Los Angeles Miscellany Volume 71, 2023

miscellany

Copyright © 2023 Loyola Marymount University.

Trinity Catlin

Sam Yaziji

EDITORS

Christianne Tubola

Benjie Salazar

Madeleine Misner

Allen Lam

Lexiss Morgan

Ian Piexoto

ADVISING PROFESSOR

Sarah Maclay

Ash Goodwin

DIRT LESSONS

SIENNA CAPUTO

I’ve given my heart to you exactly thrice. You squish it under your toe like a roach, like a man. Slam the door shut with a thread tied around my tooth. My favorite thing about you: I know how to please you. Chili mango resin and a reason to die.

Haven’t seen you in years, but I run into you all the time. The brain bodega. I love it when you visit. You used to lick honey off my ankles. Pass me two Tylenol and bottled water. I don’t know

how to take care of my body if you’re not using it.

The sunlight wakes me up. I swear I hear my parents whisper in the kitchen, but I don’t live at home anymore.

UNTITLED • TRINITY CATLIN

TO THE END OF THE BLOCK TAYLOR

CROWELL

Lemon drops on my tongue,

yellow tongue like the yellow air  that snakes past us as we ride our bikes, lemon groves and the citrus air  carried on the Sky’s open back:

I think Sky is wearing my mother’s backless dress.  Earth is the width of my father’s cracked palm  and the world ends at the tip of his finger,  at the end of the block, with the red sign.

I liked sucking on lemon drops  and you liked those mini bottles of orange juice.

I’d race you to the end of the block or until dinner time or until you moved away to Arizona and only wrote once.

Remember when we had to be back by dark? Remember when I pushed you off the curb when  you told me we should get married once we were 18?

It was right after you left that I fell off my father’s fingertip and the sky closed the zipper to my mother’s dress. Did you know I haven’t ridden a bike in 5 years?

I wonder where you are now, and how you’re doing, and if we were to see each other in a crowd,  would we be strangers or would we be children?

I never saw my grandmother again, by the way, and that beehive in the back of my brain never was smoked out.

Do you still like orange juice, and do you still have a freckled face because lemon drops are sour now,  and my raccoon freckles have faded to dusty sprinkles only seen when I’m barefaced.

UNTITLED • CHRISTIANNE TUBOLA

TO: NENE

CHRISTIANNE TUBOLA

I know, when you look at me, you see all the parts of yourself you hate.

Because I am all you could’ve been and you are all I might be.

You hate your body, you’ve taught me to hate mine. Only difference is you’re running on borrowed time.

No mirrors allowed “Out of sight, out of mind.” “Am I still pretty in your eyes?”

Rage calcifies into stones. But even bones are beautiful, even bones like yours.

I saw you drown in codeine and hydrocodone and xeloda in your sleep.

I saw your right hand cupping your left breast, while your left hand cradles the ghost of a child you haven’t said goodbye to just yet.

And for once, you were gentle. Only gentle when in pain. No mirrors allowed “I’ll be alright.”

“I’ll love you ‘til the day that I die.”

When your soul starts walking up up and up to distances farther than this room, farther than your capricorn skies, farther than the homeland, farther than the moon so far away you forget to haunt me—

I will find you until the sun swallows this earth and everyone is burnt into ash. Engulfed in flames like the heart of ang Birhen Maria (bless her soul). Burnt like your left breast.

I will find you, always Maybe then, I’ll teach you something too.

I’m yelling at Los Angeles to Stop moving.

From Mission eat centers

Lit, yellow, white faces.

Can drinking fill your Spaces?

Ace on the Big Foot bar West like a time capsule Fender.

Flannel and blue ocean, I want these streets

To stop moving.

Let me be a grown woman

Cooking on the stovetop

As sunset lines the corridor in that dream

I’m standing two by eight on a three dimensional Laptop where digitized letters can derive water On the cheekbones I use for pretty faces.

They look like they love me

Making up movement against my iron lung, Sure, can’t feel everything in commuting spokes

Size of his belly and money, Thinking truth comes in accounts

Managed by my old man.

Lobbying for daddy government

To take me out for a drink

Until I plead and turn this city Into the earthly pavement, Banging against the front door Where solitude is a mystery

In that bible you carry

I pray big strong tower, Traffic blower, cigarette smoker, coke raver, ash choker, ring bearer, Wheel pusher, shit user, sleepy reader with a superiority complex, I beg And crush the bone marrow in the depths of my sternum to begin By an end and don’t touch a goddamn thing.

Just for a moment

So ocean park gale can speak to Angelo, And the reparations of bright light fog Can set a dinner table

In the midst of my declining health.

UNTITLED • TRINITY CATLIN

The leather combat boots crossed the threshold from the dreary and storming outside to the lantern-lit interior of the den. The smell of cigarette smoke hung in the air. Light reflected off of it before it drifted through the cracks in the floorboards and wood-paneled walls. The sound of shuffling cards, rolling dice, and hearty laughter filled the rest of the space, replacing the pattering rain and rumbling thunder from outside.

The boots crossed the entry room, entering the space where business took place: the gambling parlor. Four men gathered around a small, cluttered table, smoking until their teeth and the whites of their eyes yellowed.

A mustached man smiled through the smoke as the young man in boots entered the room. The little hair he had left stuck to his head with sweat. His suit was patchy and wrinkled. The gold chain on his neck hung low over the piled-up chips in front of him.

“Alaric!” he greeted the man in boots. “Glad you decided to stop by! Take a seat!”

“I’m here for the job, Bart,” Alaric said. “Not interested in gambling.”

“Eh, you’re just upset that your luck ain’t as good as mine!” Bart said. “Enjoy a drink with the boys for a bit! You look like you could use a break.”

“I need the money, Bart,” Alaric said. “Now.” Bart chuckled. “Your little superpowered intimidation might work on the streets, but it

ain’t gonna work on me, kid. I know your heart’s too soft for killing. To me, you’re still that little boy… Nico.”

Alaric winced. The rest of the table sniggered.

“Just tell me where the job is.”

“Another warehouse down by the eastern docks—need that space for a fuel generator. Not exactly being used properly at the moment. Should be easy with your skills,” Bart said. “I can pay you a thousand big ones.”

Alaric grunted. “My rent’s just gone up. I’ve gotten 3,000 easily for a job like this.”

“Times are changing, Nico,” Bart said. “It’s getting harder for me to make an honest living— aha! ”

Bart revealed his hand to the rest of the table. The other men grumbled as they handed over cash and chips. They rolled a die, and another round began. Bart counted his earnings as cards and dice distributed around the table.

“Tell you what,” Bart said. “I’m feeling lucky. I pay you a hundred upfront, I give you a thousand after.”

Alaric scowled. “Two hundred.”

Bart smiled. “Don’t pull my leg too hard, now, eh?”

He handed Alaric the money.

“Make it quick. Minimal rubble.”

Alaric took the cash and left the den, heading back into the thundering storm outside. He fumbled for a bit, trying to put the money in the

pocket of his duster. He wrapped his scarf a bit tighter around his face and continued towards the eastern docks.

The storm only made the city streets look more miserable than they already were. Drifters huddled around trash bonfires, attempting to find any bit of solace from the relentless rainfall. The darkening clouds had already prompted most of the residential lights to stay on during the day, but Alaric noticed many of them began to flicker off as the later hours started to creep in.

Soon enough, the sound of rushing water mixed in with the pounding rain, and Alaric stepped onto the riverside street leading up to the eastern docks. The power of the night-time chill and storm-induced cold was beginning to take hold. Alaric felt his hands numb. His coat and socks were soaked.

He arrived in the courtyard in front of the warehouse. Its walls were made of scrap metal and wooden slats, hastily hammered in haphazard patterns. A few crates and boxes lay around the loading areas, accompanied by the piles of trash that seemed to creep into most areas of the city.

Alaric stepped up to the front of the warehouse, taking a moment to scan it up and down.

He lifted his hands and spread them apart, commanding the rusted metal to give way. There was a creak, a crack, and the door collapsed in on itself, buckling under the invisible force that Alaric seemed to command.

His combat boots stepped into the warehouse’s open space. With a flick of his fingers, he commanded the water to wash off his body, rippling it through the air and watching it hit the ground. He shivered, finally dry.

Alaric examined the structure he stood in, taking note of its supports, roof, and walls. With its mismatched makeup and materials, it should be easy to dismantle. He stepped past a few shelves stocked with crates. Each one ap -

peared to be marked with a shipping number, location, and time of arrival. Most of the dates were marked two or three days away.

On the far side of the room sat a table and a few more crates, one of them left with its lid open. Alaric shifted the lid over, examining the contents within. Neatly arranged in rows and columns were a series of weapons: rifles, handguns, grenades, explosives, and ammo clips.

Alaric approached the table, noticing a few shipping documents laid out. Next to it was a small ashtray, a smoking cigarette butt left sitting in the ashes.

Still smoking.

Alaric ducked behind the table as the gunshots unloaded in his direction. The papers flew into the air. The ashtray clattered onto the ground, ashes spilling onto Alaric’s duster.

“We just love it when visitors stop on by,” a woman’s voice called from behind the rows of shelves.

Another voice chuckled, before another shushed it.

“Come on out…” the first voice called. “Me and my baby just want to have a chat with you.”

Alaric cleared his throat. “What do you want?”

“What do I want?” the voice laughed. “I want you to walk out of my warehouse!”

“Your warehouse?” Alaric asked.

“Yes! Are you deaf or something?” she said. “Leave! Before my baby makes you look like swiss cheese!”

“I’ve got a job to do here,” Alaric said. “And I was told this place was abandoned.”

“Well, does it seem abandoned now, shitface?” she replied. “Get lost! I might have patience, but my baby is starting to get anxious.”

“Damnit, Carrie, just call it your gun!” the chuckling voice piped in.

“Shut your face, Melvin! You sleep with an assault rifle!” Carrie yelled.

“For protection, Carrie!” Melvin replied. “Not for loving!”

Alaric crept over to one side of the table, opposite of the bickering voices.

“Well, I’ve come to love my baby, Melvin!” Carrie said. “He’s my cowboy in shining armor.”

“Ya mean knight?” the third voice asked.

“Shut your face, Clyde!”

Alaric lifted his hands, and pushed them forward. The table flipped onto its side, sliding into the rows of shelves.

“Damnit! Shoot the bastard!” Carrie screamed. The shelves toppled over like dominos, crates and flimsy metal collapsing and crashing to the floor.

Carrie screamed, and the other two unloaded on Alaric as he dove behind another crate. Gunfire sprayed inches away from him. He caught sight of who he assumed to be Clyde, a tattooed man in a tank top and cargo pants, and held up his hand to him. Clyde immediately froze, his face contorting into panic as he lost control of his body.

“He’s enhanced!” Carrie shouted.

She fumbled with her gun, trying to recover from the shelf that had slammed her to the ground. Alaric held his hand up to her as well, watching as her muscles and jaw tightened.

“Mevlin, ach—Shoot him!” she choked through her words.

Melvin, a scrawny and sweaty fellow, backed away. His gun remained at his side.

“I don’t wanna be crushed!” he shrieked.

“Dumbass! He’s only—ach—got two hands!” Carrie managed.

Alaric swung his hand around, sending Clyde into Melvin. The two goons collided into one another, and Melvin’s gun misfired into the ceiling.

Alaric moved Carrie towards him, getting a closer look at her platinum blonde hair and eyelash extensions.

“What are you doing here?”

“I told you already, you enhanced freak,” she said. “This is our place! Ach—my name’s on the paperwork, dumbass.”

Alaric pushed her to the ground next to her two friends and knelt next to the papers scattered on the ground. Most of them were riddled with bullet holes or singed by cigarette ash, but the names remained visible. The papers were listed under Carrie Hayer. None of the shipments were outdated.

Bart had lied. The place wasn’t abandoned.

“Who do you work for?” Alaric said, not taking his eyes off the papers.

“Some sort of high-efficiency turbine company,” Carrie replied. “Too many hits on their hydro plants. We were using this old place to store the weapons shipment they’d ordered.”

“Bart’s generator…” Alaric whispered.

The pieces were starting to click together.

“Excuse me?” Carrie asked.

“Never mind.” Alaric continued looking over the papers.

“I’ve only heard about people like you,” Carrie said. “No one knows where you’d come from. Government experiments? Corporate espionage tools? Cyborgs? I’ve always thought it was a bit of all three.”

Alaric froze. His jaw tensed. His knuckles tightened.

Carrie continued, “I’ve always wanted to kill one and lucky for me—”

Alaric turned around, “Wait!”

“—you’re standing next to a crate of C4.”

Carrie fired her baby.

Alaric caught just a glimpse of the bullet as it flew towards the crate just beside him. He held out his hand, hoping to redirect the bullet’s trajectory, but it was too quick.

The crate exploded.

A burst of heat, energy, and fire erupted against his body. Alaric instinctively raised

his hands, desperately channeling all of his strength—all of his power—into protecting himself. He winced, the pain and heat blazing through his veins. His body tightened, his muscles burned, his eyes narrowed. The heat and fire remained harnessed in his hands, pulsing, writhing, twisting, desperate to escape.

Alaric had no choice. He released it.

The heat, energy, and fire expanded around him, colliding with his surroundings. The walls burst into ash, the roof caved in, and the ramshackle warehouse began to implode in a spectacle of light and fire. Windows shattered, crates disintegrated, supports evaporated.

The blazing heat turned into numbed emptiness, and Alaric collapsed, unconscious.

What eventually awoke him was the thunder.

Alaric opened his eyes, his face buried in a pile of rubble and ash. He coughed, stumbled, and turned around. Searing burns rippled down his body—his arms, legs, face. Each drop of rain burned against his skin.

What had he done?

“Carrie!” he screamed.

He ran into the heart of the wreckage, coughing once more as the smoke entered his lungs. Nothing seemed to have survived. Nothing remained but ruin and regret.

“Carrie! Melvin! Clyde!”

He dug through the unrecognizable ash on his hands and knees, crawling through the ruins as the rain poured around him. They couldn’t be gone. They couldn’t. He couldn’t. He’d never. Never.

The search stopped after a few hours. Alaric fell to his knees. The guilt hurt as violently as his burns. The smoke pierced his lungs. He could barely breathe. He couldn’t tell what was tears and what was rainwater.

After another moment, the leather combat boots trekked out of the demolished warehouse and stumbled back to the den. The boots limped through the doorway, stomped into the parlor, and planted themselves firmly before the table. Alaric’s eyes blazed with anger, fixated on the despicable man sitting before him.

Bart smiled. “You’re back! The job gave you a bit more trouble than you’d thought, eh?”

The rest of the table chuckled.

Bart’s body shot out of his seat and into the smoky air. Alaric summoned his neck to his hand, holding him in a tightened grip a foot above the ground. Blood trickled down from the sides of Bart’s mouth, as Alaric began to squeeze. Dirtied fingernails punctured through the gambler’s cracked skin.

“Ach—ok—I…I—might’ve—Alaric—please!”

“You lied,” Alaric growled.

“You—you’re still back, right? I’ve—ach— got the money… I—”

“You owe me a lot more than money.”

The gambling chips and dice hovered off of the table. The other men remained frozen in their seats. Alaric released Bart, and sent him over the table. The chips and dice swirled around him like the crackling storm clouds outside.

“Next time you take a gamble on me,” Alaric said, his voice barely piercing through the hammering rain outside, “you’ll end up buried in something much more deadly than debt.”

Alaric released Bart back into his seat. He hit the back of the chair, his head slamming into the wall. The stacks of chips and dice clattered to the ground. He snatched up Bart’s winnings and stuffed them into the pocket of his duster.

He left the men frozen in silence and exited into the unforgiving storm and city outside.

The demolitionist had completed his job.

UNTITLED • TRINITY CATLIN

UNTITLED LOVE POEM FOR A META-COLONIAL FUTURE KIONI

SHROPSHIRE-MAINA

In the mornings I wake, and he whispers Césaire into my knees, recites Sankara against my collarbones, breathes wa Thiong’o into the parts between my cornrows. my postcolonial man speaks many languages, and each of them is soft and earthy which is to say he reads to me in different tongues and I pretend to understand them. when he leaves, I compose poetry for him, say things like I’ll miss you like the Blue Nile misses the White, like I’m waiting for you like the dhow waits for the trade winds, wanting for you like the traders want for oases in the desert. he, who is postcolonial in essence, finds me gold and salt and honey-colored things. he brings me pale avocados, brings me ndoma and so many books. I stand bent at the waist at the riverbank of this country scratching a rich, dark life from this place with my fingers and he soothes my hands with mango or shea or cocoa butter he bought up on 125th. for him I haggle over swathes of fabric in deep colors, read to him from Liyongo, rub thick oil into his scalp at night. when he sleeps, I press incense into his feet and gossip to my ancestor-mothers about him. bless him I say, cover him I say and they, giggling, pressing watery, ring-covered hands to my cheeks, say bless him yourself, girl-named-for-her-seeing-eyes

I had been walking around downtown Portland for an hour. I was homeless. My cigarettes, water bottles, rain jackets and dirty clothes scattered in my backseat. I had been to four different Inns off Broadway on the east side of the Willamette river. I was wearing green dickies, my grey blundstones and an oversized white shirt. I had been wearing the same outfit for three days as I’d been staying in Seattle. The rainfall had made my black hair all disheveled and my skin soft. I was arguing with an innkeeper about the room rates, attempting to rationalize a deposit for a single night stay in a room that smelled like sewage and looked like it had been purposely trashed in every corner. This man with three missing teeth and curly brown hair heard my conversation on the side of the trash-filled block and turned towards me, in a warm, friendly gesture. He pointed down the street and told me there was a Motel 6 just a mile and a half down, a bit southeast, on the edge of downtown. “100 dollars a night and you’ll get a bed and shower, just don’t stay on the bottom floor.” I had a show to be at in an hour, 15 minutes north. I dropped everything in my clean-cut, essential motel room and ran out the door in a blue-buttoned wrangler as I hadn’t shaved in a week. It was sunset as the city port buildings refracted orange-yellow and Mount St. Helen peeked glances at my dirty white four-door trudging up the city blocks. I parked roadside, more of a suburban area with just a few shops that were closing up as twilight

rose. My steps were high in my blundstones as I looked to where my show venue could be in this town I had never been to before. In the distance I saw a girl with a slim frame and long bleach hair walking as if she knew everyone was looking at her. Her eyes were bright green and her smile shook her whole body as we made eye contact. I hadn’t seen Annie Kate in over a month, and now in the northwest, it was all losing light and different. I had felt like the northwest was a place I wanted to call home. I was struggling with the fact that the home I knew in Texas was gone and so I went out searching.

I think retreat is an interesting word. It holds a negative connotation and gives the impression of repression or a defense mechanism to help avoid some inexhaustible truth. Personally, I would say that retreating allows for a sense of growth in reflecting on an experience or persona that has not yet been fully realized. Just how the potential for yourself, or a space of time where you acted a certain way, may sometimes feel unfulfilled for some circumstantial event, whether you moved, or changed passions, or fell out of love. When I retreat, it is unconscious and makes my limbs feel like they have no weight whatsoever. There was a church in front of me with beanie, tattooed green-eyed people smoking on the curb and selling ice cream. I had gone to Portland to see a band I had already seen just ten months before from Boston. There must have been

sixty-three people in the whole open church floor in front of the stage as my body started moving on its own. My eyes were closed and I screamed and jumped up and down to sounds I felt like I had always known. Annie Kate yelled at me how I looked like I was at home, like I had always lived here and felt so comfortable. She was always emotionally intuitive which is something I’d always admired of her. My sweat started to build up and ash smoke tasted like pavement and dusk tiles on the hardwood soles.

It felt like strawberry jam when I was 13 years old in a corner house. A pool I didn’t use enough and the trail across the street where I always ran away to before Ma started yelling through the whole tree line, shaking every bone in my goddamn body. Seeing nothing but feeling like a creek bed, before I had moved to the city. Or, the third concert I had ever been to or the sixth, or the last day I spent in my hometown. The lone streetlight that shined on the middle of my block or the way gravel pavement felt on my rough soles and the nature preserve

down the sunset hill blocked by a green prairie and brown horses. Things that can build on each other, like the way voices rise and your body grows and contorts. Moves to a rhythm or glaring strings and bass, almost falling and getting pushed by people you don’t know. I am everything and I am nothing simultaneously, while the compass on my wrist tells where home may be. Realizing I am searching for something that doesn’t even exist. A place I go when I close my eyes and the gut in my throat bellows for something ungodly and treacherous and beautiful. Just how the last of a blazing star is the measure of one’s happiness or fulfillment. Nothing is ever really gone, it all just stays in the tissue in the hard skull I tend to hold as my breaths steady. The retreat of myself as the band leaves and an old fashioned sits in front of my bar counter and Annie is at my side, laughing of a night at a lonely bar she loves. The moon shining through the big glass window and the blowing of the tree leaves. In a northern wind and sinking into someone I don’t know and will always have the pleasure of getting to know.

CHRISTIANNE TUBOLA

summer was spent waiting for it to fall on the islands. men on the radio said so. ten years after man set foot on silver sands, we wondered how much longer for man to plant their feet in the cinnabar dunes of martian moons phobos and deimos. stories of laika felicette ham and enos lost in space, traveled to the ears of mga bata, the children, like wind during the first monsoon. we were kids who hoped the creatures saw the sun rise on the horizon and loved the view. summer was spent waiting for the fall of impenetrable titane and steel americana. the day skylab fell, it plunged silently into the waters, sparkling and momentary, never once touching our islands. that day we were told that in order to get its fruit, a papaya tree cannot be climbed. it must be shaken.

UNTITLED • TRINITY CATLIN

LIGHT BLUE JOY

NATALIE WONG CHRISTENSEN

You, to me, are the shiver of a lake In tears I wake.

You, to me, take the sour out of secret and tell me to keep it. Me, to you, a reflection in spring You, to me, are a reason to sing Me, to you, and to each other: you are the self I used to cover.

SAM YAZIJI

Magma pours, porous icing from the Ladle, my heart Icarus against your Helian chest, another sun-flare and puncture and a pulsing fissure will form, and it will crinkle the shrinkwrap of my igneous gut, and acidify the black singe-relief of my leg-hairs that pepper the Tile. Your palms are tailored to tuck into my nape and extract the elliptic cord within, and wear it, crownlike on your knuckles—bone-splinter halo of wingflake and black viscera. O how the stone below irritates my battered shoulder! But you are beyond the mere Pantheon your eyes numb me —quartz medallions affixed to opium-resin upon an archangelic face, angular shadow-negatives shed over serene cheeks that negate the Hadean gust—your gilded riza skin-shell that will block the acid wind of this infant earth.

SHE CALLS ME WHEN HE LEAVES

HALEY MILLER

Second summers and the smell of hot turf clogging in my nose keeping my lungs from filling fast enough to match the hysterics that I just can’t keep down anymore— I wish this was real grass. I wish this was real dirt. I wish the swan had never come down for her—

would at least show me the real blue underneath his empty black eyes.

To return to the earth is an old idea but I reach for it now. Working my hands with the twine and the scythe to push my body down faster faster so I can feel the roots again just before they break ground.

Hands touch like branches— hairs like leaves that tell you This is real connection. Arms that hang like ancient moss, heavy but still holding. What will you do with it?

I can feel it in my scars when a storm is building in the clouds that rise and fall with the slopes of the hills             both gentle and steep like every mother I’ve ever known.

Riding the back of a great gray horse— slick back hard breath pounding of the hooves, of her heart, with hands gripping tight— white knuckle press across her neck, heads down through the tilted rain that thunders like her shoulders under my chest.

The black sky keeps the light from our eyes but we know the sun is rising— that somewhere above  is the picture of twilight turning itself slowly back to dawn.

A winner needs a wand or a cane or the rock first thrown.

Hit me where it’ll hurt. Hand strong and long and sharp to push the air from my lungs. Listen to it start at the bottom, get higher at the larynx. Stop for a moment while my tongue fights it back, and exit with the force of St. Helens— threatening to split my head in two and take out the nearest stubborn old man before he can even say I told you so.

Hold me at the limit— in my mind it’s her garage— watch me calm with whipping, beating arms. I made them strong just for you.

Use your palms, your fingertips, to push deeper into my scalp. I know you want to. I know you would. Let me scratch let me squeeze until you just get too bored. I know you will and you won’t bother to hear the turn of my feet on the pavement the swipe of the sink under my hand or the sick and greedy air that falls hard out of my lungs.

Raise my sword up fast against flesh that feels like mine: soft, rippling, pulsing with the blood of a million hot atoms that breathe and push and fight for their place on the front lines.

Feel the dirt between my toes. Down Wet hair flat across my cheek.

Wiping the spit and sweat

Down that dribbles and sticks

Down the underside of my chin. Down

The seeds crack under my feet on my new walk home. I move decisively forward and so I mourn them— all the trees that will never be because of my heavy foot.

But the grass beside them is cruel. Unfit in this arid earth to forge them into anything more than what they already are. So I mourn them again, then revel in the sharp clap of their skin against the pavement. It is the most joy they will ever bring.

STRAWBERRY HANDKERCHIEF AND THE MARKETPLACE

TRINITY CATLIN

The bruised strawberry is still sweet to you. Red flesh dyed purple underneath your tense fingers. Whetting around my neck to a sharp steel blade. You call it a foul craving, as if nothing was unbounded, and you fear the empty bowl. You slip my clothes to the edge of the bed, and lay me down in a cotton river. Driftwood. Boring in the spoiled hips that swell with red water, that host fixed viridian stems, that wish that heaven had made it such a man,1 like your father on his cold deathbed, who calls this pleasure and preservation. Quiet. I will lie still. I’ll eat your heart.

1 Reference to Shakespeare, William. Othello. (I.iii.163)

UNTITLED • NICHOLAS DE LA TORRE

INTO THE HINTERLANDS

OLIVIA MARTINEZ

Javier died with a crumbled bill crammed into the recesses of his worn leather wallet. He was lucky to not lose it in the confusion of arrival, even luckier that one of the other wandering dead didn’t take it from him.

It was a type of miracle that the toll took pesos because Javier had, looking around, noticed most of the patrons paying their own tolls in American dollar bills. Crisp and pressed out with sharp edges, all Javier saw around was American presidents. A woman in a beaded hat counted out her own bills from her purse at the booth across from Javier, and he felt embarrassed as he handed the folded cien pesos to the operator.

To the operator Javier smiled up sheepishly and said, “Sorry about it, man. Is that enough?”

The operator’s milky eyes looked down at Javier’s pesos, and took it, beginning to unfold it.

“Good, good… I think I might have a tip here, or something,” Javier postured, patting down his front pockets first and then the pockets on the seat of his pants. “Well, I really didn’t expect to die today, yeah? I wasn’t even going to go out tonight, honest. What luck, though, that I brought that, just in case. Like my Ma says, it’s good to always keep a little something in the back pocket, just in case. Y’know how moms are. It’s funny actually—” and just as Javier leaned against the toll booth counter, he was cut off by the party behind him, a scrawny-looking young man with dark hair and a pale face. He spared no attention to Javier, so Javier stepped

backwards a half step.

“I’ll let you folks get to it.” Javier patted the counter twice and moved onward, joining the swarm of dead making their way to the river. Large ferries sat on the water, still on the water even as the current rushed past. The spray of water chilled him as he walked the gang plank up onto the body of the boat. The first seat open to him was in the middle of a row, squarely between four dead on either side. The row overlooked the edge of the boat with a metal railing in between the passengers and the river below. The water looked so dark and mysterious that he couldn’t help but lean forward in his seat to watch it lick at the sides of the boat.

Javier turned to his seatmate, the young man with dark hair, and nudged his shoulder.

“How deep do you think that goes? I’ve never seen water this deep, not on a river. Looks cold, too.”

His seatmate shrugged and pressed his palms against his eyes, breathing deeply through his nose and out his mouth. Javier had more to say, but the young man looked so distressed that Javier politely began looking in the opposite direction. Just then, the boat pushed off from the shore. It shuddered under the weight of a hundred or more dead. On the shore even more dead pushed against each other for a seat on the next ferry. Even further offshore, past the toll operators, Javier saw all the people who didn’t have the luck to die holding a fiver.

When the ferry reached the other side of the river, Javier had already begun to engage his other seatmates in conversation. On the opposite side of Javier from the young man was an older man, hair graying at the temple and neatly gelled. He wore a pinstriped suit and carried a briefcase between his knees. When Javier had leaned in to greet him, the man had stuck out his hand stiffly, but not unkindly. They shook hands and Javier had learned that he was a businessman from the States, in the business of manufacturing. He was much taller than Javier, and as they spoke, he looked down at Javier under the rims of his dignified glasses.

When the gangplank went down again, Javier and the businessman left the boat together, and Javier declared them fast friends. Once the passengers had all been loaded from the ferries, the boats began their journey back, leaving the locusts of the dead to descend upon their final resting place. Their destination wasn’t all that much, from what Javier could see off the sparse landscape. Groups of tufted hairgrass began some distance from the rocky shore, and a few unpaved and well-worn roads wound their way away from the water.

The young man with the dark hair had left the boat behind Javier and his new companion. He looked lost and small amidst the gray of the landscape.

As the dead began to move from their crowds at the shoreline, the young man, Javier, and the businessman all began down the same path and began to speak on what they had each done before death.

“We manufactured cars,” the businessman explained. “I was in and out of Wall Street all the time, and I was damn good at my game. Sales.” He patted his briefcase proudly. “I was such a lucky sunuvabitch, I was flying first class to a meeting. Had enough equity to trade at the toll back there.” The businessman chuckled and

pulled a credit card from his suit jacket. “They didn’t take plastic, I couldn’t believe it. Who carries cash these days?”

The young man went next, beginning with his fear of dying before lamenting his situation. “It’s all because I came to America,” he swore. “It was the worst decision I ever made. College wasn’t worth it, I didn’t even finish my masters… I didn’t break up with my girl, I didn’t...”

“A college boy, eh?” the businessman said. “I loved college, but I loved working even more.”

“Right on. I never went to college, saved myself the trouble and the money,” Javier said. “I bet you wrote all sorts of important papers in school, huh? I bet you’d have gotten hired anywhere, if you had graduated. Making money and all that,”

“I guess. I never really liked it, but I didn’t hate it either.” The young man ran a hand up and down against his own arm. “I don’t even know why I died, I was just in my apartment alone. I didn’t feel sick or anything. I think it might be better if I knew. I’m still afraid of death, even now.”

The businessman laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “We all die sometimes, son.”

“But you’re old. I didn’t have time to make it.”

“I was never afraid of death!” the businessman interjected.

“I wasn’t either,” Javier said. The businessman gave a smile and winked.

“I had heaven on earth, what does it matter what happens to me now. It couldn’t possibly get any better. I built myself an empire and a palace, so now in death I can be complete.”

“I didn’t have any of that though. I had a future, and now I don’t,” the young man said. “What about you, Javier? Why aren’t you afraid?”

Javier thought for a moment, considering the land around them. Even in death he wasn’t afraid of what was around him. Gray skies, hot

air and dry plants. The road before them paved an endless journey. None knew where it would take them, and to what end. Maybe the path would diverge, later, and the trio would part. Or maybe the singular path would take the three forward endlessly, each an equal across the broad sightline before them. Wherever it was the path would take them, to suffering or pleasure or the unimaginable, Javier was certain it would not base itself upon the Americanness of the businessman, or the fear of the young man.

In life, Javier had lived with his aging mother. He was remorseful that she was alone in the world once more, although he couldn’t say he would want to go back to her. He had left her with nothing, no coins to pay her toll. He had tried for her like she had provided for him when he was young. He wasn’t sorry he’d died, not particularly.

In life, Javier couldn’t escape money. In death, the toll was his one-time payment at the gates, but in life he leached money like there was a hole in his wallet. He worked hard for pennies in factories and tried to ignore America. Like a

noose settled around his neck, the threat of its tightening, Javier felt the presence of America every day in Mexico. His brother had written to him, often, that America was free of the factory labor that Javier hated. Javier’s work was hard, and paid very little, but he supposed the American companies employing men like him in the States would pay just as poorly for his backbreaking labor there anyways.

It felt impossible to say all this in a way his traveling companions could understand. He couldn’t say it all, he couldn’t tell them the depth of all he had experienced. He rolled his thoughts around in his mouth before he spoke.

“In life I worked,” Javier said simply. “Now, I guess, the uncertainty is a little more clear.”

That was it, that was right, wasn’t it? Javier didn’t know what came next, and it was a relief. He knew that he knew nothing.

“Well, then,” the young man said. “How did you die then?”

“I died thirsty, I think.” Javier tasted the sweet air of the dead expanse around them. “Yeah, that sounds just about right.”

EVERYONE WHO CLAIMS THEY LIKE WHISKEY IS LYING

IAN WOO

I’ve never licked kerosene Or swallowed a hand grenade

But I have taken a shot of Jack Daniels— I’m still recovering.

Whiskey?

You mean burnt peanut butter juice?

Oaky napalm? Spicy caramel Windex? Hmm hints of mahogany, vanilla, and—TRAUMA!

This shit sucks!

You like this? No one likes THIS! This is hell—no, worse than hell. This is Stubbing your toe, spilling on a white shirt, getting broken-up with via text, all at once, infinitely.

You clout chaser.

You absolute phony. You suffer every day behind an artificial grin. But it’s not just you.

Everyone who claims they like Whiskey, leg day, calculus, cold showers, spiders, hiking further than two miles, Believing in God—

It’s shocking how we delude ourselves when we’re uncomfortable.

YOUR MENAGERIE OF ME

HUDSON CAMPBELL

This isn’t the first time you’ve ripped a piece out of me, and it probably won’t be the last if you have your way. You of course know that my only request will be that you display this giblet of me with the other chunks of flesh and insectoid oddities that you’ve trapped behind panes of glass for your viewing pleasure. I think I’d like to be placed in the butterfly section this time; I rather like their wings. My complexion would only serve to accentuate the indigo and cerulean shelf.

As always, you have the final say over placement within your menagerie, though, considering how much you’ve stolen from me, it would be kind to let me pick my resting place for once. Even now, I can feel as your little steel pins pierce me, trapping me amidst the arthropods, specifically with the centipedes. You must understand that I’m deeply disappointed, as you’ve placed another part of me with the millipedes two months ago. They say variety is the spice of life, and my time with you is quickly growing stale. In fact, based on your utter disregard of my wants, I’ve decided to request that you please return all my pieces to their rightful owner (myself) at your earliest convenience. You know where to find me.

Yes, I’m dumping you.

No, I will not pay for postage.

UNTITLED • BENJIE SALAZAR

AMONG THE EXILES

CONNER WILSON

Push me back into a tree. Bind my buttons with salt & fill my long ears with bees, Braying — Please, please, please!

Unstick from time, mortal, ben adam. Sit with me, beside the river where the mud flows, the mud dries, the mud goes hot, goes flat, cakes in the sun. Unstick from time, son of the earth. Show me what I show. Tell me what I tell. I take the scroll that I have been given, full of wailing and woe, bitter lamentation. I take the scroll. I fill my stomach, I fill my mouth. It is as sweet as honey. I am safe.

I lie in the desert for a hundred, two hundred, four hundred days, with my punishment, my prophecy. I recoil from unclean dung, from the carrion of life. I prepare millet, prepare barley, on the dung of a cow. I am safe.

Sing, I will swallow your sadness & eat your cold clay Just to lift your long face, & though it may be madness, I will take to the grave Your precious long face! & though our bones, they may break, & our souls separate, Why the long face? & though our bodies recoil From the grip of the soil,

Why the long face?

So I spoke to the people in the morning. At evening my wife died. I bound my turban, sandaled my feet. I did not cover my upper lip, did not eat the bread of men. I spoke to the people in the morning. At evening my wife died. My mouth went closed, went silent. I did not weep, did not cover myself in sackcloth.

I spoke to the people in the morning. At evening my wife died. I am safe.

& all those lonely nights down by the river, Brought me bread & water, water in, But though I tried so hard, my little darling, I couldn’t keep the night from coming in. Ammon shall be a fold of flocks, Moab remembered no more! Great vengeance, wrathful punishments upon the Philistines, Tyre thrown into the pit, never rebuilt, never recalled! The crocodile will be food for birds, a portion for foxes! He will be called Gog of Magog, a cloud buried in the valley! They shall know their worth when fire, lightning, anger, fall upon them, when the city shall be bound with righteousness!

I am safe!

& I miss your precious heart! & I miss your precious heart! & miss & miss & miss & miss & miss & miss & miss & miss your heart! But release your precious heart To its feast for precious hearts. The circumference of the city Shall be eighteen thousand cubits. The name of the city from that time on Shall be The LORD Is There.

I am safe. So be it.

Excerpted in part from ‘Sawdust & Diamonds’ & ‘Cosmia’ by Joanna Newsom.

APOSTROPHE TO FAIRUZ

SAM YAZIJI

When my forehead implodes and everything spills, quiet my crumbling form with the fire of your song

—let my lobes find solace in the libations of your oud, and clutch my fingers firmly—whisper to them, dissolve their woes, eclipse the withered sob of this hangèd sun

—lay my sprawling limbs on a sumac bed, and speak to them of how you saw the Virgin at Hamatoura— molt her sobs into oil and anoint my eyes (their pale lids)

—incinerate my words but bury my body in a plot blessed by a Damascene sparrow, soaked in your perfume—sing kamel el ajyal and for forty days plead to the Virgin’s Son

—pray I am not captured and cast out by the Angels, for I am unworthy to wade into the wake of His Light, to taste the pure spring of His Blood—but if I do, be assured

—I will hold an umbrella over you when you are alone in the rain, and repel those rancid drops, and drape your hair in a shawl of apricot light, and forever warm your frigid palms

—and walk with you until damp sand turns to turquoise sea.

ODE TO THE EIGHT-ARMED EMPRESS

ZOE STRICKLAND

Fluid and endless as the space she fills, she unfurls her spineless form Emerging from her indigo sanctum, she adjusts her emerald crown

Rays of light above reach desperately to touch her velvet skin, Illuminating elastic pools of jade and sapphire, Inflating beneath her slimy surface, Just before dissipating into an opalescent canvas

Her hungry limbs sprawl over rock formations and vacant coral towers Her dominion once a tie-dye wonderland Now washed in mortal-made grey

She is yearning for some vibrance to mimic her own— A mirror in the void.

Between her organs and the emptiness, a paper-thin sanguine flood, peppered with shards of gold bearing thousands of omniscient rings

Gripping

Tasting Lusting

She sees me— suspended in space I am quiet in her orbit

Granddaughter of the kraken, How lonely is your reign?

Wrap me in your limbs and Squeeze until my limp body can barely breathe

Please your majesty

Drag me on your descent to the refuge of your dungeon And

I will watch your colors.

A DRIVE THROUGH DREAMS • NICHOLAS DE LA TORRE

5:00 AM:

I’m sitting in my car again. Time is making knots in my mind. Exhale.

I close my eyes. I’m fifteen again. Pillow hugged in my armpits, eyes burning, night whispers from the window mixing soothingly with the anxious sweat on my neck. My phone buzzes. I see the familiar question from him:

2:03 AM: Are you awake?

2:10 AM: Ya what’s up?

2:10 AM: What are you doing?

2:11 AM: Nothing lol you know me I’m always up

2:11 AM: Have time to talk?

I don’t know how to describe it— I know I’m being emotionally manipulated, but I’m fine with it. ’Cause at the end of the day I know they’re hurting. Maybe I’m hurting a little less. I don’t know what I am to them— but I know it’s an odd amorphous in-between. Not partner, not lover, not best friend. I know just enough to help, not enough to judge. I’m close enough to give comfort, removed enough to be an outside detached perspective. I’m an emotional hook-up, but I guess I don’t care because it feels good to be wanted. Doesn’t it?

3:04 AM: Hey you busy tomorrow?

3:15 AM: Nope

3:16 AM: I’ll pick you up at 8 … ugh

He’s so goddamn egotistical.

He picks me up. 3:00 a.m. me said yes; 9:00 p.m. me regrets it. The rain thrums on the roof, and the stale pretention of premium gas and horsepower capabilities linger. He could drift. So he said. That’s

bullshit. I watched him reverse straight into an innocent family SUV at the base of a hiking trail, thinking he was in drive.

The sound system is broken, but to make up for it a speaker is propped expectantly on the dash. We are stuck at bridge to nowhere. He talks about himself for hours. His hopes. Dreams. Skills. He asks me if I regret not being in a relationship. What the hell does that mean? The rain is making the night feel not real. I don’t know what to say to him.

I don’t regret always having one foot out the door.

5:47 AM:

I’m sitting in my car again. Facing the city lights.

I’m all tangled up. I don’t know when the knots got this bad. Inhale.

I jump from one to another, trying to follow a line, trying to form a connection. Instead, I’m wrapped in them.

5:53 AM:

I’m sitting in my car again. I trace my hands along the door handles, ridged with scratches and the seat plush but stained. I fall into a more recent past:

Music and shouts live-fade in the air, trapped in the house I now stand outside of. The steps I’m about to walk down worry me slightly. I feel an arm wrap around my side in a hug and I turn to see Anabelle.

“I’m going to bed now, love,” she says.

I don’t let the hug end as my sign of protest. I think it’s past midnight, but I’m not sure. I see her roll her eyes at me, but I know she is thankful I was there. She turns her attention to Lucas, who has already made it to the driveway.

“Make sure she gets home safe, ok?” she calls after him.

“Yeah, no worries,” he responds.

“Thank you!!” She looks back at me, eyes still laughing from the events of the night. “See you soon, ok?” A swell of noise surges out as the door unlatches and Annabelle walks back in.

I feel the car moving but I don’t care where it’s going. I trust Annabelle so I trust Lucas. He will get me home.

I’m not thinking. Just absorbing… the way the soft fabric of the car roof gives a little until you hit the hard plastic shell, just the way it feels all so close together, how the headrests thump when four more bodies cram in and it smells like lint and takeout.

I just hear noise. I try to look around as they each speak but the middle seat cramps me inward and deep voices bounce on both sides of me. I laugh when it feels right. Try to switch my focus when each one speaks. A smile stretches through my throat and reaches my eyes. It hasn’t unraveled yet.

“Wait, what are your names?” I ask. I think I ask.

I don’t remember now…The music hits my ears, and the motion of the car dictates my sway. I sing in the way I do: listening for a little, singing the parts that repeat.

I don’t know any of them…A sea of motion attempts to sweep me towards the door, but my stomach catches on a seat belt and my fingers fumble to release me. My exit through the doorway is far from graceful, toe catching the concrete. My arm swings up for balance and I smell my deodorant, a pleasant surprise.

A hand holds out a taco for me and my stomach grumbles. I take a bite before asking, “Are you sure?” The hand that holds the taco laughs, “Yeah no worries.” Then I realize I’m at a food truck. I didn’t know I was coming here.

A voice complains about having to go to the bathroom: I have to pee so bad too. It says: “Let’s go look this way”

So, I walk around the corner with him, into a Target parking lot that seems the size of a football field. Laughing, I run to the doors, confused at their refusal to slide open and temporarily dazzled by the glowing neon of the signs. I see him glance at his phone.

“Holy shit, it’s 1:00 a.m. already!”

We both laugh and stumble away from the doors out into the stretching asphalt. I grab for my phone and my wallet simultaneously flips out of my pocket, bouncing, trying to be swallowed by the darkness. Crouching down, hands scraping and frantically grasping for it, a moment of panic interrupting my elation from the taco, and the trust that I didn’t need to be in control. I feel the zipper and cheap jean-fabric pouch my friend made me in high school and relief washes over me. He grabs my upper arm and pulls me up. I notice that he’s taller than me and that his other arm has slipped around my waist.

“We should go back since we couldn’t find a bathroom,” I say.

“We should hang out here a little longer,” he replies.

Life feels a lot less poetic.

6:58 AM:

It feels like “ick.” It feels like something’s shoving up the concrete settling at the pit of your stomach up back into your brain, so you can think about it for a little while, or a long while… I want the tears to soften it, to wash it away. Sometimes it forms bars in my mind. They get a little thicker each time. It’s hard to blur my eyes and let the lines fuzz away. Soon I’ll have to look through them.

7:17 AM:

I’m sitting in my car again. I see the city horizon stretching out towards the ocean. 7 a.m. smells like 5 a.m. when the fog hits the coast. Wet concrete collides with water-worn grass; I think I’m seven again.

When I am in the ocean, I feel seven-year-old me. Seven-year-old me is bold, whimsical and carefree. I don’t care if the sand gets on me. I like finding the sand crabs. I still launch myself off the crest of waves about to break as high as I can, ready to side-flop on the other side. I still challenge the person next to me to keep their feet in the same spot in the sand as long as possible while the waves wash over us. I dive through crashing waves, trying to feel the gentle tug on my hair, and remember Sam and my mermaid games. I swirl in circles, feeling my fingers catch and spray the top film of the water.

I taste the turkey sandwiches, watermelon, and goldfish from long afternoons at the beach. I feel my sister next to me, building drippy castles, elaborate sand tunnel systems, hot tubs and chairs. I feel the laughter bubbling as I remember seaweed monster tag and the technique to creating the hardest packed sand-ball for our shoreline battles. I feel the smooth slick kelp next to me and remember draping it over my suit, pretending it was a dress, then popping the bulb on the end and tossing it away again. I see myself flailing, trying to keep up, playing paddle ball with my mom.

I’m playing simply because it is fun. That is enough.

8:09 AM:

I’m sitting in my car again. Living is intoxicating: sweet summers, watermelon crisp, refreshing, enticing, melting to water in your mouth with the promise of leaving you satisfied but never full. Here’s the thing: I don’t like thinking about the seeds. They crack bitter in your teeth. Spit out one and it’s easy to ignore, dozens and it becomes more difficult. I’m always wading through seeds.

But I crave adventure, don’t I?

8:23 AM:

I want the nights to taste like fun. Rhythm on my lips. Limbs pressing away the air, friends’ feet shaking the floor. Hair sticks to my neck from sweat. The darkness wraps my vision, thrilling, dynamic. People press through the space. My body feels detail but rejects time. I’m with my friends: one’s cool rings etch my collar bone, the other’s curls brush my draped forearm as the three of us jump, sway, stumble, the edges of our sneakers playing bumper cars in the chaos below.

In the moment, nameless eyes linger, and they don’t look away. I keep dancing. One curls his fingers in the classic “come here” gesture, another positions himself behind me. Revolting. I hate myself for ducking behind the guys I know, but I am avoiding the seeds.

I like to remember the warm dark, laughing as my friends inch closer to each other, and someone we know jostles their way through the crowd bringing us clinking glasses of water, finally something that’s free.

9:02 AM:

I’m sitting in my car again. There’s a lock around my ribcage. There’s an engine in my stomach.

It might have been the way my knees buckled around her belt loops that bruised them. Except they didn’t.

I don’t think they ever bent the way she intended, The way I folded over like prayer wings.

Except, her belt was a hill with a tree and a swing perched between opposing seas of houses. And I was 14 with milkless bones, climbing out of the dust bowl, spooning away the birch twigs from the ribboned path, as she left me behind.

Except, I think I was 17 and tired, and the buckwheat was blooming as I sat alongside it—

flushed with June, or with an apology pressed at the back of her head as she kept climbing. Except, I think it was raining, and it was yesterday, and the lungs of the city pulsed in a velvet sage. and we were at the top of the hill while she swung over the sardine landscape, while I tried to peel back the tin that sealed me into her.

蝕底 | THE SECOND DAUGHTER’S LOSS

MADDIE CHEN

to take a loss; to suffer misfortune; to come to grief; to bite the dust

Charmain Chen is thirty-one when she is born. It’s almost as if she comes into the world bound to this seat, rendered immobile by this unforgiving lap belt. She’s forced to stare out of the window for the next four hours, to feel her stomach lurch when the plane jolts unsteadily as it lifts into the air, leaving behind a life that she has built up entirely out of pure loss.

When they arrive in the faded land of Texas, standing at the glossy door of the red brick house, she feels it deep within her bones. The despair of being reset like some disposable machine, the need to scramble and clutch tighter onto her husband and the bassinet weighing down her left arm. She grasps them like a string of pearls around her neck, fearful that if she lets go, they’ll scatter across the floor and never return to her.

Charmain Chen is born in Austin, Texas, on July 31. She is thirty-one.

various channels of excuses to utilize when her sister inevitably accuses her of snooping. It’s instinct at this point, a protective second daughter tendency. It’s not like she meant to find it. She had only wandered into the room in search of her sister because the cold, bitter feeling in her chest was refusing to thaw out, growing harder and harder to ignore. It was December, and the Toronto winter had only grown crueler as the nights grew darker.

The house is lonely, too big for the number of residents, which is a measly three, and consists only of Nga Lok, her older sister, and her sister’s dog who was named after the famous Hong Kong actress, except now they live in an English-speaking country where Do Do sounds too much like Doo Doo and the chow chow’s name was therefore changed to the less shockinducing Dude. But Nga Lok and her sister are not even close as sisters and are much better off as roommates, so the house grows lonelier still. The bone-chilling numbness steadily creeps throughout her limbs like a parasite, the cold searing through her clothes with aching clarity, all while the winds shriek at a frequency that stings her ears and burns her cheeks. It never gets better.

Leung Nga Lok is only sixteen when she discovers the email on her older sister’s computer. As soon as her wavering eyes finish darting across the screen, something in her brain snaps into action, frantically flipping through

Eyes dry, mouth set in a grim line, Nga Lok’s eyes skim over the email again. Again and again, the words Dear Adele Leung , and It is our great pleasure to inform you of your acceptance and transfer and University and Vancouver

Her sister intended to transfer from her current Toronto university, yet she had never once mentioned anything about it. An air of uncertainty settles upon the room, waiting in anticipation for the amalgam of emotions that are sure to swirl up into the atmosphere—confusion, rage, shock, despair.

All that follows is the quiet shuffle of footsteps out of the carpeted room. This is the third loss already. At sixteen, good second daughter Leung Nga Lok has already learned of her destiny, marked by impermanence and warnings of threes, trios, and triples. Three may be revered, 三 turning to 生 , but it will not be in this lifetime, for the birth of three girls within this bloodline has eternally halted the flow of three’s blessings. Things that come in threes do not reap any rewards, taking on ghostly appearances and nightmarish shapes, ominous in the way they approach and unforgiving in the way they take. By the time the third thing comes around, rearing its ugly head, she should have already turned her back on it.

This is her inheritance—a ghostly, gray, cobweb-shadowed house with a stupid, rat-hungry dog. Nothing more, nothing less.

Charmain Leung is too young to have already experienced two clean carves into her heart, each merciless swipe returning full of bloody, pulpy flesh. Her arrival in Toronto had been marked by the loss of her father, who remained in Hong Kong while the rest of the family pursued a Communism-free life in Canada. The second loss followed shortly after, as if frantically chasing after it, desperate to be included. After three months, her mother takes herself and Charmain’s youngest sister back to Hong Kong. Her mother never moves back to Canada. Charmain should have known better by then. She should have known that her older sister was next. This is the Second Daughter’s inheritance. Things that come in threes are never blessings.

“Why?” She can’t help but blurt out. After months and months of ignoring the mottled blue emotions swirling through her chest, Charmain finally thrusts her hand in to pull out a chunk and hold it up to the light. It’s anger. She’s angry. Her life in Canada has only been marked by loss, unforgiving red scribbles on stark white paper. Why must she experience any more?

Leung Nga Lok is only sixteen when her sister comes down the stairs with her boyfriend in tow. She tries not to grimace—she never quite liked this boyfriend—and settles for a less antagonizing look of suspicion. She watches as her sister makes her way down the winding staircase, like a snake uncoiling its neck, looks her in the eye, and tells her that she is leaving and never coming back.

She doesn’t even take the dog.

Her sister pauses at the door, her hand frozen on the handle of her luggage. She and Charmain had stuffed their belongings to the brim in that very suitcase on the way to Toronto. Now, a year later, and everyone, even the luggage, is leaving.

“I can’t stay here forever,” her sister says firmly, dry-eyed and blank-faced. She speaks as if Charmain is an acquaintance— someone she does not quite have the time for but does not want to be rude towards. Charmain watches in dismay as her mouth purses into that telltale, taught line when she’s finished speaking, solidifying her position. She will not be convinced to stay.

“But where am I supposed to go?” A counter. The stares turn challenging, her sister’s beginning to slip into discomfort. The Leung daughters had never been too good at holding a tight reign on the jar wedged within their chests. Things always escaped.

Charmain sees it flicker across her face before it disappears. One millisecond and it’s gone. A slight murmur, a ripple across the muscles of her face. Something only sisters can see, maybe. A select second daughter perception.

one day they suddenly stop.

“

妹妹 .” Little sister. This will be the last time she calls her this. Her tone is short, mouth clamping shut without any hesitation. This conversation is already coming to a close.

“You’re not the only person here who matters.” It’s emotionless, her sister’s face becoming a plaster mask, dried out after years of weariness and discontent. Charmain can see it mold to her, spreading across the most reactive muscles in her face, directing them into the cold, impassive expression she now wears.

Charmain wants to scream, to be choked up with so much rage that she has to slam her fist against her chest to let it all out, pouring out of her in splatters while she heaves and heaves. This isn’t fair. The scale wobbles, tips like it always does onto the side of emptiness. An endless tunnel into a bottomless ocean of nothing. This move to Canada has ripped everything away from her. If she ever gathers the courage to take a step forward, there will always be something pulling her back.

So instead, she steps back. Allows her sister to steer her suitcase through the door, lets that unscrupulous boyfriend trail after her. Watches as her temporary life metamorphosizes into one of permanent loss. The middle years are restless until they’re not. The gains come and the losses follow, until

It’s quick in the way it happens, moving too fast for her to notice until she wakes up one day with her husband next to her and realizes. Her life seemingly becomes permanent, grounded and rooted in a solid foundation. The losses no longer seem so large anymore, becoming halfhearted nicks in her armor, strengthened by the union of marriage and the arrival of her first daughter. There is no sand in the equation of marriage or motherhood. These gains will not slip through her fingers so easily. Conditioned to be restless and expectant of what will be gone when the sun rises, her veins had never stopped thrumming with that familiar murmur, urging her to get up get going keep moving forward and never look back . But at thirty, Charmain now had two things to physically settle for.

Internally, though, deep down in the darkest corner of her veins, she could still feel it. The slight buzz, a hum of trepidation and premonition. There was still more. This tiny baby in her arms was part of her life’s work, but could not possibly be all that this life had to offer.

And on a windy day in September, her husband comes home with the answer.

“I received a job offer,” he starts slowly, carefully, as if sounding the words out. Turning them over in his head before pushing them out of his mouth. “It’s for a pastoral role at a Chinese church.”

And then comes the bad news. She can hear it in the way he inhales sharply, quietly, as if not to scare her. But she knows better. Her second daughter abilities have never left her, tuning her ears to the finest frequency, her eyes to a startling level of keenness. She’s already picked up on what’s coming next.

“It’s in Austin, Texas.” The ringing in her ears begins. Austin? She’s never even been to California, much less the southern United States.

“What pastoral role?” she finds herself say-

ing, body frozen to the seat. She sounds like she’s underwater, her voice taking on a strangely distant tone.

“A youth pastor,” he responds, sweat on his brow, and Oh. How could she not, it was his dream, had always been his dream since they started working in youth ministry together.

“I know that this is a hard decision,” he begins, but Charmain’s not listening. Torn by the feeling of the ringing in her ears and the faraway thump in her chest, she can’t help but wonder. Wonder what it might have been like to stay rooted like a tree your whole life, to feel the wind rustle your leaves and sway your branches but never take you away.

“—decide in a few weeks,” he finishes. She turns to look at him, beckons him closer to smooth the wrinkle in his brow. Tries to take a deep breath, but winces when the torn part inside of her throbs painfully.

“What are you thinking?” her husband tries carefully. She blinks, and then everything tumbles out at once.

It’s quiet before the river of rage pours out of her. Blood red and blinded by years of uncertainty and fear of what would disappear next when the sun rose, she tries to stop the endless torrent from her throat, emanating from the deepest pits in her stomach, but she can’t.

Second daughter Charmain Chen had never been too good at keeping the lid screwed tightly on her jar. It had been easier when she was in a positive balance, her gains overtaking her losses. But now her husband has presented her with what is potentially the biggest loss she has ever experienced, and yet she still somehow wants to go. It’s illogical, ridiculous, even, and the fact that she’s even considering it is causing angry tears to stream down her face.

It’s not fair. It’s never been fair. She’d just gained a permanent life and now she’ll give it up so easily for a land that carries no dream of hers,

a city so different from what she has known that it’ll be like she was thirteen again, newly arrived and so unprepared for the life ahead of her.

She wishes she could rid the world of all people and start over, perched daringly on Noah’s ark, watching the world swirl down the drain of the sea, but that would require her to begin again. She had not anticipated that this feeling would lead her to an entirely new life, jostling that seemingly stable foundation she had created for herself. She had not noticed her voice raising higher and higher until she is screaming, gasping for breath as it floods out of her, her throat aching and raw and angry. She doesn’t move when her husband clasps his arms around her like a locket, securing her gently as she continues to sob.

Everything, it seems, leads her to leave her life behind. In Texas, Charmain is stripped of identity, taking up few spaces and leaving no imprints behind. She has no ability to work, her roles being limited to that of a stay-at-home mother or a pastor’s wife. How could she come to a place that held no dreams for her to pursue? How could she silently allow herself to be rid of everything that had ever made her who she was? She had stepped back, allowed her husband to search out his own dreams in the faraway lands of Texas. She had given up a life that she had just taken hold of.

But there is still joy. Charmain’s second daughter is born in the hottest moment of the summer, her cry breaking through the humidity and salt. Two daughters, sometimes like ice melting on pavement, other times like flowers bursting through cracks in the concrete. There will not be a third. Second daughters always know when enough is enough, she likes to joke. She thinks her second daughter would agree,

strong and stubborn even in her years of infancy. Sometimes, in the quietest part of the night, she thinks that this could be it. That from now on, this will be her life forever. Her life can only restart so many times before it ends altogether.

Charmain Chen is thirty-five when she tells her elder daughter about how the playground in their neighbor’s backyard, which was the object of all her five-year-old’s envies, had originally belonged to their family. How their neighbor across the street had asked the construction workers to move the playground to her backyard instead when she found out they were going to dispose of it, all because they had heard a pastor was moving into the house and assumed that he was well over fifty, not the thirty-three-year-old man with the stark black hair and the pregnant wife. Her daughter is as furious as a five-year-old can be. How could a simple misunderstanding result in such a great loss?

Charmain laughs and reminds her daughter that she’s still able to access the playground, which she plays in all the time, but it doesn’t make a difference. A loss is a loss—at five, it seems her daughter is able to recognize that much. It’s amusing how easily it is for her to discern a gain from a loss, even at the age where she can barely reason, but she will never allow her daughter to lose more than she obtains. Her daughter, already so different from her mother, has a whole life ahead of her to take and gain and grow.

A seesaw obediently totters back and forth, groaning and creaking at each tilt, but it refuses to slow. Echoes of mischievous giggling and excited shouts ring out in the air of the faded playground, but Charmain knows better—she’s always known better. Her worn hand reaches out, firmly wraps around the left seat to steady it, and the seesaw’s insistent pattern peters out.

A nip in the bud, a quick snip of the roots of generational ties with shears that gleam new and bright. There will be no more life-stealing losses in this life.

UNTITLED • CHRISTIANNE TUBOLA

There was always a weekly lesson — piano, catechism, fencing, just to name a few.  And they all ended the same way: with sliced pears in an off-white bowl and a toothpick stabbed into the topmost one (Why are you bringing me fruit?  I’m supposed to be mad at you, don’t give me fruit! ), acting like you didn’t just yell at me all the way down the 5, because I’m not very good at the things you want me to do.

Reminders that I’m not social enough, that I’m not eating enough, that I’m not dressing sexy enough, that I’m not… enough.  But it’s okay, I’ve got a photoshoot at noon where I can smile in a dress I’m not comfortable in and makeup that makes me feel like a clown.  And in 3…2…1…cheese!  어머 어머, 나의 예쁜딸!  You’re so beautiful, look at my good little girl!

Except I’m not your good little girl not the way you want me to be. But even so you know I like the third couch cushion, you know I like the heavy fork with no grooves, and you know I like the sheets untucked.

In between the weekly lessons, there was always a game.  Foam bullets from plastic revolvers zipping through board game dollar bills and pewter tokens and asking Alex to make it a True Daily Double.  A pink plastic bat and yellow tennis balls, and I’d be hitting home runs into the trees.

Then there were the trips to the liquor store before Mom came home — I’ll take that pack of sour skittles as you decide between an ale or a stout.  Though you shouldn’t really be drinking those things, it’ll mess with your liver and probably isn’t very good for your glaucoma.  But you’re taking your medicine and you’re on Nutrisystem, so I’m sure you’ll be fine.

And you don’t like to admit it, but I know you cry when I’m not home.   So I promise to text and call more often and watch our show every week. That way you won’t forget that I’m your good little girl.

AYANA O’BRIEN

Thefirst time I saw Talany, I thought she was the sun.

She was seven, same age as me but a head shorter, and had on the brightest yellow dress I had ever seen. Her hair was pulled back into two low ponytails, and that hairstyle did nothing but accentuate the bright red glasses she wore. Her mother stood beside her, holding her hand and swaying slightly, her other hand resting on her round belly. I don’t remember if Tala’s step-dad was there, but I doubt it; he never seemed to come to church much. At least, not before, anyways.

The choir was singing, words I had heard enough times to sing without thinking about them. Instead, I watched Talany. Her eyes were closed, squeezed into two thin lines on her face. I thought she was meditating, perhaps even trying to hold in tears—I didn’t really understand what it was exactly that the Lord’s spirit could do to a person.

I asked her about it, later at school, when I joined the new girl laying out on the grass during recess. Her hair was out, cropped short after her step-dad had cut off a lock of her hair when she wouldn’t quit playing with it at the dinner table. It fanned out around her face, looking shades of gold and deep brown in the afternoon rays.

“My Nanay (mother) says that God created the world by simply thinking about it.” She pulled out pieces of grass, and laid them on my arms, my legs, my chest. I did not move.

A piece of grass tickled my nose. “I wanted to see if I could make a world, too.”

It meant a lot to Tala that she was Filipina— Ilocano, to be exact. She wore it proudly in her step, in her hair, through the words from her mouth. It was a sort of reckoning, I supposed. Something to remember her mother by. Something to distance herself from her step-dad, who wanted nothing more than to have his minority daughter seem more like the majority.

To be fair, her outward appearance as a Filipina didn’t matter much, seeing as everyone at school simply categorized her as the Asian kid who wasn’t the Indian one or the Chinese one, but the “other” one. She was one of four brown kids in our entire grade, and I was one of three Black kids—our entire minority union, not more than the fingers on both my hands.

In the eighth grade, everyone was required to go on the field trip to the American History museum, a tribute to our learning for the year and a treat for the teachers to let someone else try and corral too many thirteen-year-olds for the day. Most of the kids talked and goofed instead of even pretending to listen to what the guide had to say. Talany and I were towards the back; our feet carried us through the history, our tongues coming up with our own stories for the artifacts and items around us.

We took a pause, standing in front of a large black and white photo of Martin Luther King jr. Under his might, I felt small. His eyes were up towards the heavens, his mouth open and hand raised, fingers about to take flight. The image was superimposed upon a collage of other civil rights leaders, all faces from the 1960s, caught in black and white, though we’d learned in art that tonal color photography existed by then.

“Two,” Talany said quietly, turning to me. “You all get two sections on your history.” She turned back to the photo.

I recalled the Civil War exhibit we passed through earlier. The images of plantations and remnants of master’s whips broken down by time. The museum even had a little photo area, a room not bigger than a closet, with a raised platform in the center where a pair of slave chains sat. The clasps on the chains were much larger than what would have ever been set on my ancestors, and I’m certain they didn’t put their wrists or ankles in the chains just for a photo-op in a museum.

Our carefully collated participation in the American project, here. Chained, but still a part of American history. Included.

“Excuse me,” Tala stopped a worker as they were passing by us in the gift shop, “do you guys have anything from the Pacific region?”

“Oh, they don’t fit on this shelf here. Check the one off to the side—you should find a couple of things there.”

On the shelf sat a mini canoe in a bottle, a book on simple conversational Japanese, and a bulul, a little figurine meant to hold the spirit of ancestors and protect crops. Tala had mentioned the little statues to me before, a miniature piece of Filipino culture. The shelf was full, yet the products seemed untouched. Talany grabbed the bulul, shoving it in her bag and leaving without paying.

I followed behind.

It was cold and dark, like how I imagine the world was in the beginning. The house was quiet, Mom and Dad’s not-so-quiet arguing beginning to dim to their late night levels, my brother giving up on his loud music rebellion and switching instead to the quieter activity of video games. I laid on my bed, arms spread wide, pretending I was floating, current of thoughts pushing and pulling.

I tried not to sink.

I heard a small tap at my window. I ignored it the first time, thinking my mind was playing tricks on me. But then it came again, clearer, more incessant. I rolled my legs off the bed, moving to the window. It was already open a crack, but I pushed it all the way up, the sticky night air cementing my hair to my face. I was surprised to see her—Talany’s hair was brown again, the blue dye she once had to try and rebel her step-dad into being a better father, a fading memory at the tips. We hadn’t spoken in a bit, not since she had gotten with Malli—a girl a grade higher than us sophomores and with an ego to match—and had forgotten that I was her best friend.

But then here Talany was, outside of my window, looking small and dim, the dark circles around her eyes prominent.

“Come in,” I said, moving away from the window. Tala navigated in deftly, the moves easy through her muscle memory. I walked away, clicking my bedroom door all the way shut and turning the lock. I turned back, seeing Tala laying on my bed, eyes watching the bubbles from my turtle tank in the corner of the room. I tried to keep my breathing steady, the game I always played when she was here, laying across my bed like this in the soft moonlight.

She called my name. I always felt like she said my name as if it meant everything. My ac-

tual name didn’t slip off her tongue often, with her calling me nicknames like ‘ga or lola , or simply starting to talk and knowing I’d listen.

But when my name did turn on her tongue— Kara —it was like her mind wanted to put every thought and feeling into its weight. Kar -a: two syllables in delicate balance. I felt the weight, shifted it from shoulder to shoulder. I felt small, too inadequate to be carrying this precious cargo, but determined to try anyway. How could I not? Talany was my best friend—we were blood and water.

I sat down on the edge of the bed. Tala moved, setting her head in my lap. I pushed her hair away from her face, but she moved it back again. It hung, a curtain covering the tear stains on her cheeks, little paths of black cut across her face, her old mascara leaving its mark. I held my breath as she took my hand in hers, tracing paths along it.

“What am I doing here,” I heard her say quietly. It was a question, but not. There was no lilt at the end indicating the need for an answer, no turn to me to seek my advice. Tala stopped asking questions after her mom died, taking her little brother-to-be and her stepdad’s only son with her—since then, there was nothing Talany was willing to let anyone figure out for her anymore.

I pulled her cold hand to my chest, hoping the steady beat of my heart would make her feel present, make her feel anchored. She sighed.

“I love you,” She said. I nodded. It was always more than just an “I love you.”

It was an “I’m sorry.” An apology for leaving for months while my parents’ relationship capsized.

A “thank you.” Gratefulness for me still being here, being willing to listen when her relationship did the same.

And worst of all, it was a pause, another space. Another empty hole that meant she may leave again.

In Ilocano myth, Talany had once told me, two giants—Aran and her partner, Angalo— created the world with their hands, their feet, and their spit. Aran pulled the sun from the core of the earth, hanging it high in the sky along with the moon and the stars. Angalo pushed his fingers in the ground, raising mountains, lowering valleys. His spit on the dirt sprung to life, creating humanity. The giant then put the humans into a bamboo tube and set them adrift, where they landed in the islands now called the Philippines.

As we sat on my bed, her hand in mine, her breath tickling the hair on my thighs, I wondered if Tala felt herself drifting, wrapped in bamboo and set asail by her ancestors in a sea she couldn’t touch.

I could only hope she had room on her ship for me. The music at this party was loud and full of ditty melody, some song that was never off the radio these days. I stood with the red cup of teenage acceptance in my hand, taking only occasional sips of whatever dark liquid Talany had poured into my cup a couple hours earlier. I watched as she downed another shot, dark eyes flashing in competition with a kid two times her size. It didn’t matter, though. Tala had a knack for being larger than life: strong. Holding her own.

In her eyes, I always saw mountains. I saw a girl meant to flow, but instead made to be a monument: steady for her family, her friends, and ultimately for herself.

Her hair had grown longer by now, the end of senior year, just brushing past the collar of her shirt. Another style her step-dad hated. He said it made her look like a hippie. But in the soft light of the party, I could see the hair dip

delicately off her shoulders, could see the gentle slope of her nose and the subtle curve of her lips.

I knew it made her look too much like a ghost of her mom.

“You have tattoos? That’s so hot.” My head turned, watching Tala and a random girl a grade below us talk. She leant back against the couch, the least dingy surface in the dingy basement of the party. A quick shuffle brought her closer to me, the heat from one of her legs just close enough to register in my body. Tala always carried a casual air, arm draped across the couch putting her stick and poke on full display. A coy smile played across her lips. It always seemed to be there around people, well, around everyone except me. The look was an invitation with no address, no return-to-sender.

I watched as the girl brushed a finger across Tala’s arm, and I took a hard swig from my cup.

I remembered the day Tala came over, eyes bright and pleading, arms full of an array of seemingly mismatched items. On the floor of my room, door locked, she spread out a sketchbook, an old concert ticket, a handful of needles, and a bottle of dark liquid.

She explained then how her mom had drawn all of these sketches, all of these designs for tattoos she’d never get the chance to earn. She had said my name again then. A plea.

In no way did I have the steadiest hand, but I drew, tracing the lines Tala’s mom had made across the page across my friend’s skin.

Later that evening, we had buried the paper towels stained with blood deep in the trash can, preparing some lie about my period in case my parents happened to come across them. And then I stood back, taking in the dark ink swirling across Talany’s skin. The tattoo was large. There was definitely going to be no hiding it from her dad, who would toss her out for three days when he saw it. But Talany didn’t care. Rivers, ferns,

mountains wrapped around her skin in abstract lines, color deep, ink mixing with her blood.

Kalasang. Armor.

The music raised as Tala turned to me, her soft smile actually reaching her eyes. I stuck out my tongue at her, and she raised a brow, a quiet challenge. My eyes flicked over to the girl still pushing her fingers across Tala’s skin, making comments on the “super tribal vibe” her tattoos gave off. And then with a swift movement, Talany wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me onto her lap. My heart sputtered, the scratch of her jeans scraping my exposed legs. The girl looked just as taken aback as I must have, her fingers leaving Tala’s skin, and the little red marks of her touch fading just as fast.

“Pretty sure those tattoos are cultural appropriation anyway,” the girl spat as she got up, crossing back into the throng of the party. Tala just laughed. I floated on the sound.

We left a little past one a.m., Tala’s hand on my back to keep me from drifting off. She insisted on driving, though she had three drinks and I had only half of one.

“And you’re a lightweight, ‘gâ,” she said, a smile in her voice. “Get in.”

We drove eastward. I could tell because the smell of the ocean began to grow stronger and stronger. I stuck my hand out of the window, allowing the waves and crests of the air to rush across my fingers. It felt good to be driving so late at night. The air was quiet, and I could breathe.

My arms flashed colors in the streetlights, reds and blues darting across my skin. My body was enveloped in calm, the same way it always was when Tala was within reach. Without looking over, she tapped my hand twice, a signal we came up with when we were younger.

Her way of telling me that she was good, she was okay. She was here.

Gravel crunched as we pulled into a parking lot. I didn’t need to ask where we were, the soft sound of crashing waves and the strong scent of salt lulling me from the car. The sand, just cooled from the day’s heat, welcomed my tired feet. We walked together, slowly, feeling our weight rise and fall on the earth.

The water’s edge was dark, a line cut across the page of sand. I stopped, just before the cold I knew was coming. But Tala walked on, making it up to her knees in the surf.

She turned to me, features fuzzy from the low moonlight. Then, she stuck out her hand. A small gesture. A beckoning.

I went forward, feeling the water soak up to the edge of my shorts, but I didn’t care. I wanted to hold onto her, to hold onto each other. To let time pass, me with her, her with me. I closed my eyes, sinking into the feeling of water moving beneath me and Tala’s hand steadying.

It was cold and dark.

And I let forever pass—Tala and I—waiting out the sun.

UNTITLED • TRINITY CATLIN

THE VOYAGE TO THE RANCH

HALEY SMITH

Passing rolling green fields of untouched weeds, our car strides past; flashes of colored hues warp from solids to the intangible. Like a wormhole into a desolate, foreign land. The road slides through fertile barns. Each square block its own doomed fate. Each home caring for an animal army, peckish plants, wishing the sun could extend rays further. The car pulls up, bruised gate, allowing us to stifle a breath.

Our car swarms, buzzing with humid guilt and regret clouds. Our vision, murky and untrained to unprosperous almond trees. My grandfather, a silhouette in the distance, like an eye exam finding the barn. Tractor growling, dogs yapping, no smiles exchanged. The gate aches open, revealing a dying story. Grandfather, a heartless man, paving the American story for generations to come.

Spot and Tommy. Tommy and Spot. Together, though each dog alone. An epistolary of their lives:

Dear Spot,

Oh, how I wish to run through billowing palm-tree puzzle, run my slimy saliva-covered tongue over leaves, lizards, and lap water from feral river streams. Instead, my world ends at the beginning of my chain collar.

-Tommy

Dear Tommy,

I dream of chasing bumblebees and butterflies lacing through eroded rock kingdoms, following them until I can no longer find the strength. My paws, hungry for relief, My paws euphoric.

-Spot.

The labyrinth of almond trees pains my heart. Melancholy air settles above my brow.

Grandmother greets me before my eyes can ripple around. Grandmother says she has a good surprise. Good surprise is paradoxical to my grandparents. Her silhouette beckons to follow. We tiptoe across a backyard of shadows.

I find myself studying a barrel. A blue barrel.

Chirping echos throughout the chamber. Yelling, pleading for a mom, food, love. I feel myself wanting to be excited, yet what’s exciting about 15 baby chicks physically stuck in a barrel.

A maze of expired memories: the library in the trailer the cesspool fountain that killed the last dog the motionless gardening tools crying oil

Flashes of iridescent rainbows catch my eye, weaving themselves through perfectly lined lifeless trees like a loom.

3-pronged footprints, a squawk, the stampede. Peacocks imprisoned for a crime they didn’t commit.

Did I tell you I’m too scared to insert My birthday into Animal Crossing ?

The cursor flashes as I brood over How old to make myself

Con ơi! Con ơi! The monster needs me To relieve her after a long week’s work The sun peeks dimly past the shutters

“It’s tiring,” she mutters

I knead her back with delicate intention Stroking supple skin that has seen Brighter days and darker years With my long piano fingers, as she’d coo

Asking if I’d like to have dinner with her tonight For that reason, I write a lettered tale of affection To the monster that conceived this fairy And cannot fathom the intensity of my spells

But she still recognizes my incantation As she overcame this cursed speech We’re forced to share, or did it subjugate us? Oh, how ironic it is I study this language

The monster flinches to the sound of Invisible gunshots down the street She takes cover from those pillaging our home And slaps me in her own conservation

In response, I leave her back alone as She applies the Eagle’s medicated oil

The peppery green fluid burns her back

And she screams to the spice of orange

Asking her when my birthday is, She shudders and slides her eyes to the side

Replying that her own is false April 30th it is! I peek to the edge

Mẹ ơi! Mẹ ơi! The monster needs me

To provide relief after a week’s lifetime

Mẹ shuts her eyes for seconds, minutes, hours

“I’m tired,” she murmurs

Mẹ hoisted herself off our bed with grace

Motioning her skull toward the kitchen

So I grip tightly and nuzzle my head in her bosom For we are both monsters, and I was hers

UNTITLED • SHERRY XIAO

YOU CAN’T EAT A KOI FISH

KAYLA CHANG

At the edge of the pond heart-shaped leaves are scattered with the soft sleeping lotus

A young boy squats. Breaking the surface tension with pond pellets stuffed in his pocket. He hopes to see the moon spirit.

An elegant dance towards that hand, Ornamental orange golden yellow Like bold strokes of a painter contrast the muted brown waters Like the passions of a thousand suns.

Copper pennies that sleep on the pond floor reflect on her supple peach belly Soft moves against ripples of the water artificially created by the alien arms reaching for her iridescent freckles.

The boy watches as she sways for her lover— seducing him with her silky body, mesmerized by the draping fins adorned by flecks of honey

She kisses the palm of the boy who vows to watch over her.

EX-LOVERS AT LUNCH

Spoon rests on saucer and on its surface reflect a thousand miniscule scenes of life that slip into tea with sugar.

To inhale the fragrant mix of memory, dissatisfaction, desire. And for eyes to fix on the black crocodile leather purse, a solitary daisy dangling from inside.

To grapple with the purse clasp (in search of more flowers) and discover it filled with teaspoons resting against delicate satin lining.

To see oneself reflected on the surface of a spoon.

That is all there is.

September 24, 18xx.

My name is Damien Baal, and I am on the verge of something miraculous.  I am a professor of the chemical sciences at Undergrove University.  I have been teaching for two years shy of three decades, but I have yet to produce a meaningful contribution to Undergrove’s scholarship.  I have been deeply ashamed of my lack of achievement for the longest time.  But I now finally have reason to step away from that shame. . . and give a good name to both myself and this university.

Last night, I was in my laboratory preparing for the next week’s lecture.  In pursuit of materials, I happened to walk past the medical wing where I heard the unmistakable crying of an infant.  I moved closer to the source of the incessant whining and found a baby wrapped in a blue wool blanket with a note attached to it.  The note read as follows:

Felix.  Born September 13.  Please give him the world.

I looked around to see if there was a chance his mother was still lingering.  I picked it up and checked down the halls in a hurry, eager to find any reason to not have it be my responsibility.  After what felt like hours of searching — though it was likely not even five minutes as I quickly started to feel faint — I gave up.

I held this. . . Felix. . . and stared at it.  I never understood the appeal of newborns (or any child for that matter) but I suppose if you take a minute to look at them, they are somewhat curious little creatures.  So, I brought it back to the lab, not quite sure what else to do with it, and I nestled the child in a stack of fruitless research notes and papers.  The crying had died down, but there continued a ringing in my ear.

I watched the baby.  I was waiting for it to do something amusing but given that it was not even a fortnight old, I probably would have waited quite a while.  I tried to resume my activities, but there was something about it that I could not look away from.  Perhaps it was its bold brown eyes and curly hair to match; or maybe I was captivated by its strong brow and nose, pronounced even for a mere baby.  But in all honesty, I simply could not fathom how something could be so wrinkly, red, and, quite frankly, hideous.

I was turning the note in my hand.  Please give him the world.  ‘Now what ever could that mean?’  Is what I had initially thought, until the baby shifted its weight and knocked over a notebook that opened to a page of my predecessor’s research.

How convenient it was, that he knocked over this notebook to the exact page that would be my claim to fame.  Had I actually gone through my predecessor’s notes instead of immediately deeming them useless after inheriting them and stacking them all into an unstable tower in the corner of the room, I might have not missed this absolute genius.  Apologies for the crossing out of my words, I just need to make sure that things are properly attributed to their rightful owner.  These are just notes that I must have forgotten about. In all my years of teaching and researching, it clearly just slipped my mind.  What hidden genius I have!

What my pred research shows is a machine that harvests the dreams of anything you put inside of it.  This machine then converts those dreams and puts them in the form of an injection which I can administer intravenously and absorb into my body, thus gaining knowledge I could never have dreamed of myself.

To put into this machine, I considered for a second the surplus of the university’s rodent population, both domesticated and local, as subjects for this study.  However, I found their incapability to develop true consciousness an utter disappointment.  Their knowledge is not what I wish to have.  I needed something more.

I needed Felix.  Infants are the perfect creature!  They are unencumbered by the mundanity of life, as opposed to their older, more pathetic counterparts (a collective I unfortunately associate with).  Their brains are hungry, absorbing all knowledge they can get before they eventually crystallize and become blocked off to new information.  Free and unrestricted, at mere weeks old, their minds are more powerful than we could ever hope ours to be.

It is a pity they’ve no way to properly harness such abilities.  Their underdeveloped limbs, pliable bones, enamel-lacking mouths. . . it disgusts me to even continue, what an awful shame!  Yet, their brilliant deformities no longer have to be wasted, as I have taken it upon myself to be the first to bring their deficits to justice.  Once I harness Felix’s boundless imagination, I can become the smartest man in the world, capable of anything and everything.  This is something my predecessor could never do.

With this revelation, I called it a night.  When I awoke this morning, I set out for a full day’s work.  I spent the better part of my day looking at these notes and was in a frenzy gathering all the materials I could to start this project immediately.  With the last piece of scrap metal I could use to fashion a helmet to fit Felix’s rather large head, I can finally begin creating what will be the most important invention of the century—nay, the millennium!

OCTOBER 13, 18XX.

I have finally finished what I am now pronouncing the Infant Dream Absorber !  I have worked tirelessly so I could make this the perfect gift to celebrate Felix’s first month of living.  This last month I can say that I have become. . . rather fond of the child.  I have had to keep him a secret to ensure the smoothest progress of this project.  This wasn’t particularly hard as I live alone, and I am essentially the only tenant in the University’s provided housing.  So, my being his only company, and him being my only company, we’ve created this sort of companionship that is like no other.  I also ensured excellent nutrition of the child, feeding him sheep’s milk and pulverized apples, keeping him fat and happy.

I am sure that Felix is delighted to know that he is going to play a major role in the advancement of science, that his dreams are now something that I can use to peer into a world that I, as a grown adult, am no longer keen to.  I can hardly contain my excitement for what is about to happen, and I am ready to be a part of this. . . this new age that we are about to enter.

I have already hooked him up to the Absorber.  Considering all the wires and the noise that it makes, I am surprised little Felix is not screaming in fear.  How considerate he is to be quiet; he must know that this is something that requires all of my focus.  I will let you know the results as soon as I inject his dreams into my being!

OCTOBER 20, 18XX.

I must apologize to you.  I wanted to update with my findings as quickly as I possibly could, but instead I was bedridden for a week, which was far from my intention.  My memory is somewhat hazy, but I shall do my best to report exactly what happened.

I had just put Felix into the Absorber.  After several minutes of the machine whirring and buzzing, a viscous liquid poured into a beaker I had laid in the output section of the Absorber.  Based on those notes I found wrote, as well as the several tests I had conducted on the aforementioned rodent population, I knew I had yielded the perfect results.

I had done it — I had Felix’s dreams in the glass container right in front of me.  The liquid was completely clear in the container, almost as if nothing was inside of it at all.  I swirled the liquid around in the glass a few times, before dipping a syringe in it and slowly drawing in the dreams.  Once the beaker was drained, I looked into the thin barrel of metal and glass, barely processing what was about to happen.

I was sweating profusely.  But I could not prolong this moment any longer.  I rolled up my right pant leg halfway up my thigh and, in a swift motion, pierced my vastus lateralis.  As soon as I injected Felix’s dreams into my leg, I had the strangest sensation I have ever felt.  I could feel the liquid — burning hot — spread through all my veins.  It even felt as though it was infiltrating my muscles and bones.  This sensation. . . it was a mix of intense pain and extreme euphoria.  My body felt numb and asleep.  I couldn’t move.

While my body was near paralyzed with simultaneous pain and pleasure, I saw visions that I could not explain to you.  I saw metal giants and impossibly tall buildings.  The animals were starved and especially crazed, masses of people blinded and walking in oceans of bloodied sand.  And there were so many other things I could not describe, even if given the chance.  But something that I cannot seem to get out of my mind. . . something so seemingly benign, yet so sinister. . . all the flowers were gone.  I don’t even like flowers.  But to know they were missing, it felt horrid.  I have no idea what any of this could mean.  And while it is daunting, it is something I must move forward with!

NOVEMBER 26, 18XX.

For the last month, I have been injecting myself daily with Felix’s dreams.  He has grown accustomed to the process and even looks forward to it.  He has even stopped crying altogether!  What a well-behaved child.  Though I must say, he has been looking a little pale.  But it is more likely to be caused by the switch from sheep’s milk to goat’s milk. . . the agriculture group on campus started locking the sheep in a different, much farther location.  But I digress.

I believe it safe to say — I have never felt better in my life!  I have not again seen those nasty visions as I did with the first injection.  And from the daily supplements I am quick, I am sharp, there has never been a time where I was healthier.

My students and colleagues have noticed a difference as well.  They asked if I perhaps had someone at home that has given me a refreshed sense of life.  To which I simply reply ‘yes.’  Because technically that is not a lie, it is just someone they might not envision.  And even if I were to tell them about Felix, to say that a baby gives you a refreshed sense of life, they would laugh right in my face.

I plan to take this research to the university heads at the end of the next semester, as I believe I will have sufficient data collected from myself and from Felix.  I just know that this will be a breakthrough that Undergrove University has been waiting for.  My predecessor must be rolling in his grave now.

JANUARY 29, 18XX.

Everything around me has been moving so fast.  Time is a blur, and I don’t have much of a grasp of myself these days.  I slip into days and weeks without sufficient sleep or nourishment, all without realizing the amount of time that has actually passed.

I am also starting to feel the effects of the dreams plateau a little — though I am still in the best physical shape that I have been.  In addition to my impaired perception of time, there is an occasional pounding headache here and there, but I am not worried too much about it.  Surely it is just from tiredness.

On a similar note, Felix has been looking more and more gaunt.  His muscles aren’t developing at the rate I assume they should, and he is sleeping less and less too.  Perhaps I am not feeding him enough.  A growing boy should eat lots and lots to stay healthy.

Just one more thing before I try to rest for the night—I am starting to reconsider if I should take my findings to the university so soon. . . something of this scale may need to be studied for much longer than a few months.  I will give small details of what I am working on to get them intrigued and (hopefully) supportive of my project.

MARCH 6 18XX

Somet hing is o f f.  I can’t seem to get my thoughts in or der, And it feels like my m in d is moving faster than my body will allow  .I am having  tr o u ble fall ing a sle e p and I am getting lost in visions that are aga in like what I saw after the first inje ction . I am go ing to lo wer my d o sage of Felixs dreams and see if that he lps

Felix him self is the same as I.  Despite there being m u ltiple meals that I give to him he does not take them as he used to  He has not rec o mmenc ed c r ying as I had hoped,  I am start ing to think that this mig ht not be healthy for either of us  But sci ence req uires sacr ifices of all kinds  S o we m ust per severe. . . I kn ow it wi l l be wort h it.  It has to be. . . r ight?

MARCH 15, 18XX. These d r e a m s . . .

They are n ot dreams at a ll Th e y are nightmares

APRIL 9, 18XX.

I am in a Lucid state, and I don’t know for how long.  FoR days I have been sick and feeling awful, I can sureLy say the same for felix.  I have since stopped taking his Dreams, yet I caNNot stop seeing these VisiOns everywhere I go.  I see such strange things.  This time, there are burNing houses and burning animals. . . the stars and the heavEns are ScreaMing. . . and this time the sky is gone.  Everything is blaCk and DarK, and I regrEt ever stepping out of my lab that night.  Felix doesn’t deserve tHis.

Perhaps that was why my predecessor had to leave in the first place. . . he already tried this. . . he already failed.  We are not meAnt for anyone’s dreams eXcept our own.  And I’m sorry I took yours away from you, FeLix.

A PR IL 13, 18 XX

Fe  li x,    m Y  dea r  boy. . .  i aM s o  s o    rry.  I   c o ul   d  n Ot  gi v  e yoU t he  world.

THE HORIZON TRADER HUDSON CAMPBELL

At a crossroad, come dawn, there exists the slight possibility of a meeting with the horizon trader. He uses a stiletto to cut where sky meets earth, peeling them apart like old wallpaper. He slips from the tear, always smiling, always ready to peddle his wares from distant lands and realms, which he keeps safe within his tattered coat. Trinkets such as a piece of tangible light that warms the palm, a glass pyramid with a tiny skeleton of a man within, a set of knucklebone dice with no fours and two threes, and no less than seventeen lost manuscripts in half as many lost languages.

He also carries ontological delicacies such as rainy Saturday mornings, lute-songs by the campfire, and visions of the first murder, which he bottles up in old masonry jars that still smell of spiced peaches and shattered dreams. He will rarely accept payment up front, only bowing his head and slinking back to wherever it is he comes from. But years later, if you find yourself at a crossroads come dusk, he will return. The stiletto is rusty now, but still sharp enough to sever sky from earth and he will slip out, much the same as before, and take back his gift and something a little extra to give to some other unfortunate soul.

PROMISED KNIGHT • RENEE CHEUNG

Pulled from a deep slumber, exiting his dreams of eternity, the man awakens.

The cot he lies on is small, uncomfortable, and unfitting for such a momentous occasion. His surroundings are bleak, gray, and chilling. The man shivers, realizing that he’s no longer wearing a coat. Sitting up, he looks at the walls to his left and right, examining the small room he finds himself in. The man knows nothing of who he is, possesses no memories, no direction, no purpose.

He is simply a man.

There’s a hiss. A door opens, parallel to the cot and hidden in the unmarked wall, and a man steps inside, dressed in clothes as gray and bleak as the structure they both find themselves in. The newcomer looks at the man and takes a moment to examine his features.

He’s the one.

“I’m happy to see you,” the newcomer says.

“Why might that be?” the man asks.

The man isn’t sure if he should trust the newcomer.

The newcomer smiles. “I am Hanson. You are Benevolent.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Benevolent. That is your name,” the newcomer, Hanson, explains. “You are here because you were destined to be. You are a great hero of the past, preserved in an endless slumber until the day when we need you. We believe that day is now.”

“Who is this ‘we’?” Benevolent asks.

“The Revolution.”

The walls lower around the two men, disappearing into notches in the floor. Their true surroundings are revealed. Hundreds—thousands, perhaps—of men and women stand around the two men, arms crossed as they watch the man on the cot. Each is dressed in identical clothing, creating an endless sea of drab, gray fabric.

They all stare at Benevolent. He is their hope, the one whom they have been waiting for.

“It’s time to fight.” Hanson takes Benevolent’s hand, helping him to his feet. “Come, we must prepare.”

They begin walking through the crowd. As the two men push through, the sea of gray parts, creating a path to a spiral staircase at the end of the large room. They begin to ascend, and Benevolent pauses. He has a sudden spell of déjà vu. For a brief moment, no more than a fragment of a second, Benevolent feels as if his memory has reentered his mind. Then, as quickly as it came, it leaves.

“Why can I not remember my past life?” he asks.

Hanson replies, “You are experiencing the side effects of the preservation process. Not to worry, it is natural. It will pass. Your mind is from another time. You’ll need to wait for it to catch up.”

“Then wouldn’t it be wise to wait?” Benevolent asks. “Wouldn’t my memory prove to be

useful in the battle ahead?”

Hanson stops on the step he is on, taking a moment to look at Benevolent straight on. His gaze pierces into Benevolent, an intensity burning in his eyes.

“We have no time,” he says. “We must act now.”

Hanson turns back, continuing up the staircase. Benevolent pauses, looking out over the mass of people below as they all prepare for the battle ahead. Each of them gathers in loose formations, following orders from their superiors as they equip themselves with weapons, armor, and supplies. Benevolent takes it all in for a brief moment, unable to pinpoint the familiarity he felt before, then continues following Hanson to their destination above.

The staircase appears to lead to an office. Tables are set out on each side of the room and a large, circular window overlooks what Benevolent can only assume is the outside world. It looks bleak. Unnaturally dark clouds hang low in the air, buildings are all built from the same gray material, and the surface below is oddly deserted. No one is outside, despite a criss-cross of streets sectioning off the city into neatly formed squares.

“So, this is the future?” Benevolent gazes out the circular window.

“What’s left of it.”

Hanson gathers some belongings on the table: a coat, a book, and a strange looking, silver instrument. The small device catches Benevolent’s eye, its sheen glinting briefly in the dim light, and he watches as Hanson pockets it in a bag along with the other belongings.

“It’s not much,” Benevolent says.

Hanson nods. “That is why we fight. The Great One is in control, but he does not deserve his rule. The world is forced to meet his ideals, his demands. We have no freedom, no choices, no way of personal fulfillment. We fight to re-

store rule to the people, as it was once before.”

He points to the building in the center of the city, the one towering over the others.

“That is the Great One’s stronghold. It’s there where he lives, rules, and makes his demands. We are to attack it before nightfall.”

Hanson turns on a lamp set on the left-most table, then flips a switch integrated into its top. The wall behind the table collapses, revealing a set of ranged weapons stockpiled in a hidden compartment.

“Take what you need.”

Benevolent takes one of the larger weapons, holding it like a rifle in his hand. A familiar feeling sets in, and he realizes that he’s done this before. He’s fought with similar weapons before. Hanson shoulders the bag he’s packed, and grabs his own weapon from the compartment.

“The others should be ready.” Hanson gestures for Benevolent to follow him back down the staircase.

They both descend once more, finding themselves looking out over the masses of men and women, all equipped for the battle ahead.

“This is yours.”

Hanson takes a set of armor from one of the soldiers, handing it to Benevolent. The same familiar feeling washes over him as Benevolent fits the armor over his head, expertly strapping each of its pieces into place as if it were second nature.

Benevolent and Hanson both take their place in front of the crowd, watching as they form a rough military formation.

“Now is our time!” Hanson shouts. “Too long have we squandered in the shadows, obeying the commands of the Great One who rules in his fortress of deception, greed, and tyranny! While he lives a life of extravagance and comfort, we are forced to operate the machinery of his well-oiled machine. We once fueled it with the sweat of our labors, and now we must fuel it with the blood of revolution! He must know

that we will not surrender to his oppression and false wisdom.”

Hanson turns to Benevolent, resting his hand on his armored shoulder.

“We now have the one who is destined to aid us. We have the one who will end this fight, this war we have waged for so many years. The scales will be shifted, and the balance of power will once again be restored to its natural state!”

The crowd gives out a cheer, raising their hands in anger and agreement.

“For a New Age!” Hanson shouts.

The crowd echoes, “A New Age!”

The entire room breaks out into cheers, a mixture of joy, anxiety, and determination filling the cold, dry air.

Hanson turns to Benevolent. “You and I will be leading a small group towards a weak point in the stronghold’s structure. The rest of the fighters will be causing diversions around the larger entrances, drawing out the enemy forces. His bots will be scattered thin, allowing us time to break in.”

Benevolent nods.

“I need you to stay close to me.” Hanson continues, “You’re the key to—it has to be you.”

“What do you mean—?” Benevolent begins to ask.

“Move out!” Hanson raises his weapon into the air, and their small group of soldiers begins to move to the other side of the room, running in a loose formation.

Benevolent brings up the rear, watching as their squad and dozens of others exit through various hidden doors in the large room’s walls. He takes a moment to absorb his surroundings, taking in the towering buildings, tangles of metal pipings, and thick, dark clouds that continuously hang low in the air. Not a single person is in sight.

They round a corner, separating from the rest of the soldiers, and begin to move around

the side of the stronghold. Hanson leads the group with ease, as if his entire life has led up to this moment. Benevolent, however, feels as if he is in a dream, following his thoughts through an endless maze of streets and memories. Flashes of moments return to him as they approach closer to their goal, though it all seems to fade as quickly as it arrives. These buildings, these streets, they seem so familiar yet so different.

For a moment it’s overwhelming, the disorienting flood of recognition that comes over him. Benevolent trails behind the rest of the group for a bit, slowing as his mind begins to race. Something isn’t right. He knows this place, or he knows he’s supposed to know this place.

They come across a dead end, and the squad takes a moment to regroup. Benevolent props himself up against a building, catching his breath. Hanson makes his way through the group, inspecting his troops.

“You alright?” Hanson stands over him.

Benevolent nods, though his head throbs with an immeasurable amount of pain.

“You sure?” Hanson comes closer, examining his face.

“It’s coming back to me.” Benevolent winces and rubs his temples.

Hanson’s face contorts into panic for a brief moment, then he straightens his composure.

“We have a moment to rest,” Hanson says. “They should be starting the diversion soon.”

The next few minutes are spent in silence, each of the soldiers clutching their rifles in anticipation. Benevolent crouches down on the ground, his head in his hands, wincing as his surroundings seem to spin around him. They all wait, the dark clouds seemingly lowering as time continues to pass.

Then, Hanson sits up, eyes looking upwards towards the stronghold’s overbearing silhouette. He’s heard the sound. The other groups have begun their assault. Hanson signals for them to

continue forward, and the other soldiers start to move.

Benevolent is still crouched down, leaning on the side of the building as if he’d tumble into eternity if it weren’t for its support. Again, there’s something about this moment that doesn’t feel right.

Hanson starts to move before noticing Benevolent hasn’t stood up.

He approaches him. “Benevolent.”

Benevolent looks up at Hanson, examining his concerned expression carefully.

“I’m beginning to remember,” he says, rubbing his temples.

“We need to keep moving,” Hanson says. Then, when he doesn’t respond: “Benevolent!”

The two men look at each other, both of their faces taut with distress.

“We need you,” Hanson says, a desperation building up in his voice.

Benevolent picks back up his weapon and begins to stand. “Alright.”

Hanson turns back to the rest of the squad, signals for them to push ahead, and they continue making their way through the streets. Benevolent barely manages to keep up with the rest of the group, still struggling to process the continuous flood of revelations.

But there’s no time to deliberate.

Sparks of energy erupt from the end of a dead end street, sending the squad scattering for cover. Hovering machines encased in sleek, gray metal approach, guns mounted on their armored bodies. They spray another round of fire, drawing the soldiers back once again.

Hanson rolls out of cover, firing at the central android. “Keep moving!”

The machine bursts into flames, sputtering out of control as Hanson continues to fire, piercing through its hardened exterior. The other drones stop converging for a moment, weaving out of the line of fire.

The other soldiers, emboldened by the leader’s heroism, begin to push forward. Sparks and projectiles fly through the air, the darkened, quiet streets now alive with the lights and sounds of battle.

Benevolent follows their lead. His head pounds. His ears ring. He fires, sending an android to the ground. He ducks into the alcove of a building before firing at another machine just as it manages to take down a soldier charging forward.

“We’re at the entrance!” Hanson shouts. “Don’t let them stop you now!”

The soldiers give out a battle cry. The ragtag group’s lack of organization clashes with the androids’ preprogrammed coordination. Benevolent realizes that, at its core, this is a battle of chaos and order. The revolution seeks to take down the system that has oppressed them. They believe in their fight, they depend on it.

But is it the right fight?

Benevolent’s thoughts are interrupted by an explosion. His head erupts in more pain, and he’s knocked off his feet as the wall beside him combusts in a spectacle of heat and debris. He hesitates for a moment, disoriented by the blast. The world seems to slow around him, ash sprinkling the ground like snowfall. Then, he picks himself back up. He stumbles over the body of a soldier, his wounds rendering him unrecognizable. Benevolent continues to limp forward, coughing from the rising smoke.

He raises his weapon and fires at the opposite wall. Another explosion erupts, and smoke fills the already heavy air. More androids swarm forward, and Benevolent begins to take them down. He only needs to fire at each one once, executing them one by one with unnatural precision. The blazing energy of each bolt lights up Benevolent’s eyes. He locks into a trance, the rush of each kill controlling his each and every move.

Then, the drones stop coming. Benevolent keeps his weapon raised, still anticipating any incoming threat. The smoke and dust begin to clear, and the only sounds of battle are the ones heard in the distance.

“Benevolent.”

He whips around to the voice, his weapon aimed at the figure standing just behind him.

Hanson backs away with a start, his hands in the air. “Calm down, calm down. It’s me.”

Benevolent realizes he’s breathing heavily. His heart races. His head continues to throb in pain. He lowers his weapon and takes another moment to look at Hanson through the aftermath of smoke and ash.

“You’ve exposed the entrance,” Hanson notes.

Benevolent looks, and he sees that he’s right. He can barely make out what’s left of the interior of the Great One’s stronghold.

“Why have the drones stopped?” Benevolent asks.

Hanson hesitates, unsure how to answer. “The Great One must know that we have won this fight. But he’ll be ready for another.”

Benevolent surveys the area. He and Hanson are the only ones left alive. He looks towards their opening. The interior appears to be dimly lit, covered in ash and obscured by the wafts of smoke still emanating from the fires blazing up and down the street.

“You and I will have to continue the mission,” Hanson says. “You’re still our key.”

Benevolent pauses, then says, “I still don’t know what that means.”

“Sorry?” Hanson asks.

“How am I your only hope?” Benevolent asks. “At first, I believed it must be my skill, but I’d require my memory to recall my abilities. Then, I believed it was my identity. That, in some way, I am the only one who can cross the threshold of this stronghold. However, I’ve

realized the impossibility of that idea. Why bring the rest of the troops here only to have me continue the fight alone? So again, I ask, what makes me so important?”

Hanson grits his teeth. “Benevolent, you are simply meant to help us. It’s destiny.”

“How do I know if it’s destiny,” Benevolent asks, “or deception?”

“What are you implying?”

“What I’m saying,” Benevolent continues, “is that I woke up with no memory and only had a few seconds to process my surroundings. And there you were, the one to greet me. You were the one who explained all this, the one who insisted that I aid in your revolution. And now I stand here, at the base of this stronghold facing the heat of an uprising—the heat of a coming war—balancing on nothing but this trust.”

Benevolent is mere inches away from Hanson now.

“And now,” Benevolent says, “I have reason to believe this trust does not exist.”

“Fine,” Hanson says. “Fine. Just know that if you step through that opening, you will have an opportunity to finish what was started— you’ll have the opportunity to finish what we both started. This revolution was not built on falsehoods. I can assure you that I did not put my brothers and sisters through hell just to lead them to a false heaven!”

Hanson’s face contorts into rage. His hands are shaking in anger.

“They are dead!” Hanson then lowers his voice to nothing more than a whisper. “And I would hope that they did not die for nothing.”

Benevolent examines Hanson’s face, searching for traces of truth and glimpses of lies. The memories continue to flood in, and while he does not possess the bigger picture, he begins to realize that Hanson is right. Benevolent is important, he knows that for certain. The stronghold holds knowledge—truth.

It’s then that Benevolent realizes what needs to be done. He can’t be distracted by Hanson. He still believes in his ideas, he still knows that revolution needs to take place. Yet, Hanson’s ideas of revolution may not align with Benevolent’s.

“I believe,” Benevolent raises his weapon, “that this is where we part.”

He pulls the trigger, and Hanson has no time to react before the blast hits him in the chest. He’s knocked off his feet, sent tumbling to the ground like a pile of rocks.

“He must…” Hanson coughs up some blood, spitting it towards Benevolent’s feet. “He must… fall…”

He goes limp, his eyes staring lifelessly at the sky as the sounds of the revolution he’d carefully built thunder in the distance. Benevolent takes one last look at the man, then shoulders his weapon.

Bending down, he reaches into Hanson’s bag, taking out the book, coat, and silver instrument he’d taken from the spiral staircase office. He examines them for a moment, then pockets the book and instrument, leaving the coat to cover Hanson’s lifeless body.

He faces the exposed entrance to the stronghold. He knows it’s time for the truth.

The room he steps into is barely recognizable. The ash and smoke have consumed the interior, making it their new home. A door sits on the opposite side of the room. Taking one last look at the street, Benevolent turns the door’s handle and steps inside.

The next room is enormous. An entire block of buildings could be moved into its space, and there would still be room for more. The walls are lined floor to ceiling with shelves of books. Some are physical copies, the old paper versions used by the ancestors of the past, but most are digital tapes, stored in neat orderly lines and pulsing with an odd, hypnotic energy. The room

is separated into two different stories, a balcony wrapping around the shelves on the second floor. Ladders and spiraling staircases lead up to the knowledge held on the upper level and allow one to precariously access the books on the higher shelves. Chandeliers and neatly placed lamps illuminate the walls and arched ceiling, their light reflecting on the shine of the ornate, wooden shelves.

However, the magnificence and grandeur of the room is nothing compared to the shock Benevolent feels in this moment. For another, more prominent feature of the room has captured his attention: a statue.

The statue dominates the center of the enormous hall. It’s a man, standing in an authoritative pose, overlooking the endless rows of books and tapes that stretch to infinity.

It’s him. It’s Benevolent.

“An impressive collection. Wouldn’t you agree?”

A man steps out from the shadows, clothed in elegant robes, clutching an elegantly crafted cane.

Benevolent is overwhelmed with shock as he realizes that this man, like the statue, is him. His hair is a bit more gray, his eyes a bit more tired, and his face stretched with wrinkles, but Benevolent knows it’s him.

The man smiles. “I’ve waited for this day you know. Not in anticipation, but with existential dread.”

“Who are you?”

The man laughs. “I assume that question was rhetorical. You already know the answer.”

“But…” Benevolent stammers, “but how?”

The man smiles. “Long ago, I—we, I should say—discovered something that would change the course of history. In fact, it would be the key to changing the course of history.”

The man approaches closer, then produces a small, silver instrument from his pocket, the

same one Benevolent took from Hanson’s bag.

“I assume you have one of your own,” the man says. “It holds the secrets of time. It allows its user to travel forwards or backwards with no effort at all. Oh, it was a marvelous invention— our best! Its only side effect was the brief amnesia that overcame me after each jump. One’s brain is incapable of processing such a cosmic change, so it naturally takes time to adjust. But that was only a temporary setback. I began jotting down notes, keeping them in books that I’d read after I’d made a journey.”

The man turned over the instrument in his hand. “But it’s power corrupts. You see, with the force of time in the palm of my hands—our hands—I was able to accumulate all the knowledge of the universe. I could go to The Beginning, The End. We could write our own destiny, carefully creating the perfect timeline for our own personal gain.

“But that’s when I discovered my true purpose. I needed to use my knowledge of the universe for a greater good. I had to restore balance and peace to the world when it so often erupted into chaos. So, I did. With me as the benevolent ruler, the world became one of perfection. There was no more war, no more conflict, and no more governmental turmoil. There was only me—us.”

Benevolent stepped back from the man, the flood of memories rushing in all at once. He knew that this man, this man that was really him, was correct. It hit him like the blast of an explosion, the realization erupting in his mind. He was learning the truth.

“So that makes me—”

“It makes you a past version of me,” the man finished. “Hanson was hoping to exploit you, use you to take me down with his rebellion. He learned of our secret control of time and calculated the exact location of our next jump. He took your instrument and book. He knew that if you were to enter this stronghold, you could kill

me… but I could not kill you.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“Because I lived through all of it,” the old man answered.

“So you once stood where I stand now,” Benevolent says.

“I’m afraid so.”

“You’re afraid so?”

The old man’s face twists into a grim smile. “This is an important moment in our history. It’s the moment where a decision is made. I have tried to change this moment, to prevent the next series of events from unfolding and unraveling the carefully laid plan I have constructed, but no matter what I’ve tried, the same thing still remains.”

“And that is?”

“Hanson planted an idea,” the old man says. “He planted an idea in your head that has already dug its roots into your subconscious before you even arrived at this stronghold.”

Benevolent realizes, once again, that the man is right.

“You must die,” Benevolent says.

The old man nods. “You have seen what Hanson sees. He sees the world I created as flawed, dull… unforgiving. I see it as a miracle of humanity. With one person holding power, one person with the knowledge of the universe, the course of humanity is bound only towards perfection.”

“But at what cost?” Benevolent asks. “It’s only perfection in your design.”

The old man smiles. “You may not see its benefit now, but when you live the life you are destined to live, the life I have lived, you will begin to see that all roads lead to my idea of perfection. You’ll see the war, the greed, the endless skirmishes that erupt when human beings are forced to share power.”

“I may not be able to prevent my own future,” Benevolent says, “but I can allow humanity to create its own.”

“I knew you’d say that,” the old man says fondly, as if recalling an old memory.

Benevolent raises his weapon, pointing it directly at the old man’s face— his face. The haunting image of his own eyes stares back at him from the opposite end of the weapon’s barrel.

“The irony is,” the old man laughs, tears forming in his aged eyes, “I can do nothing to stop you. If I kill you, I kill me as well. You are my past. We are linked. All possible outcomes lead to my death, the end of what I’ve built.”

“It’s what must be done,” Benevolent says.

“I suppose so,” the old man agrees. “What was it Hanson called us again?”

“Benevolent.”

“Ah… yes…” he chuckles. “I suppose that’s fitting. Benevolent: kindness, charity, a gift… oh yes… Oh, a gift indeed.”

A single tear falls down the broken man’s face. “Enjoy being me.”

Those are the last words he utters as he falls to the floor. The sweet, grim smile is still on his face, his eyes looking above the statue towering over him.

The old man fades away, killed by a mere memory of himself.

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

—George Orwell, 1984

“Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

—H.G. Wells

TABLE DANCING THE RAGE OUT

MADELEINE MISNER

The pinkie nail of my acrylic set broke off suddenly and a sharp, bare bloody cuticle stands exposed and my coffee is cold and the restaurant is dead and I want to jump on tables and scream and curse in the heat and heartbreak of yet another rejection. Not even the Beatles or dolphins could conjure happiness in my anger-ridden disposition today.

Today is a “fuck you” day and I still must douse the bubbling and popping embers through yogic breathwork and meditation to try and instill a calm acceptance in me that my nerves have never known. I know I’m cool and hilarious and gorgeous and all the other synonyms told to inherently single girls to make them feel better about the missing love and the self hugs. If I hear another You’re great... but, This has been fun... ... but, I love you. But. then I will abandon God and Mother Nature and my

Own Free Will and swim out to the buoy, where sharks don’t see marital sadness but only rage; there I will grow gills and hunt for fat fish with my bloodstained teeth Forevermore.

HOPEFUL DESCENT OF A LEAF

NATALIE WONG CHRISTENSEN

Underneath the cassia branches I used to sit Like I was the song you wanted to sing. How do I remember when everything around me forgets?

II

Yet I still dare to dream, past moons hovering over the earth Mirrored in a thousand still lakes, two worlds formed. I possess neither; I live in them both.

III

I can no longer spend my evenings gazing at the stars as if through your eyes, Mornings make a promise better kept. I am no longer the reflection in your sweet spring, Though a thousand petals float there in stillness.

IV

Flickering yellow lanterns float towards heaven. Releasing the last one from my tender hands, I learn to love what the ancient ones called fleeting.

V

Any beginning is also an end, a kiss. Fear not what has happened, but what will happen due to fear. As you close your eyes, there is no one else to be.

ABEJA REINA • NICHOLAS DE LA TORRE