Lost and Found by Horseshoes & Hand Grenades

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Lost and Found

ANIMALIS Ricky Ray

for Rosmarie Waldrop

I woke up this morning feeling fur, asked myself what I was dreaming. A certain silkiness to the touch denied dog, felt feline even if the skin underneath was human. My tongue went to my teeth but they felt like my old nubs. I took a breath and my nostrils whistled their usual deviations. Arched my back, and that felt too good for a spine so ruptured and wrong, so I put off the mirror, put off the inevitable collapse into person, walked back towards the darkness, told the mind to be quietâ€”shhh, we're asking Egyptian slits what it takes to awaken claws in the fingers, to restore the tail as rightful rudder, to call us back to the animal we never left. The answer I got was a hiss and a purr, a hum in the belly that played along the body like a reconfiguration of the ribs. A reminder: to stay low, remember all fours, feet that know the earth and never wonder how to walk it; to sniff first and listen hard,

Summer 2018

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Lost and Found

haunches coiled with instinct when prey can be felt ahead in the bushes; to swallow with neither guilt nor glee, just one life consumed, and then, if luck stays with us, another; to chew grass when something spoils and the stomach needs to be purged; to chew cornhusk for no reason other than it's good and bears repeating, and remembering in the limbs, where many things are remembered: the trees of old properties, mice holes of apartments; the kittens who went walking and never returned; the smell of dumpsters and oceans that could break this nose open; the feel of sunlight in the desert where once we were gods, parting the sands as our footsteps left water, unafraid of our shadows, unafraid of our powers, unafraid of the earthâ€™s insistence that we live nine times to protect her heart.

Summer 2018

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Lost and Found

GIRL RECRUIT Shana Montrose

I met God last year. It doesn’t matter that I’m a girl. I’ve never built a bomb before. But no matter. God will move my hands. Bright yellow and white and burning. It doesn’t matter where my bomb showers. It doesn’t matter which bodies shatter. My bomb will bring those souls to light. My boyfriend says my hands are steady. He possesses me. Makes me powerful. In a world where I don’t matter. I might have mattered. Had I been on a winning team. Or prom queen. This matter of the world.

Summer 2018

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Lost and Found

It is not yours. Nor mine. It is but Godâ€™s. And if God wills it: I will burst open the sky. The heavens will swallow your matter. And my matter whole. All the matter in the universe. Transformed by my hand. My tiny girl fingers. My precision and fission. Splitting open the chest to repair the heart. So something matters.

Summer 2018

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Lost and Found

Summer 2018

THE FLY Dawn Ryan There’s a fly in my room. She is no ordinary fly. I say this because she has been buzzing around my room for more than a month now, and I know from the internet that flies don’t normally live so long. What’s more surprising about this fly is that she doesn’t seem to need food or water. I long ago stopped eating in bed, in hopes the fly would starve, or at least get so hungry she’d leave my room in search of nourishment. This never happened. I keep my bedroom door open when I’m home, and yet she chooses not to go scouting. Now it’s been over three weeks since the fly hasn’t had access to food or water. Another thing about the fly that drives me crazy is that she always wants to know what I’m doing. Sometime during the first week of our bunking together, I decided to give up trying to swat her. She was so quick and agile, capture was impossible. I said, “live and let live,” but the fly never lets me be. She’s always flying around my head, reading over my shoulder, staring. Some mornings I’ll even awaken to feel her perched on the tip of my nose, like she’s grandstanding atop a mountain peak. Like she’s conquered me. I should also mention that this fly, this common house fly, is oddly beautiful. Her beauty is hard to describe, but comparatively speaking, she’s much better looking than me, and yes, occasionally I find myself perversely jealous of her charms. It occurred to me around month two, when the life span of this fly had become phenomenal, awesome, that there was something remarkably familiar about her presence. I couldn’t think of whom or what she reminded me, but her effect on me was undoubtedly familiar.

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Lost and Found

Summer 2018

In an attempt at full disclosure, I will admit that I haven’t been able to masturbate in my bedroom since the fly arrived, or rather I tried once, but the fly hovered over my right knee for the more interesting part. And when I was finished, I had the strangest feeling that she was judging me. Now all onanistic relief is done standing in the shower, which, for this lady, isn’t particularly easy, but I’ve grown adept. And yes, of course I’ve said to myself, “she’s just a fly, flies don’t judge. They don’t even think. Why let her manipulate my behavior?” But my relationship with the fly had long stopped being reasonable. This fly judges. This fly thinks. This fly is a master of manipulation. And what’s even more disturbing, this fly knows me, knows me in a way that makes masturbating in front of her taboo. When I first acknowledged this terrible, incestuous feeling, it triggered a childhood memory. I was an only child to a single mother. We lived sparingly in a small, one-bedroom, government subsidized apartment. We shared the one bed in the one bedroom. I must have been pre-latent, perhaps in the anal or genital stage, and I was having strong sexual urges that kept me in the bathroom far longer than necessary. One Saturday morning, I woke before my mother did, while it was still dark. I remember creeping into the living room and splaying my naked little body on the love seat. I spent the greater part of the morning fondling my various erogenous zones, zones particular to a child, places for which I no longer have any use. During an eyebrow-belly button combination something came over me; a sinking, dreadful feeling and I called out for my mother. She answered from behind me and my heart dropped. During the night, without my knowledge, she had moved from the bed to the sofa perpendicular to the loveseat. She was buried under a lump of blankets, and she was a petite woman who could easily vanish under covers. I hadn’t taken the necessary precautions to notice her. She’d slept there, but I knew, from my sick feeling, that she had merely been pretending sleep, that she’d been awake for some time, watching me. This was the eighties, and

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Lost and Found

Summer 2018

people, especially women of my mother’s generation, had taken up new philosophies on childhood sexuality. Chances are my mother was caught off guard and didn’t want to shame me in the way she’d been shamed as a girl. She said nothing, and I said nothing, wrapping my nude body in the quilt at the top of the couch. Not long after, I found Our Bodies, Ourselves sitting, unacknowledged, on our small kitchen table. I knew the book was for me, and I cherished it, hid it among my most valued toys, and studied it closely with sweaty fingers. But I never shook the feeling that my mother was always watching me, or that she was somehow proprietor of my sexuality. Her new-age methods had failed. By not shaming me, she had invented a new and just as damaging breed of shame. The fly in my room manages to rekindle these childhood worries. Her big vacant bug eyes reflect my twisted image. Her nonchalant trajectories, from dresser to bookshelf to TV set, are rife with narcissism. And her vague but continuous interest in me is a constant puzzle, a thing that painstakingly highlights our differences, while demanding I try harder. I know what you’re thinking: this woman believes the fly in her room is her dead mother, just like every other wacko with a dead mother thinks that their cat or dog is their parent come back. Well, I’m sorry for being such a harried cliché, but there’s just no other way to explain it. I’ve never been particularly spiritual, or even superstitious. At any other period of my life, if you’d asked me if I believed in reincarnation, I’d politely, graciously, say no. This fly is a different story though. I’d gladly cop to insanity, or some kind of temporary, fly-specific psychosis, but knowing I’m nuts doesn’t make the mother-fly go away. And no one can argue that this fly, this three-month-old miracle musca domestica, isn’t special, even if it isn’t my mother reincarnated. I should also mention that I’m not completely convinced this fly is my mother. I don’t go through my day truly believing that my mother’s soul is trapped in the fragile body of a bug. It’s more of a suspicion, a suspicion that seems validated constantly by the

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Summer 2018

fly’s hauntingly recognizable behavior. The most telling and frustrating example happened just a few weeks ago. I had a boyfriend, had being the operative word. His name was Tom. We met shortly after my mother passed away through an online dating site that matches people based on complex personality profiles. I was a cautious/pragmatist and Tom was a protector/provider. We were together for close to a year, and I was starting to think that he might be the one. I even had fantasies of him and me giving video testimonials of our successful union for the site’s television commercials. I knew right away, he’d say. It was love at first sight, I’d reply; and we’d kiss on camera in the tender, flippant way two compassionate soul-mates kiss. Not overly boastful, for the sake of the general public, who haven’t managed to pair off so happily, but affectionate enough so that everyone knew we belonged to each other. We’d be a model twosome. No such luck. Just as in earlier years, when my high school boyfriend referred to my mom as a hottie, and I could no longer look him in the eyes without feeling nauseous, the fly got in the way of my true happiness. Back then, when I was a teen, my mother, in her defense, was going through a strange period. She had cut ties with her family, who, admittedly, are a large and awful group of people. Her mother had birthed eleven children, and my mother, being single and a sponge on the system, was the black sheep. At the time, my mother had wanted to take some courses and become a reflexologist, which, in her family’s defense, they rightfully considered a fake occupation. She asked her most successful brother for a loan to pay for the training, but he refused. Instead, she received a barrage of phone calls from her parents and siblings, telling her to get her act together, but denying any economic support. My mother responded by writing a mass letter, and sending it to everyone in her family, indicting them as, “a vast, godless empire, always on the verge of collapse,

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Lost and Found

Summer 2018

forever reveling in each other’s demise, intent on bringing [her] down to [their] level.” No one responded. Their silence hurt her deeply, though she denied it. For the year that followed, my mother, isolated and alone except for me, shamelessly sought the attention of men. She began staying out late, exercising, dabbling in vegetarianism, and dressing inappropriately for her age. I’d given her ample warning. I’d told her my boyfriend would be coming home with me after track practice so we could study for a chemistry test. I’d hoped that she would find something to do and let the two of us have the apartment to ourselves. I was the kind of girl a mother could trust with such responsibilities. I’d lost all fascination with sex at this point in my development, or rather I feared sex. I was convinced that even masturbation could cause a venereal disease. What if I hadn’t washed my hands thoroughly? What if my index finger was infected with syphilis or herpes simplex 2? I guess these were the intended lessons of state sanctioned sex ed. My mother had even begun referring to me as a prude, and playfully asking where I’d come from. Certainly not from her. My mother hadn’t found anything else to do that day; in fact, she made her presence abundantly known. It was the dead of winter, but my mother wore a mini-skirt and a spaghetti strapped tank, which, given the slightest shift of her torso, flirtatiously revealed her midriff. (The fly, too, has a way of accidently presenting.) My mother served us snacks and drinks, and sat next to my boyfriend on the couch, asking questions with over-zealous interest. It was quite obvious that, despite himself, he was taken with her. I never introduced a boyfriend to my mother ever again, and for a while, when I was in college, she entertained the idea that I was a lesbian. This provided her an odd kind of glee and excitement, as if she herself were rebelling against the hegemony, her family.

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Lost and Found

Summer 2018

I never delivered on her Sapphic dreams, and I could tell she was a little disappointed. Truth be told, there weren’t too many men to write home about, and Tom, the man I’d hoped to marry, was the only long-term, serious relationship I’d ever really had. I’d made a point of taking it slow with Tom, though we had become sexually intimate. Still, I insisted we have our overnights at his place, knowing I was unable to conjure any true romantic feelings in my bedroom. Ironically though, a week arose when Tom’s building was being fumigated. He was a true gentleman, and never asked to stay with me, which compelled me to offer. Things were good that first day. We made dinner and cuddled in front of the TV. I felt great, domestic; but this sort of intimacy was new to me, and though it was wonderful, being my mother’s daughter, I couldn’t help but experience short bouts of anxiety over our relationship. I was intellectually torn. I knew that what Tom and I had was right. We looked and acted like a normal couple does on television; however, the philosophy of my upbringing buzzed in the back of my mind. I was raised to believe that this acceptable, hetero-centric behavior was part of a large, insidious social disease, the cornerstone of everything wrong with the world. I felt guilty for enjoying Tom’s touch. Wanting to feel small, meek, secure in a man’s arms is a fundamental sickness of the female mind, something we should guard against, or so my mother taught me. Also, I was, am, still a bit of a prude. This too, spoke to my mental weakness. I should freely embrace the basic joys of my body, and by not doing so I was perpetuating the myth and mindset that the white, female form is a pristine vessel, a thing whose virtue must be defended. This myth, I remember my mother telling me, was especially terrible for black people’s psychology, and she refused to be part of the problem. I managed to avoid having sex with Tom in my apartment that first night, without any real effort. We were both fairly exhausted, but the fly still ogled me from my nightstand, making me feel ooky and weird. Every time Tom nudged his chest against

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Summer 2018

my back and wrapped his arm around my waist, I revisited those years when I’d shared a bed with my mother. We’d wake up spooning, having joined unconsciously, like two lonely gerbils left in a dark cage. This is how they live in Peru, my mother would say. The second night was not so easy. It was Saturday, and Tom and I had spent a leisurely day together. We attended a Spin class in the morning, followed by a matinee of the most recent Wes Anderson film. Tom revered Anderson’s blithe wit, and vibrant, sentimental set designs. I found comfort in his use of the same actors from previous films. I’ve never really paid attention to the plots, though Tom told me they are deceptively simple; meaning, I believe, that they are very complex. Tom had one of those man-crushes. Perhaps it was our feeling of physical fitness, or the nude Natalie Portman scenes—whatever it was, Tom was uncharacteristically virile. I tried confining our affections to my small sofa in the living room, but the lack of space, and my lack of daring allowed only the most awkward attempts at foreplay. I tried to be cool and disinterested, but I’m generally the kind of woman who needs to be coaxed into sex. My reserved apathy didn’t dissuade Tom’s advances, but rather encouraged him. I had to think fast. “I’m on my period,” I uttered shamefully, just as Tom was gearing to lure me into the bedroom. Tom had been cupping and baby-talking to my breasts, an act I found especially erotic. He looked up from my chest, puzzled. “Didn’t you just finish?” “It came back,” I said. “It can come back?” “Things like that happen when you’re on the pill.”

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Lost and Found

Summer 2018

“Oh,” Tom said. I’d lied, and I’m pretty sure Tom suspected as much, but he was a gentle and understanding man who would never bully me into a confession. However, during the night his embraces were particularly violent and jerking, and though I know he didn’t mean to, he caused a small bruise on my lower back. I would have had trouble sleeping anyway. The fly was conspicuously absent, filling the empty space of my bedroom with heavy foreboding. I knew she was spying from somewhere, critiquing me. And I know it was probably just an aural hallucination, but I swear I could hear her tsking me from above, from wherever she had managed to hide. The following morning was a different story. The fly was out in full force. I awoke to find Tom with the rolled up arts section of the Times, laughing and swatting futilely while the fly soared from one corner of the room to another. Her swat-dodging was especially graceful, as though she were teasing him, getting ever so close, then zooming away. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that fly,” I said. “She’s been buzzing around my room for a while now. I think she’s about to go naturally.” “She?” Tom asked. “How can you tell?” “Well, isn’t it obvious,” I said. Tom laughed in his toothy, knowing way. His laugh could make every utterance seem smarter, every joke funnier, like he understood things on a much higher level. Deeper implications tend to be lost on me, but Tom’s presence made me feel that I, too, was in the know.

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Summer 2018

Tom hopped back into bed, and the two of us attempted to do the crossword together, but the fly wouldn’t quit with her histrionics. She loopdi-looped around the room in a way that I’m certain was meant to be enticing; perhaps a fly version of a lap dance. The dance had the rhythm, the ins and outs, that quite deliberately tapped into our cellular knowledge of animal sexuality. Tom couldn’t take his eyes off of her. “I’ve never seen a fly vie for so much attention,” Tom said. For a second, I thought Tom understood. “I know,” I said. “She’s the bane of my existence.” “I don’t know,” Tom mused. “She’s neat. It’s like she has the personality of a cat.” “I wouldn’t give her that much credit.” I grunted. Tom just kept staring, mesmerized. He was clearly smitten. Their flirtation didn’t end there. I left the bed to take a shower. I could hear Tom in the kitchen, frying something up. My earlier insecurities faded with the sounds of him preparing breakfast. What a guy, I said to myself. I have nothing to worry about. I dried, dressed, and walked into my kitchen, where I saw Tom hunched over a plate of eggs and the newspaper. He set a plate out for me too, and placed a paper towel over it to trap the heat. I was beaming with appreciation. I took the seat beside him and kissed his cheek, thanking him, but Tom was oddly inattentive. I realized why when I looked down at his hands, resting on the tabletop. There she sat, on his left index finger, contented. “Watch this,” Tom said. He raised his hand gently, two or three inches, and the fly, like a trained circus act, flew onto his other index finger. Tom did the same thing

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Summer 2018

with his other hand, and then again, to prove it wasn’t a fluke. “This fly is a genius,” he said. “Ehh,” I replied, forking my eggs. I’d lost my appetite. I should also mention that this was the first time the fly, to my knowledge, had ever left my bedroom. I had previously held a certain level of respect for her, for not violating the other spaces of my home, but this unspoken trust was now broken. She clearly did what she pleased, without any thought of me. “A fly has never let me get this close before,” Tom confided. “They’re really not as gross as we think. I mean, look at the coloring. It’s quite beautiful.” Tom tried raising the fly to my eye-level, but she took off, flying back to my bedroom. “She must not like you,” Tom chided. He didn’t even notice the pained expression on my face. The workweek was a little easier for me. She still managed to distract Tom, though; resting on his knee during Jeopardy, performing tricks and air shows, gingerly batting around his frame. “You know they sustain themselves on shit?” I joked. “Eww,” Tom cringed. “Don’t say that about her.” His reaction made me feel like I’d become uppity. This wasn’t the only time Tom condescended to me. By Wednesday he’d begun carrying on one-sided, fake conversations with the fly. Their talks had started as a clever way to pay me compliments. “Oh, doesn’t my lady look gorgeous this morning,” he’d ask the fly. “You know, I think you’re right,” he’d say. “She does bear a strong resemblance to a young Grace Kelley.” It was sweet, and I didn’t mind so much, but the conversations soon took a cruel turn. The two of them began making inside jokes. I’d ask what was so funny and Tom would pat me on the head. “Next time, Honey,” he’d say, or, “you really had to be there.” It was belittling, and Tom appeared

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completely clueless to my emotional state. He seemed blissful even, as though he could live like this, with me, forever. I couldn’t. By Friday night I realized I couldn’t go on any longer. I’d suffered a week of Tom’s amorous chatter, and the sight and sound of him, even his smell, was wearing on me. His tight, nighttime embraces felt like a stranglehold, and I often awakened so hot I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I didn’t know who I was anymore, particularly when it was dark. I woke up that Friday night in an especially acute existential fugue. Tom’s touch, my pillow, the air—nothing felt right. A darting sensation shot through me, and I wanted to flee, but there was nowhere to go. I lay still, my eyes open. The fly was on my nightstand, but I deliberately ignored her, refusing to bridge the tension between us. I’m not sure if I was dreaming, or if I was the one who, in fact, spoke, but I heard a voice crystal clear, breaking the silence. “I really like him,” the voice said. “I’m sure you do,” I blurted, angrily. The next morning, I told Tom I needed some space. He believed me. Compassionately, without question, he left my apartment. The fumigation period was over, and my request seemed innocuous enough. He called later that night, but I didn’t answer. He left a few messages, and by Thursday he sounded confused and desperate, but I didn’t know how to explain myself. I eventually sent a cold and crazy email, to which he replied, though I never read his response. I blocked him from my email account after that. I assume he got the point. What could I have said? “You failed my test, buddy. You allowed yourself to be seduced by my dead mother, the fly.” Perhaps my email was worse though. I was cryptic, writing something about how he’d hurt me in an “elusive, untenable, irreparable way.” He must feel awful, never knowing what he did. In retrospect, I see he did nothing wrong. A man can’t really have romantic feelings for a fly; but I knew, had he ever met my real mother, the same couldn’t be said. I don’t

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Summer 2018

believe I’ll ever meet a man my mother couldn’t seduce. This knowledge frightens and saddens me in ways I’ll never be able to articulate. I must confess something now. My mother grew ill and eventually died of a virus she’d contracted from blood transfusions she needed after my birth. It was the eighties, before hospitals tested blood banks the way they do now. The virus lay dormant inside her for many years, until I was in my early twenties, and she in her early fifties. I know it seems late in the story to share this detail, and I know I’m not truly to blame, but I’ve always felt a level of morally-masochistic responsibility. I share it now because, though my mother never deliberately burdened me with guilt, her large, awful family did. I’ve never made much of an effort to see her family, though I’ve maintained loose and amicable relations. I imagined I was remaining aloof out of loyalty to my mother, but I was feeling especially lonely and vulnerable after Tom and I broke up. I found myself rsvp-ing to an E-vite to the bridal shower of one of my fifty-seven cousins. It was a summer barbeque affair at one of my aunts’ houses and I was asked to bring potato salad. I made my potato salad with the utmost care and brought three large vats so there’d be enough for everybody. I arrived and discovered that the party already had an ample supply of potato salad, courtesy of my eighty-year-old, preternaturally spritely, grandmother. “Oh, Sweety, I thought I called,” my grandmother said. “I decided to go ahead and make the potato salad.” My mother would have flipped. That’s just like her, my mother would have said. Rest assured, this was no accident. “That’s ok, Nana,” I said. “We’ll have extra.”

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Summer 2018

My grandmother gave me a disturbed and displeased look, as if she’d hoped I’d discard my potato salad, make it disappear altogether. “Don’t worry about it, Sweety,” my grandmother said. “I’ll take care of it.” My potato salad was never seen or heard from again. I would have let the potato salad thing roll off my back, but this was only the beginning of my mother’s family’s passive-aggressive abuse. I wandered outside and sat silently at one of the half-dozen fold-out tables scattered throughout the yard. My mother’s family had always made me feel shy and uncomfortable. They had the ability to render me mute. I had a memory, then, of a similar gathering some twenty years ago, clinging to my mother’s arm while Nana questioned loudly, in front of all my cousins, whether anyone else thought it was strange that I was so silent, whether I might be retarded. Everyone laughed except for me, which only validated my grandmother’s concerns. Eventually, one by one, various relatives came to my fold-out table to greet me. It was as though they were all of the same mind, part of some cult-y collective, because I had nearly identical conversations with each of them. “It’s so nice you could make it,” they’d say. “None of us were expecting you.” The first few times I heard this, I thought nothing of it. Around the tenth time, it felt a little like an insult. Finally, it felt more like a polite way of asking me to leave. Then, compassionately, “I’m not sure if I got a chance to tell you at the wake. But we are so sorry for your loss.” “I know it was hard on everyone,” became my response.

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Summer 2018

Some of my less sadistic relatives would leave it at that. Some would try pulling at the heartstrings, adding something like, “You were her pride and joy.” More often than not, I was told time and time again, “None of us believe it was your fault.” The more I heard this declaration, the more vicious it became. The wording was so textually rich, and implied so much. It could be your fault, the words implied, and we’ve weighed the facts, and decided it’s not. They said, we’ve discussed this, and we don’t believe the facts, therefore someone was being dishonest, potentially your mother. They said, we are not culpable of wrongdoing; we are the objective observers, and you stand apart from us. These words swelled and buzzed in my mind. I was about to get nice and worked up, but my least favorite and sleaziest uncle approached me. I assumed he’d come to spew the party line, but he just stood in front of me, staring creepily. I tried to wear a playful, welcoming expression, but my uncle didn’t react. He just kept staring, sort of squinting and hunched. I was about to speak, or release a nervous laugh, when my uncle, without warning, whacked the side of my head. “Got it!” he said. “Jesus Christ!” I shouted. He bobbed his big clumsy body in satisfaction and, in a racially insensitive and not so clever parody of Mr. Miyagi, said, “Sorry, Daniel-son. I must be one with fly, become fly. Only then can fly be conquered.” “It was a fly?” I asked. “Actually,” he said. “I think it was a mosquito.” He smeared his hand on my arm, made a face, and walked away. I know this is a leap, and he’s not sophisticated enough for such a nuanced slight, but I couldn’t help but think of how mosquitoes can carry contaminated blood and infect someone with encephalitis. I know it’s an incredibly self-

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Summer 2018

centered way of viewing things, but it seemed the theme of my cousin’s bridal shower was based on how I killed my mother. I stood and said my good-byes. The relatives sang, in choral unity, “Oh, so soon?” “Gotta work,” I said, grimacing, trying to appear disappointed. “We understand.” I can’t lie. When I got home, I cried my eyes out. I washed the dishes. I cried. I did the laundry. I cried. I steamed asparagus and practically collapsed with emotion. I’m not sure if I was sad or intensely frustrated, but the tears and sobs kept coming with or without my understanding why. I took a shower, and lathered up meticulously, shaved, exfoliated, cried. I brushed my teeth, blow-dried, whimpered. I’d exhausted myself by the end of the night. I crawled into bed and tried to watch some cartoons on the cartoon channel. Oddly, I never once thought of my mother. During all that weeping, all I thought about was weeping. The thought of her only came to me when I stopped. I suddenly longed for the bristly scratches of her stubbled legs against my young, sensitive skin; and I realized, indeed, I was frustrated, and a little turned on. The fly had been in hiding. Waiting, perhaps, for the waterworks to end. I hadn’t thought much about her either, until I spotted her on my comforter. An orange octopus on television argued with his purple father, while the fly sheepishly walked toward me from the foot of my bed. We watched each other. I could tell she was up to something, but she wanted to make sure I was game. My mother had used similar ways of testing consensus without speaking; manipulating my actions, so that it at least felt like I’d made my own choice. I put my hand out, palm up, sensing that this was what the fly wanted. The fly gently crawled onto the tip of my ring finger, down its length, past the callused ridge of my grip, and directly into the soft middle of my hand. She was offering herself

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to me. My uncle’s words repeated in my mind, be one, become, conquer. I had no intention of killing her. I slowly, gently brought my fingers to a point, making the shape of a tulip with my hand. We didn’t budge. And when I slept that night, and then awoke in the dark, confused and alone, one of us said, with the most earnest sentimentality: “Nothing can replace you.”

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Summer 2018

BARRAGE John Bebout I. Steel rain sweeps across the ruined landscape. ‘Stay down!’ I scream. I sense—I know—he wants to run. Death lumbers towards us with heavy steps. Each step closer than the last. Inexorable. I say one prayer over and over: Make it stop! From the corner of my vision, I see Jonesy erupt from the earth. I turn to watch him run. No rifle. No helmet. Then a flash brighter than the sun. II. I am lying in my mother’s garden, nostrils full of damp earth. My head in the lap of white daisies. Quiet. I open my eyes to a cobalt sky. But it is no more than a sweet dream. My hearing returns. The war returns. Fear and chaos crash down on me again. Make it stop! III. When it finally quiets, men stagger from their holes. Returned from the dead. Shocked and apprehensive. We check ourselves for blood, for missing fingers and limbs. I walk to Jonesy’s foxhole. His rifle leans against the wall aimed at God. His helmet tipped, full of mud. Dinner for worms. IV. I fall to my knees and cry. Once I start, I cannot stop. I cry for Jonesy. I cry for the sheer madness of it all. And I cry for the softness of my youth, petrifying even as the tears are still running down my cheeks.