hello. You’ve reached the Archers. We’re not at home right now, but we’re sorry to have missed your call.” James laughed far off in the background. “Please, leave a message and we’ll get right back to you. Thanks for calling.” The caller didn’t hang up, but didn’t speak. The machine amplified the hiss of an open line and the faint sound of music, far

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Kevin MacVane from the receiver. Ellen sat frozen in the living room armchair, unsure of what to do.

Then the line clicked and went dead. She turned off the television and put her plate in the sink for the morning. The clock on the microwave said it was twelve thirtythree. She replayed the message and listened to what sounded like faraway jazz or blues, something with guitars and horns in it. Music, and the garbled, incomprehensible chatter of people talking. When all the lights were off and she had washed her face in preparation for bed, she stood in front of the machine and almost played it again, but didn’t. No one called for the rest of the night.

Friday morning she had an exercise class at the senior center. Afterwards she stopped at the florist and drove to the cemetery to visit David’s grave. The cemetery smelled of damp earth and cut grass. It always felt awkward, standing at his grave. She was never certain how long she should stay. It felt like she should say something, but the truth was, she didn’t have much to say. She had loved David, and he her, but things had been hard before he passed. James had been in and out of trouble, mostly minor, drug-related charges. David had spoken to a judge, an old friend, who had agreed to let him enlist in lieu of jail time, but James had been given a Bad Conduct Discharge in record time when a bunk search turned up stolen Morphine ampules in his footlocker.

It was only David’s good name that kept him out of a court-martial. He had been a good father, she thought, and she a decent mother, but David changed his approach and thought tough love in order. He cut James off: no more money, no more help.

“Let him hit bottom, it’s the only way he’ll ever see he needs help,” he’d said.

She had agreed, but been unable to stay the course. When James called for money, as he did every few months, she wired him some. Not a lot, but enough to keep him going.

Enough to keep him from hitting that bottom, as David said. Enough to let him know we still love him, she had argued. Then came his slow decline, until James had been arrested as an accomplice in a convenience store robbery and managed to talk and plead his way into rehab and probation. While she and David hadn’t argued out loud about it, the recriminations and blame had lived just under their skin. A month later, James had vanished. Two months after that, David’s heart gave out while he was taking out the trash. Ellen had hadn’t known he was gone for almost an hour.

“Hi, David. I don’t really know what to say. Same as always. Charlie misses you. He still sleeps in the bed, where your feet used to go.” She sniffed. “I do too. Miss you, I mean.” She sighed. “I miss you. That’s what I meant to say. I love you.” She wiped her eyes and craned her neck upwards. “Oh god, what did we do wrong? What else could we have done?”

She had resolved to call Sarah that day, but the cemetery had drained her.

Instead, she sat in the garden and finished her book. When Charlie was fed and walked, she fried a chicken breast, diced it, and mixed it into a garden salad. She didn’t check the machine, though the light was blinking. She just didn’t have anything left. She felt dry and brittle and likely to crumble like a dry leaf if she took on any more weight.

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61

Kevin MacVane When the phone rang, she tried to ignore it but felt something fragile stir at James’s little recorded laugh. When had she recorded that message? What had he been laughing at? When a man’s voice came over the machine, asking about his wife’s chemotherapy appointment, she got up and charged to the phone so fast the salad scattered over the living room floor. She snatched the phone from the cradle and screamed into it.

“You have the WRONG NUMBER!” Her voice sounded so strange. She was screaming with such force she could feel the strain of it in her throat. “STOP CALLING HERE, I CAN’T HELP YOU!” She slammed the phone down, but missed the hook, leaving the receiver bouncing at the end of its cord. She collapsed into a sitting position against the wall, weeping. “I can’t help you. I would, if I could. I can’t help anyone.”

She curled up, covered her face, and let herself cry. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” When she fumbled for the receiver, the caller had hung up.

Saturday was over cast and gray, a perfect day to get some things done around the house. After walking Charlie, she started in the living room, dusting and straightening the picture frames that somehow always ended up askew as if some ghost moved about the house at night. David’s prized stereo stood mute in the entertainment center. She had considered donating it a hundred times, she never used it, but the image of him sitting in the armchair, reading the morning paper, and listening to his records was so vivid she couldn’t imagine how the house could stand without that stereo. It was load-bearing, as integral to house as the walls around it. She dusted the albums that sat upright like books in a wooden milk crate, ran her fingers over them the way he had when he was selecting one.

She prepared a chili in the slow-cooker for dinner and made a salad with cranberries for lunch. She was eating when the phone rang. She put down her fork, but the caller hung up when the answering machine clicked to life, and she went back to her lunch. After washing the dishes, she pulled the notes and notices from under the magnets on the refrigerator door. It was mostly old receipts and reminders, heating oil, car maintenance, and the like. The condolence cards had been long since thrown away, but a prayer card from David’s funeral had shuffled itself into a stack of business cards clipped to the side of the fridge. It had his picture on the front and a quote on the back: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. —John 14:27. David had found some measure of peace in his faith when James had vanished, but the sentiments had left Ellen feeling empty and somehow more alone.

One of their bitterest fights had been about that clothing drive. David had wanted to donate James’s things and seemed surprised when Ellen objected. They hadn’t begun blaming one another for his disappearance yet, but there had been a sour note in their marriage. An undercurrent of anger just under the surface. There had been a blowout argument that they never spoke of again. David had boxed up James’s clothes and things and banished them to the attic. They were still up there.

The bedroom closet was still half-filled with David’s clothes, like little

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Kevin MacVane snapshots of his life. A gray suit he wore to weddings, a black one for funerals. A tuxedo for formal charity events, a dress uniform wrapped in plastic. She left those in place, but carefully folded the rest of the shirts, slacks, and jeans into a heavy duty garbage bag. Gayle would pick them up for the church charity drive. There was no one to hand them down to.

She was in bed when the phone rang. She gripped the edge of the blankets, ready to get up if it was James. “Hello. You’ve reached the Archers. We’re not at home right now, but we’re sorry to have missed your call.” James laughed his innocent, faraway laugh.

“Please, leave a message and we’ll get right back to you. Thanks for calling.”

Silence.

No, not silence. Music, faint music. She pulled the blanket aside and stood up, lurched down the hall past pictures of happier times. She and David at their wedding, James as a toddler at Christmas, smiling on a boat, going to prom. The call was still connected when she got to the kitchen. Music and the sound of people; it sounded like a party or a bar. Her hand was trembling when she reached for the receiver.

“Hello?” Silence. “Hello, is anyone there?” She pressed the phone to her ear and thought she heard someone take a breath. It sounded so close, so far from the noise and music in the background. “Are you there?” She took a deep breath. “James? Is it you?” Did she hear a catch in the caller’s breathing, or did she imagine it? “James, where are you? Are you ok?” Silence. She waited. “James, if you’re there, please talk to me.”

Silence, but the line was still open. “If this is you, I’m here. You can call anytime. I’ll be here. James, I love you. You can come home.” She wiped her face and was surprised to find tears; she hadn’t realized she was crying. The line stayed open for another few moments, then clicked as the connection was broken. She opened the refrigerator and poured herself a glass of wine by the pure white light that streamed out. She closed the door and drank slowly in the dark before going back to bed.

Gayle called early the next morning, which was alright. Ellen had slept soundly through the night and risen with the dawn. She picked up at the sound of Gayle’s voice over the machine.

“Hey, Gayle, I’m here, I’m here.”

“Well, of course you are!” She laughed. “Just making my weekly call to invite you to Mass. I’m a glutton for punishment.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I’m ready just yet.” Ellen doodled in the margins of the message pad by the phone.

“I know you always say that, but you need to take a step, hon. I hate to think of you all cooped up at home.”

“I know, thanks. Not this week, I don’t think. Thanks for asking.”

“Sure.” Gayle couldn’t keep the disappointment from her voice.

“Gayle?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t give up on me, all right? Ask me again next week?”

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Kevin MacVane

There was a pause on the line. “Count on it, El.”

She walked Charlie and made some scrambled eggs with onions and peppers.

When she had finished eating, she washed the dishes and opened the living room windows to let in some fresh air. She started another book and sat in the living room until the hall clock softly chimed ten o’clock. She cocked her head to the side, imagining that she could hear the bells at Saint Mary’s. She marked her page, went to the kitchen phone, and dialed the number written on the pad. A tired girl’s voice answered. She sounded lonely and raw, as if she was weary from crying.

“Hello?”

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Christopher Morris

Here’s to Looking at You

for MGG

My darling, I watch you watch home pull away into the distance, and I never see a tear. I stare too long, and you notice. You say, “What’s wrong, Mommy?”

I see you smile out of the corner of my eye and pull to a stop at the end of our street. The moon whispers sadly to us, and the Christmas lights shining in the houses to either side of the road offer their condolences. “Nothing. Just thinking, is all.”

You always have been a thinker—my little thinker—and you shake your head.

Your hair, so long and smooth, falls over your face. “You’re lying.”

“Don’t worry about me.” I squeeze your hand, soak up its warmth like a wetted sponge. For a year now, I’ve thought I could hold you and just hold you. I thought the days where we hugged to make maps of each other were over. I thought we were past those nights where I’d take down every freckle, every note to your giggle, every sparkle to your eyes and lock it to my memory so there would never be a day, after you were gone, where I’d forget any part of you.

You sigh and turn on the radio, and I take us onto the highway, where the sorrowful Christmas lights fade to barren trees and long, rushing streams of headlights beneath a trail of smoggy clouds. You fall so quiet I think you’re asleep, and I am glad for you, but you’re still awake, only silent, your knees curled to your chest and your head against the windowpane, when I look your way. If I could, I’d take a picture of you now and show it off like a trophy, my unstoppable little girl working out her plan of attack.

The Big C doesn’t stand a chance, I’d say.

“How long will we have to be there?” you ask. “Is it going to be like last time?”

We’ve got six exits to go, and I think, Now, just do now. “I don’t know, my love, but we’ll figure it out. We’ll have it all figured out soon.”

“Hmmm.” You twist around to rummage in the front seat, dump your duffel bag in your lap, and pull out your giraffe. He’s still got some wrapping paper stuck to his ear.

The car in front of us slows, but I don’t pass him. “Did you figure out a name for him yet?”

You smirk, flick at his tail. “Germaine?”

“Germaine? That’s a fancy name.”

“Yeah!” you say. “He’s a fancy giraffe.”

“He sure is.” A horn blares a few cars back, and the car ahead of me flashes its hazards and pulls off the road into the grass. My foot hovers over the gas pedal; my hand halts on the blinker signal. The air heats up and falls heavy, like God’s holding His breath.

“Mommy?” You poke my arm, and I ache for you. “You need to go.”

Another horn, and I flip on the blinker, hit the gas, veer off into the passing lane, and then snap back to the right. I slow the car to just below the speed limit, and

Eastern Exposure

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Christopher Morris turn the radio up. We’ve got four exits left, and I don’t care if I get a ticket—I’m not going any faster. Fast is what the other lanes are for.

“Whoa,” you say, laughing with your hair in your face.

I smile because I can, because you can, because neither one of us will be able to after tonight, not after those next four exits.

“Mommy?” You sit Germaine on your knees and pop him up towards the ceiling, catch him with a squeal that reminds me of last time, when you were a baby, when you didn’t understand. It was better that way.

Three exits left, and the moon flashes like a stoplight, and I’m not breaking.

You say, “I’m not afraid anymore. I’m unstoppable.” ***

The sun beats down on the windshield, and you shield your eyes, put on my too-big sunglasses, and look at me with the straightest, gravest face, and I can’t help it.

“What? Why are you laughing?” You pout, your hands on your hips, the sunglasses sliding down your nose, my darling.

“Nothing,” I say. “You look real cool.”

You nod, all seriousness. “I’m even balder than Daddy now, so that makes me the boss. You better not make fun of me, Missy.”

“Oh”—I take a quick peek at the road, pluck the glasses off your nose—“is that right?”

You frown, and it pulls hard at your jaw, at the sharp bones in your cheeks.

Those five precious pounds made you look your age; I don’t need anymore reminders, God, of how old you’ve grown.

“But Daddy said I could be the boss,” you say.

We pass an exit sign, and I smile; five more till home. “I’m kidding. Of course you can be the boss.”

You nod again, cuddle Germaine to your chest. “Good. It’s only for a few weeks anyway.”

My smile dips, and I think of that word, low on the doctor’s lips like he was afraid it might shatter me, brittle as I was: Transplant.

“Mommy?” You kiss Germaine’s head and hug him against your belly.

“Yeah?”

You turn down the radio and blush like you’ve got a crush. “How come every song is about the birds and the bees?” ***

You tell me again how much you like math and bring your practice book with you so you can prepare for after. “I’m not falling behind a grade,” you say. “I’ll prove to Mrs. Mackay that I don’t even need the second grade; I’m a smarty pants.”

“That’s right.” I coast down our street, thick sheets of white powder billowing in the breeze and folding in over blow-up Santas. Clouds hang heavy, and the weather report says there’s a blizzard coming, maybe even bad enough to shut down the roads.

But it doesn’t matter, not now, because we’ll be gone until the springtime

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Christopher Morris anyway.

“I think I could finish this by the time we get there.” You smile so proudly at me and clap your hands on the cover of your book: “Easy-peasy.”

Easy-peasy.

“‘If Mary has six apples,’” you declare, “‘Bobby has five more than her, and Kate has one less than Bobby, how many apples does Kate have?’ Well, what a silly question . . .”

The sun glares through the windshield, its warm hum layering over your voice and easing it to a hush. I see, in that light, wisps of your hair curling out from beneath your funny little hat, hairs we washed down the drain months ago. I feel as if I’m staring at a mural, a mural made of blown glass, and I feel as if I’ll break it all away if I stare too long, as if the you we lost at diagnosis is gone forever. I need to believe it, to believe that I can bring you back to yourself, to believe that this transplant will work. I need to believe that this is more than a mural, more than a memory—I need to believe that the you we lost at diagnosis waits also in your future.

“Kate has ten apples,” you say.

Ten.

Ten percent: your chances of survival. ***

You, my darling, pop little confetti cannons across the back seat and whistle and shout. You, my love, whoop and cheer and kick your legs like you used to do when you were a baby, round and rosy and so happy to be alive. It’s something I always admired about you, even then, even when I was blinded by the perfection of everything you did. I’d put you down in your crib, snuggle you up tight, and I’d turn to your daddy and say, There’s a fight in that one.

“Here”—you wave your iPod in my face —“you know what to do.”

I hit your Rascal Flatts soundtrack and dial it up as we swing onto the highway, and we’re homebound—we’re going home, home, home.

And you, my darling, are cancer free.

“Look, Mommy, Germaine’s dancing,” you say, bobbing him around and around and brushing his mane with your fancy new brush and squeezing him so tight he looks ready to burst. “Dance, Germaine, dance.”

“Hey”—I wave your attention over to me—“what do you want for your birthday?”

“Hmmm.” You poke your finger into your cheek and twist it around. “Let me get back to you on that.”

“It’s in a week, Baby.”

You giggle, and when you look down at that giraffe, it’s like you’ve found the leprechaun’s pot of gold. Your smile, always so wide, gets even wider, and you lean forwards to blow me a kiss. “Catch!”

I do, and you go crazy back there.

“That’s all,” you say. “Happy Birthday to me.”

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Christopher Morris

“No”—I give you a real stern look in the rearview mirror—“that’s not it, you little goofball. I’m going to spoil you rotten, and you’re going to like it.”

“But, Mom, I don’t need anything. Give the money to the other kids.”

In the car ahead of us, two little girls fuss around in the back seats, slapping each other like something out of The Three Stooges, while Shrek plays on a small TV hanging from the ceiling. You were never like that, my darling, and neither was your sister.

You two were angels.

“What other kids?” I say.

And you say, “The other kids like me.” ***

You laugh so hard you snort, and it could be the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. “Mommy. Look what you made me do”—you point grandly to the ice cream dripping down your shirt and onto your seatbelt—“and it’s chocolate, too.”

“Don’t be a cry baby.”

“Well,” you scoff. “Hey, look, you’re the one doing the laundry, not me.”

I offer you a spoonful of my vanilla and watch you gobble it up like a little vacuum cleaner. It’s like a camera flash goes off, and, for second that feels something like an hour, I see your bones through the fresh plump of your cheeks, your rib cage through your cutesy blouse.

“Mommy?” you say. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing. Just thinking.” I brush your hair back behind your ear, softer than it ever was, shorter than its been since you were in diapers.

“About?”

I shake my head. “Nothing.”

You roll your eyes and make a bored noise. “You can’t think about nothing, that’s not thinking.”

Rascal Flatts hits a high note, and a car swings by us into the drive through.

You wouldn’t remember, but your daddy and I got in trouble for loitering in the parking lot here once with our ice creams. This was back before your sister was born, when you could only babble. Your daddy panicked and started shoving our receipt in the officer’s face, saying, We’re customers, we’re customers, we’re customers. I think the guy felt so bad for us that he would have let us off even if we’d stolen our ice cream.

“Except”—you chew on your spoon—“you know that mean girl from my grade? With the pigtails?”

You’ve got your daddy’s eyes, my darling. “Yeah, I know her. Her mom’s on the PTA.”

“Yeah. I dunno if much of anything is going on in her head while she’s”—you do some bouncy air quotes—“‘thinking.’”

“That’s terrible.”

You shrug, hold out your ice cream. “I want to toast.”

“Okay”—I wipe my hands on my napkin, raise my cone—“what are we

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Eastern Exposure

Christopher Morris toasting to?”

You’ve got chocolate syrup on your front teeth and a spurt of caramel on your lip. “To new hair!”

“To new hair,” I say, and we clink. ***

It’s Thanksgiving morning, and I should be cooking the turkey and mashing the potatoes. I should be wrapped in a smoky kitchen while you scamper around me with your sister at your side, my two tiny piglets stealing scraps of anything and everything you can find. You, my darling, should be making piles of hand turkeys and filling our hearts with every single little thing you’ve ever been thankful for.

Instead, we’re three exits from the hospital, and you’re just realizing you left Germaine at home.

“Daddy will bring him up,” I say. “We can’t turn around.”

“Why?” you ask. “Why can’t we turn around? Why can’t this stupid cancer just leave me alone? Why does God hate me?”

I lay a hand on your shoulder, give it a squeeze. “He doesn’t, my darling.”

You glare at me. “Why can’t we go home?”

“Because”—I tighten my grip on the steering wheel and flick on my blinker; it’s our exit—“I’ll never be able to convince myself to leave again.” ***

Rain dribbles down the windshield; the air through the air conditioner glides crisply, coolly over us. It smells like autumn leaves and winter on the horizon.

Sometimes, I picture you diving head-first into a pile of leaves, and other times, I try to picture it and can’t. Most of the time, I wonder why you beg to spend time rolling around Boston when all it does is remind us both of what we can’t have and where we aren’t and what we aren’t doing.

But I suppose I can understand it today.

“Are you sure about this?” I ask.

You consider Germaine, run your fancy brush down his back. “Yeah.”

I nod. “Okay.” ***

My darling, I’m missing you tonight. A woman at the supermarket recognizes me and comes over to offer me her tears, but I’m too numb to pull the dumb look off my face and give her any kind of thanks. I spend the whole time waiting, waiting for her to say something, but I’m not sure what, and it makes me angry when she doesn’t get it right.

On my way home, I stop for gas, and the station is vacant. It makes me think of you saying “no” to treatment, your hands folded in your lap like you were making an executive business decision. Night lies dense and crisp about me, crickets and other twitterings mixed in with the hum of the fluorescent lights over the gas pumps. I stand there for a minute, just stand there, my credit card in my hand and my car engine tinkling noisily behind me. Across the street, through the occasional shot of golden

Eastern Exposure

69

Christopher Morris headlights, a man with a garbage bag slung over his shoulder sits and shines a flashlight at a magazine.

I swipe my card and try to decide: regular or premium.

When you were really little, my darling, I’d hold you up in my arms while the gas pumped, and I’d make motor-boat sounds with my lips and make you shriek with laughter. I’d move my fist like I was revving a motorcycle engine and run you in circles around the car. You’d outstretch your arms and take the wind, and people would look at us and smile and laugh with us.

It was like Heaven, my darling.

“Hey, you,” your daddy says, picking up on the first ring. “You almost back?”

“Yeah.” I look back to the man across the street, and I know he has a child somewhere, someplace. I’m not sure how, but I know. Parents can always tell one another, especially when we’re wounded. If I was bolder, if I was better, I’d run over to tell him about you, all about you from beginning to end, and I’d sit beside him in the dirt of whatever his life used to be and let him teach me how he’d gone from having a baby in his arms to cradling a tattered celebrity magazine in the tepid glow of a dying flashlight.

“The girls are waiting for you,” your daddy says. “You know how excited they get about movie night.”

Again, I say, “Yeah.”

He waits, and then: “What did you need, Hon?”

Tears well up in my eyes, sudden and hot and steamy, and I try to blink them back, but all I do is squeeze them down my cheeks. “Put her on. Put her on, please.”

And when I hear your voice—“Mommy?”—I’m so, so guilty.

Oh, my darling, I should have sent Mrs. Kempe out for the groceries. I should have stayed home with you. I should be spending every last minute with you, with you in my arms, with your head on my shoulder, with your voice high and bubbly and alive.

And here I am, alone with the night and the man with the flashlight and the kid off somewhere else—you’ve got ten months left, and I’m off buying milk, losing hours we’ll never get back.

I’m missing you tonight because I left you.

“Mommy?” you ask again, and all I can see is the date on the calendar in the convenience store window: March 12, 2015.

“Yeah”—I take a deep breath through my mouth, let it out—“hi, my darling.

I’ll be home in ten, okay? You got your movie picked out?”

“Yeah,” you say. “And Daddy made popcorn.”

The gas pump spits out a receipt, and a cluster of flies buzzes lightly around the trash can. A convoy of pickup trucks blasts down the street towards the highway and, across the way, the man’s flashlight winks out. The wind carries back his quiet curse.

“Save some for me,” I say.

“Of course, Mommy,” you say, “but you better hurry u-up!”

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Christopher Morris

I smile, ball up the receipt, toss it to the flies. “Will do. Love you, my darling.”

You say, “Love you more,” and hang up.

On my way towards the highway, I drop my window and slow by the fizzling sparks of the man’s cigarette. I hold a twenty out into the darkness and the crickets and the twitterings, and I hear the crunch of his boots against the gravel at the roadside.

I hear, “Thank you.” ***

I’m missing you tonight, Darling, speeding home at twenty miles over the limit and hearing your laughter in my ear, the crunch of popcorn between your teeth.

You better hurry u-up!

I press the gas pedal to the floor and smile, wide.

Three exits left till home.

Eastern Exposure

71

Dakota Dolan

The Night I Killed a Man after Drinking a Bottle of Absinthe; or Le Louche

My heels connect with the ground like two negatives, wobbling away from where I want to put them. I’m used to walking back from Chuck’s place drunk, well after a bar would cry its last call. I remember the last time I was here at night, sober, it felt almost surreal. The sidewalk trees and tipped garbage cans look too still when they’re not dancing away from me.

I overstep the curb and shuffle-hop to not fall. A horn explodes to my right and I hear brakes crying from the effort of not killing me.

“Get the fuck out of the road, you cunt!”

I realize I’m on the ground now. I get up and wobble, fall, crawl to the other curb. I feel the lights leave my back and tear down another street. I try to check their plate before they’re gone. It has a 3 and maybe an H. Did they just hit me? I’m alive, so I guess not. Why was I on the ground though? Maybe the horn knocked me over. Er, I fell over from the sound, I mean. Does my cheek hurt? I think so, but it might just be from falling. I stare up at the neon sign for Ken’s Fried Chicken and breathe deeply.

Someone told me once that, mile for mile, drunk walking is more dangerous than drunk driving. I’d like to see them try to police that, though. Cops setting up “stumble traps” in alleys and running out when they see drunk people, shouting, “WEEOO, WEEOO,” with little flashing lights strapped to their heads.

I get up and start walking again. Nothing hurts too bad, so I’ll see if I can just sleep it off. I think I tore my jacket, but it’s warm for November, so I should be fine.

I check my purse as I walk to make sure nothing fell out: Chapstick, birth control, pencils, that gift from my Uncle Tom—too chicken shit to leave it behind—notepad, wallet with fake ID. We were planning on going out for gin and tonics, but when I got there, Chuck had absinthe and insisted we drink that instead. I feel so alive now, so inspired. We drank the life blood of the Bohemians, had drinks named by Hemingway.

Liquid emerald splashing into our glasses. The magic of Le Louche when water hits spirit, spreading like smoke in crystal. A fairy’s love draught.

I stop to take out my notepad and jot down the thoughts before they flit away.

My writing arcs down across the lines. I try to erase and start again, but I can’t quite make the eraser pass over the same place twice. I sigh and figure messy writing is better than nothing. Deciphering it will be a problem for future me.

I stuff the note pad back into my purse and keep walking. I think about the greens in the lamp posts, and sidewalk trees, and graffiti. I feel pressure on my wrist and my arm almost disconnects at the shoulder. My back collides with an alley wall and something pushes against my chest.

“WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE UP TO! DON’T YOU EV—”

The blast is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. The second is louder, and this

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Eastern Exposure

Dakota Dolan time I notice my elbow collide with the wall behind me from the recoil. The man falls backwards and hits the ground screaming, clutching the hole I made in his stomach. I glance down at my revolver, then snap my eyes back forward as the man, teeth bared, jerks his head up and hand out, eyes full of crazy.

“I’M GONNA FUCKIN’ KILL YOU YA NSA—”

I swing my arm around and squeeze death into him. The force rips through my body. Again. Again. I realize my eyes are closed and open them. And again, and the red is all over him. And again, because the shouting won’t stop. And again, and I realize it’s my own shouting, and the gun isn’t firing, and it didn’t fire last time, either.

The world is gray, and he is the girl in the red dress. The dress is screaming.

I’m still screaming. I close my mouth. I try to back up but I’m already against the wall.

His dress is fanning out around him, bright and boiling. There’s a metallic clatter at my feet and my flesh writhes inside my skin. The world is a top and I’m trembling and this can’t be real right now. I can’t stand; I sink to the ground, huddled inches from his skirt.

Wet. Sticky. It’s on me. I feel the redness now. Burning me. Holy water on a sinner.

The sirens scream the blues back into the world.

I bolt deeper into the alleyway, charging toward the low fence. I vault over it, limber, like I’m not drunk, like I’m a goddamn bird taking flight. My jeans catch and my leg is yanked to a stop. There’s a ripping sound. I swing down, slamming into the fence, then dropping onto the concrete. The air is forced from my lungs and, for a blissful second, I think I’m dead.

I’m not.

I roll over, demanding my lungs to fill with air. Fuck, I’m wearing heels. I rip them off then sway back up, then jog, then run. I clear the other end of the alley, shoes in hand, and tear across the deserted road. I come out on a side street, turn, keep running, turn, down another alley. Oh God. Oh God. There’s no way. Christ. His blood. His blood is all over me. I need to get out of these clothes. Just a naked drunk girl. Where would I put them? Where am I going? He’s dead. I need to get out of this skin—these clothes. Where am I? Where are the sirens?

I stumble-stop. I don’t hear any sirens. They were there before. I know they were. Don’t I? What if they’re already at the body? What if they turned them off to look for me? Is that legal? No, I don’t think so. They could hit someone. I wasn’t in the best neighborhood. Maybe no one called 911. But I heard a siren. Was it a police siren? I don’t know. I don’t, fucking, remember the difference. I squeeze the shoulder strap of my purse. What the fuck should I—

The gun.

I open my purse and rip through it. It’s not there. I dropped it. I remember now. I dropped it in front of me. It has my fingerprints. I have to go back and get it.

But what if the cops are there? They could be there looking around right now. Should I leave? I look back and forth and I’m on a sidewalk in plain view. I start running again.

Has anyone seen me? What am I going to do? Is there any way they can tell it’s my gun?

The gun isn’t registered.

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73

Dakota Dolan

The gun isn’t registered.

Tom specifically said it wasn’t. There’s nothing linking me to it. To him. To the man in red.

Who the fuck do you think you are? I know what you’re up to. Don’t you ev—

My bare feet beat against asphalt. I need to circle back to my apartment. I need to get out of these clothes. Burn them. Where am I? How have I not run into anyone yet? This is a—fucking—city, there are—fucking—people everywhere. Oh god, if they saw me they’d know. They’d see him, I’m covered in him.

I come out into a plaza. I know this place, I’ve been here a thousand and one times. Thank god. I can get home from here. I just need to—

My eyes fix on a large fountain in the middle of the square. The places where his splatter is still on me seem to move, like lice crawling across my skin. I need get him off of me. I stagger-run into the fountain, drop to my knees, and submerge my whole body.

The chill cuts after the warm air, but it feels good, clean. I let all the air out of my lungs and cling to the bottom of the fountain. I embrace the cold like the powder of a year’s first snow. I can’t imagine ever wanting to leave here. I slide my hands along the floor and feel the wishes of so many people. Cool. Smooth. Hard. Metallic.

I feel the gun recoil in my hand.

I burst out of the water and suck in the night air. This can’t be real. I look up at the few stars not hiding from the city lights. They seem to rotate slowly and I realize I’m wobbling. I don’t want to be drunk anymore. I don’t want to be here. This is wrong.

I killed him. Maybe I should go back. It was in self-defense right? He was attacking me.

I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you ya NSA—

What is an NSA? Did he mean the government thing? Was he crazy? He was obviously crazy. Is it still self-defense if I’m drunk? I wasn’t even supposed to have that gun. Fuck Tom. You need it. Every young person on their own should be carrying. Fuck you. Would I go to jail? Why the fuck didn’t I go into prelaw? No, I decided I’m gonna be a god damn poet instead. I killed him. I—killed—him. The red. Should I go back?

“What the hell are you doin’?”

I stand up and almost fall back down. There is a cop at the other end of the plaza marching toward me. I’m done. They caught me. I need to run. My throat starts to close and my stomach feels like I’ve been sho—

“Well? Can ya not read the no swimmin’ sign? Get over here.”

I lean forward and vomit into the water.

“O’ course.” His fingers claw at the scruff around his mouth. “How old are you?”

“Twenty two.”

“What’s yer birthday?”

I stare at him blankly. No force in the universe could make me remember what my fake ID says right now.

He exhales slowly, a bull eying a red cape. “Yer comin’ with me.” He grabs me

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Dakota Dolan by the arm and tugs me from the fountain and leads me to his car. He opens the door but stops me just before I crawl into the back. His eyes narrow on my face. He sees it.

He see him. He’s still all over me. I can feel him. Crawling across my face. I can’t get clean enough.

“What happened? Yer face is all banged up.”

“I got hit by a car.” Why the fuck would I say that? “Because I’m drunk.” Yeah, that made it better.

“Jesus Christ. Why didn’t ya go to a hospital?”

“I feel fine.”

“Right, and that has nothing to do with all the margaritas floatin’ in that fountain. Get in the car, yer going to the hospital.”

I sink into the back and he throws the door shut. Is he really taking me to the hospital? There’s no way that can be true. He must be lying to get me to come peacefully. Isn’t that illegal though? I think he would have to read my rights if he were arresting me.

“What’s yer name?” The engine revs and he begins to drive.

I stare silently at the back of his head through the metal grating.

“There’s no point in lyin’ now, they’ll need to know once ya get there anyway.”

I don’t say anything. I can’t. I feel like Satan is asking for my true name, or Peter.

“Eh, suit yourself. I’ve had enough arguments with drunks for tonight. You’re the third kid I had to pick up. Ya’ll gotta learn to hold your liquor.”

He stops talking and the quiet is oppressive. I need to hear my feet on pavement, the wind ripping round my head, my blood pumping in my ears. Instead all I hear is him, screaming.

I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you ya NSA—

He can’t be dead. I only hit him once, twice at most. I don’t know. I couldn’t have hit every time. He could have lived. He could still be alive and the siren could have been an ambulance and I might not be a murderer.

I retch again in his back seat just as we are pulling into the hospital. There is nothing left in my stomach but bile.

“God damn it. You couldn’ta waited another thirty seconds? I should’a called the ambulance.”

He stops the car and comes around to help me inside. We pass through the emergency room doors, and he walks me up to a desk with a man in scrubs sitting at it.

“I got another one for ya Stephen.”

“Aaah excellent. We just discharged someone from psych so there’s a stretcher in the hall with your name on it missy. And what might that be? Your name that is.”

I don’t speak. I don’t look up from my shoes. I can’t let them know my name.

“Oh, she said she got hit by a car.”

“What?! Let me see.” The man in scrubs leans forward and looks at my face, then hands. “Hmm well you’ve got some scrapes but it doesn’t look too bad. Does it

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Dakota Dolan hurt anywhere?”

“No. Just my cheek a little.”

“The car didn’t hit you very hard then?”

“No. It just sorta knocked me over. I think.”

“You think?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

The police officer begins clawing at his scruff again. “Whelp, I’m not charging her with anythin’ so she’s yers now. See ya Stephen!” He walks out with a wave.

“Scott wait! Ugh, why didn’t he call an ambulance?” The man in the scrubs jots down something on his clipboard. “Hold on one second miss,” he shoots, picking up the phone. I’m sitting. When did I start sitting? Don’t you usually have to wait like an hour to get through the ER? How long has it been? How am I still drunk? It must have been hours by now. It must have.

“Okay, thank you!” The phone hits the receiver and his eyes are back on me.

“The stretcher will be here in a second. Let me get a closer look at you.” He leans in and articulates my face and arms like I’m a doll he’s checking for imperfections. “If you’re so drunk you don’t know if you got hit by a car or not, then you might be more hurt than you realize.”

After a time, a woman appears pushing a stretcher, and Stephen helps me onto it before pushing me on into the hospital. The ill are spilling into the hallways everywhere I look. People laying on stretchers—wheezing, bleeding, and dying—line the walls. The florescent lights seem to strip away any modesty that was left to them, making them look raw against the bleached, sterile whites of the gowns and sheets and walls.

I am wheeled down another hallway into a different section. This must be the psych area. We take a quick left and I see an empty spot in the hallway across from a stretcher occupied by an older man. He lifts his eyes up and looks at me. I taste sick in the back of my throat.

It’s not him. It can’t be him. He was younger. Wasn’t he? All I remember is red.

This building is too white and sterile to have that much red inside it. Besides, this man was obviously not shot recently. Maybe I never actually shot him? What if he was scared and came here because he had nowhere else to go? What if—

“Rebecca! Rebecca darling, come here and give daddy a hug!”

I feel struck and don’t react as Stephen says, “Quiet now Carl! I’m sorry miss, he’s a bit confused. Best to just ignore him. Now swing your legs around and I’ll take a better look at you.”

I try to turn myself around and lose my balance, half-falling before Stephen catches me.

“Here let me help you with that. There you go. Now let me take a look at your shoulder,” he says while unzipping my jacket. I guess the shoulder had been damaged when I fell.

“Rebecca! Why aren’t you talking to me, Rebecca? Where’d they all go? I want

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Dakota Dolan to see them again, Rebecca. Aren’t you listening to me?”

I can’t remember the man’s face. It’s Carl’s face now, looking up at me from the ground. The deep frown lines around his chapped lips. The loose skin beneath his weak chin. The bags under his sad, bloodshot eyes, popping out of his dark face. His eyes are so, so red.

“Can you take me to see them, Rebecca? The owls? They were just here. I want to go see them.”

“Hmm, your shoulder seems a bit bruised, but nothing too bad. Can you hold down liquids? You need to hydrate. If not I’ll have to start an IV.”

“I’m leaving.”

“Haha, that’s not happening.”

“Rebecca. I don’t like it here, Rebecca.”

“I don’t care. I’m going.”

“Um, no, you aren’t. You’re far too intoxicated to leave.”

“I don’t give a shit what you have to say, I’m leaving.”

“Is it because of Carl? I can move him if he’s making you uncomfortable.”

“No. I just don’t want to be here. I’m fine and I want to go home.”

“Where are the owls, Rebecca? I miss the owls.”

“There are no fucking owls! And my name is not Rebecca!”

“Look, I can see that he’s bothering you. I’ll have him moved, but you have to stay here until you sober up.”

“No. I’m leaving. Now get out of my way.”

“Look, that’s just not possible. Now calm down while I move Carl or I’m going to have to restrain you.”

“Then I’m leaving against medical advice or whatever. You don’t have the right to force treatment on me. I saw it on House.”

“Did I say something wrong, Rebecca? I never meant to make you upset!”

“In order to sign out AMA you have to have the capacity to make that decision, and you are very drunk.”

“I’m sorry, Rebecca.”

“I swear to fuck my father is a lawyer and I will sue the shit out of you if you don’t let me go.”

Stephen sighs. “Look, I don’t care who your father is. You aren’t allowed to leave while you’re intoxicated. Now let me call someone to move—”

“I’m so sorry.”

Carl tries to reach across the room towards me before toppling onto the cold white floor.

Stephen whips around. “Carl! Are you oka—”

I charge full force into Stephen’s back. I don’t stop to watch him fall, but I hear something connect before I turn down the hall. I hear shouting and someone falls backwards to avoid me. I need to get out of here. I need to get away. The dead white walls are a thousand pounds and I can’t breathe. Being here is killing me. I burst into

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Dakota Dolan triage area, fly across it, and race into the night air.

I don’t stop running until each step feel like needles in my soles, until I am lost and found and lost again, until the wetness under my feet can’t be any color other than red and my breath comes so ragged I fall to my knees and cough up the nothing in my stomach. The pain in my feet must be the absinthe leaving my blood. Good. How did I get out of there? Isn’t there security or some shit? How many people saw me? How hard will it be for someone to connect the dots? How long has it been? Are they still looking for me? God damn it, what the fuck is time? It’s too much to processes, filtered through a haze. All that makes sense are the colors. The whites and greens, the reds and blues.

Blue. Was there really a siren?

It takes me over an hour of running and bleeding and walking and running again to get back to my building. The sky is starting to lighten. I trot up two flights of stairs and open the door. Everything is just like I left. I look down at my soiled clothes and start to feel sick again. I rip them off of me. Everything. Down to my skin and I try to rip that off but it won’t go. I get in the shower and stand under freezing water until the red of my lips turns blue. He attacked me. They can’t trace it back. He was evil. He was probably going to rape me, or kill me, or both. I did nothing wrong.

I cry until I can’t sob without choking.

I wrap myself in a towel and walk back into the living room. I hear my roommate Katie snoring. Christ, she’s been here the whole time. What if she had called the cops when I didn’t come home? What a devoted friend.

The next night, I will see on the news, in a five-minute aside, that a homeless man named Henry Jackson was found dead in an alleyway. He had a history of mental illness and drug abuse. The cops will assume he was killed over a bad drug deal. They won’t show his face. Later this week, I will bring my clothes over to Chuck’s where he has a fireplace and burn them. In two months, I will break down in front of Katie and tell her everything. She will swear never to tell a soul, and she never will.

But right now, I lean forward, hunching over a piece of paper, and start writing a poem. The same poem I will be writing for the rest of my life: “The Night I Killed a Man After Drinking a Bottle of Absinthe; or Le Louche.”

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Lyla Maus

Passé

“That’s so passé.”

No one else was in the room except for her. There was a shirt hanging limply from a mannequin at one end of the room. There were no doors or windows in the room. No display racks. Nothing but the mannequin. And that arrogant, passé shirt that had overspent its welcome. What a jerk.

She shuffled toward the mannequin while also moving away from it, and immediately sneezed while simultaneously not sneezing.

“I will now assert my superior fashion sense,” she stated contemptuously, glaring at all of the doors and windows in the room. She knocked over a display rack in admiration.

“Congratulations!” said her friend, who either did or did not have on a revealing dress and an inviting smile. “I’ve never been more your friend than now,” she lied in her usual honest manner. They kissed each other passionately, their lips never touching any part of each other’s body. The mannequin felt sad, but sadly didn’t have any emotions.

Suddenly, all five of them were transported slowly to Realm II via second-rate public transportation, and aged ten years, conquered three nations, and failed to pass a history final.

They arrived.

Dutifully, they paid their passé bus fare and filed out the front of the bus in a circular line.

“What should we do for fun?” one of them demands, putting no special emphasis on the last two words. The demander is dressed in white slacks and is called Demander. What a stupid story. Why are you even reading this? You’re so passé. That’s right, I insulted you. What are you going to do about it, huh? Tear up the paper? So original. Go ahead, do it. Like the passé person you are.

“For fun?” It was the girl from the beginning of the story. You remember her, right?

“Of course,” replied Demander. Everyone else except for Demander and the girl from the beginning of the story abruptly evaporated, which is generally considered rude to do without forewarning, but is also quite fashionable.

“How rude!” griped the girl from the beginning of the story, stunned by how dark Demander’s slacks always were. Want to know her thoughts? Her puny little character thoughts that I control? Hah—privacy is so passé. I’m violating my fucking character. All you can do is watch. Do you hate me yet? If only you could respond. So powerless. What does it feel like to be powerless?! Isn’t it great??!! I don’t care.

Her thoughts:

“I never knew concrete could taste so good.”

“Huh . . . so that’s what that’s for.”

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Lyla Maus

“I’m going to be late for class.”

“I’m late for class.”

“Fuck.”

“Screw class. I’m blazing up in the Arboretum.”

“I’m going to die one day.”

“Should I choose Crest toothpaste or Colgate?”

— END OF THOUGHTS — *Snicker* She just can’t help herself from thinking them!

Hmmmm, do you want to be in the “story” as well? There’s room. What say you? Why not take a test to find out?

Story Participation Test Name__________________

Date___________________

Circle your answer below using the disgusting binary format provided. Force yourself to choose “the best answer,” even though many answers can be right. Remember, there are only ever two diametrically opposed options to pick from within every facet of existence. Make sure you diligently avoid looking up the word “spectrum” at all costs.

Question 1: Do you want to be in the “story”?

Yes No Question 2: How do you feel about this test?

Yes No Question 3: How would you describe yourself?

Yes No Question 4: In what way do you admire me?

Yes No So how did you score, huh?

Ugh . . . what a disgusting score.

You failed. You’re not in the story.

Shut up, stop complaining.

You’re worthless.

Trash.

Now, back to what actually matters (hint: it’s not you) . . .

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Eastern Exposure

Lyla Maus

Demander had a short attention span, a result of years of clipping it. They were still never satisfied with the way it looked. “Hey Annika,” shouted Demander to the girl from the beginning of the story. “Let’s go play some basketball. I’m starved!”

Annika jumped to her feet from a standing position and sauntered over to the court that had materialized nearby, complete with bloodstains. “You’re on!” she challenged. As it was just the three of them, they agreed that neither should act as a referee in order to guarantee fairness. Annika tore apart her blouse in mock anticipation, aching to lose to Demander. Afterward, she knew they would have passionate, meaningless sex.

“Alright, you should probably, perhaps, maybe stand over there while I figure this out—if you’re feeling up to it, that is,” suggested Demander, fiddling with a deflated basketball. Their fingers squirmed over the surface, attempting to find the inflate button.

“What are you doing?” cried Annika. “They eighty-sixed the inflate button in ’86. It’s so passé. You must feel so embarrassed.”

Indeed, Demander’s face flushed scarlet, acknowledging the great shame of not being in the know about basketball fashions. “Let’s . . . have sex then?” they offered, desperate to take Annika’s mind off of such a grave fashion crime.

“Sex?” she chortled. “That fad died off last year.”

Demander woke up from the dream, sweating profusely. “What the fuck?!”

Two guards burst into the spacious room, tearing the flimsy bamboo door off of its hinges, and made a great show of waving their spears about.

“Are you okay, Your Excellency?” one of them demanded. “We heard shouting.”

Demander slid carefully out of the massive, silk-drenched mound of comfort that passed as their “bed” and threw back their head, laughing fiendishly. The head landed in the corner of the room near the replica 19th century gas streetlamp, which was the only light source that the guards had permitted Demander. “I am most awake!” assured Demander’s head as their body slipped past the guards and stepped into the hallway beyond. The guards visibly relaxed.

“Your Excellency, are we needed further?”

The lamp flickered. The guards continued to stare blankly at the head, awaiting an answer to their question. This continued for: (x – 1)2 = (4√x – 4)2 minutes.

“Fetch my body. After that, find me the Minister of Affairs,” the head barked.

The guards glanced at each other and shrugged. Maybe it was time to summon Woof, the Excellency’s uncreatively named pet dog.

“We’re sorry, Your Excellency, but we didn’t quite catch what you said.”

“Oh, I do apologize. My aim is rather off this morning. Let me try again.”

After some deal of squirming and awkward jerking motions, the head adjusted itself to better face the guards.

“I begged that you bring me a bowl of cereal, the non-calorie kind,” beseeched the head.

“Of course, Your Excellency! I’ll fetch the Minister of Affairs at once,” replied

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Lyla Maus one of the guards (it can be either Guard 1 or Guard 2, depending on the reader’s preference).

The Minister of Affairs awoke immediately, sensing the Excellency’s need of his services. It was a calm morning, punctuated by occasional clam noises. A pleasant fragrance, perhaps that of a moldering corpse, suffused the air.

The doors to the Minister of Affair’s most ministerial bedroom were flung open and an armor-clad guard burst into the room, waving her polished spear about.

“Minister! Our Excellency demands your presence!” shouted the guard, staring at the Minister’s white toga. The Minister nodded at the guard and slid off of the bed, falling to the floor.

“I am written rather clumsily,” complained the Minister from her vantage point on the floor, rubbing her aching side. Unfortunately, the floor passed up on the opportunity to merge with the Minister during this moment.

“Imposter!” accused the guard. “The real Minister would have already tried to barter with me by now.” Her gray eyes gleamed with excitement. Maybe the Minister would believe she was serious again and barter away another castle keep like last time.

“Very well,” conceded the Minister. “I’ve been looking to barter the other castle keep, as all it currently ‘keeps’ are bats and an assortment of vexing literary symbols, such as a mannequin with a shirt hanging limply on it.”

“I’ll give you three sheep for the keep.”

The Minister’s eyes narrowed. “Make that five sheep. Or the deal’s off.”

“You’re such a rip off. Sheep don’t even exist,” complained the guard.

“You’re a fictional character, I’m sure you can just make something ‘happen,’ if you know what I mean . . . ,” suggested the Minister, winking furiously at the guard.

“Oh . . . OH! Uh, right.” The guard smiled. “I’ll get your five sheep for you.”

“Five isn’t a number.”

“Your seven sheep, then.”

“Quoi?”

“Votre sept moutons puis,” dit la garde.

“Bon,” répondit le Ministre. *** Act III: The Bankruptcy of the Export-Import Bank Scene: The cramped interior of a sunken submarine. With plenty of water left to breathe, several devious skeletons have survived the passage of two decades. They now wile away the long hours of the night telling ghost stories.

SKELETON 1 I must say this is absurd! This beach is completely full of people, but completely empty of sun! And THEY say the liquid in the glass is only half glassy!

SKELETON 2 (either smiling or frowning)

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Lyla Maus Sun exposure is dangerous. I say good riddance. I’ll catch a skin condition. I don’t need my bones bleached that way, thank you very much.

SKELETON 1 But you would never argue that in public. Therefore you are no better than the color red.

SKELETON 2 Well I certainly agree! No one should be exposed to Eastern Exposure! The chemicals in the lead are quite toxic!

SKELETON 1 (either gesturing erratically or eating an ice cream cone) On a good day, I would just ban existence entirely. Let the government deal with the consequences. I’m voting for Candidate Perennial. This isn’t political humor, but because it seems political it is therefore “funny.”

A brief kerfuffle ensues as Candidate Perennial barges onto the scene, pushing plenty of imaginary people out of the way.

CANDIDATE PERENNIAL So I have your Endorsement, Skeleton 1! Thank you for your Endorsement. I feel Endorsed. Will you be voting even though you are dead? The Greens have been in office for ten, long years. Let’s choose a different color, to mix things up a little. And then switch to another color later on after ten long years. After careful consideration, I’m officially withdrawing from the race.

SKELETONS 1 and 2 (garbled, unintelligible mutterings) Dear Illustrious Reader,

If you are reading this, you shouldn’t be reading this. But you should also keep in mind that _______________. And, lest we not forget: _______________. But paradoxically, it’s ironically metaphorical and meant unintentionally to be a simile.

Fuck you. All readers (puerile insects) should have a hostile reading experience, because writers are naturally superior.

Cordially, Illustrious Reader

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Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?

Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening, (Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

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––Walt Whitman from Song of Myself, Section 51

Contributors notes Alexis Ballirano graduated from Eastern in May 2015 with a B.A. in English and minors in Communications and Writing.

Nathan Boutin is an English major with a Writing minor here at Eastern. He is from Plainfield, CT. Although he grew up dirt poor, his parents hard work and determination remain his largest inspiration. He strives to one day work as an editor and write a novel.

Jonah Craggett ‘15 is a 22-year-old high school teacher from New Haven, CT. He seeks to change the way people view the world and each other through his writing, drawing inspiration from religion, mythology, fantasy, and the mundane realm. Jonah wishes to unite people through his poems and stories.

Alex Cross is a Political Science major and Sociology minor. They submitted these poems out of an old promise to Dr. Donaghy and are from Watertown, CT. They have been the dramaturg for The Laramie Project and Doubt, a Parable here at Eastern and were the student recipient of the 2016 Ella T. Grasso Distinguished Service Award.

Angela DiLella ‘14 (B.A. in English) generously contributed this year’s cover art. She is completing an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) at the New School.

Dakota Dolan is a senior at Eastern with an English major and Writing and Sociology minors. His hobbies include editing this magazine, being filled with anxiety over editing this magazine, and missing deadlines in his attempts to edit this magazine.

Tashanna Edwards is from Ledyard, CT, and is currently a junior. She loves to write and recently completed a 60,000-word novel as an independent study with Dr. Fraustino.

Currently, she is working on a full length play under the direction of Dr. Chibeau and a novella under the direction of Dr. Torockio.

Quincy Farrow is an avid reader who enjoys writing poems and stories. She wrote “Brown Girl Dreaming” in Dr. Donaghy’s Advanced Poetry Writing Workshop.

Sean Gilmartin is a senior at Eastern who is apparently better at writing poetry than autobiographies.

Amanda-Marie Goode is a Sociology major from Amston, CT. She enjoys writing poetry and has always wanted to be a writer. She loves to read and spends a lot of her free time (even when not studying) at the library.

Nicole Green is an Elementary Education and English major with a minor in Writing.

She is from Tolland, CT, where she has lived her entire life. She loves to do yoga and hopes to become a certified yoga instructor someday.

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Contributors notes Kevin MacVane is a commuter student from Manchester, CT. He previously finished the Secondary Education and History & Social Sciences programs at Eastern and is currently an English major with a Writing minor.

Lyla Maus is a transsexual girl with a penchant for candy, writing, filming, photography, politics, history, videogames, game design, rhetoric, philosophy, fashion, astronomy, psychology, and acting––among other things. She is quite lost right now. She regrets abandoning her sword and bow when she was younger.

Christopher Morris is a sophomore from Waterford, CT. He is double-majoring in History and English and minoring in Writing. A mystery fanatic, he is finishing up the revisions to his first mystery novel with the dream of one day seeing it on store shelves.

Robin Morris, from Morris, CT, is a Communication major with a Writing minor.

And before you ask, no, her family doesn’t “own” the town. She writes sometimes.

Elizabeth Pelletier is a senior Psychology major and a student in Eastern’s University Honors Program.

Amanda Perreault is a junior at Eastern working towards a degree in Psychology with minors in Criminology and Writing. In her spare time, she enjoys reading anything she can get her hands on––whether it be poetry or fiction––and crocheting.

Kyle Pratt graduated from Eastern with a B.A. in English in May 2015 and is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Hofstra University.

Julia Rathbun is from Gales Ferry, CT. Her major is Communications and her minor is Writing. The Vice President of American Advertising Federation’s chapter at Eastern, she wants to work in advertising and marketing after she graduates.

Rebecca Rubin is an English major and Writing minor at Eastern. She will pursue an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Hofstra University starting this fall. She hopes to become a college professor one day.

Rachel Scrivano is a Psychology and English major. She grew up in Cromwell, CT. Some of her interests, besides writing, are playing tennis and the piano.

Emily Shields is a Communications major from Marlborough, CT, with minors in Writing and Psychology. She enjoys writing, photography, and hanging out with friends.

Renae St. John graduated from Eastern in May 2015 with a B.A. in Music with a concentration in Performance and a B.A. in English with a Writing minor.

Ash Wolk graduated from Eastern in 2015, leaving behind her “most cherished” writing, the poems published in this issue. She continues to write poetry and songs.

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Dear Readers,

Thank you for taking the time to read the 2016 Eastern Exposure. We hope that you have enjoyed its contents. This literary journal is the product of the blood, sweat, and tears of not just the Eastern Writers Guild, but of every writer who submits poems, short stories, creative nonfiction, plays, and scripts every year.

If you would like to submit to the magazine for the 2017 issue, we will be accepting submissions at the beginning of the Fall 2016 semester. With each new year, more and more submissions come in. We hope to see even more submissions next year.

Guidelines for submissions are as follows: •

Students may submit up to 5 pieces (10 pages) in any combination of genres, such as poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, drama, and scriptwriting.

•

Work must be submitted through our Submittable account: easternwriters. submittable.com/submit.

In addition to publishing Eastern Exposure, the Eastern Writers Guild hosts visiting authors, creative writing workshops, open mic coffeehouses, and other cultural events throughout the year.

We are what we are because of our members. If you are an Eastern student who has the love of reading and writing that we share, please feel free to join us! Club meetings for the Fall 2016 and Spring 2017 semesters twill be posted at the start of each term on your website: website: http://www1.easternct.edu/writersguild/

If you have any questions about club membership, our magazine, or our activities and club events, or if would like to be added to our email list, feel free to contact the Eastern Writers Guild at easternwriters@my.easternct.edu.

Thank you once again for reading the 2016 Eastern Exposure!

—The Eastern Writers Guild

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Readers Notes

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