Oakland Arts Review Volume 6

OAKLAND

ARTS REVIEW

Oakland Arts Review ( OAR ) is an annual journal published through Oakland University in Rochester Hills, Michigan. OAR is dedicated to the publication and advancement of literature written by undergraduate students from across the United States and around the world. We publish fiction, poetry, essays, comics, hybrid and experimental work, and art. Because we believe that undergraduate students have much to contribute to the literary world, it is our mission to provide a platform for this generation’s emerging writers and, in so doing, create a journal that is of both high artistic quality and great literary significance to readers from all backgrounds.

Oakland Arts Review Volume 6

Spring 2021

Logo Design

Natalie Williams

Oakland Arts Review (OAR) is an annual international undergraduate literary journal published by Oakland University

OAR

Department of English 586 Pioneer Drive O’Dowd Hall 320 Rochester, MI 48309

Submit to: www.oaklandartsreview.com

OAR is published by Cushing–Malloy, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan

Cover Design

Alison Powell

Front Cover Art

“Brazen Bison”

Cameron Wasinger

Interior Layout Design

Kevin T. Ferguson

OAKLAND ARTS REVIEW.COM

OAKLAND

ARTS REVIEW

SPRING 2021 STAFF

Jaclyn Tockstein

Caitlyn Ulery Kat Zuzow Managing Editors

Maddie Eiler Graphic Arts Editor

Cassidy Eubanks Social Media Manager

Emily Lawrence Jaclyn Tockstein Nonfiction Editors

Channer Podlesak Caitlin Sinz Fiction Editors Renee Seledotis Sharese Stribling Poetry Editors

Eileen LeValley Ashley Glasper Jake Warsaw Copy Editors

FACULTY ADVISER Dr. Susan McCarty

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Caitlyn Ulery Managing Editor

Readers,

To say that 2020 was rough is a vast understatement. Many of us lost our jobs, our routines, our loved ones—everyone’s world changed seemingly overnight. As the COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses and recreational centers to close, what we were left with was isolation, but also art. With nowhere to be and nowhere to go, we turned to the arts: books, movies, music, podcasts, television shows, anything to divert our attention from the waking nightmare of the present and to remind us that we are not alone. Art, and the people who created it, became essential once again as the world remembered its necessity.

With this volume of the Oakland Arts Review , we sought to showcase the resilience and brilliance of undergraduate writers and creators in the face of so much adversity. This journal features magic and whimsy that can transport readers to different realms or realities, like the futuristic society of “Ersatz” or the familiar yet foreign landscape of “Water Baby, Storm King.” Perhaps you will feel the same cautious curiosity as Marisol when you meet the boy from the moon in “Luna, Luna,” or experience the sense of wonder that emanates from “The Piebald.” We are eager to share with our readers the variety of fictitious, but distinctly familiar, contributions that this journal has to offer.

Yet, this year’s submissions also remind us that COVID and quarantine have not erased the challenges or struggles faced by many across the globe. There is a tired anger expressed in “We Have Your Card on Profile” regarding the prevalence of racial profiling, and “The Grocery List” brings attention to the decimation that war has brought to people living in the Middle East. “Guns as Trojan Horse” reveals the looming anxiety of being a grade school student in an age of school shootings, as “Edith and Abby” documents the pain of being separated from a sick lover on the grounds of bigotry. Though finding distraction and escape is essential in times like these, it is just as essential to remember that new hardships do not erase the ones that have been ingrained into the world for centuries.

Though the artistry expressed by our contributors is varied in terms of subject matter, all of our entries feature some form of isolated human experience, an example of what it means to be human. Each piece contains an element or image of humanity, be it a first-person narrator or a human protagonist or, as with our portrait series, actual human subjects. Our contributors have shared with us their unique, personal perspectives, and in doing so have demonstrated the way quarantine has impacted

the way we create; when we are forced into isolation, we turn to ourselves for inspiration.

Volume 6 of the Oakland Arts Review exemplifies the power and beauty in being alone with oneself, and the subsequent growth and discovery that can arise from that isolation. It is my hope that as you peruse these pages, you find yourself connecting with your own sense of humanity and individuality, as well.

Sincerely, Caitlyn Ulery

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR IN CHIEF

Susan McCarty Editor in Chief

In an Instagram post on November 10, the day after the 2020 presidential race was called for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris became the first woman and wom an of color to be elected Vice President, the educator and writer Caroline Randall Williams (author of the devastating essay “My Body is a Confederate Monument”) posted a black-and-white photo of herself in front of a bookshelf, mascara-tears streaking down her face. She wrote, “When you just did a segment that meant a lot but then they drop off your dog’s remains in the tiniest little box and so you weep and fuck up your makeup and decide to take a picture because if we’ve learned anything from the eternal COVID shut in it’s that WE HAVE TO BE OUR OWN WITNESSES but then you’re absolutely going to pull it together and go teach these children you just need a minute and a breath. #2020 #whiplash #highsandlows #beyourownwitness”

Williams is taking a moment to grieve her sweet dog before she gives live commentary about the Harris win and what it means for our collective dreams of American equity. She is showing us herself in this in-between moment: a private pause for grief before she cleans herself up and, sitting in the same place, shows her clear face to the world. This pivot is a kind of emotional scene change, where the actor sits in the same place as the world reassembles itself around her; it feels familiar. But instead of an audience, this year we have only had ourselves to keep track of these shifting affinities as we run through our days and our lives, isolated and alone.

This call to be your own witness was anticipated by every writer and artist who submitted work to us this year. Each piece we read, whether it was selected for publication or not, felt like a reaching out from the void. The work we encountered had all the urgency of art created under duress, but it still managed to produce, from that void, the human warmth and conviviality of good art. In our virtual classroom space, with its glitchiness and impersonality, the OAR submissions were how we connected with each other—most of us strangers who had never met in real life. It was so reassuring to locate, in the work we read together, the essential and eternal drive to express ourselves and connect with each other, even during quarantine, and even (especially) in a season of fear and loss.

As Caitlyn points out, there are stories and poems in this issue that di rectly engage the struggles of quarantine and COVID-19, but there are also timely stories of being stuck where we are even where there is not a global pandemic raging beyond our door. In “Greek Mythology” by Danny Paulk, a young trans man

has found freedom for himself but worries about losing his younger brother. The narrator of Victoria Gong’s “Regeneration Song” comes to understand how one’s own mind can be a trap. And in “The Choir,” Tessa Woody reminds us that the opioid epidemic predates and will outlast our current pandemic.

For our contributing artists, too, quarantine has meant introspection. In this issue, many of them give us intimate self-portraits which ask us to look, with them, in side ourselves and attend to what is there.

I hope you feel the same sense of reflection, connectedness, and community that making this issue of OAR has provided for us. We are so grateful to the contribu tors for being their own witnesses, and for sharing with us what they found.

I am also immensely grateful to our staff this year, who managed to pull together a literary journal with no previous experience, and no in-person meetings, and to my co-editor, Alison Powell, who steered this ship into the port.

Sincerely, Susan McCarty

CONTENTS

ODE TO THE PINK COWBOY HAT 17 Quinn Carver Johnson

I SHOULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING THEN, BEFORE THE LAKE WAS CHOKED 19 Connor Beeman

SANITIZER 21 Selah Randolph

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS 23 Jesse Saldivar

COUNTENANCE 24 Tamara Blair

GUNS AS TROJAN HORSE Madison Culpepper 26

YELLOW WANT 28 Andrew Weller

WE HAVE YOUR CARD ON PROFILE

Anthony Herring

YIAYIA’S HEART

Kathryn Cambrea

IS GOD IN YOUR CHEST?

Anna Bronson

A SHORT TALK ON THE VOICE

Li

NEW-AGE VAMPIRE

Shira Haus

LAKE HOUSE 40 Clare O’Gara

MIND LIKE A BOOKSHELF 41 Anna Raelyn

HOW IT ENDS 42 Callan Latham

GREEK MYTHOLOGY 43 Danny Paulk

HOW LOVE CONFESSES ITSELF UNDER THE INFLUENCE

OF PSYCHEDELIC MUSHROOMS Shreeya Shrestha

THE PIEBALD

Emily Tsai

THERE IS A WOMAN LIVING IN MY MIRROR

Rebecca Lazansky

SMART GIRL

Beatrix Zwolfer

THE TREACHERY OF IMAGES

Sean DeSautelle

A POETIC CRISIS

Grace Penry

VOICE 69 Andrew Weller

FAIRYTALE

Grace Penry

REGENERATION SONG

Victoria Gong

WATER BABY, STORM KING 85 Annabella Johnson

THE BUTTERFLY JAR 94 Emalyn Remington

THE RAT AND I 97 Jacob Bloom

VIGNETTE FROM FATIMA FARHEEN MIRZA’S 103 “A PLACE FOR US” a. a. khaliq

SOMETHING THAT ASKS FOR NOTHING 104 Ella Schmidt

LAYERS 106 Laila Smith

EURYDICE 109 Carlee Landis

WHEN IT RAINS 110 Beatrix Zwolfer

PEACHY

Arin Lohr

TRANS PANIC DEFENSE

Arin Lohr

SCAN IT

Sijia Ma

GRASP

Zachary Parr

ALTERED SELF

Josephine Newman

HOLLYWOOD LASCAUX

Samuel Lawson

POC #1

Abby Green

OVERGROWN

Alexis Hawthorne

SUCCUMB OR RELEASE

Audree Grand’Pierre

METALLIC

Cara Clements

DISASTER 121 Josephine Newman

THE NEW SNAP 122 Arjun Saatia

CONFLICT 123 Rachel Peavler

OUT OF THE DARK 126 Arianna Jackson NIGHT OWLS

Meg Rouse

AMIDST THE PANDEMIC 146 Chloe Cook

PHOTOGRAPH 148 Julia Weilant

WHEN YOU HEAR HOOFBEATS, THINK HORSES

Makenzie Jones

THE CHOIR

Tessa Woody

AUGUST

Beatrix Zwolfer

LONGINGS OF A WELL-WORN BODY

Sydney Vincent

ERSATZ 162 Angelina Chartrand

CULPEPPER CIRCLE 170 Madison Brown

HOW MANY YEMENI FATHERS HAVE TO DIE SOMEWHERE BETWEEN MILLER AND WYOMING 171 Tahani Almujahid

SICKNESS 173 Amberly Day

LETTER, WRITTEN AND REVISED 174 Holly Bergman

WAITING THREE YEARS FOR MY AVOCADO TREE TO BEAR FRUIT 175 Ella Corder

PEAR DUSTED WITH CINNAMON 176 Julia Norman

LUNA, LUNA 178 Sofía Aguilar

WHEN IT RAINS 158 Beatrix Zwolfer

THE GROCERY LIST 186 Haddia Bakkar

EXPIRING YOGURT: 4 FOR $0.97 192 Matt Rogers

WORMS 193 Isabel Lanzetta

THEY SAY 50% OF MARRIAGES END IN DIVORCE, BUT 100% OF PRO-WRESTLING MARRIAGES END IN DISASTER 197 Quinn Carver Johnson

EDITH & ABBY 198 Kimberly Kosinski

TUNNEL VISION 200 Elizabeth Mercado

SEPTEMBER 209 Emily Dexter

THE BALLAD OF THE EARTHWORM 211 Caroline Poole

VOLUME 6

2021

ODE TO THE PINK COWBOY HAT

Quinn Carver Johnson Hendrix College

& in the summer of 1986, “I Wanna Be a Cowboy” was No. 12 on the charts

& the music video featured a man, a best of the bad type, buck naked except his hat, smoking a blunt in the bath

& MTV hated the video— they said it wasn’t rock ‘n’ roll but the song was a smash hit so they had no choice

& that’s how it found me two decades later: a teenager discovering the last remnants of VHS tapes in their room as the cartoon thought bubble begins to expand, learning that a fantasy looks like a naked cowboy in his bathtub

& that was the summer of 2006 but in the summer of 1986 Boys Don’t Cry released their only major hit song

& during that same summer, & that summer only, Bob Orton wore a pink hat when he came to the ring alongside the adorable one or when visiting Adrian Adonis

in the Flower Shop

& it’s telling that Lemmy Kilmister plays a spaghetti western cowboy in the video for “I Wanna Be a Cowboy” & I watched those old westerns in the boxes of VHS tapes

& it’s telling that in those films the hero wears the white hat, rides into town on a white stallion to gun down the villain beneath the midnight black brim

& I don’t need to tell you what it means that “Cowboy” Bob Orton came to the ring in a pink hat, paired with Adonis’s lace & eye shadow

& I don’t need to tell you who the villain of the story was or who was gunned down when Rodd Piper decided that a town wasn’t big enough for two men

but what I need to tell you is I can make a town or a home big enough for two men

& if you’re going to be a cowboy then I wanna be a cowboy, too & I want to wear the pink hat.

I SHOULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING THEN, BEFORE THE LAKE WAS CHOKED

Connor Beeman Ohio University

dive in.

the water is cool and crisp, dark stone and chemical brine.

each summer the algae blooms, green and sticky and wrong, the lake like rotting fruit, a crabapple bobbing in the waves.

it’s worse each year. they say it’s the pollution.

dive in anyway. this is our lake. our water, no matter what it hides.

maybe there was a time to save it. maybe there still is. but I’m not sure there’s time to save anything anymore.

maybe all things are past the time for saving. but do you remember being young? not knowing the words, but taking me past that scraggy tree line anyway. past the buttress of the docks, the fort of that island, to that stone beach, our private place,

shattered beer bottles, glass glinting like warning.

do you still remember that sunset?

how orange the sky was, that it stained the lake in its hues, red and orange like iron and blood.

I wanted to kiss you then.

I was 12 and I already knew that was wrong. I wanted it anyway.

I remember watching a water snake, now endangered, bob confidently in the waves.

I never liked them, I’d surrender the lake when I saw one, but you didn’t care, never showed fear like that. nothing in that lake could scare you.

sometimes I wonder if that’s still true.

SANITIZER

Selah Randolph Kennesaw State University

I gingerly readjust my Hawaiian-print mask for the sixth time, pulling it up the bridge of my nose and squinting in the early-morning sunlight. In front of me, a line of disgruntled customers stretches out of sight. Behind me a line of bright red shopping carts, glistening with sanitizer, do the same. I spray another squirt of sanitizer on the nearest one to appease the watching crowd, knowing full well I’ve cleaned the cart twice already.

“Ma’am, you’re welcome to head inside.” I push the handle towards the lucky blonde in question. “No, the sanitizer is not for sale,” I announce firmly. “Thank you for your patience,” I add, smiling as she snatches the cart and wheels it through the sliding glass doors. It is Saturday, and I’ve been here since five in the morning. My smile is not disingenuous. I love these people. I love being with them in their rawest reality. I am learning what it means to rejoice, learning to choose love when I’d rather not.

“Rejoice always,” I grumble to myself as I heave my aching body out of bed at the harsh cry of a 4:30 alarm. It is a small white cube I bought at Target, battery powered. I slam it against the wall to silence it; it is now smug and silent. Coffee on, sweatshirt on, battered Converse on.

Coffee spills on my sweatshirt. My eyes soften into laughter. I forget my nametag nine times out of ten to the eternal frustration of my boss, Mark, who won’t fire me even though I keep reminding him it’s an option every time he pesters me about the absent nametag. “I prefer anonymity,” I explain as I throw twenty-four cans of diced tomatoes on the top shelf in thirty seconds. He groans and walks away.

For the last several months, I’ve worked the morning shift as my older co workers stretch their paid leave as long as they can. Soon, some will trickle back as their bills become more urgent. They will wear gloves and masks; they will sanitize everything within reach. I will see the fear in their eyes when a customer leans in to ask a question more loudly, when an eye roll turns into a mask yanked down and pushed into their face. But for now, these friends are safe at home. I am more than happy to take the extra hours and this new excuse to procrastinate my online homework. The morning shift goes quickly. We spend the three hours before we open breaking down pallets and boxes, shoving product on shelves as quickly as we can. Before opening, I snatch a quick break, a cup of coffee sipped slowly in the back, by the dumpster. This becomes my morning ritual. The sunlight drips from

the trees like molten gold, and I breathe unhindered and cradle a steaming mug between my hands. I pause, leaning into love, content. I am learning that isolation shoves people into vulnerability. I see it in their eyes; they hunger for human connection. This mother, out of her home for the first time in weeks or months, with frustrated mirth in her eyes as she tells stories of her home descending into chaos while her husband tries desperately to work from the basement. This student with tired blue eyes and faded blonde hair, graduating quietly, alone and without a plan in the world in this wild new reality. A new father, unshaven and wild-eyed, yelling in excitement as he buys bananas and milk and chocolate and shows me pictures of his infant through the plexiglass. I absorb these emotions. I am heavy and tired and cannot release these burdens. Soon, I learn how to let the grief of these people flow through a lens of compassion and bleed out onto the varnished floor beneath my shoes. I take it, hold it briefly, respond in love, and then let it walk out the door with them. I am learning that compassion should not be a burden. I am learning that rejoicing does not mean ignoring pain; it means embracing it and allowing it to work fully.

I finish my coffee and peel myself off the sunny pavement behind the store. I catch myself when I begin to fall into exhaustion. We laugh, all of us essen tial workers, when people thank us like we just pulled them out of a burning build ing. My friend rolls her eyes as another couple expresses their undying gratitude. “Essentially,” she mutters under her breath, “I’m fucking exhausted.” We laugh. I love them; I love them all. It’s just a job. It’s just a morning. It’s just eight hours. It’s just life. It is exhausting and painful and beautiful and slightly above minimum wage.

“Rejoice always,” I think as my mask takes its rightful place on my face and I run register and I run around and I run into people who need something, everything, and nothing I can give them. I answer questions that become louder and more frantic as the day wears on. No, there’s no more toilet paper in the back. Yes, we’re open every day. No, you can’t skip the line. Yes, I do have to wear this mask. Yes, I understand how difficult it is for you to breathe in that. Yes, I’m sorry that you can’t think and wear this mask. Please wear it anyway. No, please don’t— MA’AM, PLEASE DO NOT PULL DOWN—ma’am. Please put your mask back on and kindly remove your face from mine. Okay. Another spray of sanitizer. The sunlight shines and a split- second rainbow glistens in the mist of seventy-percent isopropyl alcohol.

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

Jesse Saldivar University of California, Davis

When I was told that the last thylacine went extinct because of neglect I thought

That zoo over there let that poor thylacine freeze because they thought they could buy another but now none of them exist.

Then I thought to myself Who cares?

Well what right do I have to kiss someone goodbye or bury them neglect them hold them or offer fake smiles—

they’re going to buy a plot of land for thousands of dollars and now that’s where they’ll be in sixty-five years with brooding rocks that read

The one who didn’t cry for thylacine. Maybe even The one who cried for thylacine. It’s a matter of perspective really. The way those facets reflect neglect.

I have everything to be scared of but at least I lived in a way where I said things like Who cares? or That poor thylacine.

COUNTENANCE

Tamara Blair Eastern Michigan University

I’ve been thinking about that look on your face. I spend too much time thinking about it, really. My eyes trace the lines and strain themselves in the read ing. I always want to know what the shape of your lips means. I want to know what the curve of your brows says. I want to know. I’m afraid to know. Do you remember those pajamas you used to dress me in with all your fa vorite team mascots? I never watch sports. For a while, I hated sports. But I loved you, so your favorite teams were my favorite teams. I didn’t care who won. Joseph and I sat on that worn leather couch in the basement and watched SpongeBob one time. We had never seen an episode of that show before. You passed by us on your way to the office. You stopped, hand still on the doorknob.

“What are you two watching?” I turned the volume down. You looked at the screen. “I hate SpongeBob . Why is that garbage on?”

You went to work, and I turned the TV off.

“Why’d you do that?” my little brother whined. “He hates SpongeBob .” I thought it was fairly obvious. We never saw an episode of SpongeBob after that. Our friends watched that show. We didn’t. You still hate SpongeBob.

You came home from work one day complaining to Mama about two cus tomers. Two women came in to buy insurance. They were a couple. Your lips had morphed into a frown, and your eyes were pinpricks. Your brow cast shadows on your face.

“What does gay mean?” I asked. You and Mama shared a look. You thought I was too young, but she urged you to go on and explain anyway. I was looking at your face--the taut lines, the weight they bore--and trying to understand.

That night, we sat on my bed with a Holy Bible across our laps. You ex plained Genesis to me. You explained what God wanted. You explained to me what was natural and what was not. You explained to me, but I did not understand. I did not say I did not understand. You said you knew what God thought was right, and I knew that what you thought was right. You were always right. You loved sports. You hated SpongeBob. You did not like gay people. I did not like gay people. I did not understand, and I did not like gay people.

There was a girl in middle school, curly haired. We sat together sometimes at lunch. She brought books with her. So did I. We talked about books. I talked about the stories I was writing. She listened like no one else. She smiled like no one else. She called me creative and smart and talented. I thought she was creative and smart and talented. At home, I still thought about her. I played music, closed my eyes, and thought about dancing with her. I thought about her curls and her smile. I thought about how it would feel to have our hands on each other as we swayed to Tchaikovsky. She asked me, once, if I have ever liked girls. I told her no. She told me she had a crush on a girl. She left it there, and I would not pick it up. I thought about you. I thought about your eyes, pinpricks, and shadows.

In tenth grade, seeing you made my stomach hurt. Your casual comments made my hands shake. Sneers made me go still. I liked listening to Elton John. You called him a fag. I listened to his music even more. I would sing along to “I’m Still Standing,” feeling powerful for those three minutes. Still, I looked at your face. The night of the big fight—the night that I wrote the letter—I stayed up in bed, staring at the ceiling, worrying about what your face would look like. The letter was sitting on the kitchen counter. Should I go back and tear it up? I wanted to throw up. I didn’t believe I would get any sleep.

I woke up to you and Mama standing over the bed. She held the letter in her hands. There were tears in her eyes. I looked at your face. I looked at the shape of your lips and the curve of your brow. My eyes strained themselves reading— there, the jaw is hard, but, here, the lines are soft. What did that mean? Your eyes might have been pinpricks, but I couldn’t meet them. My heartbeat sickened me. We went over that letter point by point. We told each other we loved each other. We loved each other. We loved each other. Maybe we were telling the truth. You agreed to let me see a therapist again. There were just two points we skipped over: I do not believe in Christianity.

I like girls.

Why did we skip over those? I think about it too much. I think about it be cause we never talk about it. Do you think I’m going to hell? Is it because it would hurt too much to say it aloud? You can tell me. Please, tell me. I’m still trying to read your face.

We played a family game of Life and I got the “get married” tile. I put another pink piece in the car. Nobody said anything. The shape of your lips did not make a smile, nor did they make a frown. Your brow was furrowed. I looked at your face and traced the lines with my eyes, divining a meaning that meant nothing and everything. Those lines are not my fate. I looked anyway. I love you, and I’m think ing about the look on your face.

GUNS AS TROJAN HORSE

Madison Culpepper Central Connecticut State University

The adults say that we need the guns to help us win a war, that they’re sacred to America, that they’re used by the heroes in the fight.

Yet there’s carnage in classrooms. Desks are abandoned and overturned like wreckage of a fallen city, and no slogans can sanitize the blood of seventeen in Florida, thirty two at Virginia Tech, twenty six at Sandy Hook.

The adults tell us to admire the craftsmanship, the chambers that hold as many bullets as soldiers in the belly of a wooden horse. They swear it’s not the guns, it’s the people; it’s their twisted, unhealthy minds.

Yet my friend’s hands shake as I try to comfort her, because every lockdown feels like another headline, another shooting, another number soon to be forgotten.

The adults say our schools will become fortresses, our teachers will be armed. Meanwhile, I say I love you to my dad before I get on the bus every day,

so if I don’t return he won’t regret our final words.

Yet every word I speak isn’t valid enough because I’m just a kid, I don’t understand what they keep telling me –that there’s value in something carved for blood and war.

The adults say we need the guns to help us win a war, but the only war I see is the one where students become soldiers, textbooks become shields, classrooms become battlefields.

The adults do not want the children to speak because the children will not stay quiet. The children are finding their voice in the ruins, and it’s louder than any gunfire the world has ever heard.

YELLOW WANT

Andrew Weller Pennsylvania State University

We were teetering on the edge of Friday and reunions and love making me dizzy up her steps, wanting as a pond envelops a stone in a cup of lilies. Want can reverse all course, rose-color her hints, pull you across the state along dashes of yellow—that shade is still hers along with our empty February. I checked my mail for her card, finding only coupons for clothes. Behind our phones, I turned over the stones in her voice.

Want can convince you stones are soft. Perhaps the mailman raked her card into the wrong pile. Perhaps, February is just dead space between us and spring, where yellow belongs to dandelions and goldfinches, raincoats and coffee stained cheers, lemons and seeds.

WE HAVE YOUR CARD ON PROFILE

Anthony Herring Ball State University

Slender, rounded lines ensnared it. My signature on its back side, transcribed in dull, black ink. The emerald tree of the Forest Park Public Library— born of powerful pine —is embellished across the front.

Everything else...was nothing but white.

It was simple really: a library card renewal. I watched in anticipation.

The bony, brittle fingers of the lady behind the desk slowly scooped it up.

Sunken eyes embedded in an ivory face scanned it as if overseeing a grim transaction.

My granddaddy, a strong and stable soul, stands next to me in silent waiting. His glasses are dazzling halos against his dark complexion.

Is this card yours?

My hairs on the back of my neck shoot up!

The lady’s eyes bore into mine as if she were some vehement vulture circling over her prey. I slowly inch away from the desk.

My granddaddy and the lady now have their faces at point-blank range Opposing opposites. Black and white. And me, smack dab in the center of it with my light brown skin.

What did you say?

An astounding arsenal of words, phrases, and expressions spill out of my granddaddy’s mouth. The lady, already a deathly pale becomes practically drained of all color.

It’s just standard procedure— It’s his card.

I get that, sir, but it’s— It’s his card! Why would he steal his own card?

The lady grows squeamish in the face, loses her place. My granddaddy sighs, closes his irritated eyes.

Come on, kiddo

With the flip of a page, he disappears.

The automatic doors slam behind him.

My perplexed eyes peer at the lady, whose skin is white as fresh snow. She simply stares at me

but in my confusion, I turn away. I decide to glance down at my skin. Not a single speck...not a single drop of whiteness.

My eyes look up and suddenly— I understood.

YIAYIA’S HEART

Kathryn Cambrea St. Thomas Aquinas College

enveloped the tongues of all who knew her, Greek and American alike, Maria , they said, Maria.

Maria sleeps in Tappan Reformed Church Cemetery but she is awake in your smiling curls and elbows. In your eyes, brown like a frappe with no sugar.

You have the heart of yellow gold, which rested on the chest of Maria.

But, where is her heart, you ask? Why does it not sing like the bouzouki? Why is all you hear the clat clat of metal under your wine-red nails?

Maria’s granddaughter, you see Yiayia in stories, her heart is words, which you cannot grab. Conversations before your birth are flowers to family, saviors for strangers, unremembered by you.

And the heart you wear is tangible. You try to hold it,

but it doesn’t hug your finger.

It is not a memory of yours, for you never met Yiayia. It could never be her heart.

IS GOD IN YOUR CHEST?

Anna Bronson Pratt Institute

T he statue looked so much like my dad I had to blink a few times to make sure it was real. And it didn’t look the way I’d last seen him, eyes closed and hands crossed in his casket, but tall and proud in yellowing marble armor, pointing out to a crowd no longer listening with a little cherub tugging at his leg. It was the nose more than anything: strong and straight, standing out against the face like it was leading the charge. It was my nose and it was my sister Rosa’s nose and it had been our grandfather’s nose. I gave mine a tap.

“A relative of yours?” asked an accented voice behind me. Turning around, I found a slim Italian woman with long, dark hair draped over her shoulders. She wore a bright floral blouse, frayed jeans, and Gucci boots I had bought a knockoff version of at Target with my last paycheck. I’d wandered off to some far corner of the Vatican, not following my audio guide and not really worrying about where I’d end up. The Spirit should be my guide, after all, and in God’s capital city its guid ance should be stronger than ever.

“I think he is,” I said, pointing to our matching noses.

“The resemblance is incredible,” the woman said. “That is Emperor Augus tus. You come from Roman nobility.”

“I’m Maria,” I said, holding out my hand. She smirked with her soft-look ing glossed lips and shook it. Her hand looked like a child’s inside mine, so soft that she must have moisturized every hour on the hour.

“Would you believe,” she said, still smirking, “that I am Maria also?”

I laughed a little louder than I should have, then looked around to see if anyone had noticed. The only other person was a tourist in khakis who had decid ed to take a nap on the floor, which felt sacrilegious, but it wasn’t really my place to say. It was only a matter of time until I met another Maria in Italy, after all. “I must confess, when I saw you from behind, I thought you were a friend from uni versity,” she said. “But we are both Maria and I think that is a sign. You have been to the Basilica?”

The truth was that Saint Peter’s Basilica was the reason I was there, but instead of going I had spent three hours wandering around some building looking at paintings by artists I didn’t know. Maria was so pretty it made me forget what I was procrastinating, so I said, “No,” and she clapped her dainty hands together.

“Say ‘ Ciao, Augustus ,’” Maria instructed, and I did, and then she took me by

the arm and out through a garden lined with orange trees.

“You work here?” I asked. We walked past a stone fountain with a saint in the middle—I didn’t know which—and headed toward an open patch of grass with gigantic hedges and huge, white heads, at least three times my size, lined in a row. “I volunteer,” Maria said. “I am an art historian. These heads are other emperors.” Maria pointed around the garden like I could possibly miss them. We kept walking and the heads passed us like highway lights. “Where are you from in America?”

“Las Vegas,” I said.

“Ooh,” Maria said. “Casinos and showgirls.”

“My sister is a showgirl,” I said, thinking of Rosa dancing onstage in her big purple headdress.

“Not you?”

“I play piano,” I said. I’d always complained to my dad about how he gave me his big hands, and he would hold mine up to his and shake his head and say, “No, these are piano hands.”

We turned around a shrub and began weaving through a different garden, this one lined with beautiful flowers of every color. Carnations or chrysanthe mums, I couldn’t be sure.

“Piano bar,” Maria said, nodding like she’d seen one on TV or something, and I just nodded too because she was right; I did work at a piano bar. We turned around another hedge and there was the Basilica. A great peaked dome I somehow hadn’t seen through the trees, tanned by centuries of weather and worship. Inside was…what? Absolution? Closure? “That’s just the back,” Maria said, and we fol lowed the sides of the Basilica until we stood in Saint Peter’s Square.

After Dad’s chemo every week, we would sit in his bed and watch the travel channel.

Duvet pulled snug under his arms, he’d sit with his thin hands crossed on his stomach, knuckles protruding, and his head resting against the wooden head board. Where there used to be luscious black curls was a beanie covering a patchy, shaved scalp. I can’t ever keep still, so I was crocheting him a new hat when he leaned over and said, “We should go to Rome,” in his tired, croaking voice.

“Okay,” I said, because I didn’t have a reason not to, and because the show about luxury European hotels that was on made me really want to visit a haunted castle.

“Before your grandfather left Italy to come to America,” my dad said, start ing his infamous we used to have nothing speech, “he lit a candle at la Basilica di San Pietro for his father who he’d never see again. We should do the same.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” I said, because I didn’t want to hear it.

“Talk like what?” he said, un-crossing and re-crossing his ankles under the white duvet. I was sitting on top of the blankets, legs crossed, and I scooted over so

he wouldn’t have to fight against my weight. “We’re going together,” he said. “Get your computer.” So he watched over my shoulder while I failed to spell Travelocity twice in the search bar and we booked a flight three months from then from Vegas to New York to Rome.

“Tell me more about Rome,” I asked when we were done, resting my head on his bony shoulder, careful not to put too much weight on him. My hair was long then, the color his used to be and covering his chest like a second sweater.

“There is a cafe your grandfather used to hang out at with his friends called La Casa de Caffè . He took me there once when I was young and I met the most beautiful girl…” With a strand of my hair between his forefinger and thumb, he talked about Rome until he fell asleep.

Saint Peter’s Square was littered with pamphlets and there were workers with garbage bags going around to pick them up. A big platform was in the middle of the square with seats lined up around it. “The Pope spoke this morning,” Maria told me.

“Littering isn’t a sin?” I asked. The front of the Basilica was even grander than the rear, with huge columns beside a stone staircase leading to the entrance. The line was long, maybe longer than it had been when I first got there, so Maria and I got in line together and I tapped my toes while I eyeballed the Swiss Guards in their red and yellow-striped uniforms.

Maybe I should come back tomorrow, I thought. Try again when the line isn’t so long. I kept tapping my toe and the line moved forward an inch or so. I’d say we were easily fifteenth from the door. Maria lifted her Gucci boot and stepped on my foot to keep it still. “ Pazienza. The wait is not as long as it looks.”

I wondered what Rosa was doing. She would be waking up soon and get ting ready for work. Always working. She loved dancing and her boyfriend loved it even more, staying up every night to watch her performance from the back of the casino auditorium. When I suggested she use Dad’s ticket and come to Rome with me, she’d looked at me like I killed him.

“I have to work,” she’d said, and that was that. Religion wasn’t her bag, anyway. Kids who grow up Catholic either resent God or can’t function without Him, and Rosa and I were the full spectrum.

“What is in your head?” Maria asked, squinting her dark eyes at me. I looked around and realized we’d moved to sixth place.

“It’s hot,” I said, wishing the dress code had allowed me to show some ankle instead of being stuck inside my black t-shirt and slacks. I had packed a few nicer blouses, more like what Maria was wearing, but colorful didn’t feel right for the occasion.

“The sun is how God smiles,” Maria said. I looked at her serious face and couldn’t stop myself from laughing. “A nun told that to me,” she said, trying to fight her own laughter.

“We are made in His image,” Maria said. As we got closer to the door, the line looked longer and longer. Still I wanted to leave and come back later, but Maria took my arm and guided me through the doorway. I’d never been one for old buildings, but I forgot how to breathe when I stepped inside the cathedral. Light poured through the high dome windows, showing off arches lined in gold and Lat in, which sloped down to meet white and gold tiles on the floor. The air was cool, and for how many people were inside, it was quiet. The walls were enormous and I felt myself shrinking.

“The original Saint Peter’s Basilica was built in the year 324,” Maria said. “This was rebuilt in 1506. Old but not the oldest.” Not far from where we stood in the vestibule, tucked in a glass case by the wall, was a coffin. “Is there a dead guy in there?” I asked.

“There are over a hundred tombs here,” she told me. “Ninety-one popes, a few saints and Catholic kings and queens.” There was so much to look at, but my eyes kept wandering back to the light coming down from the dome in thick, uninterrupted streams, landing on the altar. “If you kneel and pray,” Maria said, now whispering in my ear like anyone would be listening to us, “you can feel God in your chest.” I stared at her, blinking a few times so she knew I thought she was being ridiculous, but she held her ground and pointed at the pew. “Pray.”

Weaving around a few distracted tourists, I picked a pew with nobody sitting in it and genuflected before sitting down, because it seemed like the kind of place I should be vigilant about showing respect. Pulling out the kneeler, I lowered myself, folded my hands, and closed my eyes.

Should I recite the Lord’s prayer, I wondered, or is God so tuned in to this place that I don’t need to? I whispered it to myself anyway and let my head rest against my hands. Listening to the shuffling of feet, the whispering of oth ers’ prayers, tour guides talking about the old crucifixes hanging on the wall, I thought about how the kneelers here weren’t any more comfortable than the ones in Nevada. My mind wandered to my dad, there in his casket with his best suit and his bald head and the nose he gave to Rosa and me. I thought about Rosa and her wandering spirit and her big smile that she shared with an audience every night. I thought about my mom, whom I barely remember, and the empty space she and Dad left behind them.

And then I felt it, like a tightness in my throat. God was in my chest.

When I opened my eyes again, I didn’t know how long it had been, but the sunlight was dimmer and the people were far fewer. Maria was gone, probably back doing her job. My knees were numb and I had to sit in the pew and stretch my legs before I could stand. Not far from me was the votive candle stand, red lights flick ering, and when my legs were ready I walked over and lit a match. There was only one candle unlit.

“And the rain is how He cries?” I asked.

A SHORT TALK ON THE VOICE

Li Stanford University

1.) Larynx, trachea, epiglottis. Hard palate, soft palate. The vehicles of sound.

2.) In high school, my voice teacher told me to pretend my belly was a cauldron when I sang, and that every breath I took was cold tap water hitting the iron bot tom first, then rising.

3.) Over the years, choir directors told me stranger things. To pretend I was shooting laser beams out of my cheekbones, then to march backwards down an imaginary mountain. To smile like the Cheshire cat, or impersonate a professional bowler.

4.) When you sing you cannot see the muscles you are flexing. Larynx, trachea, epiglottis are useless map markers to a terrain shrouded in the throat. This is why voice teachers and choir directors choose instead to operate in weak - isms and analogies. Pretend like you are standing in a rushing river. Pretend like you are pulling down the moon.

5.) All of these images did nothing but frustrate me. They flickered some lightbulb of recognition within, but never turned it all the way on, never made it last.

6.) Seventh grade was when my friends began to play Fuck Marry Kill. Jack? Daniel? James? In basement sleepovers their names were tossed around like playing cards; assessed, swapped, and rearranged. Endless strings of giggles floated up to the dark ceiling. Then we’d watch She’s The Man and replay the shirtless Channing Tatum scenes in slo-mo.

7.) In 2011, Britney Spears released her seventh studio album, Femme Fatale, a godsend to America’s gays. Queers across the nation wept, romped, and bopped. Young men and women spackled their arms in glitter and twirled whole nights away. I was thirteen and Not Gay and not a woman, but I wept, romped, and bopped with the rest of them.

8.) God, I go crazy when a man has a raspy voice, my best friend Elisa told me, during a basement sleepover. Like Bruno Mars? So sexy. I thought for a little bit. “ I Wanna Go,” the fourth song in Femme Fatale , had all these little gasps and yelps. I know

just what you mean, I told her, but I didn’t exactly.

9.) What in Britney Spears’s voice plucked the sharp violin string of desire inside me? Was it her larynx? Her trachea? Her epiglottis? My voice teachers never gave me a term for the type of huskiness that made you not want to applaud but to do things to another person.

10.) We put words to our feelings but they are not exactly right. Do we know what makes a voice desirable? Do we know what makes a human desirable? There are pheromones , evolution, biology. Or there is sing like there’s an egg in your mouth. Sing like you’re lobbing a softball. She sounds like cut glass. He sounds like warm butter.

11.) I used to watch porn on the weekends like an astounded scientist, absolutely confused and goggle-eyed, practically holding up a magnifying glass. Flesh pounded on flesh, and I felt sorry for who I saw onscreen. Why would anyone choose to do this? Images didn’t answer my question, nor did the comments.

12.) We put words to our feelings but they are not exactly right. Pheromones or hor mones or puberty are the vehicles of new desire but they do not encapsulate how it felt to be mean, thirteen, and in the dark. Maybe this: Pretend like a hand inside you is clenching and unclenching. Pretend like you are a dog tugging on a leash.

13.) Kill Fuck Marry. Braden Justin Jeremiah. The giggles around me were a code I couldn’t crack. So, this is how I learned about loneliness and wanting and shame in the eighth grade. I looked for the map that would put name to my strange and contrary insides but it was not there. I retreated back into my shrouded self.

14.) But when “Till The World Ends” played at a dorm party ten years later, I didn’t need words to justify my body’s reaction. There was a beat and there was a Britney. And there were my own arms, finally, spackled in glitter. “I’VE LOVED THIS SONG

FOR TEN YEARS,” I screamed to my friend. “SHE’S SO GORGEOUS.” He beamed at me through his own sparkly lids and painted mouth. He had his own closet of unsayable things. But when we held each other and swayed, we could have been any two kids in 2011 or 2019, sharing one feeling, among others.

15.) Thank god I am not fifteen any more, taking deep shuddering breaths in a tiny room, going through motions because other people tell me to. Trying to flex mus cles I’m not even sure exist. Thank god I am not there.

NEW-AGE VAMPIRE

Shira Haus Allegheny College

There once was a girl whose blood was magic. So, she gave and gave and gave until her lips trembled, pale, and still it wasn’t enough to save everyone. Sometimes the plants on the windowsill die, even when you water them like it’s your religion, pressing banana peel into the soil, and still they stretch, aching, towards the sun. We are all pieced together, threads in the world’s patchwork quilt, and sometimes I take and take, suck the oxygen from the air before my rosemary, my thyme, my violet can breathe. I know this: breathing is not easy to do when there is a snake on your breast, poised to strike.

Open the blinds. Let me swallow the sunlight, let me brush the taste of dying from my tongue.

LAKE HOUSE

Clare O’Gara Smith College

We eat Lifesavers all summer. My brother and I count the goats on the island across the river. My father cuts the grass in the morning. He gives us money for ice cream. I rub my brother’s shaved head with my hands. I remind my brother to wear sunscreen. And he forgets. My father is fishing. We eat inside our white hammock. Hung between half-buried oars. My father uses large ice cubes. We hide behind loud doors. We name the stray cat Dick Cheney. Condiment packets in the freezer. My father catches a catfish over four hours. My father catches a catfish in the dark. My brother finds it in the morning, flopping on the grass. When I throw the creature into the water, it floats. We count five goats. We suck tadpoles into our water guns. Vanilla and chocolate melt into our hands. We play one game of Go Fish. And no one wins.

MIND LIKE A BOOKSHELF

Anna Raelyn Florida State University

Four books a week, it used to be. Now I’m lucky if I can find the energy for a few pages. A full bookshelf sits in the corner. But full is too empty a word— it’s overflowing. Manic days buy books that depressed days can’t finish. I color-coordinate, I try judging books by their covers, in the hopes that it will shake loose the inspiration I once had. The wind ruffles pages faster than my fingers can. The books might as well be blank. There’s a heaping pile of books in the corner, spines to me like children in timeout. The bookshelf is just a things-shelf now, like a junk drawer, like a toy box after a child’s grown too old to play. A candle, a lamp, a plant, some pills. These all get more attention than the things for which the shelf was named. There’s an overflowing bookshelf in the corner, and I’m drowning in my desire to read. New books, the hardcover kind that cost extra. Maybe that will get me to read. Sleep, I’m so tired. Maybe that will get me to read. I’ll carry one in my purse, just in case. “Read at night,” Mom suggests. “Read yourself to sleep.” But books are not the sleeping pills I need—they’re not strong enough. I’ll use books as my pillows, let the story seep in. The smell of old pages will stick to my hair, and when I awake I will read.

HOW IT ENDS

Callan Latham

University of Iowa

And the pond gets too high

And the water has yet to come

And it has not rained for at least a week

And the tulips in the living room

And they have died like quiet mouths

And they haven’t even bloomed in the ground

And they are put away like caskets

And the river cannot be a mirror

And the silver balloon is stuck in a tree

And the marsh marigolds will drown

And it will stain the sky like skin And nothing will breathe on its own And it will all start coming back And dead branches will bloom

And feathers will start to replace snow

And none of it will matter And the laundry isn’t done yet And knuckles are getting too pale And morning streaks like a pond And the pond is losing its shape

GREEK MYTHOLOGY

Danny Paulk

Centenary College of Louisiana

“Myths are stories about people who become too big for their lives temporarily, so that they crash into other lives or brush against gods. In crisis their souls are visible.”

July 1996

From the treehouse in the backyard, the yellow light pouring out of the house’s windows into the blue night made them all look like little shadow boxes, with parent and child puppets wandering from room to room inside. It was more of a big wooden platform suspended ten feet up the tree than a treehouse; they had a little corner near the back with a sheet of tin laid over it for when it rained, or when they decided to sleep up there. Bug Robinson was sitting with her legs dangling over the edge of the platform, lightly swinging them in the warm July evening. Her body was good and tired from walking through the fields smashing crawfish mounds with her brother, earlier in the day. She clicked her flashlight on and off absently while she watched through the windows for her mom. They had dinner without Dad again, and it was always too quiet without him there. The sound of voices and dishes being washed floated through the air, percussion to the noisy soprano of the cicada song.

Her dad had taken to calling her “Bug” again recently, and she couldn’t ex plain why, but it made her feel smug and satisfied. Her class in school was reading To Kill a Mockingbird , and she had tried getting everyone to start calling her Scout or Dill, to little success, but Bug worked well enough. She was trying to get her mom to at least call her Bug too, but Mom always calmly reminded her that she was named after her grandma and that was that. Her dad rarely called her anything else these days and even Cal had picked it up.

Speaking of Cal, she was expecting him any minute now. It was late, and Dad still wasn’t home yet. She sighed and reached for her Illustrated Book of Greek Myths. Mom had managed to find an entire set of them at the thrift store: there was a Greek one, a Roman one, and an Egyptian one. She got them last Christmas and read them all in under a month. By now she’d read each of them about five times, but the Greek was her favorite. She’d read it so much that the thin laminate from the cover was peeling at the edges, and the cardboard spine was exposed and

- Anne Carson PAULK

fraying at either end. Her favorite so far was still Hercules. In boring classes, like math, she liked to sit and try and imagine herself as Hercules’s best friend, tagging along from Labor to Labor and providing witty, helpful commentary. Sometimes she tried to think up a myth of her own, but she didn’t have any good ideas for one yet. Still, being friends with Hercules was fun. Sometimes she even yelled at Zeus. Yellow headlights. Dad was finally home. The car door slammed like an ax thunking in wood and she followed the dark outline of his body from window to window until it joined that of her mother, washing dishes by the kitchen sink still. Hands flew and heads turned back and forth like some sort of transformation sequence in a scary cartoon; she half expected her parents to fuse together or else turn into a giant, multi-limbed monster at any time. They were yelling at each oth er, but she couldn’t make out what was being said.

As if on cue, the back door creaked open and the beam of Cal’s flashlight was visible, sliding over the bright green of his rubber boots as he ran down the steps and into the grass. The screen door slammed behind him; their parents didn’t react. Bug shifted to help him up as he came climbing the treehouse ladder.

“Hey, bud,” she said.

“Hi,” Cal said, quiet, chewing on his sleeve.

“How are you doing?”

“Okay,”

“Okay. Did you brush your teeth?”

“Yes.”

“Mmm. Breath test,” Cal grinned and breathed a loud “HAAAH” all over her face. Mint and bub blegum.

“Good job.”

They sat in silence for a minute.

“Bug?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you read to me?”

“Yeah, ‘course I will. C’mere,” Cal clambered to sit in between her legs. She grabbed her Greek mythology reader and opened it in front of them so Cal could see the pictures and she could see the words.

“Hold the flashlight up,” He settled back against her chest, getting comfortable. She started reading.

August 2002

Jason Robinson stared into the bathroom mirror, combing his hair with his fingers: neat, then messy, then neat, then messy again. He leaned back and examined his body, turning side to side in the small space. He looked good. He

breathed out, making eye contact with his reflection.

“You’re a cool guy, Jason Robinson. A good son. Good friend.”

He walked out of the bathroom and through the hallway to the kitchen. His dad called out from the kitchen table, “Hey, Bug,”

He cleared his throat a little, but it came out cracked anyways. “Hey, Dad. Can I take the car?”

His dad hummed an affirmative without looking up from the newspaper.

Jason gave his thanks before heading out the back door to the beat-up 1985 Toyota Camry that served as their family vehicle. All the upholstery on the seats was peeling, and one door panel on the outside was a different color than the rest, but Jason had always had a secret soft spot for the Camry and its familiar old car smell. As he pulled out of the driveway, the tire pressure light flashed; he hit a pothole and it turned off again. God bless Louisiana roads.

He was headed to the river to meet up with Lilith. When he pulled into the little clearing on the higher side of the lock and dam, she was already standing there, staring dramatically off into the distance as a cigarette smoldered between her fingers at her side.

They’d both been inseparable since grade school and ended up coming out to each other within the same month when they were both fourteen. There wasn’t anybody in his life who knew him like she did, and he was proud and warm to be able to say the same for her. She turned her head, alerted by the sound of gravel crunching under his tires, and smiled at him.

“Hey, Romeo,” she smirked as he wandered over to the riverbank to stand beside her.

“I’m not gonna start calling you Juliet,” he rolled his eyes, but he was smil ing, too.

“Obviously not. I’m clearly more of a Titania, anyways.” She considered him with faux seriousness. “And you are kind of an ass, I guess.”

“Har har har.” He took her cigarette when she offered it and breathed deep, but he ended up coughing most of the smoke back up. She raised a brow at him.

“My mortal grossness,” he gestured. She grinned.

“But seriously, Jay, you shouldn’t bind your chest so tightly. You’re gonna mess up your ribs or something,”

He made a noncommittal noise, staring out over the water. The sun was just starting to set, and the oranges and yellows were rich and deep. He turned back to Lilith, blinking the phosphenes out of his eyes. She was fully lit by the setting sun, turning her skin a gorgeous golden pink. There was something about the way she was, the way she held herself; he would never understand how anyone could ever question her womanhood. The way she held her cigarette loosely, almost daintily, between two fingers, the arch of her brows, the chipped nail polish, the way she leaned back at the hip. She embodied “girl.” He had a guilty little jealousy of her, in that way. Her expression seemed much more poetic than his own stum

bling steps into masculinity, all baggy hoodies and ugly sneakers.

“Have you told your parents, yet?”

“No,” he sighed. “But I will before I leave in August.”

She nodded. “And everything’s all good with your school?”

“Yeah. I managed to get in touch with a current student there. Says he’ll help me find a roommate, and he’ll connect me with his doctor for hormones and everything,”

She nodded along, considering.

“What about you?” He bent down and started looking for good skipping rocks, picking them up one at a time and turning them over in his hands, feeling out the surface with his thumbs for any imperfections. “Are you folks still talking about that military college?”

“Yeah. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I don’t want to, but I might just end up stuck here getting whipped by the Bible Belt for another year,”

Jason cleared his throat a little, fiddling with one of the flat skipping stones. “You know, you could always come with me. I’d pay our rent. We could go together.”

Her mouth tightened sadly at the corners and Jason interrupted her be fore she could say anything.

“Right, cool, you don’t want to, that’s fine.” He avoided her eyes, hurling the stone out on the water. It skipped four times, then sank.

“I do love you,” Lilith said to him, all sweetness and understanding and no pity.

“No, no, I know. I love you, too.”

She smiled at him again and bent to snuff out the last of the cigarette. The tension broken, she straightened back up, and regarded him curiously.

“What about your little brother? What are you gonna tell him? Are you gonna tell him?”

Jason smiled nervously. “Believe it or not, I actually have a plan for how I’m gonna explain it to him. If I can pull it off, it’ll be easier telling him than my parents.”

She nodded in sympathy. “That’s good. I’m glad.” She waited until he made eye contact to continue, emphasizing each word. “I’m really happy for you, Jason.”

His lips quirked. “I know, Lil.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

“…I love you, Romeo.”

“I love you, too…Titania.”

That night, he clambered up into the old treehouse again to wait for Cal. It was more or less the same as it had been six years ago, although now there were

holes in some of the wood planks, and the tin sheet they used for a roof to keep out the rain had long since rusted over.

Jason unfolded and refolded the yellow piece of note paper in his hands, nervous. Cal was his kid brother. His opinion meant more to Jason than practically anyone else’s.

Eventually the screen door creaked out in the blue evening and Cal came gliding over the grass towards the tree line where the treehouse was. He was a quiet, thoughtful kid; quieter than Jason himself had been at that age. Pensive. It worried Jason sometimes, as much as it made him proud. Cal sometimes walked as though he was carrying every harsh word he’d overheard between their parents with him on his back. His little brother was so mature, but that maturity also spoke of years of carefree playfulness that felt stolen somehow.

Cal’s head popped up over the ledge.

“Hey, buddy,” Jason said, patting the wood next to him for Cal to sit. “Hey,” Cal said back. “I got your note.”

“Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Is it about Mom and Dad?”

“No. But you also can’t tell them. They’ll find out eventually, but they need to hear it from me.”

Cal’s brows furrowed. “What’s wrong? Did someone die?”

“No! No, of course not. It’s nothing bad, I promise. It just might be sort of confusing at first. It’s about me.”

“Okay. Is it—is it about your school?”

Jason laughed a little bit despite himself. “You know, I could just tell you if you stopped trying to guess.”

“Okay. So, what is it?”

Jason took a deep breath.

“Cal, do you know what transgender means?”

Cal shook his head, his eyes huge and shiny in the low light.

“Alright. It’s like…sometimes people are born boys, but then become girls. Or the other way around. And sometimes people aren’t boys or girls? Those are transgender people,”

Cal’s brow furrowed, not in anger but in confusion.

“I don’t think I understand, Bug. So, what, you can just, become the oppo site sex?”

“Well, I mean, not overnight, but yeah, essentially. And you can be just as much a man or a woman as anyone else. Sort of like…sometimes people get misla beled at birth, and later on they find out they’re actually something different. Like when you accidentally put a spoon in the fork drawer. You know?”

“Okay…” Cal was nodding along, but he still looked a little lost. “So, why are you telling me this?”

“Because I am. Transgender, I mean. I’m a guy, Cal.”

“You—” Cal’s eyes were saucers, but he still didn’t look upset. Jason

rushed to explain.

“And you know, it doesn’t change anything. I’m still gonna be me and I will always be your sibling and love you more than anything, but I’m gonna look different. And I, uh, I’m changing my name. And I’m gonna ask everyone to call me he, you know, just like any other guy.”

Cal was quiet for a long time.

“Is this…is this a joke?”

It stung a little, but Jason knew it wasn’t his fault. He was young and con fused. Jason could empathize.

“No, buddy, I’m afraid not.”

This was the part he wasn’t really sure about. But, if it worked, he would know that he had his little brother for life, no matter what.

“I, uh, I wrote something. To try and help you understand. If you want to hear it.”

Cal was quiet for a long time again. Jason could practically see the gears turning in his head.

“Okay,” he said, softly.

Jason’s heart was beating a punishing staccato against the inside of his ribcage. But, when he unfolded the yellow piece of note paper he’d written, his hands did not shake.

“You remember how I used to read you Greek myths? This is sort of like that. This is…If I were a myth, this is what I would be.”

He cleared his throat, and started reading:

In the old days, when the Sun chased the Moon not only side to side, but also up and down, around the Earth, all young Boys wanted to become Men. Virtually everyone wanted to become Men, except for some few Women and some fewer who were Neither or Both or All. There was one young Boy who had been told he could never become a Man because he had been taught all of his life that he was a Girl, and the only way for Girls was to become Women.

“Well, how do the other Boys become Men? Maybe I shall do what they do and see myself prospering of the same results.”

“The other young Boys are transformed of Body and of Mind; they do this by finding the Bodies and Minds of Men out in the Wilderness.”

“Then I shall do the same.”

And so, the young Boy-called-Girl set out in the Wilderness to become a Man. First, he sought a Voice with depth; for depth he sought the Ocean.

“Hello, Ocean. I have come for depth of Voice, for I am to become a Man.”

“Hello, To-Become-Man. You may reap my depths, but first, you must retrieve my favorite Conch Shell, who has been swept from the shore to the deepest of my trench es.”

And so, he swam to the bottom of the Ocean, and retrieved the Ocean’s favorite

Conch Shell.

Placing the Shell back upon the dry Beach, he thanked the Ocean, and when he did he spoke with all the Depth of the blue waters of the Earth.

Next, he needed his Body to be stronger. So, he sought out the great Earth quakes, which are so strong that they move the Earth. This was a difficult task, because the Earthquakes moved quickly and unpredictably. Finally, he caught one, and stood still among the shaking of the Earth, and spoke with the new depth of his Voice, “Oh, great Earthquakes. I am here because I am to become a Man, and I will need the Strength of Body which you exert upon the very Earth.”

“Hello, To-Become-Man. We will lend you our strength, but first you must hold together the two pieces of the Earth which we have split apart in our vigor.”

And so, he stretched his Body across the Gap and held the Earth together with his Arms and Legs. When he stood again, he was stronger than ever before.

“Thank you,” he said to the Earthquakes.

Last, he would need a new Name which would represent that he had gone through the Trials to Become a Man. It would represent all of his new Wisdom and Ma turity. He went to a very wise Oracle, but she told him that she could not help him.

“But you see the Future! You can tell me what Name I choose.”

“I am sorry, Young Man. Only you may choose a Name by which to proclaim yourself.”

And so, the Young Man left, saddened, and consulted many books and Wise Men for many years, reading the names of heroes but finding none which fit himself. Every night, he gazed at the Stars, which were random as spilled salt across the Sky. It was here that the Young Man had the Idea to find his Name in the Stars, the way that other Wise Men found the Bodies of Heroes and Monsters. He searched the stars for letters every night for years, until finally he had spelled a Name which fit himself.

“I shall be Jason.”

And thus, the Boy-Called-Girl became the Man-Called-Jason.

Jason’s throat was dry from talking by the end. He cleared it a little, feel ing stupid and childish at the same time as he felt proud of the words he’d found to describe his journey.

“So?” he said eventually when he couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

“I think…I think I get it. Jason. How did you choose that name, really?” Cal was quieter than ever, but his voice was sincere.

“In the myths, he’s Medea’s husband. I just liked the way it sounded. It means ‘healer,’ in the Greek.”

Cal hummed in acknowledgment. Jason leaned closer, touching their shoulders together. “This doesn’t change us, you know. I’m always gonna love you more than anything. Just now, I can love you as a brother, instead of a sister.”

Cal nodded along. He turned to Jason in the low light, and leaned heavi er against his side, tucking his head under Jason’s chin, just like when they were PAULK

younger.

“Jason suits you,” he said, and nothing more. Jason smiled into his little brother’s hair, and together they gazed quietly at the stars, interrupted only by the occasional twinkling of the lightning bugs. PAULK

Shreeya Shrestha Naropa University

“I saw you, right as you are now,” you said but there were bright yellow sunflowers bigger than your face. You envisioned me surrounded by sunflowers beneath you. Painted in your hallucinations, You saw me on a bed of yellow, “My little piece of the sun, what did I do to deserve this Goddess at the tip of my tongue?”

On a warm Thursday afternoon, back in fall when you used to spend your hours waiting for me to get off from class, you took me to a little shop at the end of the hill. “It’s the Daylight Studio, and the owner is such a hippie, he literally spent a whole summer tripping on shrooms!” you told me. Despite its name, very little sunlight entered the small shop. Its width was the size of a corridor. Right outside its entrance was a huge flamingo made out of rusted metal. It was painted pink and had prayer flags draped on its neck as a scarf. You introduced me to the owner and I pointed out all the little trinkets I liked in his shop. The little crystals, the handmade earrings, the huge porcelain mushroom sculpture on the counter. Every time I pointed something out to the owner, he told us a story of how he had found it.

As we were about to leave, I remembered I hadn’t asked his name. He said he hadn’t chosen one yet but people called him Peter.

“I’m Shreeya by the way,” I told him, and as is the normal response to my name, he asked me where I was from. “Nepal,” I answered. After my response, Peter only looked at you. He shared that he had been to Nepal several times and asked you if you knew that Nepal was one of the seven sacred gates to heaven. You didn’t know that, but you nodded along as he explained that all Nepalis, and by default me and my family, were guardians of that gate.

“She is not your woman, or your lady, or your queen; she is a Goddess,” he told you. Then turning to me, asked, “Has he ever told you that?” You have, once, I answered Peter’s question.

My bloodlines if traced back millenniums have tasted heaven.

HOW LOVE CONFESSES ITSELF UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHEDELIC MUSHROOMS

There isn’t much guarding I can do now away.

About a week prior to that day, we had tripped together for the first time. That night the ceiling in my room turned kaleidoscopic. I told you the age-old story of a man stuck in a maze. He couldn’t swim the ocean that met him at the end of the maze so he got out by making wings with feathers and melted wax.

“Icarus,” you said.

“Yes, remember the story of Icarus!”

Maybe you are my Icarus Yes

But remember he died because he got too close to the sun.

“You know what the story is really about? Drugs! It’s about drugs!” My laughter rang in our ears, light and feathery against the thick air. It then rested on your smile.

You are my joy You are my safety

I was looking into your eyes when you said you could hear the angels sing. I asked you how it sounded.

”

While you heard the angels, I heard the Divine Voice. She spoke to me in the oldest language I had ever heard. I couldn’t understand it, but I knew it was the first language. I tried to repeat her words out loud but my voice drowned hers and I couldn’t hear her anymore. I shared this with you: “I was trying to whisper it quietly, her words. I just don’t know what language that could be.”

You pointed to your Mjolnir pendant hanging from the doorknob, a pen dant symbolizing Thor’s hammer.

Could it be runes?

After my laughter erupted in the thick air of the night, tears hung at the corners of my eyes.

There is so much sadness in me

And it is contagious

When I confessed my love to you, we cried I’m sorry I cried I’m sorry I made you cry I didn’t intend to do that

Can I cry right now?

When you were in me, I realized that even if we hadn’t known how to speak to each other in a common language, we would’ve still known exactly what to do. Because our bodies carry that one primal knowledge. There would be an aching that would direct us. When we made love that night, there was nothing physical about it. It was an excuse our souls made so that they could meet.

I think I found a new religion I think it has something to do with you *

Around the same time that fall, when we visited Peter in The Daylight Studio every week, we were talking about moving in together. How fun it would be to have each other at our disposal. When we got serious about it you told me you don’t sign leases. “I can’t be tied down. Does that bother you?” you asked, but I shook my head.

I had a dream that night. It was the day before your birthday and there was a party at your house. We got tired so we let the guests party alone and went to your bedroom in the attic to go to bed. As I was about to sleep I noticed huge blisters pregnant with pus all over my body and I told you I wanted them gone. You said they would if I went to sleep. When I woke up the next morning in the dream, unlike you, they were still there. I went outside to look for you, I looked for you everywhere and I called your phone and called out your name as I scanned every block, every street. There were people walking around, hurrying to go to their classes and their jobs as I stood in the middle of a crosswalk. At last you picked up my call.

In that dream, I asked you where you were. You said, “I went away; I can’t be tied down.” I asked you when you were coming back. You replied, “You don’t need to wait.” All I wanted to do was kiss you and wish you happy birthday.

I woke up from this dream, crying, and the number of times you repeat ed, “I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere,’ did not console me because I realized that if the dream you could leave me then there was a possibility the real you could

leave me too. Once I was done crying I said, “I wish I could make you sign a lease to me, so that you would have to stay with me, like a fifty-year lease.”

You said, “You mean marriage? Are you proposing to me?”

I did not ask Do you know what it is like To need someone to love you?

*

Our first trip together had lasted so long, we were hallucinating till four in the morning. You said you were feeling pretty sober and wanted to finally sleep. But when I looked up at the ceiling, the popcorn bits were still moving in kaleido scopic waves. As you drifted off, I held you and whispered everything I had seen when I was tripping. Huge canyons, deserts and oceanic landscapes. You must have taken me to those places, because in the moments you held me, I finally saw the world.

I did not whisper everything.

I was scared to go to sleep. What would I do if we both woke up and our memories of the trip were not available to us anymore? What if everything that we confessed was only because of the shrooms? What if our love only exists within your will and without any leases?

What if you woke up and simply forgot me?

You told me to get some shuteye. I couldn’t tell you, under the ceiling, pulsing in geometrical ripples, that I was afraid to face the morning. The morning at some point in my life without you.

So, I told you, “If I sleep I’ll die.”

“No, love, if you sleep you’ll dream.”

THE PIEBALD

Emily Tsai University of Maryland

A valley, open

A woman, a white tern – a fairy bird, with egg, leaf, and mossy green child

Blessed fawn, you are life in the soil and blue with sorrow. Why?

You are a breath, birthed from a mottled tree with peeling bark.

You see her rise, and you must flee. Look:

Behind her, a trembling one whose song is a mist-veiled note, well worn and warmly heard. Not young, but flushed and

flowering, like you

THERE IS A WOMAN LIVING IN MY MIRROR

Rebecca Lazansky University of Tampa

It was a late winter morning; white-gold sunlight dripped into the room from the tall windows against the eastern-facing wall. The walls of Violet’s studio were made of exposed brown brick that smelled of cigars to her, though she did not smoke. She had hung sheer curtains the color of fresh cream over the windows be cause she liked the way the light diffused into her house and enveloped everything around her in a haze, as if she were living in a cloud. Clouds made her feel safe. She found the curtains on the side of Bushwick Avenue piled in a shimmering heap on the curb, and as soon as she laid eyes on them she thought they were the most beautiful curtains she had ever seen, but she almost did not take them because she was worried that someone might see her and find her strange or look at her funny out of the corner of their eye. Violet stood in front of the pile for a few minutes in a long black puffer coat that zipped up from her knees to her chin before she unzipped her coat, closed her eyes, stuffed the curtains into her jacket, and walked away briskly.

In the center of her living room was a large couch made of green cotton that felt good when she ran her hands over it. She liked to eat her dinners on the couch facing the windows instead of at the round dining table because of the empty chair. She hated having to stare at the empty chair across from her while she chewed her food. Each night, Violet set her plate down at the table with a folded napkin and a glass of pinot grigio and sat in her chair. Each night, she placed her palms face down on the tops of her thighs for a few moments, staring at the empty chair with men ace—that goddamn chair, dusty and quiet and cold from the lack of warm bottoms, mocking her with its silent laughter. Giving up, she would grab her plate and her napkin and her wine and plop down on the couch to stare at her curtains. Off to the left of her spot on the couch, right in her periphery, was Violet’s vanity. It was a beautiful vanity, an old gilded thing that belonged in a Baroque painting.

The top of the vanity where Violet did her makeup every day was worn with chipped gold paint that exposed the plain wood underneath. Each leg slithered un der it in smooth curves, like paintbrush strokes in the air, and terminated at a dove claw spread wide. The mirror was the shape of an hourglass. In the mornings, Violet sat on the matching claw-footed stool to apply her blush and creams and loose pow ders. This morning, she leaned in towards the mirror and rested her elbows on the vanity’s surface to stabilize her graceless hands. The woman in the mirror mimicked her, tugging the mascara wand through her eyelashes just like Violet. Peering closer, Violet noticed a small black smudge.

“Damn it,” Violet said. She licked her right pinkie finger and scrubbed at her eyelid.

“I was going to tell you if you didn’t notice,” the woman said back, scrub bing her eyelid just the same. The woman sat up straight and cocked her head to the side. “I think you got it.”

Violet cocked her head in the other direction. “I think so, too.” She ruffled the hair on her crown and scooted the chair out from underneath her legs to grab her things and head to work. She found her purse and her keys and her wallet, her notebook and blue fountain pen and, thankfully, she remembered to grab the shade of lipstick she was wearing. She swished out the door in her long black coat and thick black heels. The woman stayed in the mirror.

On her way to work, Violet liked to stop at a coffee shop at the exact midpoint of her commute. She walked three blocks east and four blocks north then turned right to descend the small flight of stairs off of the sidewalk that led direct ly into the café. The swinging glass door had one of those cheesy bells at the top of it. It was one of Violet’s favorite sounds. The inside of the café was temperate and light, and the black and white tiled floor made her feel nostalgic for a time she did not live through. She had perfected the art of removing her coat as soon as she walked into the café and draping it over her left arm so that she did not get funny looks for wearing a puffer indoors. Violet absolutely did not want to be that wom an who wears a giant black puffer indoors and does not know her order when she reaches the counter and asks the barista what variety of milk they recommend, the one who holds up the line to give exact change at the register for her coffee while everyone whispers to each other, “look at that woman,” so she always removed her jacket while kicking the swinging glass door with the toe of her boot, and she never carried cash.

She ordered a cortado with cinnamon, her usual. After ordering, she wan dered idly over to the bulletin board on the far wall, the one covered in lost dog posters printed in low-resolution and tutoring advertisements with a papery, tornoff fringe. Sometimes there was a flyer for a local art pop-up or some live music; if it looked worth going to, she noted the date and time and location in her head and then she went about her day with lazy thoughts of attending the event, how nice it would be to go, maybe meet some new friends. She liked to imagine that her friends would be very tall and wear stylish, cropped pants to accentuate their nice-looking ankles and tasteful shoes. They might like to walk barefoot on the beach at dawn or admire the silk dresses in the Renaissance oil-on-canvas paint ings at the Frick, just like she does.

There was actually an art show happening on Saturday that seemed worth going to. There might be some nice people there. It would be nice to meet some people. She scanned the board. In the bottom left-hand side of the bulletin board was a job posting:

Figure Drawing Models Needed (no experience necessary)

Inquire in person @ Williamsburg School of Art

There was a small water stain over the word “models” that made the ink bleed into the white paper so that the title really seemed to read, “Figure Drawing Moolds Needed.” What if she walked up to the receptionist at the school and told them that she was here to apply for the moold position? The receptionist would look at her like she was crazy! Then Violet would explain the joke, of course, and the receptionist would think she was so funny, quite clever. But she would never go and apply. She was not moold material, and she most certainly was not fig ure-drawing-model material.

When the barista yelled Violet! she walked up to the counter, grabbed her warm cup, and kicked the swinging glass door with the toe of her boot. The outside chill made her shiver. She set her cup on one of the narrow concrete steps in front of her, swung her puffer over her shoulders, and zipped it up to her chin. She then reapplied her lipstick, smoothed her coat, picked up her coffee, and continued walking to work.

Violet was chopping half of a sweet onion for her dinner when the woman asked, “Are you going to go? On Saturday?” Violet slid her finger down the length of the knife and watched a couple of stray onion bits tumble onto the cutting board.

“No, I don’t think so,” Violet said.

“Why?”

Violet shrugged. The woman frowned. “Why?” she asked again. Violet did not answer. “You might meet some nice people,” she said. Violet rinsed her hands in the sink and wiped them on her dish towel, the one that had small flowers em broidered on it.

“I suppose.”

“It would do you some good.”

“I suppose.”

The woman frowned again. Violet was annoyed. God, why was she so… intrusive? Violet lit the burner underneath her sauté pan and drizzled a bit of extra virgin olive oil from a dark brown bottle onto the skillet. She poured herself a glass of wine.

“What’s stopping you?”

Violet froze. She noticed how sweaty her feet had gotten inside her wool socks and how the wine glass in her hand felt heavy, as if it were filled with thick, dense sludge of saltwater and swamp moss. The oil in the pan sizzled softly. “I don’t know,” said Violet. She ignored the woman for the rest of the night.

It was a particularly balmy day for February, as if spring had stopped in briefly for a bite to eat. The sun dusted the buildings and the sidewalks in a sweet tangerine light that felt buttery on Violet’s skin. She walked out of her front door onto the street, felt the divinity in the air against her cheeks and the knuckles on her smooth hands, and immediately turned around, walked into her building, walked up the flight of stairs and through her apartment door, shimmied out of her puffer, turned around, walked back through her apartment door, back down the flight of stairs, and back out onto the street. She stood on the sidewalk with her arms hanging at her sides; the sun wrapped around her sleepily.

She took the long way to the supermarket because the long way dipped and wove in and out of beautiful narrow streets lined with flowerbeds and iron streetlamps and stucco townhomes the color of granite and mahogany. Violet liked the way the heels of her boots sounded against the smooth concrete, and she made sure to scrape and drag her boots slowly, shuffling, enjoying the way the air smelled, the way the breeze felt in between each strand of her hair and each eyelash, the way the sunlight tasted on her upper lip as she licked away the small beads of sweat. The long way was nice. Comfortable. In fact, the walk was so nice that she decided to ditch the supermarket and stay outside in the shade of the oak trees. Normally, at the fork at the bottom of 5th Street, she would go to the left, heading towards East River to sit on a bench and stare across the water at Manhat tan before she bought her groceries. That day, she followed the breeze to the right.

Violet found herself in front of a large white building that reminded her of the photos of ancient Greece from her old history textbooks: the Parthenon and the Pantheon and the temples of Aphrodite. The letters that sat above the front door read Williamsburg School of Art. She noticed how nice the font was. The street was quiet, nearly abandoned; she felt bare, watched by a flock of starlings that gazed at her from their perch on one of the power lines. The cables hummed. Violet scuffed her heels against the pavement and walked through the front door. The hall was cavernous with high ceilings of marble and white brick and brass light fixtures that hung down on long cables; it smelled like cedarwood can dles and floor wax. The receptionist’s desk was in the center of the room under neath the highest point of the ceiling, and its dark, lacquered surface was as shiny as a mirror. Violet did not like how large the room was because the desk was so far away from the front door that it took Violet quite a long time to reach it; each foot fall echoed so obnoxiously into the grand stillness that it made the back of Violet’s neck erupt in blooms of crimson.

“What can I help you with?” said the receptionist. His fingers tapped a keyboard and he peered up at her over the bridge of his metal frames. She did not think he would laugh at her joke.

“Um,” she said as she placed her palms face down on the surface of the desk, “I am here for the, for the modeling ad. The figure model—figure drawing… ad.” Her ears burned.

The receptionist picked up the black phone off of its plastic receiver and

dialed three numbers with his ring finger. He cradled the phone in the area where his neck became his collarbones and smiled up at her with a look of kindness and pity.

“Hey,” he said.

A pause.

“Mhm.”

A pause.

“Yes.”

A pause.

“In ten minutes?”

A pause.

“Would you like me to send her back?”

A pause.

“Okay. Mm. Bye.” He hung up and tipped his chin back to see her fully and clearly. “There is a class in ten minutes. The professor was wondering if you would be willing to model for it,” he said. “Think of it like an audition.”

Violet’s breath caught in the space between her throat and her teeth, and her tongue became so dry all of a sudden that it stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her palms left a halo of condensation on the surface of the desk when she lifted them off to wipe them on her jeans. She watched her handprints shrink away, embracing their impermanence, and saw the woman gazing back at her in the polished wood. The woman tilted her head to the side and blinked slowly at Violet. They stared like this for a moment, then two. Violet scrunched her brows together above the bridge of her nose.

What? she said to the woman.

Nothing, the woman replied. I wanted to wish you good luck. She looked into Violet’s eyes with a deep love, that of a mother or an old, old friend. What’s stopping you?

The woman looked beautiful. Violet had never thought of her as beautiful before.

The receptionist cleared his throat. “Ma’am?”

Violet let her eyelids flutter shut.

“Yes,” she said. “Sure. Where do I need to go?”

She stood at the edge of the room in the dark while the students walked in quietly and settled into their chairs in front of their easels. They all carried large pads of newsprint and drawing paper and small pouches filled with charcoal and graphite and oil pastels and kneaded erasers, permanently black from mistakes. They did not notice her. The professor told her that she was to remove her gar ments completely, and that she was more than welcome to leave them on the chair at that empty desk over there if she pleased, and then she was to sit down on the stool in the center of the podium in the center of the room underneath the fluo rescent lights for one hour while the students drew her lounging. He said it was

a beginner class, very low pressure. If she did a fine job and sat still enough, he would offer her a regular seat on the podium once a week. She stood at the edge of the room in the dark for six minutes before her hands began to unbutton her wool cardigan and unbuckle her belt and remove her socks and her thick black boots. She was supposed to be getting groceries. She slid out of her jeans and stepped her bare feet on the tiled floors. The fuzz on her legs stood upright; she was standing underneath an air vent in her underwear in public. Not again. She folded her arms across her chest. The professor walked up onto the podium and said a few words to the class. Her cotton briefs hit the floor silently and she walked to the edge of the light.

After the class, she walked back through the edge of the light as if she were living in a cloud. The students filed out, murmuring soft thank you’s to the profes sor as she stepped back into her jeans and pulled her cardigan across her shoulders. The professor said she did a fine job, a wonderful job. She had sat exceptionally still, the students got some fine drawing in, would she like to come back next week at the same time for a fee of $30? She said yes. She walked out of the classroom, back down the hallway, through the wooden doorway and all the way across the floor of the entryway. Passing the receptionist’s desk, she gave a a small wave while her boots clicked and shuffled and scuffed against the floor in loud, obtru sive echoes. She liked the way this sounded as she stepped back out into the gentle afternoon air.

Violet went back the next week, and the week after, and the week after. She felt good. She did not think she would enjoy sitting naked in front of other people as much as she did. Once, when Violet was in elementary school, one of the mean boys with spiky hair and a front tooth missing and jeans that were too big for him pulled down her skirt at recess in front of everyone as a prank. She was not sure why he chose her to prank—she was not an exceptional person and really did not think anyone knew her name. She stood in the center of the playground with the sun beating down on her shoulders and her red gingham skirt around her ankles while everyone laughed. She was wearing a pair of pink underwear that said Saturday on it in curly embroidery, though it was only Tuesday. It was the most embarrassing moment of her life. Now it seemed so far away. She began to smile at people on the street, showing them her straight teeth and round lips that she had forgotten she liked so very much. She bought herself bouquets of rose and myrtle and placed them in a tall glass vase on the edge of her vanity so she could smell them in morning while she got ready each day. Her cream curtains ballooned in the breeze against her open window as she dug out the emerald green dress with the square neck and long sleeves—the one she absolutely loved to wear but always felt overdressed in. She held it out in the front of her, smoothed the fabric out, and put it on to run errands. Before she headed to

the train station on her way into the city, she walked three blocks east and four blocks north and turned to her right to descend the small flight of stairs off of the sidewalk that led directly into the café. A cold snap had come through the night before. Violet stopped before the door and thumbed at the zipper on her puffer. She decided to unzip it for comfort and practicality but leave it on inside for the chill. While the barista got started on the cortado, she meandered to the bulletin board and saw a bright yellow poster for a local band’s Friday night gig at a dive bar around the corner. Violet walked up to the counter and asked for a napkin and a pen. She scraped out the date and time and location of the show in black ballpoint ink against the fibers of the napkin. The barista called her name and she stuffed the napkin in her pocket, grabbed her drink, and pushed her way out the door and onto the sidewalk.

Later that night, Violet placed her baked potato and salmon filet on a nice clean plate and poured herself a glass of wine. She had put on soft, heav enly music that made her want to dance around barefoot on the pads of her big toes, so she did. She danced and swirled with her plate in her hand and her wine against her lips. She felt lighter, full of air and breeze and the sky itself. The music wrapped itself around her waist and hummed against her ribs and pulled her into the kitchen where she found a few old candles and a box of matches in her junk drawer. Violet took the candles to the vanity and arranged them thoughtfully around the hourglass mirror. She lit them with a single match and set her plate down on the paint-chipped surface and floated over to her light switch. Flick. She undressed in the dark and walked over to the vanity. As she sat down on the stool, she shivered—the seat was cold. The woman sat naked across from her, too.

“Hi,” the woman said.

“Hello,” said Violet.

“Are you going to go on Friday?”

The candles flickered from breeze coming in through the open windows. The flames cast shadows across the woman’s face that made her look like she was not real, but made of fragile porcelain. Violet thought she looked so incredibly beautiful.

“I am,” Violet said. The woman smiled. Violet smiled back. The two dined together by candlelight while the curtains danced and shimmered in the young evening breeze.

SMART GIRL

Beatrix Zwolfer Montana State University

Smart Girl! is the tag she puts on the back-alley wall black lettering, measured, pretty graffiti, spray paint through a stencil. She titles the murals with an exclamation point Smart Girl! it says beneath the pigtailed woman painted by the back door of the Chinese Takeout Palace Smart Girl! For the fairy on Main’s traffic box An addendum with an s (Smart Girls!) for the mermaids beneath the bridge. Smart Girl! comes in broad daylight because she doesn’t care who catches her and it’s not a crime to write an unrefuted truth.

Smart Girl! carries her paint in her left hand, uses the right to flip off cops when they switch on the blue and reds and does not run because she has done nothing wrong only informed the world that Smart Girl! is every girl and no woman should be downed for simply being she. The law tries to remove the words but Smart Girl! doesn’t wash away with a power hose or disappear beneath a coat of paint. Smart Girl! is resilient and back in black and bold

typeface.

She smiles at the passersby with big teeth and open eyes watching every step because Smart Girl! is always watching even when shadows run long and lights low. Smart Girl! loves to scream and snap her jaw so fast it clacks and then parts again because she has pockets of words left to say. Smart Girl! opens her mouth and roars because she is not chained by silence.

THE TREACHERY OF IMAGES

Sean DeSautelle University of New Hampshire

My boyfriend studies art. Fine Arts: Undeclared is what the school’s De gree Works program has listed under his name and above his year—freshman. He likes photography but is best at painting. He likes the history but doesn’t want to teach.

I study marketing.

“But all I’m saying,” he says, “is that when your entire project is focused on consumer and financial profit, what you’re making isn’t art. It’s a product.”

“The poster itself isn’t a product, though.”

“Fine. But it’s fundamentally tethered to a product and selling it. There fore, it’s not art at all.”

This all started when I suggested my current project, creating an advertise ment for a fictional product, was art in one way or another. It had to be eye-catch ing and aesthetically pleasing—that’s art, isn’t it? I was using scissors and paints and glue and other materials that he grabbed from, you guessed it, the art depart ment But, being a real artist, he won’t hear of art outside of Fine Arts, whatever that means.

Arguments like this aren’t new to us, unfortunately. He has some vendetta against corporations and conglomerates. One of the first things he said to me was how I was pretty chill for a business major . He thinks studying art gives him some high horse to sit on and hand out critiques to the rest of us. Business majors only care about money. Science majors are stuck up. English majors are all right, but haughty because they think books are more important than paintings. He’ll go on tangents and rants about how every other major contributes to the downfall of so ciety, but still calls me a bitch when I joke about actually making money someday. “You can buy posters on the same websites as photography and paintings. What makes them different?”

“It’s not about the medium, it’s about the intention. You wouldn’t get it,” he says, placing his earbuds in and tuning out my business-major antics. And that’s the end of our conversation. I wouldn’t get it.

In the morning, we leave the dining hall and head back to his room. Break fast and dinner are probably some of the best moments of our relationship. Over subpar Belgian waffles and coffee drowned in cream and sugar, he’s very pleasant to talk to. Very gentle and calm if you choose to avoid the following topics of con versation:

politics capitalism consumerism religion warfare the music industry

which are only to name a few. Yet, the conversations that don’t somehow arrive at one of his tirades about the demolition of society are quite nice. This morning, he warmly recalls his childhood dog, which turns into a fruitful conversation regard ing pets.

But we can only talk about dogs for so long before it grows tiresome. Eventually, we agree to go back to his room where we have sex. The other good part of our relationship.

“It’s so profound.”

We’re next to each other in his bed and his laptop sits on his bare chest. He’s working on something for one of his classes. The screen shows a painting of a pipe with some French words which translate to, so he tells me, This is Not a Pipe His class is going over a movement called, so he tells me, Surrealism. The painting is by, so he tells me, Ren é Magritte.

“I don’t expect you to get it,” he says. I haven’t said anything and still I’m not spared from the artist’s wrath. I thought silence would render me sal vaged from this next round of judgement, but clearly I am mistaken. Significance, perception, and other words of the sort litter his passionate spiel on behalf of the painting. Lucky me. I’m basically getting a free lecture as he goes on about the painting and what it has done for art and why I need to care about it.

“And then, there is the theory it’s just a painting of a pipe...”

Thankfully, he fucks me again after this speech. I think I deserve it.

Suddenly, he wants to have a threesome.

“We’re in college, why wouldn’t we have a threesome?” is his justification. “Maybe because I just don’t want to?”

He has the nerve to roll his eyes at this, before turning back to his project. Sitting on his floor I manage to be called a prude, boring, and stuck up all within five minutes. We do our respective homework in silence, frustration palpa ble.

“You’re mad,” he finally says.

“Yeah.”

“I’m not an asshole for wanting to have a threesome, just so you know.”

Of all the things we’ve fought about before, this one really gets under my skin. He constantly criticizes me and judges my major and now, out of the blue, our sex isn’t even enough? Who does he want me to be? Mona Lisa?

My professor feels sick so my class gets out early. I consider going back to my dorm now that I have some extra time but decide against it. It’s early fall and already dark when I leave the lecture hall. I head toward my boyfriend’s dorm instead. Might as well surprise him. After all, spontaneity would be such a pleasant surprise from a business major.

The last couple of days have actually been better between us. For whatever reason he’s abandoned some of his artistic superiority complex and we’ve been having some of the best conversations. Equals. We’re finally equals in his little hierarchy of artists and rats. It’s not that far of a walk to his building and I’m there in just under ten minutes. There’s no one else in the elevator on the way up so I make it to the third floor in under a minute. To the left, down the hall, two doors down and I’m typing in the door code.

I’m not sure who I see first, him, or one of the two naked girls in bed with him. When they see me it’s like I’ve walked in on an exhibit of surprised Greek statues.

The two girls, both of whom study science, get dressed with impressive haste. By the time I’ve turned around to leave they’ve already pulled on their shirts, panties, and socks. He only throws on his department store boxers to chase me down the hall.

“Babe! Babe, come on!”

“Don’t follow me!”

“You can’t be that mad at me.”

“Yeah. I think I can.”

“You didn’t want to have a threesome!”

“That’s not an excuse!”

“Babe,” he says, putting his hands on my arms, “We’re in college. People mess around all the time. I’m not a bad guy.”

Ceci n’est pas une pipe. This is not a pipe.

Ce n’est pas un mauvais gars. This is not a bad guy.

A POETIC CRISIS

Grace Penry University of Arizona

I’m back at square one and I feel as pale as when I realized that there is no reason why psychics are usually women. My pupils wonder at the words painted cherry vanilla perfect, I swear they are. Therefore, I don’t know where to find my poems. Two years ago, I thought myself to be on par with my classmates’ expectations but now reading my pages turns me brutal beet-red. It’s not that I’m expecting to be Frank O’Hara. But I’m definitely comparing my two-foot writing to his deep-end swimming pool deluxe. I just didn’t realize poetry weaves , not just strings words together like a kite. So maybe call this ‘crisis’ and let me off for sounding pretentious. I don’t like poems about poetry either.

VOICE

Andrew Weller Pennsylvania State University

I want to define my breath by diaphragm strength and laugh line depth.

Define it as the second step from bed. I could take the first back and hide

behind the drywall whites of my eyes— but the second step across the carpet

static charges my wool socks. There’s power in leaving bed.

There’s power within the pink manic chests of my alveoli. There’s power in running—

not from things but for things, for that deep burn when lungs are used as lungs should be—

to fall in love with motion, to speak words as shockwaves in the air.

FAIRYTALE

Grace Penry University of Arizona

This is a good story. The man doesn’t have to get the woman because they are already together and in love and when the man first gets sick it is not really sick it is just his flutter heart that needs an extra push and when she gives it to him he gets strong and moves the apartment to where the air is good and the lungs breathe well and then the flowers can grow again but if the night falls too early they will have to search for their cat so it can sit between them on the couch while they hold hands and the curtains never have to fall.

REGENERATION SONG

Victoria Gong Harvard University

Dream journal. This one doesn’t make much sense to me.

I am not home. Granted, I felt like this last year when I half-woke every night to the mattress creaking under my restless body and saw my freshman year roommate hunched over her desk, the light from her computer screen pinpricking an aura around her. I swear she never slept, just turned into a statue overnight. It felt like I didn’t sleep either, for that whole year, because of the feeling.

It’s this heavy and light, discernible and inexplicable feeling. It’s like when you drift off in an unfamiliar bed and you come to not exactly remembering where you are, but there’s a part of you hovering over your body, omniscient, knowing all and knowing nothing. Only I know I’m home. I fell asleep in my childhood bedroom, and I’ll wake up in the same place. But now it smells like a kitchen sink, burnt pans, cardboard shipping boxes.

Am I dreaming? I must be. There are numbers and letters. Hands guiding my face, pulling my hair. They’re gentle.

The dream envelops me, and I see an animal flit across my line of sight. We’re standing on the beach, the Fox and me. The waves lapping at our feet. She’s staring into me with those silver eyes. My girl , she says. My poor, sweet girl. She wipes tears from my cheeks. So lost, so alone. She drapes herself over my shoulders, and her weight feels like muscle and skin. Natural. Warm.

The Fox sings a song into my ear. It’s an old song, a lullaby. I know its melody well. There are no words to this song. She hums it like a woman I knew. I fall asleep listening to it, or maybe I wake up.

*

The first time I meet Hannah Ouyang I think nothing of her. This is not unusual. I don’t generally think about people. From a certain distance, people are just stochastic objects. Like here, filling up the lecture hall like microscopic algae quivering about in a puddle, their voices buzzing on all sorts of frequencies.

Enough to be maddening.

“Hey,” she says, “can you scoot over?” I’m sitting in the aisle seat, second row from last, in the left of three sections. There are 149 seats in this section, barely any of them filled. But Hannah Ouyang and the boy standing by her want to sit in my row. I look left at the line of empty seats. I stand and lean against my folded seat. “Go ahead.”

The guy’s name is Ben. No one has told me his last name. I’ve never spo ken to either of them before. I don’t want to know who they are, but I know them nevertheless. It’s a small school.

“Thanks,” Hannah says, although I get the sense she doesn’t mean it. They crawl over me and leave one seat between me and Ben. They wanted the aisle, probably.

I spend the next fifteen minutes thinking whether I should give it to them, move to the middle of the row like they asked. But I like the aisle. It lets me leave whenever I want—preferably early to avoid the crowd. I think maybe Hannah and Ben wanted to leave early, too. I flick my gaze to my left every now and then. Ben appears inconsequential, sitting there in a grungy flannel with his knees sprawled. Hannah is his foil. She takes notes diligently, one leg bobbing up and down. Her makeup’s a soft sunset, her hair a metallic brown ombre, cascading over one shoul der, fake eyelashes obscuring her monolids.

Ben raises his hand and asks if brain-computer interfaces can commu nicate via chemical signals as well. After the professor answers, I huff. “Isn’t it evident. Have you ever heard of chemical signals in a computer interface?”

They hear me, but they pretend not to. I should have kept that to myself, but sometimes there are too many things in your mind that something has to come out. I glance over at Hannah again. She scowls. I think about the places I’ve seen her on campus. On the Green last September 17th, that time during the activities fair she was manning the Digital Art Society’s booth, in the library on April 12th, that grey sweatshirt of hers swallowing her with an ocean’s mouth…

The lecture is over before I realize it. There’s a sudden uproar of feet as everyone swarms to the exits, an exponential uptick in noise. I push myself upright awkwardly. There’s a stale taste in my mouth. I haven’t been paying attention. It’s unlike me to not pay attention, but I’m sure I’ll remember what was said later. I stretch. It occurs to me I’m lingering. It occurs to Hannah, too. “It’s nice to meet you,” she says, pointedly. Her hand’s on Ben’s knee, and she’s leaning forward, her muscles coiled all animal-like. Should I introduce myself? I can’t tell. I stick my hand out, but she’s already turned away.

I wait by the doors to the lecture hall to see if they will come out. The bio mass of people slows to a trickle, and there’s no sign of them. I stick my head back in. The lecture hall is empty. No sign of the professor, either.

But a couple hours later, there’s Hannah, walking across the Green. She’s alone, moving with an uncharacteristic urgency. I spot her from my car, where I’m trying to recall the lecture from that morning and finding that it’s only com ing back in strands. Perplexed and on the verge of being frightened by my lack of memory, I calm myself down by deciding to follow Hannah.

This action is also unexplainable, but I don’t dwell on that. By the direc tion she’s walking and the car keys in her hand, I know which parking lot she’s headed to. I swing around the Green and the back of the lecture hall and catch sight of her car as she pulls out of the parking lot.

I tail her downtown, where she slows in front of the Red Lotus, Asian supermarket and restaurant. I park across the street and watch her in the rearview mirror. My father’s friends, the Fu’s—can I call them family friends if my father is the only family I have?—own this place, and it doesn’t seem one where Hannah Ouyang would go of her own volition. The Red Lotus can’t be mistaken for upscale, and it’s kind of far off campus. Hannah’s car disappears around the block, presum ably to find a parking space, and I settle in. Distract myself with the problem at hand.

Movement in the mirror. I look up to see my father entering the restau rant, cell phone up to his ear, the tie I remember him wearing during lecture this morning gone. The door closes, chasing his heels. Moments later, Hannah comes down the sidewalk, her phone clutched in her hand. She enters mere seconds after my father, and the door shuts on a secret.

“Oh. Interesting,” I say.

That night, my father brings home takeout from the Fu’s for dinner. “I thought you went there for lunch,” I say.

“Mm-hmph,” my father says through a spring roll.

“I went to your office around two, and you’d put up your ‘gone for lunch’ sticky note.” This is a lie, but I’ve learned that my father will usually put up the note if he leaves campus, regardless of whether he’s at lunch or not. He doesn’t pause or squint at me, so I know it’s true.

“I went out with some colleagues.”

“Who?”

He flaps a hand. “Harry and Jose. And some others joined us.”

This is how you know when either of us is lying: we’re unspecific. My fa ther craves specificity. I can’t help it.

“Where did you go?” I say.

“Just the bagel place down the road.”

I ask him if it was busy, and he stuffs another spring roll into his mouth, so I switch tactics. “I was looking for you after class this morning, too. But I couldn’t find you anywhere. Were you with some students?”

He sighs. “Make some friends, Bailey.” Then he points to the expression on his face.

“What’s this?”

This is a game we’ve played for as long as I remember. My father used to make an expression and have me guess what emotion he was portraying. Now he springs it on me at random times.

“You’re…sad,” I say. I can’t tell. I don’t like meeting his eyes.

“No, try again.”

I glance at him again, and the only word that comes to mind is constipat ed, which I’m sure is not an emotion. I shrug.

“Frustration,” my father says. “Notice how the lips are tightened in the corners, my brow is drawn. I’m frustrated, because I wish you’d stop asking me all

these questions, you see.”

“Okay.”

“What does frustration make you think of?”

He’s forcing me into another one of his games. Word associations. I sigh. “Anger.”

“Try a color.”

“Green?”

“No. Red is more commonly associated with anger.” He frowns, then points to his face again. “What’s this?”

I know this expression without having to see it. “Disappointment.”

*

The next week after my father’s class, Hannah asks me if I want to get boba tea with her. I’m taken aback; I look behind me to see if she’s having a con versation with someone else, but no. It’s just me and Hannah. Ben didn’t even come to lecture today, and Hannah still sat in the same spot. Beside me. Only 30% of people sit in the same seat for the second lecture as they do for the first. But the ones who don’t change seats after the second lecture will rarely change after that. I say yes.

We take my car. I put it on self-driving mode, and Hannah inputs the ad dress of the boba tea place. I sit back and thumb the steering wheel, feeling useless as it glides under my hands.

Hannah looks out the window intently—like a dog. I’m pretty sure dogs would jump out the window of a moving car if they didn’t feel a level of attachment to their owners. I study Hannah’s body language and get the sense she wants to jump out. That’s an interesting conclusion. I’m usually wrong about these things. I’m probably wrong. What’s Hannah’s attachment, then?

“Brains are so fucking weird,” I blurt, and I certainly didn’t mean to say that out loud.

Hannah hears me, of course, but she pretends not to. Which I’m grateful for.

Then, a chill comes over me as I realize. Did she see me last week when she went to Fu’s? I look at her. Her arms are crossed, and her foot’s tapping. I wish I could just pry open her skull and know.

“Sorry,” Hannah says once my car brings us to the boba place. “You were saying?”

I tell her it doesn’t matter. I fumble with the door—push or pull?—and I try to hold it open for Hannah, but I stand too close and don’t open it far enough. She squeezes by me, her arm brushing against my arm. My face feels hot.

“What were you thinking about?” I ask her, pretending to look at the menu. I can’t tell if this is an appropriate thing to say or not. Is it too late in the day to be asking a question like this?

Hannah could have thought about plenty of things by now. Not to men tion all the thoughts she ever had before.

She sighs. “Just had an idea.”

“An idea for what?”

“A song.”

I ask her if she writes songs, and she says that she tries to. She has a tenta tive deal with a record company, but they want to hear more before they sign her. She’s been working on that deal for nine months and still hasn’t written anything new. I’m not sure what to say to that. The lullaby from my dream comes to mind, and so I hum it quietly as I read the menu. I don’t get very far, overwhelmed by drink combinatorics.

“What are you getting?” I say. Hannah says that she gets the same thing every time: a large milk tea, extra boba. I order the peach tea with popping boba, but Hannah tells me the flavored ones are bad. They taste like preservatives.

“Okay,” I say.

“Okay…” she says. “Or you could just try it.”

“Okay,” I say again.

We get our drinks and sit by the shop window. Hannah swirls her tea around but doesn’t drink it. I take one sip of mine and try not to gag. My father never bought me boba when I was growing up, no matter how much I asked. He still says the pearls look like 药丸子 ( yao wan zi ), medicinal balls: why would you eat medicine of your own volition?

“Look,” Hannah says, and I turn my head around before I realize she means metaphorically.

She sits up straighter. “Ben and I aren’t dating, but we’re kind of exclusive right now.”

The shift of topic to Ben doesn’t interest me, so I sip at my tea. I manage to get a popping boba up the straw, and I crush it against the roof of my mouth. Nectar in the flavor unpleasantly sweet coats my tongue, runs down the back of my throat. I play with the shell between my teeth.

Oh. It’s not until then that I realize. “Honestly,” I say. “I don’t care.”

Hannah laughs—the kind of breathy, humorless chuckle that sounds like you’re trying to spit out a bad taste. “Oh really.”

I get the sense she misunderstood me. I don’t know what I can say to change her mind, since the idea has probably been replicating more sinister ver sions of itself inside her for about a week now. It’s a baseless idea, but she might not believe the contrary.

“That’s not what I meant.” I look at her hands and say it as clearly as I can, “I’m not interested in Ben.”

“Oh.” Her shoulders sag. With relief? Mortification? Disbelief? I’m not sure. I ask her why she would think that, and she doesn’t answer for a long time.

“You know about the Fox, right?” she says finally.

That tugs on something in my mind, a dream maybe, a memory, but I

know if I pull, it will overtake everything in the present. And I want to be in the present, here, with Hannah. I shake my head to clear it. “The new feature?”

Hannah sidles in closer. Her bare knee brushes against mine under the table. Once, then away. It’s usually not a good idea to talk about recreational brain-computer interfaces in public—it’s like mentioning methamphetamines; you’ll get looks—but the shop is empty, and it’s not like the automated boba ma chines are listening.

“I have it,” Hannah whispers.

“What do you mean, you have it.”

You hear about people doing it all the time. The illegal, back-alley opera tions to get the recreational BCIs inserted into their brains. They’re popular, and just by looking at someone you’d never be able to tell that they had a transhuman implant sitting right under their skull. There are several features that come with the rBCIs. For example, Pan is the intelligence enhancement; Cat, the movement and coordination enhancement; derived from research into BCIs for paraplegics and stroke patients and the like. The Fox, a matchmaking enhancement, is the newest one. It seems unfeasible to me that an algorithm can help its users find love, much less be able to subtly control their actions, words, and movement pat terns to help them achieve it. But apparently, its program is running right now in a small electrode under Hannah’s cranium.

“Ben and I were supposed to get it together, but he chickened out last min ute,” she says. I gulp down a few mouthfuls of tea before I realize she’s expecting me to say something.

“What did you want from it?”

“Shit, I don’t know. I thought I’d wake up and know who my soulmate was the next day. Graduate, get married, start a family. But I just had a headache. God, why am I telling you this?”

I blink. “I don’t know.”

“Would you understand if I said that all I want is to fall in love—and I mean really fall in love and know it was love?”

I think about the woman in my dream who spoke out of the mouth of the Fox, who called me her girl. For the first time, I do understand. It’s a feeling of wanting something so badly you’d sacrifice your own mind, your own reality, for it to be true, so I say, “I think I do. But it doesn’t seem real.”

“Who cares if it’s actually real? As long as it seems real,” Hannah says. “You know, the person who did my implant said they named the Fox after the mythical Chinese fox spirits, 狐狸精 ( hú lì jīng ). Have you heard of that?”

“They’re demonic creatures that take on the shape of beautiful women in order to seduce men in power and create chaos,” I say immediately, but I’m not quite paying attention. In my mind, I keep hearing Hannah say, the person who did my implant . I conjure up the image of Hannah following my father into the Red Lotus. That day, I stayed there for two hours, missed my afternoon class, and nev er saw either of them come out. Is it just a coincidence that my father is teaching

a course on brain-computer interfaces? That after lecture last week both he and Hannah disappeared? That he lied about where he was at lunchtime? But those are questions for later. Compartmentalization, I urge myself.

Hannah swirls her tea like a zealot. “Exactly. It wasn’t real for those men.” “Why should we think about it as men?”

“Is there a difference?”

“Perspective bias. ‘He who holds the pen holds the power.’ Origin un known,” I say. “Why did you ask me to come here with you?”

“Honestly?”

“If you can.”

Hannah heaves a deep sigh. “I thought I had to warn you off Ben.” “Alright,” I say. “You did that. And I have class at three.”

*

Love story. Or a history. My mother was a singer. She met my father at a bar she was playing, and he bought her a drink. Nine months later, she died during my birth. My father was not at the hospital. He had not known about the pregnan cy.

That’s how he tells me the story. Bare bones, plucked clean of emotion. When I was younger, I refused to believe there was nothing more. I searched for clues. A button in a pair of old pants that didn’t match any of my father’s meant, on a walk one night, it had come loose from my mother’s coat, and she’d slipped it in his back pocket for safekeeping. The old-fashioned photograph of a woman with dark hair and fervent eyes in his dresser was a portrait of her. A scuff on a retired shirt of his was from where he helped her carry her peeling guitar case.

Never mind that the button turned out to be a piezoelectric transducer and the photograph was a picture of my father’s own mother and my mother didn’t even play guitar. Never mind all of that. I conjured a whirlwind romance for them that I repeat to myself today. It’s my favorite story, my favorite thing to remember, and it’s only logical. Because my story is the only way her death would be justified. The only way my existence makes sense. The only reason that I’d remember that lullaby she hummed to me through layers of flesh and blood.

Dream journal. We’re back on the beach, lying back in the sand. My toes in the Fox’s fur. There are no stars in this dreamscape sky, only memories. Real or fake, I don’t know. The shadow of my mother is beside me, around me, inside my heart.

Mom , I say. Why did you leave?

The Fox rolls her pelt onto me, covers me like a warm blanket. I didn’t want to, my girl , she says. Believe me, I didn’t want to.

Mom, I say. How do you know when you love someone?

But the Fox doesn’t answer, just flicks her tail in a silent swish, wiping the beach away. I wake up crying, seawater running into my mouth, curdling on my tongue. Half-asleep, I can still hear my mother’s voice, singing her lullaby. *

When my father sees my red-rimmed eyes, he looks overjoyed. I ask him what’s the matter, and he starts laughing. I ask him, “Why are you laughing,” but he only laughs harder. His laughter makes my thyroid throb, and before I even notice them, he springs forward and catches my tears in a mason jar.

I don’t tell him about the memory loss. It’s expected, I tell myself. My pe diatrician told my father that my eidetic memory might fade with time. Most chil dren who exhibit photographic memory lose it by the time they turn eighteen. But it’s not only that. My thinking is all jumbled, too. I put on a pair of pants that are out of my daily rotation, the ones that cinch in too tightly at the wait, and when I look in the mirror, I study myself the way Hannah might see me in lecture today.

I can’t remember if I’ve always felt like this before. I must have been capable of thinking these thoughts before. I must have, because I’m still me. These sticky-sweet thoughts that cling on and don’t let go, that make me envision instead of remember. That make me cry. They must have been a part of me before, because where else would they come from? What separates now from before? Nothing, so far as I can see. My memory stretches back, long and untarnished, apart from this past week. A snake, each moment a scale. Each scale accounted for.

In class, the words my father says slip in and out of my brain and don’t catch. Hannah doesn’t look over at me once, but after lecture ends, she stands and says, “I’m sorry. Can I make it up to you?”

We get coffee, and Hannah teaches me how to order. She giggles for a full minute after I tell her I’ve never drank coffee because I read on WebMD that it makes your urine smell. Her laugh lines weather her face in a pleasant pattern, and I get an urge to feel the texture of her hand, even though that serves no practical purpose.

On the drive back to campus, Hannah sings under her breath, You’re the light between my fingers, I catch you but can’t hold on.

My blood runs cold. My hands scramble for some semblance of a grip on the steering wheel.

That song. That melody. I’d know it anywhere, like a coffee stain on a map.

“What are you singing?”

Her neck goes ramrod straight. She sings a few more lines for me, in her performance voice, now that she knows she’s being listened to. It’s unmistakable. The song is my mother’s lullaby.

“Who’s the artist,” I demand.

“Are you okay?”

Hannah tells me. It’s an unfamiliar name, but hope has latched on and won’t let go. I ask her everything she knows. The artist came out with this song years ago, and she doesn’t make music anymore. She lives in New York City, possi bly doing some work for a nonprofit. Hannah isn’t sure about the details. She looks at me like I’ve grown three heads. I chew on my lip.

“New York’s only four hours away.” I mean to say that to myself, but it comes tumbling out of my lips.

“Can you please tell me what’s going on?” she says.

I can’t say it out loud, as much as I know I should explain. It’s too insane. What are the chances? There are so many more logical explanations. What’s to say I heard this song at a young age and misremembered? Coagulated my yearnings and the truth.

I don’t remember anything Hannah says for the rest of the ride back to campus.

Friday night, Hannah calls and tells me she was planning to go to the mov ies with a friend but they canceled last minute and she was wondering if I wanted to come. It’s another remake of the X-men. The CGI is something novel—they keep thinking of new ways to depict explosions—but the story has been resurrected countless times; it’s more holy than Jesus. When He kisses Her at the end, flowers bloom and fireworks burst like apple jelly in the sky.

“Doesn’t it make you mad?” I say to Hannah as we’re walking out into the lobby. “What?” she says through a mouthful of kettle corn.

“The way he can just obtain her, and then it’s happily ever after. The way every story about a man isn’t over until he’s subjected a woman to be with him, until love is resolved, even if it’s not about love, just about explosions. And is it even love if you don’t know what they both want? And the way the woman doesn’t get a say in the matter. She’s expected to be happy. And everything, including the woman, just happens for the man.”

Hannah shrugs, dismisses me too quickly. “That’s just how movies like these go.”

“But doesn’t it make you mad,” I say again.

“It’s not like I can change it.”

I open my mouth to say more. I’ve never spoken like this before, with something racing through my veins. Something compelling me to speak more. It’s Hannah’s doing, I decide.

Everything strange convalesced from the beginning, when I met Hannah. “But don’t you think we’ve bought into it? Haven’t you bought into it?”

“What’s gotten into—” Hannah starts to say, then her eyes jump to some thing behind me, and she grabs my arm, jerks me over to the side, pulls me into a women’s restroom. She’s giggling, a little nervous.

“What?”

“Shhh.”

“I—yeah. Who’s the artist?”

She’s close. She smells like cosmetics and something milky. I feel the at oms coming off her skin prickling my skin. The hair on the back of my neck rises.

“Okay, honestly?” she whispers.

“If you can be.”

“My friend? The one who I told you couldn’t make it? He’s right there.” She points, and I see Ben standing in the middle of the lobby, looking lost. She laughs, and I can’t think why it’s so funny. “I just didn’t want to come with him, so I lied and told him I couldn’t come, but it looks like he came to see it by himself.”

Oh. I laugh with her. “That’s awful of you,” I say, but I don’t mean it, and I think she can tell I don’t mean it.

We sneak out through the window and run to her car.

As the car takes us away from the movie theater, Hannah licks the salt and sugar off her fingers from the kettle corn bag, and I have to force myself not to look at her mouth work. I stare straight ahead, and I have the urge to say some thing impulsive, like, “Will you come to New York with me?”

Hannah glances over, her thumb in her mouth. “Why?

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Okay. Why?”

I want to say I think my mother’s there , but it feels like I’m breaching some sort of barrier. “I can’t tell you, but…but it’s important.”

“What’s so important that you can’t tell me?” she says. “I mean, not be cause it’s me. Just, if you want me to go with you, I will, but I need to know why.”

“I’m not sure,” I say, and I lie, “I need you to be there.”

I don’t need her. I want her. But they feel close enough in that moment that I don’t feel bad about the lie. I will later, though, I imagine.

“Stop being so selfish, Bailey. Just tell me. Hell, make something up.” “I’m not being selfish,” I say. “I don’t think that’s a fair assessment.”

“I think it’s perfectly fair. You didn’t even ask if I was free. I have plans tomorrow. My parents are coming up to visit. I have a group project to work on for a class. I have a song to write.”

“You’re never going to finish that song,” I say, and I mean to be hurtful. I’ve never felt like this before, like I’m holding a knife. “You’re going to fall in love, and who cares if it’s real. You’re going to get married and buy a house and have sex and pop out a few children, and maybe you’ll sing lullabies for them when they can’t sleep, and maybe you’ll keep telling yourself you’re still thinking of ideas for your song, but you’ll never write it. You’ll never sing it. You’ll never sing—”

I’m imagining the green rage building in Hannah’s eyes when she reaches over, grabs the front of my shirt, twists my body awkwardly away from the dash, and kisses me. I think I reciprocate, or maybe I’m too stunned to move. She works quickly. She sucks all the marrow in me out, then starts on my blood. I only think to use my hands to hold her and keep her there once she’s pulling away.

“You’re so fucking immature,” she says.

She crumples up the kettle corn bag. There might be tears in her eyes. *

I can’t sleep. At six in the morning, I leave for New York. On the way, I dig through search histories and find the address of the nonprofit where the woman who sang the lullaby works. It’s a women’s health organization. I buy her song for $3.99 and listen to it on repeat for the four-hour drive.

The streets are quiet. Every now and then someone—or a pigeon—walks by but doesn’t enter the nonprofit’s building. Around lunchtime, the doors open, and a few women straggle out. They look young. And strong.

I put my hand on the lock of my car, and then I realize I am not as strong as them. I delete the song from my device, and I drive back home myself. I make it in three.

*

“Tell me about Mom,” I say to my father. He’s brought home takeout from the Red Lotus again, which he’s done every day this week.

He chews loudly, gestures with his chopsticks. “I’ve already told you all you need to know.”

“But you haven’t told me everything . I want to know everything about her. Please.”

My father shakes his head, and points to his face. “What is this?”

I take one look, and I choose not to register what I see. I don’t want to play this game. “Sorrow,” I say like a command. “Regret. Misery.”

“No, Bailey. Impassiveness.”

“Just tell me,” I shout. I’m angry. I’m green. I’m sick. What are you hiding? I want to say. Why do you treat me like your patient and not your daughter? Instead, what comes out is, “What were you doing with Hannah Ouyang at the Red Lotus nineteen days ago?”

“What?” he says. “I wasn’t.”

“How much money are you getting to stick Foxes in people’s brains?”

My father is silent for ten seconds. I can feel his glare. I can hear his calcu lations. “Who told you that? Was it the Fu’s?”

“No one told me anything,” I say. “Are you going to try to stick something in my brain, too?

To fix me? Is playing psychiatrist every second not enough?”

“You’re emotional,” he says, and I hear in his words almost a tone of awe. “Listen to all these things you’re saying, Bailey. You’re being emotional.”

“Fuck you. I wish you were dead instead of Mom.”

He’s completely calm when he says, “Your mother isn’t dead.”

He’s lying, I tell myself. I try to delete the memory of him saying that, but it plays back on itself, again and again, overtaking every thought with my father’s immeasurably calm face.

“She’s not dead. She just left,” he says. “She didn’t want you.” I stand.

“You’re feeling like you made a mistake.”

He spreads his hands. “It’s the truth.” *

I arrive at the Red Lotus just before it closes. I used to come here a lot as a kid, play in the kitchen in the back while my father disappeared. Grandpa Fu would give me the butts of cabbages to play with, along with tasting spoons, garlands of dried chili pepper. Grandma and Audrey Fu would let me sneak bits of noodles out of the pans, present me with canned aloe vera drinks “on the house.”

Audrey’s blasting her playlist as she mops up, moving with absolute dex terity. She’s still the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen, even after all these years. It’s hard to believe that she and my father are the same age. While my father is withering, silver hairs spreading across his head, ears, nostrils like invasive vines, sapping the life from him, Audrey is immaculate, even in her stained apron, the bit of pudge she has filling her out beyond the lines, making her presence larger than life.

“Hey, Sprout,” she says when she sees me, but doesn’t pause in her clean ing. She does it with muscle memory: swift, clean strokes, not an ounce of energy wasted. I lean against the counter and watch, breathing in the familiar smells of the restaurant. The kitchen sink, burnt pan bottoms, cardboard shipping boxes.

“Whatcha need?” Audrey says, taking the mop bucket into the janitorial closet and reappearing without missing a beat. “We have some leftover spring rolls we can throw into the fryer for you.”

“I’m good,” I say. “I need to know something, though.”

Audrey stutters. Turns around slowly, rakes a few flyaways away from her forehead. I skip straight to the point. “What’s my father doing here?”

Audrey’s face flashes through a few different shades. “I don’t think it’s my place to tell you, Sprout.”

“Look.” I take a deep breath. “I think I already know. I just need to hear it from you. It has to do with the rBCIs, doesn’t it? And the new feature? The Fox?”

Audrey looks positively wrecked. “I told him he should have told you,” she says, the words all rolled together. “For one, it’s unethical, I told him. She deserves to know. It’s not your place, I said. But he went through with it anyway. All these years—I’m sorry, Bailey.”

“Wait wait wait,” I say. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh god… Okay. I told him, when he first did it, if you ever asked, I was going to tell you.”

I feel like I’m in a vacuum. “Tell me what?”

“You’ve had an rBCI ever since you were sixteen months old, Bailey. That’s why you have an eidetic memory. It was good for that, and not much else.”

I feel nothing. What is there to feel?

“I’m sorry I never told you,” Audrey says. “I’m so sorry.”

I look at the restaurant, the water damage in the ceiling corners, the sounds of Grandma and Grandpa Fu cleaning up in the kitchen, bumbling pots and pans together with their arthritic joints, and I don’t blame her. “Did you upload… other features?”

Audrey wrings her hands. “We uploaded the Fox programming last month. He said it was for your own good. I think he thought he was doing the right thing, too. I don’t know anymore. He said it would help you… connect with people. You’ve been so alone your whole life, Bailey.”

“Okay. Thanks for telling me,” I breathe. My lips are so numb I barely register saying it. I think Audrey says something else, but I don’t hear her. I turn to go just as the song that’s been playing ends, and the next one begins. A soft guitar strums. I know what song this is before I hear the words.

You’re the light between my fingers, I catch you but can’t hold on. *

Dream journal. It’s just the Fox now. The beach is dry, starfish plopping about where the tide receded. Who are you? I say to the Fox.

She opens her jaws, and only a whine comes out. Her body seems to frac ture, splitting into pixels, stacks, data. I watch as the world is torn apart and built anew. I’m looking into a mirror. I feel my mother in my heart. *

The boba place is empty again, as if Hannah and I are meant to be here right now, skipping lecture on a Monday morning. I order another artificially fla vored tea. Hannah wrinkles her nose at me. We sit, not knowing what to say. We’re at an impasse, I can feel it. A single move will jolt us. But does she feel it?

“Was any of it real?” I say at last. She looks at me quizzically.

“All my life I feel I’ve been searching for something,” I say, and she laughs. I ask her why she’s laughing at me, and she says that literally everyone feels that way.

“Well, not me,” I say. “I never felt this way until my father put the Fox in my brain. And I thought I was looking for my mother, but I think I found whatever I was looking for in you.”

“Wait a minute,” she says. “You have a Fox?”

“Yeah, but not because I wanted one. I guess what I’m asking is…Was any of this real? Or was it just because of the Fox? My father pulling the strings.”

Hannah puts her hand on mine, and I get the urge to slip away. “Does it matter?” she says.

“Yes. To me, yes.”

“I’ve known everything all my life,” I say. “So yes, I do have to know.”

“But who cares if it’s real?” Hannah says. “As long as we felt it was real. Isn’t that all we have to go off of anyway? Our feelings. Our perceptions of the world.”

I start to think back to all the memories I have stored, each in their own box, available by command. They’re my perceptions , I think. I get the urge to leave, to run. To contemplate everything and anything.

Hannah leans forward. “Stay for a while?”

The moment is sun-spiced and smells like artificial sugar. I’m not sure what will come after.

I’m not sure what will came before. I leave my hand under Hannah’s.

“You don’t have to know.”

WATER BABY, STORM KING

Annabella Johnson Webster University

The tide stopped on August 24th. I was not in Florida yet. Before we left for family vacation, I watched it happen on our television screen. It was stillness at first, the vast, grey beach. The uncanny valley where water should have been — people noticed in Miami first, then Alabama, the Carolinas. By the end of the day, the entire American coastline had gone still. I packed my bags and watched from the carpet in our living room. My parents called our condo and asked if the beach was still open. But this was all in the Midwest, in the remains of a great grey city, where blue water was little more than myth. In Tennessee, one day later, the air was just starting to smell like the ancient salt funk of the sea.

In Tennessee, at this diner, on this TV, the ocean had started to fill an invisible tank. In the last twenty-four hours, one mile of Florida coastline had become a foot of green water pressed up against what must have been glass. A pretty reporter stood beside this “water wall,” displaying how the line now reached the middle of her calf, but the waitresses paid her no mind. The diner was small and standardized, full of gleaming fifties chrome. My parents and I sat at a red booth in the back corner, mostly done with food. The walls were large windows, revealing a borderline sky, caught between early morning and late night. Our only company was a trucker and an old woman. Both sat on opposite sides of the building and kept their eyes down.

My mother held her coffee in both hands and watched the black box on the wall. My father worked his plate of hashbrowns and eggs, mashing the brown and yellow into a crunchy beige paste.

“It’s not the wall that bothers me,” my mother said to my father. “It’s the idea that the wall has always been there, and I didn’t know. How many times have I walked through it, or stepped on it? We’ve been to the beach six times together, and how many apart? No one knows if it’s new or old. No one will touch it to find out if it’s real. I understand why, of course, it could be dangerous, poisonous or… it just bothers me that this thing might have been here my whole life, in all these memories, and I never knew. Doesn’t that bother you? It feels like a lost family member. Like those old daguerreotypes.”

I pulled on my milkshake, waiting for the pink sugar to crawl its way up the straw. The reporter’s leg was shaven, nyloned, bronze. It had been one year since I last shaved my legs, and the hair was now coarse, poking, black, and stuck out with a static charge. These thin dark streaks were proof to me of the passage of time. Sometimes it felt like time did not move. But no—it had taken me

JOHNSON

twelve months to look like every other girl at my college: pale, thin, with vague, transparent eyes. Except I was even worse, even weaker, with bleached stilts for legs. I envied the reporter, vaguely. She was thin, but she did not shake. I shook constantly if I didn’t think about it—if I didn’t hold myself tight enough.

“What bothers me is that a wall can only get so high,” my father said, his food only halfway chewed. “Now I know you’re a philosophical mind by nature, and you know I respect that, but you know that I see the world in weights and measures. I’m concerned with how high the tide can get. Before it crashes over us, I mean. You remember that movie we saw, where the meteor hit Earth, the meteor the size of Australia? I’m concerned with a wave like that. I’m concerned with our lives, Carla. But if it never breaks, that’s just fine with me. That’s a coastal problem then, a tourist problem, not mine.”

An infographic on the TV said the wall was growing at a rate of one inch of height per day. One inch of height, one foot of length, no change in width. The depth of paper, apparently, to hold the entire world’s sea. The science of how strong this mystery element was still baffled Mom. She fretted over the notion of tensile strength and ionic bonds. Dad didn’t care. I was somewhere in between. I understood what they did not, that unbreakable things are rarely ever that. Take surface tension. The people on the news threw that phrase around a lot, talking about water striders and fifth grade science experiments. They talked about this strange trait of our most vital resource like it was a friend. But I had once watched, from the lap lanes, as our school’s most talented high-diver tripped and broke her neck by hitting the water wrong.

Water isn’t your friend. It never was. This is not a symbiotic relationship, this is the thousands-year-old tale of a parasite and its thrall. I wanted to say: we are tourists, Dad. We’re going to Florida right now. But one of the side effects of last year’s vacation was that I rarely spoke my mind. Thoughts got lost on the way to my mouth, and by the time they arrived it was minutes too late. Just as I remembered, my straw made a gurgling sound. Both my parents jumped at the sound, a minor-league heart attack. My mother forced a smile and patted my hair. My father just sighed.

Minutes later we were back in the car, on the way to the poisoned coast. The afternoon sun was quiet, muted through car window glass. When she thought I’d gone to sleep, my mother switched from music to the news. A woman with a deep voice talked about the plunge in the stock market, the glass ceiling in cinema—anything but the wall, as hard as she could. My mother gnawed at her nails and muttered to my father. He nodded along, stalwart and brown. They looked in love. Worrying together always gave me that impression. One year ago they had clung to each other and cried, and I had thought through the pain that I was sick with affection for them, and shame. One year later, my mother tore at her nails again, tore at her nails over me. But this worry was not as bad.

The dense tall hills of Tennessee were a comfort on either side of the road. Waves of trees rose vertically from the ground, towering above us like Chicago

skyscrapers. It was the same dizzying sensation of height without end. Dad had this old joke about Tennessee hills. He would say sometimes that the miners in those hills drove with one foot on the break, and the other out the door. It took me many years to realize that it was, in fact, a joke at all—as a child I’d imagined myself driving those machines down a hill littered with trees and rocks. I saw myself rumbling tumbling down this sheer face, hoping not to crash. I heard myself screaming, somewhere between fear and joy. The line was much darker back then. I once knew how to categorize my thrills. Somewhere, I had forgotten that skill, and now I could sob at nothing, at the sight of water in a crystal glass.

I reached into my bag and took the orange bottle out. I reminded myself that this was the right thing to do, that this was a matter of health, not cowardice. I took the pill and thought about how much it would cost without my parent’s insurance. Minutes, seconds later I am amidst something great and black and wrong. It swirls and churns and I am flying above it, but I can’t see what it is. Yes I can. I am flying above the Emerald Coast, about twenty feet up. The water isn’t black at all. The water is deep and mean and blue. The sun is out and very warm. I can feel the burning on my shoulders. I can see them, my shoulders, gleaming red and glossy, the strange red glow of hurt flesh. Now I’m sweating. I’m so, so hot, dripping sweat like molten wax. I fly close to the water. The corner of my shoulder grazes the top of a wave. It hurts. My shoulder feels like it is being rubbed with sand. And then it’s my mother, smiling, grinding sand on my wounds. Her hands are so red. She has my arm, her nails hurt, she won’t let go, I—

I woke to the sound of my own breath, caught in my throat. It took a long moment to realize that we were in a parking lot littered with palm. My father’s car door was open; I could see him stretching a few feet away, his sleeve sliding back to reveal a lawnmower’s tan. White concrete driveway. Cerulean plaster wall. My mother peeked up over her seat, her eyes sleepy and content. She said: we’re here, and my stomach gave a hard twist at her instinctively pleasant voice. Had I really slept that long? The sun had not started to go down. But the clock was right and it betrayed the time, almost six p.m.

Mom ruffled my hair and climbed out of the car. Briefly alone, I took a deep breath that no one else could hear. I opened the door and the seal gave with a small gasp. The safety of false air vanished under the balmy, salted heat.

The front desk of the condominium was unnaturally white and blue. The front wall of the room was made of glass. The translucence, twenty feet high and glittering, made my shoulders curl, as if it would lean toward me. I stood behind my parents with my back to the glass wall. My mother wound her arm through mine, but she wasn’t sensing my fear, she was smiling in spite of it, as if everything were fine. My ribcage trembled. I could feel the tendons in my legs, the weakness behind my knees. My father signed his name, hopefully for the last time. I tried to watch his brown hands, the earthly fingers scribbling in blue, but it didn’t help. The room was full of refracted sunlight, and I could not escape its glare.

“Thank you so much,” the concierge said. “Enjoy your stay.” He was a thin,

hairless man in a teal polo shirt. His eyes were too round and bright, bright blue, and when he smiled his teeth were too small.

“Excuse me,” my mother interjected, leaning her elbow on the counter. “How have the flags been?”

The concierge’s grin did not falter. His teeth looked like shells. “Flags, ma’am?”

“The tide flags,” my mother clarified. “Any marine life warnings?”

“Mom.” The word was wrenched from me at this betrayal. “Don’t worry, honey,” she said. “I was going to ask anyways.”

My toes curled in my flip flops. I wanted to say: that’s not the point, Mom. You let him know, you let this stranger know what’s wrong with me--what happened to me. But the concierge barreled on, his voice a tumbling, turning echo. I had the thought that his gleaming head might as well have been a sandbank, waiting to trap me with the tide.

“Our beaches are unfortunately closed, ma’am,” he said obediently. “For swimming, at least.”

“Oh, I know that.” She waved her hand for general emphasis. “I figured, what with all this strangeness. I’m just interested in whether or not there’s been a...an increase in danger. Along with the strangeness.”

He laughed at this momentarily. My mother joined, and as she did, the concierge smiled at me. The blue in his eyes went briefly dark. I tried to walk away but my mother’s grip tightened. It didn’t hurt yet, but my chest did. My vision blurred for the weakness of my legs. Like a building about to collapse. These goddamned legs—he must have already known, just by the look of me, that I had once been strong. Or maybe Mom told him while she was making reservations. I could hear the blabber now. Two heated pools? Oh, yes, that will be just splendid. My daughter used to be quite good at swimming, did you know? Oh, yes, terrible what happened...ruined our whole year, the little bitch, just because she couldn’t watch where she was fucking going. The pool will be safer for the likes of her.

“We haven’t been able to measure the marine life as of late. All observation is focused on keeping an eye on at-risk species. Dolphins, you understand.” The man placed a pen back into its bowl of clear glass beads, an awful, grinding sound. “Yes, the wall has made our jobs here quite strange.”

My mother glanced at my father, and in her moment of weakness, I was able to slip away.

“The wall is here?” she said. “Since when?”

“I didn’t think it was,” my father said, and looked accusingly at the concierge.

“My apologies, sir, ma’am. We closed the waterfront as soon as the wall reached us.”

“When the hell was that?”

“Last night, around eight. We sent an email to inform our guests. If you check, you’ll find that we included three complimentary water park tickets to make

up for the unfortunate circumstances. We also have two heated swimming pools, indoor and outdoor alike.”

While my parents complained about what they could not change, the concierge stood and smiled. His hands like pale tendrils, his nails clean like salt. He was so, so still, and then his eyes were on me again. I was on the other end of the cavernous room, but it felt just as bad--too sharp, too close. I turned hard toward the door. But the door was glass, and so was the wall. I could feel the clear man watching me, as well as the wall of clear. I had to get out, but there was nothing corporeal and known. No concrete stairs, no wooden doors, just the gleam of unknown. A small sound began to come from me, a whine, a chirp, like a broken, infant bird. Dad must have heard. I saw him depart from the desk out of the corner of my eye. Shame and relief flooded me as he caught me, and pulled me gently away from the exit and into his chest. I let myself see and breathe the reality of his brown shirt, the tan plastic buttons. Opaque cotton, fiber and color, made from the real world. My father has never smelled anything like the sea. He smells like the earth itself. He smells like herbs and trees.

The concierge does not exist. The wall does not exist. Water does not exist. A sound ripped from me at this thought, a pained, choking scream. Who had I become, to wish for such a thing?

My father talked to me as I shook. “Hey, you’re okay.”

It took a while to get me up to the condo. There was an elevator, but the idea of being pulled into the air by some forceful, weightless machine was too much. The concierge, utterly unruffled, led us to a set of stone stairs at the back of the condo, a long upward tunnel with no air. I climbed the stairs one at a time, one hand on the railing, the other on my father’s arm. My mother stood by, silent except for the occasional, pitying groan. By the time we reached our door, I realized that I had climbed at least a hundred stairs, and so had they.

My mother was louder now, cursing at the electronic key. My father’s hands were still clamped on my shoulder. When the door opened, he let go, and we pulled ourselves into the room. My mother dropped her case onto the bed. She covered her face for an instant, with both hands. She’s supposed to be happy right now, she’s supposed to be looking at this room. My fault. I tried to be brave and apologize— properly, finally—for everything that I’d done. I saw it all at once, the great wealth of one year that was rightfully hers. But she interrupted by taking me into her arms, and my voice went soft, and I let the thought go.

We went for dinner and ice cream. Mom pretended to get excited about a Mexican restaurant a few blocks from the coast. I tried to offer the seaside bistro, her favorite, what she had talked about for months, for Christ’s sake, but Dad said no. We’d go when I felt braver, he said, or they’d go as a date. My mother placed her warm hand on mine and smiled the way I hate. I clamped my mouth shut. We got tacos, and banana splits. Good cooked brown beef. Deep, earthy cream. At the parlor we sat outside with our treats, and I was safe. Mom became herself again, laughing with Dad, pointing out the sunset. She looked beautiful in the salted

evening, all brown and pink and gold. She wore white pleated shorts and a polo like a modest pink box--nothing she wouldn’t wear at home. All I could think about was her standing at her closet at home, picking out her clothes. My mother loved to pack. She loved the planning, the meditation of what was to come. She made lists and notes not out of anxiety, but as a way to hone herself, to tune in to her platonic ideal. I knew how she worked. This outfit was meant for days from now. When she was sick of the sea and the heat and the evil creatures, homesick for dry land, she was supposed to find the tacos, and the corn, and the cream, and take a break. She was to be Midwestern again as a reprieve, not as an introduction. I had taken that from them, like so many other things. And why? Because of our last trip? Mexico felt so far away, like it had never happened. Almost—I could still feel the pain in my leg.

How much longer, then? How long until I got my life back? And why did I have to do it myself, alone, at night? I knew what would solve this, of course. I knew what I had to do. I had known ever since I watched the shore go still, from our TV at home, but I didn’t want to be right.

When we got back to the condo, I pretended to take my pill and fall asleep. The sofas in the living room were leather and cool to the touch. When they noticed my silence, my parents whispered loving, pitiful words. It was the same story, the one I knew they would tell. It was the story of their water baby, who cried upon arrival at a beautiful Ontario hotel because there was no pool. My parents used to tell this story a lot. Like gum or a cigarette, they pulled the memory from their pockets at meets and competitions, even when I lost. They were certain that it had been a sign, that I was meant for great things. I was good amongst my team, I suppose. But I was never meant for the Olympics. I didn’t even want to go. I just wanted to swim, every day of my life, forever. It was hard to remember that feeling now—the surge of power I felt skimming the surface tension, mastering this element I loved. Now all I felt was something like slime, a glistening, silvering paste.

They got ready slowly, shifting their weight from the cushions to their toes. The stretching sound of lycra, a few giggles, and then a blanket in my lap. The door opened and shut. I sat up fast and for that instant I felt ready to go, ready to be brave, but moving too fast had made me dizzy, and my stomach rested wrong. My head felt bad. I thought I’d missed a crucial moment, a terrible opportunity. I was never meant to do this thing, this manic notion that had passed my mind, this pathetic “solution.” I was supposed to let the therapy work. I was supposed to have gone with them tonight, and broken no rules.

I cried, but it only lasted a few seconds. I did all my crying last year. It occurred to me finally that the television was still on. My eyes focused soft against the colors of the screen, until the commercial ended. The few tears blinked away and I saw that it was a professor this time, a documentary delivery of the news. The old man wore khaki shorts and, incomprehensibly, a tweed jacket. He spoke into a microphone, one hand flat against his ribs. I reached into my bag and

took three of my pills, swallowing them dry, as I had recently learned how to do.

“The ‘water wall,’ as it has been colloquially known, is said to grow at an average rate of two and a half centimeters in height, and approximately thirty centimeters in length, per hour. As far as we know, the width of the wall has not changed. It’s as thin as a piece of paper throughout. The material is yet to be identified or tested. Though it is not expressly dangerous, local officials have reported stories of disappearances, injuries, and even deaths related to the wall.

Until such time as these stories can be confirmed or denied, the White House has issued a ban on contact with the anomaly, and a closure of all waterfronts.”

At any given time, I could decide to smell the chlorine of my college’s pool. The ungodly blue, the triangle flags, the rows of sleek, capped heads, were just a summon away. Stretch marks on my thighs, disappearing beyond the nylon. Black nylon, weakened from too much use. Who am I kidding, I was so, so good at it. But I have a new swimsuit now. Useless little thing. Mom thought it would be good for me to have a bikini, something to cut the association. I was quiet at the store when we bought it. I smiled and nodded, because I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I had been wearing a pretty skimpy thing when the man o’ war wrapped around my leg.

“Since we are unable to interact with the wall’s material form, information on its chemical composition is limited. It is clear and very strong, and behaves in a way that suggests life. As it is strong enough to withstand the weight of the tide, engineers have speculated the possibility of a synthesized, controlled version of the substance as building material. Its strength and rapid growth would make it ideal for roads, skyscrapers, and housing. If the wall is living, however, this could lead to resistance from the animal rights community, despite the material’s apparent lack of sentience.”

It’s funny. When I woke up in the hospital, Mom swore that I had stepped on the thing, that its corpse had been lying on the sand. In her mind I was blinded by the sun; I’d made a mistake, a decision that was wrong. Dad still won’t say how he remembers it, but then again, he wasn’t there. He was talking to the bartender, a quarter mile down the coast. Just far enough away that he couldn’t hear Mom scream. Personally, I maintain that it attacked me in the water—that the thing fucking knew what it would mean to me, to be hurt in my own realm—but I can’t really remember. Adrenaline will do that to you. I have to take my mother’s word for it, the way I have since I was born. Did she lie to protect me? Was she lying at all? Funny--I had always assumed I could not be wrong.

No, I don’t remember what happened. I do remember a few things about what happened, though. I remember the texture of vomit and sand, that crunchy, beige paste. I remember the EMT saying the word “allergic,” like it made any sense. “Many have begun to think of the wall as a sign from God, a warning from a higher power. The Vatican has released an official statement that they do not consider the wall to be anything more than a freak occurrence, and will

not qualify it as a miracle. The Church of Scientology similarly disavowed claims from its members that the wall is the living embodiment of L. Ron Hubbard. Even the Area 51 fan club has said that ‘a species of reptilian overlords have given us this technology, just like written language, mathematics, and the pyramids.’”

When I think of that day, I don’t see myself. I see my leg, as if I were only a leg. I have no head, I have no arms, no body. I am lungs and a heart and my right leg. I can’t remember the pain. I remember the tendrils like wet hair. Except they move, except they don’t. I should go to sleep, this is not going to help me. I need to go slow. I need to slow down or I am going to drown myself in this, I need to slow down. I don’t see myself. I see the plastic bag in the water. I see its shredded arms wrapped around my calf. I feel...I feel it, and then I see my mother in the distance, screaming, her arms like flags. I see my limp body, my heart stopping, the paling, vomiting girl. I am me. And then I am the bartender, a quarter mile down the coast. I see the two of us over my father’s shoulder, and I can’t see his eyes through the black sunglasses he has never worn.

I am flying above the Emerald Coast, about twenty feet up. Clear jelly fish dot the top of the water. Don’t fucking touch them, curl your hands in, like a mummy, don’t reach out. Go back to the shore. And then I make it to the shore. The water is black in the middle of the day. Storm clouds rage and flash, three tornadoes churn the foam. Dead jellyfish on the beach. Stingers in my feet. I feel the venom again, and I can’t shake it out. The water wall is fifty feet high now and the top sags like a bad muffin. Raw batter, threatening to overflow. We will all die. I have to get away, I can’t fly high enough. No one is doing anything! I’m kicking my legs, swim ming up, trying to fly but I can’t, get— I wake up.

The television is off. The blanket is tucked around my feet. All the lights in the condo are out except for the green numbers on the microwave which read 2:14. I can hear my parents snoring in the other room. I sit upright, my fists clenched and white. Then I get up. The stairs leading down are made of stone. The grey is smooth and cool against the bottoms of my feet. I walk slowly, taking each step of the eight floors with tender care. My legs extend before me, paler than they’ve ever been. The stretch marks glimmer silver in the light. The dark hairs brush against my skin with every move, pushed by the air. I don’t stop when I reach the bottom. I only hesitate once, when I see the concierge. Glass smooth head, sea blue eyes. I hate him so much. He smiles at me and makes a gesture like tipping a hat, but he has no fucking hat, just his shining bald skin. I walk past him, clutching my towel. Keep your head down.

I can feel his translucent eyes for too long before I realize he’s long gone. Why am I doing this? I keep my eyes on the ground until it turns from pavement to old dry wood. My feet make hollow sounds on the boardwalk and then finally, sand. Sand. It’s been so long. It’s soft and strange, still warm from the heat of the day, and I can smell the sun when I kick up its weight. Grit falls around my calves and it feels like a kiss. A purposeful, conscious love. Did you miss me, too? The urge

for tears comes, and I stop. But I have to move on. I know I have to be here, I can’t go without this for the rest of my life. So I walk until the sound of the sea beating against a rock is too much. At the edge, I stare down at my feet. I close my eyes. Then I lift my head, and breathe, and look up. At once, I am so perfectly still inside. The shaking has stopped. The wall is ten, maybe fifteen feet tall. The top is not foamy or white. It is perfectly still, like the edge of an infinity pool, like the lip of a bathtub filled too high. The water is dark, but not black. It is the exact color of the sky, a midnight blue that speaks of coolness and the ingredients for life. Like an aquarium wall, but not. Clear, but matte, not like glass at all. This is separate, unique, something truly new. Do I see fish swimming beyond the border? Do I see life beyond the wall? I tell myself that I see dark red lights flashing, ancient creatures of ancient means, but I don’t. I only see what is before me. The whole of the world. The ocean is all things, and I approach. I stand a foot away from this thing which I have hated. I hold my hands out flat, an inch from the surface of the thing like me. I feel no malice, no love, no radiation of any kind. It is a fact in front of my face, nothing more. I close my eyes. I turn around, take a breath. I dive backward into the sea. The wall breaks like a spell and I am swept, with the rest of the world, back to shore.

THE BUTTERFLY JAR

Emalyn Remington University of Maine at Farmington

My father was something of an amateur lepidopterist. When I was young, we used to traipse through fields in the late summer, our eyes peeled for milkweed. When we found the yellow and black caterpillars, we collected them inside of a large Mason jar and stuffed the jar with leaves and sugar water. Sometimes when the world overwhelms me, I close my eyes and remember the sounds of the meadow. The rustling of tall grass against bare legs, birds calling to each other from above, and an orchestra of bugs chirping all around. After we captured our caterpillars, my father would spend the next several weeks teaching me about their unique life cycle. Egg, larva, pupa, butterfly. I waited for my friends to emerge out of their chrysalises and metamorphose into gossamer beauties.

It was a simple life cycle to understand. Human life seemed more complicated back then. Growing pains, bad haircuts, unrequited crushes, divorce, adjusting to living in a single-parent household. Now that I am older, the life cycle of a human being has also become quite simple. We are born, we age, and then die. Like butterflies, or really any creature that has ever existed on this planet, when we die is never a guarantee. When I was small, I was taught that people die when they are old or sick or both. I wish now that I could go back to the impression that one’s life simply ended when they had fulfilled their purpose here. That was how my father explained it. I was six. It was the middle of August, and my newest butterfly had hatched. I had spent the entirety of the day before whining over the butterfly jar, impatiently waiting for the small creature with the iridescent wings to become acquainted with its new body. Finally, at dusk, we took the jar outside to the stoop in front of my father’s apartment. Before I sat, I carefully placed the jar between my father and me. The glass created a hollow, gritty noise against the cold concrete. Outside smelled like mowed grass and fresh hay from the farm next door mixed with notes of my father’s Old Spice cologne. A breeze lifted my thin, fawn-colored hair off of my shoulders. It felt deliciously cool against my sunburned neck and I looked up into the fading blue. The sky had just given birth to a smattering of small, twinkling stars. My father was drinking something out of a cold, brown bottle. Condensation poured down the sides and left a stain on the pebbly, grey surface. My legs were starting to hurt; the imprint of the rough exterior left an angry red tattoo against my skin, but I didn’t say anything. We let the quiet settle over us in a way that wasn’t uncomfortable. My father was a man who laughed and talked frequently, so when he was silent, otherwise ordinary, still moments were emphasized. When he finally finished, he looked down at me and smiled. “Nora,” he said, “you can let ‘em go now.”

I squealed with excitement. My tiny hands twisted the lid off of the jar and placed it beside me. Something about releasing the butterflies always felt ceremonious to me. It meant both the end and the beginning. Sometimes they just flew away, wasting no time. But for others, it took them a few moments before allowing the air to kiss their wings, sending them skyward. This one was taking his time. I looked back at my father, who didn’t seem the least bit concerned. “He’s just a little scared, Nora. Talk to him, tell him about how beautiful it is out there.”

I thought about all the things I loved. Popsicles and summertime. When my dad painted. How my mother’s hugs felt. My bicycle. I thought about how brilliantly colored the world was. How there were so many textures and shapes and sounds. How it moves so fast and never seems to stop. I allowed my eyelids to close, and I listened carefully to the sounds of my world. How gloriously loud the world was, even in the absence of words. Breath exiting the body, leaves rustling in the trees, water slapping against rocks and rushing downstream in the river across the way. I pulled the jar close to me, whispering all of these secrets to my newly metamorphosed friend. I told him about how scary everything was sometimes, like when my dad yelled or when my mom cried. “It’s okay to be scared,” I said quietly. “I’m scared sometimes too. But it’s really great out there too.”

When I opened my eyes, the butterfly was gone. I sat back down on the stoop. My father was watching the creature go. His eyes were glassy. I thought of something I never had before. “What happens after we let them go, pops?” I asked quietly. Sweat had soaked through the sides of his Yankees cap. His skin was tan from long hours spent on other people’s roofs, and covered with large tattoos from his teenage years. Dragons, skulls, my zodiac sign. He was a large man, muscular but also somehow soft and round. He was a painting of himself from his twenties but smudged and worn with age despite being younger than most of my friends’ dads. My dad had eyes that were photocopies of my own. Blue with hints of grey that became electric in the sunlight. Stormy when troubled. They were eyes like the Atlantic. He moved the butterfly jar and the bottle from between us and pulled me close to him. His arm was heavy against my small body, but it was a weight that didn’t bother me.

“When we release our little guys, they go and find their friends. They lay the eggs that turn into those caterpillars that you love so much. But when they lay the eggs, the butterflies have fulfilled their purpose. They have created the next generation, and it is time for them to rest.”

“So they go to sleep?” I asked, confused. He was quiet for a long moment, “No, baby. They...they die. They close their eyes and they go, well, they go where we all go one day.”

“Where?”

“Well, some people call it heaven. Some people call it a waiting room until they get re-born into something or someone else. For some people, it’s just this peaceful place filled with people you love and—”

“And butterflies?”

“Yes,” he said smiling, “there are lots of butterflies.”

My father and I had a lot of conversations over the years. Some were good, some were shitty, but after he died I could only remember the one from that August, sitting with him on the stoop with the butterfly jar and the stars smiling down at us. The day we turned off his life support, I sat with him in the hospital room. He was a man bathed in artificial sleep. Tubes and machines keeping him alive. Selfishly, I hoped that he would die in his sleep. That he would just stop fighting the inevitable. That wasn’t him though. He hadn’t fulfilled his purpose. He was forty one. He hadn’t seen me graduate college yet, or walked me down the aisle. He had grandchildren to meet. Adventures still to embark on. But sometimes, unlike butterflies, we don’t go to our other place knowing that we have lived a fulfilled life. Sometimes we die mid-life, organs failing, with student debt, in a bleach-scented hospital room in Florida. I still talked to him about our butterfly summers. About popsicles and my mother’s curls. I talked to him about the boy that I loved, about writing, about music. I talked to him about my fears about the future. I told him that I loved him. That I forgave him, even though I hadn’t yet. The next day, his hospice nurse started taking tubes out of him. I imagined fingers on a jar, twisting, struggling to open it. Tubes exit body. The jar has been opened. Heart monitor beeps slowly. The creature begins to creep along the edge of the jar on legs smaller than a sewing needle. Sounds exit his body, typical but they sound like cymbals crashing. I still hear them in my ears. The butterfly stands on the edge where the entrance of the jar meets the sky. “Go,” I whisper to them both, “free yourself.” Translucent wings extend, and all is quiet.

THE RAT AND I

Jacob Bloom University of Maine at Farmington

I

Let Us Call Him Achilles

When I first discovered the rat, I had a glorious delusion of coexisting with the animal. I imagined myself depicted in paintings all over church walls like Saint Francis, with morning glory wrapped around my ears, fowl and finches at my shoulder, and deer and lambs at my side. When I started to notice droppings around the house however, I decided to do away with it. It became too hard to stomach the thought of a hairy little creature running greedily about my house. It’s no wonder that out of all the artistic depictions of that glorified saint, not one of them include a rat, the wild animal that lives closest to man.

Let us call him Achilles. I had caught rats before, but Achilles was noth ing like them. He was an athletic, cunning, sleek, and muscular animal. He was startlingly strong for his size. I don’t know how, but he managed to lift large lamb chops and fruit out of the garbage can. He was smart too, bloody smart. I piled glue-traps around the garbage so that if he were to touch any of them with any part of his fur or tail, he would be caught. Still, night after night he climbed up into the trash. He knew what a live-catch trap was, he knew what a glue-trap was, and he knew what a snap-trap was. I probably set a hundred of them over the course of a few months and he avoided them all.

I figured this rat had no respect for my competence to catch him because he was completely indiscreet about his presence in the house. He left food scat tered all over the kitchen floor for me to clean up the next day. I imagined each night he would feast like a king and lay out a buffet of bones, old chicken, uneaten strawberries, cheese rinds, and shriveled peppers. Then, as relaxed as an old man lounging on the couch in his underwear, he’d lay on the floor next to the heater and eat to his heart’s content. Surprisingly, he didn’t grow fat or lethargic. I know this because I caught a glimpse of him once slinking down the stairs. He was slim and quick. I wondered why he lived alone without a companion.

To make the situation worse, about a month after Achilles first appeared, I discovered that he was chewing at the wooden cabinets and wires in both the dish washer and laundry machine. Night after night, he would come out of the garage or floor boards and nibble away at the house’s delicate infrastructure. It took just a month of this to break the dishwasher. After four months he had already done

thousands of dollars damage to the cabinetry. I saw the fridge coming next.

Every morning it was the same mess, the same routine. I lived alone—I was divorced and my kids had moved out—so there was no one to clean up but me. I’d spend at least thirty minutes at the beginning of each day walking around the house cleaning up rat droppings with a paper towel. The droppings were scattered everywhere, even the bedrooms. It was totally unsanitary.

A strange thing about the whole situation was that I felt no hatred for Achilles. In a way, I felt a bond. After all, I was alone and he was the only other living mammal in the house. Additionally, I respected him greatly, as an enemy but also as a fellow creature of intelligence. If he could evade traps like he did, I figured he must have been damn well aware of many other things. I believe there are many things we don’t know about rats and animal-kind as a whole.

I was somehow simultaneously disgusted and fond of Achilles. Often, I came home to my dark, empty house and heard scuttling underneath the floor boards or scratching in the cabinets and actually felt less alone. Sometimes I imagined Achilles and I were the only two living things left on earth. I wondered what type of kinship we would share if this were the case. For this reason, setting traps for him always pained me. Each time I laid one down it was a truly poignant routine. But what else could I do? I had to catch him.

II

Experts

After about five months of failing to catch Achilles, I decided I couldn’t fight the battle alone. I had poured countless hours into researching and devising schemes to catch him, but none had worked. I called a pest control company and inquired about their services.

Ulysses the rat catcher showed up at my door on a Saturday afternoon. Ul ysses was an older man about my age and he had the air of both a private investiga tor and a counselor. He had the silent arrogance of an expert and like most private investigators, if he didn’t have superior knowledge, he saw it necessary to feign it. After all, he was being paid.

Ulysses provided very little insight to the situation. All he did was conduct a “tour” around the house and yard. He came back about an hour later to prescribe me a list of chores I must do to clog up my pipes so no rat could get in or out. I asked Ulysses how this would stop rats already living in my home, and he replied that rats are communal creatures who wander around nearby homes and don’t actually live in a singular house.

As it turns out, Ulysses was dead wrong. A little more than a year later, I found Achilles’s lair in the laundry room. It was your stereotypical Tom and Jerry hole in the wall and it was full of rotten food. Achilles was in fact, as I suspected,

living in the house all along.

Ulysses came by my house three more times over the course of the next two months. He laid out many traps just as I had done, but they weren’t effective. In the end, I had spent five hundred dollars on the rat service that had done abso lutely nothing. The rat lived on.

III

A Rich History

There’s one crucial part of this story that I’ve failed to mention. My exwife would kvetch at me night and day about catching Achilles. Anytime we’d com municate about finances or our children, she would accuse me of not doing enough to stop him. Sometimes she would call me simply to ask if I had caught him yet. I don’t blame her, the house was being destroyed, and she still owned half of it. The rat quite literally did thousands of dollars in damage.

Believe it or not, rats had been a point of contention in my marriage. This point of conflict began many years before when I refused to kill a different rat that had been living under our dishwasher. You see, there was a particular incident with this rat that caused a profound shift in my attitudes towards the entire species. I was with my daughter, and we must have caught the rat by surprise because we stepped into the kitchen and it was sitting with its babies in broad daylight right in front of the dishwasher. Though the babies quickly scuttled out of sight back under the cabinets, the mother rat didn’t follow them. Instead, it just stood on its hind paws right in front of us and began to squeak in an odd, distressed way. It made these modulated, appealing, almost human noises and gesticulated with its tiny hands. It was as if it was trying to explain something to us—what, though, I had no idea. Then, it slipped behind the dishwasher about fifteen seconds later. The whole scene was bizarre.

Although I was initially baffled by what I’d witnessed, later that day it oc curred to me that the mother rat had been appealing to me and my daughter to not hurt its babies. I realized it wasn’t acting like a sporadic, stupid animal as I initially suspected, rather, it was pleading to us. This caused me to see how human rats re ally are. I think there’s a commonality between mammals. We may not understand each other through language, but we can certainly communicate through sounds, facial expression, and demeanor.

I felt so bad for this mother rat, that when my wife asked me to kill it, I refused. I simply couldn’t do it. Then, when my wife responded that she’d kill it, I pleaded with her to let the rat live. This upset her. It wasn’t the largest problem in our marriage, but I think it caused a rift. She simply couldn’t comprehend that I didn’t want to kill the rat. According to her, it was unclean, disgusting, and possi bly diseased. Because of my refusal to set any traps, the rat lived under our dish washer for many more weeks until my wife decided to take the matters into her

own hands whether I liked it or not.

A few weeks later, I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant with my daughter when I received a call from my then-wife gleefully informing me that she had killed the mamma rat. I felt so bad. I was honestly very, very sad. Embarrassingly, I cried in the restaurant. I didn’t bawl, but I did shed a few tears. My daughter who was twelve at the time was both shocked and bemused to see me crying, let alone over a rat. I tried to hide my tears as I quickly bent over my plate and scooped some orange chicken into my mouth.

Given the damage Achilles was doing, the whole situation felt karmic because my ex-wife had always been extremely annoyed at my sympathies towards “vermin.” It felt like some sort of punishment. Often, when I woke up and saw that Achilles had caused damage to the cabinetry or appliances, the only thing I could think of was my ex-wife gleefully trying to hide her smirk, “I told you so.” She really did tell me so. In a strange way, this rat haunted my failed marriage. I don’t know what this can possibly mean, but one night I dreamed that Achilles was in bed with my ex-wife.

IV

An Abrupt End

Like most major events in life, the end of this story begins unexpectedly. It was a hot, tranquilizing afternoon, and I had gotten home early. There was a pleasant feeling to the air, and the neighborhood was quiet. It was one of those days where it felt like the whole world had stopped to watch the passing of time slip pleasantly by. Maybe the rat felt it too.

I swung open the door and there he was. He stood with his hind legs, frozen on the counter above the trashcan. For half a second, he didn’t move, and just looked at me from across the room. This is a picture I still remember clearly: The sink to his left, the kettle to his right, and the trashcan just below him. I don’t know what in God’s name he could have been thinking in his head, but all I can say is that terror was imprinted all over his tiny face and twitching body. It’s a strange feeling to walk into your own home to be met with a look as if you yourself are the intruder.

Terror is not restricted to humans. Does my ability to do algebra really affect the way I experience so greatly? Every living thing has the desire to preserve their own existence. What the rat experienced the moment he saw me was no dif ferent than the experience of a human who is attacked by a man with a knife in a dark alleyway. I have never experienced this type of terror but I saw it in Achilles’s face clearly. Horror is visceral, primitive, and universal.

I suddenly heard a squeak, a quick scratching as he clawed for dear life, and a thud as he fell to the floor. After all those months he slipped and became ensnared in the glue-traps he had avoided for so long. This was a human mistake

he had made. Day after day, he danced and avoided the dozens of traps I placed by the trash can each night. Eventually it seemed, he had become complacent in his routine. The fear that drove him behind the walls during the day had failed him. He had dropped his guard and in doing so became caught—not out of lack of skill or agility, but for a lack of patience. He was stuck to one of the traps beneath the garbage can.

I could barely stomach looking at him, a quarter out of revulsion but most ly out of empathy. He violently thrashed his body about the floor, trying to get away from the trap I had set him. His little claws scratched against the floor, and for about twenty seconds he contorted his body back and forth trying to get away. Then, a strange thing happened. He began pleading to me. This isn’t in some metaphorical sense. He began making a noise I cannot forget. He sounded like a crying child—a human crying child. He was almost whining “Hel…he…hel… help.” I wouldn’t believe the noises he made unless I heard them myself. He was desperately trying to escape the trap, and trying to chew through it. It was this plaintive, wailing sound. So human, like he knew what I wanted to hear and was appealing to me in my own language—he was shockingly human.

I went outside to the shed and grabbed a shovel with a long handle. I went back inside and used this to pick him up. He writhed and tossed and wailed. Once or twice he jerked his body so violently that I dropped him and I had to pick him back up with my shovel from the hardwood floor. His body felt soft and squishy against the hard metal. I couldn’t look at him directly as I carried him outside for his execution.

Finally, I made it to my backyard. I put him down on the concrete and went to fetch an ax hammer. It was as quick a death as I could think of. There was no ritual, no goodbye, no final words. This was for my sake. He continually pleaded with his voice, but I blocked it out.

Even through metal and wood of the ax I felt the quick compression of his body, his small bones snapping, and his final squeal before I brought the ax down onto his head. The blood was the worst part. Thankfully, it rained that night, so I didn’t have to wash up the flesh stains he left on the concrete.

I was twelve when I killed my first bird with the pellet gun my parents had bought for my birthday. At first, the target was enough to have fun, but eventually, the birds that flittered about the trees became much more tempting to shoot. I just couldn’t help it. They darted in and out of the trees so quick and small. My hunter instincts kicked in and I didn’t think, I just shot. It’s so much more tempting to shoot at something moving, and I didn’t even consider what would happen if I hit one. I’m not even sure it occurred to me that I could hit one. The first time I did it was shocking and thrilling. It was electrifying to feel the crack from my hand, the bird darting in the trees and see it fall from the sky a moment later. It just dropped out of the sky suddenly like a rock. I was fascinated that I affected something so

far away. For a few months I shot at little birds in the trees.

I stopped the day I hit a dove. It was a bigger bird, so it didn’t die imme diately when I hit it. It just lay on the ground bloody and wounded. Unlike other times I had shot birds, I went up close to examine it. It was such an elegant animal. It had white and grey wings that were soft and slick, and a small, beautiful little head. I loomed over it, and it just looked up at me with a sad, deep look. I was a monster and it was pure. I’ll never forget the look of that dove. It just looked up at me, accusingly. It was quiet, but it looked up with its eyes and accused me. It felt like it was asking, “Why did you do this to me?”

I wish I could have helped it, but there was nothing I could do. I was too ashamed to get help from any adults, so I just sat with it in the shade under the tree where it fell. It kept on looking at me, with its round, glassy eye. “Why did you do this? Why did you do this?” It kept on asking.

I had no answer.

Bloom, Peter. Personal Interview. 26 Apr. 2020. Bloom, Peter. Personal Interview. 27 Apr. 2020. Bloom, Peter. Personal Interview. 28 Apr. 2020.

you hand him the glass of mango lassi and two fingertips brush in a hint of heat, reminding you why niqabis and british dowagers wear gloves and then it’s just you and him and the condensation reminds you that you are both touching the same wetness and that meaninglessly meaningful thought will remind you of his body for many years, as his turns to dirt and yours buds/blooms/sways in a world with no reminders of him.

VIGNETTE FROM FATIMA FARHEEN MIRZA’S “A PLACE FOR US” a. a. khaliq University of Kansas

SOMETHING THAT ASKS FOR NOTHING

Ella Schmidt Bowdoin College

There were men in orange vests beckoning clever bars of light on the St. Louis tarmac, slandered thinly with snow, when I came away from him— yet another job, he’d say, to be taken by computers, who never flinch against the cold and don’t have girls and opinions to divert them. They grow thoughts in the laboratories of reclusive men, just biding their time.

There were dirty remarks on the bathroom walls of a nation, a body upturned by duck hunters in the Ozark woods, girls were pretty and stupid under strip mall awnings. I’d loved one exhausted for a fast time by the time I got the car started again.

His pupils shrank to receive the sun when he came down from his stuff, and paradise fell from him.

I am sick, but not so sick I could not be well if he would just come back and hang up his coat and insist on renewing the lease, for it is bearable to live where a sofa pulls out to make a bed, the radiator finicks, woman and man smuggle the past like a boxcutter into a fight; a fight is just four good fists.

Then I am an artist who would rather be loved. Would rather be the lips he silenced in his paintings, the chimneys he gorged with smoke. Signs bearing all kinds of instructions convene

as four-way stops at evening on the streets we dress to walk like humans, and I will never be free.

SCHMIDT

LAYERS

Claws.

I see them behind his back. We are at the altar, and I am seeing what kind of man he is.

Where others might cry or grin he simmers with a mouth full of razors. He looks hungry and I am afraid to feed him.

“Layers” she said. Sat me down and professed her sins.

“My son has Layers, and who better than you to peel them away?”

The first year is slow. I often lay beside him, brushing at scales and ignoring glinting teeth. “Are you afraid?” he asks, curling around my form. I never answer him-or maybe I do, because he always laughs after.

The second year, I notice something strange. He is curling himself in loops on our kitchen floor. I ask, “Weren’t you Married before?” Yellow eyes blink at me

Laila Smith Warren Wilson College SMITH

and then he frowns, says “Aren’t we married?” and refuses to say more.

The third year is angry. I know he is lying. Where are those other women? He refuses to answer. Coiled on our couch, head in my lap “Weren’t you married before?” Entwined in our bed, “Weren’t you married before?” I ask and ask, and he never has an answer.

The fourth year is filled with Silence. He leaves, and I never see him go.

Once I thought to ask him where, and he placed a claw on my chin. His teeth gleamed yellow in the dark. “Do you want to know where those other women went?”

It is a spring day, when I find snakeskin lining our tub. Skin of monsters floating in rose tinted water. I can see him outside our bath room-- no change. I ask him later, “Did it hurt?” and he looks from under lashes and replies, “No more than it ever did before.”

Layers , she said. He will lose his layers

and you must stay until then. I don’t have time to wait. I call and ask “Did you know?” She says yes. “Will I die too?”

There is quiet, and then: “I had hoped you would be different.”

Claws. He has claws, and I can tell that he is growing ready to use them. “How much do you love your son?”

She pauses, exhales and then: “I love him enough to feed him.”

It is the eighth month of the fourth year. I think of scales, glinting teeth, and of the way his eyes scare me.

How much do I love him?

I will wait for him to come home, knife beneath my pillow.

I will pray that tonight is n ot the night, and if it is I will pray the fallout doesn’t kill us both.

EURYDICE

Carlee Landis Prescott College

I remember lyre strings, Calloused fingers bleeding as he wrenched them Tighter into tune. He’d play through the epics still.

When the viper struck, I heard singing. It took three days for him to notice I had fallen, He always did get too caught in his own playing.

Hades told me when Orpheus sang, Obsidian halls wept, The melody a rope meant to tie around my waist, Hauling me back.

Dragged forward by his triumph, I followed, honorbound.

He almost made it. But as he approached that door of horrible, worldly light, Trust wavered.

An opportunity.

Turning from fog to flesh, I called his name.

Lyre strings snapped, His prized possession fell to the ground.

He turned and called to me and His voice

Was exactly as I remembered.

WHEN IT RAINS

Beatrix Zwolfer Montana State University

When it rains I hear things that don’t exist in sunlight, like the hiss of car tires displaced from their whisper, a yawning umbrella awning, back-of-the-throat gutter gurgle, and the raindrops on the roof tapping like a troupe of mice learning how to dance.

I sit for hours watching water trickle down the pane, counting through the blur rainboots and bowed heads, darkened shoulders and children in yellow ponchos.

Through the blur remembering windshield wipers and their curve, the corners of the glass where reaching arms miss, the flicker of the turn signal.

Remembering rain freckled cheeks and muddied puddle mirrors, the mattress dimpling beneath tiptoes straining to let ear meet ceiling and hear the patter, thunderclaps and tender hands scrubbing quickly in the shower for fear of lightning traveling through pipes.

PEACHY

Arin Lohr

Susquehanna University

I am peeling my skin off, like a peach battling with a paring knife.

And putting on a new, fresh, clean peel.

No one has ever seen me glow so bright— you can see the glint of a sepia sunrise in the corner of my eye, and smell the rose-scented soap rolling off of my wrists.

I took a coconut-milk bath, and my hair is silken, my body is renewed.

I am presenting to you the best version of me to date.

Take a bite out of my shoulder, taste the smoke that I commanded while manifesting this breezy afternoon, while persuading the sun out of today’s sky.

I want you to watch my fingers as they retract and extend with purpose. I want to grab your attention, with the tip of my neon-pink painted fingernail.

I’ll watch you chew.

TRANS PANIC DEFENSE

Arin Lohr Susquehanna University

my vagina is justification for strangulation if you decide that you weren’t expecting a tranny in your bed then you can legally defend putting a bullet in my head you were scared you didn’t want to give up your gold star. you were in danger i was going to revoke your masculinity card. i deceived you by not putting a disclaimer label on my packaging. and now if you unwrap me. and aren’t satisfied with your purchase your fist will print a return label on my broken nose and the blood crusting over your knuckles will not save me in court.

SCAN IT

Sijia Ma Smith College

GRASP

Zachary Parr Kansas State University

ALTERED SELF

Josephine Newman Temple University

HOLLYWOOD LASCAUX

Samuel Lawson University of Louisville

POC #1

Abby Green University of Kentucky

OVERGROWN

Alexis Hawthorne

University of Alabama

SUCCUMB OR RELEASE

Audree Grand’Pierre Bowdoin College

GRAND’PIERRE

METALLIC

Cara Clements Emory University

DISASTER

Josephine Newman Temple University

THE NEW SNAP

Arjun Saatia University of Central Arkansas

CONFLICT

Rachel Peavler Northern Kentucky University

OUT OF THE DARK

Arianna Jackson Wayne State University

JACKSON

NIGHT OWLS

Meg Rouse Seattle Pacific University

AMIDST THE PANDEMIC

Chloe Cook Northern Kentucky University

There is a single, white dog hair on the dresser; I blow on it like I would a dandelion and watch it fall to the carpet in the same manner as a feather. If all the hairs on my dog’s back turned to feathery wings, I don’t think he’d fly. Rather, he’d run around in circles trying to catch them, and snort after accidentally flapping enough to raise his paws off the grass.

I’m not a car person. I can’t name the make or year of a random vehicle speeding by on the highway. My automobile expertise doesn’t go beyond knowing where to put the gas pump in, or how to check the oil. But still, I drive. Mostly to Kroger. Pretty much every day.

“We need more lettuce for the bunnies,” Mom says. “Oh, can you pick up some more cheese?” Sure, Dad.

Keys, license, phone, shoes: proceed to the car. I keep forgetting to throw away the empty water bottles littering the passenger seat. I tell myself it doesn’t really matter—they aren’t moldy and no one’s going to sit there, anyway.

Seatbelt, reverse, radio: put the pedal to the metal, girl. Show that 35 milesper-hour back road who’s boss. I crank up the A/C and grind the fresh air between my molars like it’s bubblegum—savor the free gas particles, unmuffled by a cloth mask and untainted with the scent of hand sanitizer. I drive slowly, almost unnecessarily so, taking advantage of the temporary haven.

Park, wallet, mask: here we are again. As I walk through the supercenter’s entry, I scan the lanes of cashiers; it looks like Wendy and Lauren are mid-shift. It must be Tuesday. I grab a cart and instinctually turn right toward the deli. Cheese Grandma should be here. The same sweet old lady works most days slicing up fancy cheeses my father and I will eventually eat on crackers and sandwiches. If it weren’t for the fact that we liked to experiment every week, I’m sure Cheese Grandma would know our usual order by heart.

Line, checkout, receipt: I pick out my Secret Snack (definition: a special treat designated for the person or people who went through the trouble of going to the grocery store. A reward. A term coined by my father). My breath fogs up my glasses as I regurgitate a Thanks ! to Wendy. I can’t wait to take off the mask: musty, musty, musty. I’m ready to get back in my car.

Seatbelt, reverse, radio: I pull out of the parking lot and turn left at the light where I normally continue straight. I mosey down a new back road, taking

note of the different landscaping of the houses sprouted between long stretches of tall grass. I feel every bump in the pavement and sense the reverberations of each pothole dip. I see ancient garden gnomes and muted-yellow slides. I drive: alone, slowly, onward.

I’m relieved not to be allergic to peanut butter. My mother told me that, when she was my age, her parents made her eat lima beans and drink plain milk. She couldn’t leave the table until she finished her plate. They never gave her true dessert—but she was allowed to eat PB&J. I think we can teach gratitude in softer ways. My mother used to write me notes with smiley faces and hearts, and tuck them into my lunchbox: this is one of those ways.

My dog frequently tries to lick inside my ear. Of all the body parts (toes, feet, hands, nose) he aims specifically for the external acoustic meatus. One time, I gave in, and just let him have at it. It was like a temporary, aggressive, ticklish swimmer’s ear infection. I firmly believe he wouldn’t have stopped licking if I didn’t make him. I tell myself dogs discover through taste and he was trying to lick my brain. He wants to get to know me better. He wants to be my friend. Maybe we should let people love us in the ways they know how.

When my grandma was dying, I was thousands of miles away. My mother asked me if I wanted to call her, because it might be my last chance. I said Yes, okay. I was sitting on a metal bench outside of a Carrabba’s the last time I ever spoke to my Grandma. I knew it was the last time. I tried to think about the warmest thing I could say to her, what words I wanted her to carry into death. I didn’t know what her last moments would consist of. If her final thoughts as a living being were going to be about our phone conversation, I had to make it a good one.

Months later, I slid my finger up a wooden handrail: I’d dangled there before, when my hands were too small to carry grief. I was told to look through my grandma’s jewelry: skim and see if there was anything I wanted. I found a Ziploc bag full of earrings. Lots of hoops: most of them ornamented with a cross or fake jewels. I chose a few pairs, knowing I’d never wear them, and tucked them in my pocket. I’d spent countless nights asleep in the pink room across the hall. I’d mountain-climbed the spiral staircase and spilled Cheerios on the linoleum kitchen floor. I’d gotten pruney toes in the pool and left my swimsuit, dripping, on the porch. I knew what I wanted. I’d lived there well for years, and still, I left with a pocketful of my grandma’s things feeling like a grave robber.

PHOTOGRAPH

Julia Weilant Oakland University

I’m kneeling on the wooden floor of the living room at my mom’s house— small specks of dirt and cat litter digging their way into my skin—and rifling through the large blue plastic bin of pictures, looking for photos of myself to post to the foam boards for my graduation party, mapping out what might fit on the twenty by thirtyinch white boards from Michaels my mother still hasn’t bought. The party is only a few days away, and I didn’t trust that she’d find the time to pick out pictures and buy the boards, so I suppose I’d cut out the middleman and do it myself. I file through the photos, pausing to cringe at my ever-embarrassing paprika-covered baby face, before coming to a large black binder with gold script on the front. Six letters in that weird fancy way people write things, with the last name initial in the middle:

NWR & EHM

I lift the ancient tome out of the box and open it to the first page. A piece of bible-thin paper separates each cardboard page, and I have to be careful not to tear them. An inscription on the first page, the only one with white creamy paper, reads: The Wedding Album of Nathan Roy Weilant and Erica Marie Herr Saturday, May Thirty-First, Nineteen Ninety Seven Our Lady of the Lakes Catholic Church

I’ve looked at this book many times, dreaming about time travel and how I wish I could go back and be there, watch them in their element, like season one, episode eight of Doctor Who. Sure, I wouldn’t be saving my father from being hit by a car and almost bring about the end of the world, or causing a fight between my parents because my mother thought my father was hitting on me, their daughter from the future. I’d do it right. Stay in the shadows, listen to their whispered conversations in between each pose the photographer walked them through, hear them saying their vows and try my hardest not to create a paradox. A small voice in my head nags at me, telling me it’s not as perfect as the picture makes it look, that I’d probably walk into them fighting, just like Jackie and Pete Tyler, that the cutesy little stories I used to make up in my head as a kid about my parents and how much they cared about each other—all that hoping and praying that if they could just be reminded about what they used to be, they’d get back together and everything would shine in a golden light (not unlike the trim surrounding each photo) and I’d have

everything I ever wanted and time would reset itself and I’d have a normal life: a regular white-picket-fence-and-pie-on-the-windowsill type of family—could never happen anyway. Another voice tells that voice to shut the fuck up and enjoy the beauty for a moment, to quit being such a downer.

Staring at the wedding album, I feel nostalgic for something I never had, never saw, in real life. They’re encased in a golden octagonal frame, dancing. My mother’s eyes are closed, her forehead resting on my father’s. The photographer did a wonderful job centering them between two poles, a small balcony behind them, cheesy pink ribbon wrapped around the banister. In the right corner, I can barely see the altar; on the left: a table half obscured by a fake tree with string lights laced in its branches.

My father looks so young, so happy, so in love. My mother almost looks annoyed, but there’s a faint smile on her face. God, I think, their side profiles are so amazing. What the hell happened to mine? In the short distance between them, I can almost see a tangible link. A red thread linking two lovers together, signifying them as soulmates. In the dim church light, they both seem to be glowing. I can hear the rustle of her satin wedding dress as she sways to a mix strummed by the three-piece orchestra, though I’m not even a thought in either of their minds just yet. They both look so peaceful, a slight glare from the camera lens catches their angelic halos in the light, surrounding both heads of curly brown hair.

The next page: all three against the stained glass window, my father on the left, mother on the right, my sister (just a baby at this time, a delicate child with delightfully rosy cheeks) in between them. My mother is wearing pearl earrings and the giant bouquet in her hands, large enough that it almost looks like a grave blanket (white and pink roses, spring starflowers, baby’s breath), matches the flower crown on her head and the rose in my father’s lapel. The perfect family. Something I will never see outside of this photograph.

On another page, white cake is smeared across my mother’s face. Her giant smile is plastered in frosting. My father’s left hand is stuffed full of cake, the other grips a champagne flute, and they’re leaning in to kiss each other. Another masterpiece of photography. I wonder how they got her to take so many pictures, and if she was as stubborn about them back then as she is now.

I continue to flip through the pages, laughing at the horribly orange spray tan my Mimi had, the deep contrast between her hot-pink dress suit and its plunging neckline and the way Grams and Papa dressed as if they were going to a funeral, all muted colors and button-up shirts. My aunt Missy and her ridiculously curly hair in a pale pink bridesmaids dress that makes me cringe at my mother’s poor fashion taste (or whoever chose that style, I mean come on, half-capped sleeves and a cinched-sheath waistline with princess stitching on the bodice? Who the hell designed these?). There are a few strangers in the photographs, and I turn to ask who they are before realizing I’m home alone. My sister is out god knows where, and my mother is at work, probably tending to gunshot wounds or being shit on by old men, and won’t be home until eight hours from now, when the sun is up. I could text

my dad and ask, but he’s still on his weekend boy’s trip and is definitely asleep (even if he wasn’t, I’m sure he’d be too wasted to respond). I feel more alone than ever now, looking down at everyone’s smiling faces, the bubbles being blown at my parents as they leave the church, holding each other’s hands and running between an aisle of people. I can almost hear the bells ringing.

All of it seems so foreign. The pictures must be fake. All the fighting, every screaming match between them that I’ve witnessed...there’s no way these are pictures of my parents. These can’t be the same people who yelled at the top of their lungs about being late to meet and exchange me and my sister at the Auburn Hills Police Department parking lot every Wednesday and every other weekend for three years. It can’t be the same people who took the whole family to court-ordered counseling for three months when I was eleven (snapshot: me screaming at the top of my lungs for everyone to shut up and listen). This is not the photo album of people who hate each other. This is a collage of beauty, of true love. This version of them, the version that lives happily ever after encased in a giant black binder, I wonder if they thought on that day how things would play out? If between the bouquet toss and grabbing the leg garter, they ever realized they were doomed? That, only five years later, this perfect little picture would be nothing but a distant memory, a fever dream in my childhood self’s mind?

All of the pictures are inlaid under that same golden octagon, and I can’t help but think it’s the smallest bit ironic. As if whoever constructed the album had a glimpse into the future and gave my parents the framework to duke it out, to forever be stuck in an MMA match, the rest of us watching from the ground as two people who once loved each other planned out their punches, fighting until everyone in the arena died of old age. If they knew that their teenage marriage wouldn’t last forever. And suddenly, I’m drawn out of the pictures with the realization that I’ve been sitting so long on my knees, they’re starting to go numb. I sit flat on the ground, legs extended against the cool wood of the floor, quickly building up sweat under my thighs. I feel itchy and hot, and the hair sitting on the back of my neck is sticking to me in such a way that makes me want to pull a 2007 Britney and shave my entire head. As my heart starts to race, a million questions fly through my mind. Where did their wedding rings go? What ever happened to my mother’s wedding dress that she said she saved but I haven’t since been able to find, not that I care because it’s definitely too simple to wear if I ever get married, but also where the fuck did it go? Why did she keep this stupid wedding album if she hated my dad so much, routinely telling her friends she regretted meeting him every time she talked on the phone and thought I wasn’t listening? Why didn’t my dad get to keep it since he’s the one who actually wanted them to last forever and still talks about how much he loved her when he gets too drunk? More importantly, why on earth did I ever think this was going to be a good idea, to look at it? I slam the album closed, tired of its empty promises, and heave it back down into the forgotten blue bin, relishing the banging sound it makes against the weight of the other pictures.

WHEN YOU HEAR HOOFBEATS, THINK HORSES

Makenzie Jones Oakland University

Not zebras.

I often wonder about the man that coined that old medical proverb. What an absurd life he must have had.

A waiting room hums with life and sick. A name is called, and a goat leaps from her chair. She bounces across the floor, loud and bumbling. He will say she is too flouncy and energetic. He prescribes her Concerta and Ritalin. The cow is called back next. She is too stalky, slow-moving, and unmotivated to enter races, rodeos, or even the show-jumping circuit. The stethoscope says she should be more limber, more ambitious. He prescribes yoga and an antidepressant. The pig and the hippo are next, and the camel will go later. They will all be told they have lumps and bulg es where they ought to be lean and trim, and given cards directing them to weightloss clinics or liposuction centers. The deer and antelope are malnourished. The yak and the ox are ballooned with steroids. The reindeer needs special ed classes.

The camel just returned; she had her hump liposuction as instructed, and had those thick hairy pads waxed from chest and knees while she was at it. She receives a lot of compliments now but can’t run like she used to. Her skin is all fire and prickly tingles; she’s sick often with heat flashes and chills, and constantly faint. She looks more pony than she ever has, but she used to dream of racing with mus tangs. Now she can hardly wobble to the back room. It’s probably just the flu, the stethoscope will tell her. Just get some rest. When she comes back next year, still suffering with “the flu,” he’ll charge her for another antibiotic and scoot her out the door.

The lamb goes next; she is underdeveloped. She will need hormone supple ments. The zebra and the giraffe are social misfits. Don’t worry, though, that’s probably just a phase. They’ll grow out of those features that make them so unique and unfortunate. For now, just cake some foundation over those zig-zag scars. They’ll fade with time and shame. If that freckled girl’s ridiculous neck doesn’t even out, though, consider plastic surgery.

The stallion, however, is given a clean bill of health. His portrait is hung on every wall, his mold is cast from iron in the back room. The slithering stethoscope escorts his discharge and watches him leave; his hard, little tail rattles with ecstasy.

THE CHOIR

Tessa Woody Northern Kentucky University

Forget the Glitter and Grow Up

Glitter eyeshadow was smudged across our eyelids, accented by accidental mascara marks. Hairspray over-sprayed, tightening the skin at the edge of our hair line. The curls were still warm on our shoulders.

My best friend and I had always gotten ready for middle-school dances together. The seventh-grade Thanksgiving dance was no exception. For this dance, I had real cowgirl boots, straight outta Nashville. They were embroidered thick black leather. A wave pattern curled up the ankle. The click of the heels made me feel unstoppable. I paired them with my mom’s cowgirl hat, its crown adorned with a lapis lazuli. My white and black sparkly dress was the least interesting part of my outfit.

My best friend didn’t fall short, in fact, she always seemed like she was several steps ahead of me. She got her hips and chest before I did. She understood how to put the bra on both backwards and upside-down first: clasp it, and then pull it around the front and flip it up-right. Genius. She knew how to put eyeliner on and what YouTube videos to watch to learn how to do the rest. I trusted her more than I did myself to not poke my eye. She wore blue, a color made for her. Although, by the looks of it, her dress wasn’t any less itchy. The more the sparkle, the more the itch. It was worth it. She didn’t complain about the pinchy heels. She knew not to rub her eyes because she remembered she had make-up on. She knew how to talk to people. She could befriend anyone, no matter the clique.

We posed for pictures, our parents waving hands left and right from behind cheap digital cameras. Move closer! Forwards! Backwards! Serious smiles, duck lips, and bunny ears. Dad stepped in unwillingly, but not without dragging Mom in with him. In a rush, pictures ended as soon as they began.

With my parents gone, her mom wanted to take some individual pictures. I was happy to get behind the camera. Her mom was aggravated, though she often was that way. This time it was because she had called down the stairs for her son several times. He had moved into the basement after going through rehab. My friend was happy to have her brother back home. They all truly just wanted to help him get through this. They were not the family to shun for mistakes, because they all had made their own. They weren’t fake. There were no rugs to sweep under.

I had always struggled connecting all the branches of her family tree. Her brother was actually her uncle. Her grandmother had adopted her when she was a

baby because her mom was in jail. So, her grandmother became her mom, her uncle became her brother, and her aunt became her sister. They all acted like siblings, and as a little kid, nothing seemed off to me about this. My friend was an aunt in elementary school. I swear, she was born to be an aunt. She’s always been good at it. All of her nieces and nephews clung to her like a sister, and eventually, like a mother. This was just her family. Love and hate harmonized, dancing the waltz through the floorboards.

Her mother stood at the top of the stairs and yelled his name for what seemed like the tenth time. He had to be home, because his shoes were still by the dog bowl in the corner. I had a pit in my stomach.

Continued silence.

Flashing camera lights were traded for the ambulance’s red, white, and blue. The bruises around his eyes and in the crooks of his arms were blacker than the winter night outside. He was so cold.

The covered gurney rattled out the door. I could do nothing to stop her from crying in a ball on the floor over a bible. So, I just sat with my hand on her back. Her sobs became rhythmic, and my heart pounded to the beat. My eyes dried because I forgot to blink. There were no tears, just fear. In that moment, I was forced to forget the glitter and grow up, because her brother wasn’t the only brother lost in battle. There is no mercy for loved ones in an epidemic.

Eight Years

My sister and I were rowdy girls when we were 4 and 5. We were always rough housing, rolling around on a blanket over the carpeted floor. The rug burns on our knees were as red as our flushed faces.

During one particular wrestling match at our grandparents’s house, my uncle came up from the basement to sit on the couch. The TV was running, but it didn’t have our attention. It was strange to see him out of his room.

Some of my earliest memories, younger than 5, were of him arriving home late at night with pizza or White Castle. He always brought a bunch of food, enough for him and an army. I used to hear him practicing on his drum set. He loved heavy metal, and he put his soul into music. I had never seen him play, but my parents would tell you to this day that some of their favorite concerts were his. All of these super early memories were short, and mostly just sensory detail. But it was enough to know who Uncle was.

But these days, the house was quieter. He brought home food less. In fact, I stopped noticing when he came in at all. The only way we knew he was home was because he came up to get food or drink on Sunday mornings. That is if we didn’t go to church, which rarely happened in my younger years.

Today was one of the only days the silence was broken. He was sitting with us in the living room. It felt like I hadn’t seen him in years, though it was most likely only a couple weeks or a month. His hair was a mess, dark circles rimmed his eyes,

and his bones seemed more prominent. We didn’t really acknowledge him and the wrestling match continued.

When my sister kicked the box fan over, it started a chain reaction. A violent chill came over him, which caused him to spill his drink. He jumped up and screamed at my sister. If she hadn’t bumped the fan, he wouldn’t have gotten cold and spilled his drink on his lap. Our jaws dropped. My sister’s eyes began to swim in tears. He stormed off after yelling.

Nothing was normal. Uncle never screamed at us.

I hugged my sister and told her it wasn’t her fault. I was often the one to speak up when the screaming and the yelling was unjust. Over the years, my parents had to tell me several times, “Tessa, you’re right, but he’s your (insert your superior male elder here). You can’t talk back.” I was taught to respect my elders. My teachers, family, and friends would most likely agree, but when I was in that house, it was a whole different story. Someone was always yelling. I think this is why I also felt I had a duty to be there every weekend.

Now, I’m glad I didn’t stand up to my uncle. I had no idea what he was going through, and I wouldn’t understand for a while. I knew his behavior wasn’t normal, and that was all I could understand. This not-normal feeling would grow and grow until it burst, leaving chaos behind.

The silence was broken one last time in that same year.

Like last time, my sister and I were wrestling again in the living room. The screaming began on the second floor. This was unusual because it normally started on the first floor and was aimed at my grandmother. It didn’t matter who it was, everyone had a bone to pick with her. But this time, my grandmother was in the kitchen. We could hear Uncle and Papaw screaming at eachother. We watched as the fight moved down the narrow stairs and into the foyer. My uncle put his hand on the doorknob and my grandfather towered over him. Spit flew from my grandfather’s mouth. The screaming didn’t sound much like words. But my uncle held his scruffy chin up. It was about money. That’s all I could decipher at the time.

The door slammed. The windchimes above the door rattled like the angels on judgment day.

The next time I saw my uncle’s face was on Channel 12 news at 11 p.m. After leaving the house, my uncle robbed two banks that day, one in Kentucky and one in Ohio. He needed money for his next fix, and he couldn’t steal from his father anymore. My mother later told me that Uncle stole from Papaw a lot, but I had just never seen the altercations until now. He had to do two different amounts of time in jail for each state.

I didn’t see him for eight years.

Under the Tablecloth

His oldest son was born bitter, it seems. He had, and has, every right to be. As a kid, my cousin was my friend and my bully. But I never took the bullying as an

offense. I saw him. I knew why he would lash out. I felt more sympathy for him than I did anger.

I fought to be his friend. I wanted to be cool like him. He was a big kid. He was five years older than me, so I had a lot of catching up to do.

I often watched him play video games. It’s from him that I got my love for this pastime. The few times he handed me the controller and let me play, I swear, I heard angel music. The controller glowed golden like a relic from Indiana Jones It was the sign of trust and friendship I wanted. Too bad for him, I was, and I am, terrible at video games. I messed up every save he had.

One winter afternoon during my elementary school winter break, we decided to play a game of hide-and-seek during a visit to our grandparents house. We both hid underneath the dining-room table. My sister was it , as she often was. We whispered to each other for a while because my sister was looking in all the wrong places and the tablecloth was long. My cousin, shaded in the dim light under the table, looked at me with steady eyes and said, “When I’m a dad, I’m going to be there. I’m going to be a good dad.” It was completely out of the blue. The sudden switch startled me a bit. But I realized we were finally in a place where he felt safe and he trusted me. The weight of everything on both his dad’s shoulders, and his own, became clear to me. My little heart broke for both of them. “I know you will,” is the only thing I could think to say.

He became a dad in 2013. He was seventeen. I didn’t know the child’s mom too well, but I know she didn’t get the best chance to be a mom. She overdosed this year, during the pandemic, so she didn’t get a proper funeral. My cousin said that every time he looks into his son’s eyes, he sees her. When I asked him If I could write about him he just said, “Do a good piece. I’m tired of losing people to this shit. It makes me sick.” I hope I did.

A Generation Too Late

Northern Kentucky Hates Heroin came to my high school one morning to educate us on the effects of heroin. It’s through education that Kentucky claims to have had some success in slowing the rate of heroin use and in getting overdosedeaths down. Even my school, the number-one public school in all of Kentucky, blue ribbon and everything, was not immune to the epidemic.

In this prestigious school, everyone is perfect, and if they aren’t, they pay to have it covered up. But the stories still get murmured in the corners of the cafeteria and the back of the library. I have stories to tell, but they are stories I am not supposed to know.

The assembly was solemn. A student in our grade had lost a brother to heroin. His family organized the assembly. The student, the family, and other members of Northern Kentucky Hates Heroin, told stories of loved ones they lost. The speakers held back tears. The auditorium chair became itchy and hot. My throat burned.

It was so silent, you could feel the pain vibrating in the air.

I glanced around to see the faces of my fellow classmates in the crowd. Their chairs must have been itchy too. Their throats must have burned like mine. I wondered if I was the only one counting the fuzzballs on the carpet. I wondered how many got lost in that trance that sucked them into the memories of the ambulance lights or the slam of the door for the last time. Did they make promises under tablecloths too?

The saddest thing was not the stories the speakers told. It was not the tears they shed. It was the fact that this assembly was too late for most. Every night, the blue and red channel 12 news banner told us of the climbing numbers, and the safe places to get rid of used needles.

Senior year, my government teacher brought in both our state senator and our state representative to speak to the class. Two white men gave a presentation to about a dozen pairs of dull eyes. Then, they opened up for questions. Many rose quickly to ask personal questions or why pot wasn’t legal yet.

I waited. The song in my chest grew.

I raised my hand. “What do you plan to do about the heroin epidemic?”

I asked. The room became silent. Silent like the silent that follows heroin in all situations. They both exchanged nervous glances, telepathically deciding to give me the scripted answer. They suddenly seemed shy. They did the easiest thing a politician can do: pass the blame.

The oldest one answered, and I will paraphrase: The Federal Government has several levels of categorizing drugs. Marijuana and heroin are on the same level. This needs to be changed first before they can do anything. Sadly, northern Kentucky is so different from the rest of the state. Some counties are still dry, because alcohol is still controversial amongst diehard Southern Baptists. How could a few counties hope to do anything when the rest of the state and the federal government was the problem?

It took two generations to switch the narrative. My father was born in 1971, the year Nixon declared the war on drugs. My mother was born the year before. Eventually, the public started to realize that the war on drugs was not on drugs, but instead, on its victims. The victims raised their fists and declared their children will not be taken too.

But there is no mercy for loved ones in an epidemic.

The speakers of the assembly were preaching to the choir. The choir harmonized their sobs. It could be heard from the other side of the school, past the administration’s office, outside the doors, through the parking lot, down the streets that pump blood into the heart of Northern Kentucky, to the courts in Frankfort, and up to the highest powers in the United States. They pretended to listen. They passed blame around like a ticking bomb. They couldn’t hold a tune if they tried.

They did nothing.

AUGUST

Beatrix Zwolfer Montana State University

August is framed by wildfire. A shawl of smoke drapes across its shoulders, plumed with darkened clouds, a feathering of flame. Our cabin stands miles away from the burn, but the haze is thick and cloying. Only a gentle guitar sigh can part the curtain. I press my nose to my shoulder as flakes drift down around me.

Donnelly burns. This is Idaho’s annual show. The crackling applause from the ponderosa pine urges encore with every snap of a limb. If a tree falls during a forest fire —but this wild land is too late for emergency sirens. Skeletal branches shudder, groan. Will anyone come to save it? Fire sings down their arms, and I inhale, hoping I can remember the words.

Happy birthday.

August flickers in the light of a candle. My father’s cheeks flush pink above the wax, caught in the embrace of the glow. I am home from Donnelly, and air pops from my lips as the song calls for a hard consonant p Happy. We throng around him in our small celebration: my mother, my sister, and me. Lean in , my mother urges so she can take a photo for the relatives. I screw my eyes up against the flash. Blink the stars from my vision as my father cuts the cake with a butter knife. Oh , says my mother as she previews the photos, leaning in to show my sister, that’s the one . I hope that I’m not the only one it shows blinking. We pluck off the candles to lick the sweetness from their ends. Ceramic clamors as plates pass from hand to hand. The cake has been the same flavor for the past three years: dark chocolate with ginger and huckleberries. My dad tells us it’s his favorite. After just one bite, the flavor lies thick across my tongue, and I chase it with milk. Crumbs fleck my lips. I smile, mouth stained midnight dark with juice and icing. Across the table, he smiles back.

Happy birthday.

But that day, like final chords and the presence of cake in a family of four, is fleeting.

August burns in my chest. It’s the next year, the 18th again, and I hold the phone to my ear. Happy birthday , I whisper, and if there’s a tremor in my voice? Well, you can blame that on poor connection. We’re about to eat cake , my dad tells me, and I press the screen against my cheek. I wish that the warmth of the device was the presence of their company. That the burn at the bridge of my nose, at the corners of my eyes, stemmed from the inhalation of summer smoke instead of regret. That my

small room rang with voices instead of quiet.

I close my eyes against the tears, and for a moment I’m back in Donnelly.

August watches me through the ash. It’s that first summer, and a forest fire ravages the mountains mere miles away. Donnelly burns and the fire rages in the tent beside me: sharp plucks of guitar strings, a hiss between teeth, a male voice cursing. Leave me alone. He departs for Ireland in a week. Him, my closest friend. Gone. I cannot bear to lose this: his hollow voice rising to meet the chords, the taut lips of a second friend as she stands beside me, our patient hover just out of reach. I’m not alone, but I feel it—feel so very small as I tip my chin to stare at the bloody sun glaring through the clouds. You and I, I want to tell it, we’re watching the world burn.

And then I blink.

Donnelly is gone. My friend has left for Ireland and returned more distant than when he was away. Candles are extinguished without me. See you soon. Silence buzzes as the call drops off. The phone is a rock in my hand as I stare out the window, and the breath heaves out of me, a hollow call to an empty room.

We’re watching it all burn down.

LONGINGS OF A WELL-WORN BODY

Sydney Vincent Susquehanna University

So, this is how I leave you; a rock in the shambles of your grandpa’s forty-year-old truck, breaking even with the horizon and hummingbird alone.

Please say hello before you say goodbye and lay your hand on the dash one last time.

Even toggle with the binding on the Bible your mother left, waving by the squeaky purple-stained glass frame.

What I would give to fall for you one last time.

These thoughts run too quickly between the cotton sheets.

But I stand with my feet in the mud as you put your first toe in the grass.

Graze the air of the new world and step into the place where you’ve always belonged. I wish for a time soon where I can hold this coffee mug in my right and you in my left, brushing my lips on the spot just below your deaf ear.

But I stand with my feet in the mud as you put your first toe in the grass.

I have brought you this far, closing the tides, watching the door, hoping you’ll emerge from the surface and knock with your middle knuckle, knowing a piece of your heart has loved and collected and grown into a dandelion of yellow, a simple weed at a point in time.

But I am fine, and you are great, and the blue flannel still sits, wrinkles, across your living room, threads missing, a brown button loose somewhere between the diner booth and the fifth seat in the movie theater.

I guess part of you will fade and reappear at the worst times.

So, this is where I leave you, one step forward with a sneaker left at the foot of my bed, a little mud caked to the lace, a blade of green woven at the toe. Do remember to send a postcard or two, same mailbox, same address #1. Or hand deliver and tell me all the best and the worst of the silver epiphanies and the scribbles on the receipts and I’ll tell you mine, if you find it interesting enough to merely listen.

You can leave specks and string the ties back together with each syllable, hanging the Polaroids with the clothespins, like you used to do.

And I will see you around soon, all the best, sincerely, and dearly, yours truly, farewell.

ERSATZ

Angelina Chartrand Lindenwood University

“I want to go outside today,” Mia said as she sat at the table, drinking bitter tea. Will never understood why she insisted on brewing her own, especially with the stale leaves left over in the cupboards. He used to make her tea several times a day, and she always sat as she drank it in silence, until one morning she pattered out in her robe and announced she would like to make it herself.

“There’s nothing wrong with yours,” she said. “Yours is perfect and I think it’s because of that I’d like to make my own. I keep sitting here, trying to taste something wrong with it, and it’s driving me mad, because there is nothing.” Her brow had furrowed as she told him very plainly, “There should always be at least one thing wrong with something—especially tea.”

“We cannot go outside today,” Will said as he joined her at the table, news paper in hand. Newspapers were very archaic, a vintage style some of the androids preferred, even if it was expensive to get one hand delivered every morning. Then again, having a human was expensive also.

“Why not?” Mia asked as she continued to drink her tea, though her tone had greatly worsened from its hopeful pitch the statement before.

“The radiation is no good this morning, you’ll get sick,” Will insisted, “and you don’t want to get sick, do you?” She didn’t answer. “I don’t want you to get sick,” Will said, “If you got sick, you would not feel good, and if you did not feel good, I would have to ring for a doctor, and you don’t like doctors.”

“I don’t,” she agreed.

“We can go outside tomorrow,” Will decided, seeing how miserable she looked. Misery was not something he understood, not personally; but in context he knew it was something unpleasant, and he had a vague understanding of unpleas antness. It was like when his voice box occasionally malfunctioned, and it caused for him to inherit a rasp—or when he felt the circuits overheat when he missed a few too many nights of mandated shut down. “That is if the radiation is better.”

“The radiation is never better,” Mia said, “It’s sometimes just less notice able.”

“If it is less noticeable then, we will go out tomorrow. I think you will be very happy with the condition of the garden. I’ve kept alive those petunias you love so much—the same ones your mother planted, before she got sick.”

“I wish you wouldn’t mention her,” Mia said, frowning at the tea leaves, “—and what’s the point in caring much for flowers anymore?”

“They are a thing of beauty.”

“How are they beautiful if they are forced to grow while everything dies around them?” Mia asked. “The radiation will kill them eventually,” her eyes misted over, “just as it killed the animals and the trees, just as it did my mother, and as it will me.”

“You won’t die,” Will insisted, “Not yet, at least. I wish you wouldn’t speak like that, Mia. I will take care of you. I won’t let you get sick, that’s why we’re not going outside today, because the radiation is too bad. We will go out tomorrow, when it is less noticeable.”

Mia just drank the bitter tea.

*

The radiation was more noticeable that next morning, and so Mia was depressed.

“Here, take these. You know the doctor said they would make you feel bet ter.” Will stood beside the couch where Mia was curled up. She had strange resting habits, though all humans did. She called it the fetal position, when he had asked, and explained it was a very natural, intimate position to be in—with your knees pressed up to your stomach, like you were back in the womb. Will had never been inside a womb so he thought it very strange but offered those three pills that she turned her nose up at, and so he frowned. “If you don’t take the medicine, you’ll feel worse.”

“I want to feel worse,” Mia said, as she turned her face into the pillow and it muffled her voice. “At least then I can feel something.”

“If you take your medicine, you can sleep, and then you can dream of outside.” Will sat down. Mia was small for a woman of her age and height, and took up little of the couch. He spoke once with the doctor about it, and he said Mia was what one would call petite. Just like, for the humans before them, there were lap dogs and large dogs, and inside dogs, and outside dogs—though for inside and out side, he believed there was introvert, and extrovert. He had an introverted petite— an inside, lap dog.

“I don’t want to dream of outside, I want to go outside.” Mia was as bitter as her tea today, but she sat up and took the three pills.

“Tomorrow,” Will insisted, and Mia laid back down.

“Tomorrow means never,” she spoke, with her face turned towards the television. Will thought maybe then she would like for him to turn it on, but when he rose, she just shook her head.

“Tomorrow for you means never, tomorrow for me means tomorrow,” Will said and wrapped her up in the blanket that was over the back of the couch. He had no use for blankets, he had no need for warmth. Humans—they craved it like he craved updates and charges. It was what sustained her, and when he wrapped her up in that blanket that would keep her warm, she looked livelier.

“An oxymoron,” Mia decided. “You too, were our tomorrow, and you

turned out to be our never.”

Will was quiet, out of respect. Transition between the organic to the syn thetic had been...unpleasant.

“But if that never, never happened, then I would not have met you,” Will said. “I would have just served you, as a bank teller, or a slave. Not as a partner, or a spouse.”

“You still serve me,” Mia said, staring at him.

“Yes, but I serve you because I wish to serve you, and it’s less serving than it is care.” Will felt guilty, as much as an android could feel guilt. Most androids felt something close to guilt. They had not meant to bring the radiation when they built up the cities; they had not meant to snuff out organic life. It was why, while having a human was not required or expected, almost every household had at least one. They were endangered, and while the humans had attempted to care for the endangered before them, so did the androids, too.

“This isn’t care,” Mia said, as her eyes glazed over as the pills settled in. “I’m just trapped in your perpetual garden, just like those petunias, forced to grow while what I know dies around me.”

“Did you know Catharine had a baby?” Will spoke of something else in stead. “Just last week. Robby told me when I was at the grocery store, getting you those pears you like so much.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Mia asked.

“I thought you would be happy to know Catharine had a baby, and that the baby is doing well.”

“How is Catharine?”

Will did not respond, and Mia knew that meant that Catharine was dead. “I wish I could have a baby,” Mia said, and it was obvious she was almost under because of the pills. When she went under, Will would be able to work, though there wasn’t much work for him to do as a cleaner, when androids kept everything clean, apart from the radiation, which didn’t bother them. Yet, day after day, Will routinely and thoroughly, cleaned though there was little left to clean, and the next day, he cleaned all over again, because that was what he was made to do and there wasn’t much more for him to do outside of that. Will missed humans in that regard, as much as androids can miss, because it was the flawed nature of human intention that had given him purpose. He missed the countless little mess es of their lives.

“There is something very human about wanting to create life,” Will agreed, but Mia was quiet, as if he had missed the point entirely.

*

The radiation was significantly less noticable that Thursday, and so Will took Mia outside, and she was happy, even with the petunias in the garden.

“I spoke with Robby, when you were asleep. He said if you wanted to see

Catharine’s baby, you could. She is home now and seems to be adjusting very well.” Will spoke as he stood with an umbrella over Mia’s head to keep the ashes that fell from the sky off her, because he did not want her to get sick.

“Has she been named yet?” Mia asked, crouched in the garden, as if to get close to the grass.

“Catharine named her Emily—a very human name to be given.”

“Very human indeed,” Mia agreed. “I never liked the name Emily. I don’t know why so many girls are named that.”

“Do you like your name?” Will asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

Mia was quiet, as if she had to think about it, “It means ‘mine’, as if even as a baby, I was owned by someone else.” She was staring at Will again, and he kept the umbrella over her.

“‘Mine’ can mean ‘yours’ just as much, perhaps you are yours entirely, to be no one else’s.”

“Perhaps,” Mia said it, as if only to humor him. “But it is doubtful.” *

Mia was not able to visit Emily, as she got very sick. Will did not hesitate to send for a doctor and sat beside her at the bed as she coughed and wheezed and heckled pathetically.

“I do not understand; the radiation was not so noticeable yesterday.” Will was in distress, as much as an android can be. He did not like to see Mia in pain.

“That’s not how radiation works,” said Mia, the blankets drawn up around her, even though the problem didn’t seem to be the lack of warmth, but too much of it. “Why didn’t you say?” Will pressed.

“Because I wanted to go outside,” Mia said and stared at him, and Will had to admit he didn’t like it very much when Mia just stared at him.

“The doctor will be here soon,” Will said and stepped from the bedroom. The bedroom itself was very simple with not much more than a bed and a cabinet, a closet, and a bathroom, a lamp and a side table, a radio and a vanity, and one sin gle bonsai tree by the window. Androids had no need for personal possessions, but humans built their identity around them, and by what little she had, it seemed Mia defined herself as a very simple, minimalistic person. They got along well because of that—Will, too, was a very simple android.

*

“How long has she been sick?”

“Not long,” Will said as he let the doctor inside the house. It wasn’t a human practitioner—those were long gone—but an android who had once served a

human practitioner, long ago. Will caught sight, briefly, of the doctor’s white med ical van with its single red cross out on the strip of street. He thought for a second to ask him to move it; it was very embarrassing to have a doctor visit. It told all his neighbors that Will wasn’t taking care of Mia very well, when really, he had been. “Just this morning, she woke with a fever. We went outside yesterday.”

“You’re not supposed to take your human outside.”

“She insisted; she wanted to go outside.”

“Sometimes what she wants is not what she needs,” the doctor said, and Will decided he couldn’t ask the doctor to move his car, “Especially with the radia tion so bad.”

“It wasn’t so noticeable yesterday.”

“That is not how radiation works,” the doctor said and walked past him carrying that little black satchel.

Mia told him once she hated that black satchel—it was the same satchel that carried all those horrible knives they had to use to cut her mother up after she got very sick and died—and so, Will said, “Perhaps don’t make the satchel so obvious. It will cause Mia distress.” And so, the doctor disguised it behind his back as he spoke to Mia at the door, as Mia did dislike doctors very much.

“I was told you are not feeling well, and that you went out yesterday, even with the radiation so bad.”

“The radiation wasn’t so bad yesterday; it was hardly noticeable.” Mia said, despite knowing that was not how radiation worked, and she looked strangely at Will as he stared back.

“It was my fault for letting you outside, Mia,” Will said, “You do not need to defend me.”

“I am not defending you, I am telling the truth—the radiation wasn’t so bad, and I wanted to go out, so Will let me out. He has been very good to me.” Sometimes when an android was unable to properly care for their human, the doc tors reassigned the human to another household. Will assumed Mia thought this was what was happening, and Will was glad, as much as androids can be glad, that she did not wish to leave him so much. He did, after all, let her outside.

“Will’s care is not in question Mia; it is your health,” the doctor assured her. Finally, he had to bring around the black satchel. Mia stared at it, as she stared at Will sometimes, and she became very quiet. “I will ask Will to leave, so I can examine you. You will have to take off your clothes.”

“Will can stay.” Mia said and so Will stayed, and he stood aside as Mia dragged herself from the bed, out of those blankets that kept her warm, and trem bled with fever as the doctor removed the robe around her shoulders. She was thin, as most petite humans were, and though her ribs could be seen, her cheeks were not shrunken around her eyes and she had strength enough to stand. She was as well fed as a human could be, with all the trees dead. Will stared for a moment, at her breasts, the slabs of fat of great importance to her, though he could not under stand the purpose of them much.

Mia did, and Will watched her shoulders lift and each ridge of her spine showed against the skin of her back. The doctor listened, in no need of a stetho scope, as androids had very proficient hearing.

“There is water in her lungs,” he said and went to his black satchel. “She cannot go outside, the radiation will make the water worse, and she will die.” Will stared, and Mia just tied her robe closed again when all he brought out of that black satchel was another bottle of pills and no knives. “Have her take four of these—it will help with the water in her lungs.”

“Is there not much more you can do?” Will asked, as Mia crawled back into bed.

“It is inevitable and letting her out in the radiation just made it all worse— had she stayed inside as she should have, the water would not have entered her lungs yet. She will live awhile longer, that is if you don’t let her outside.”

“And if she wants to go outside?”

“Then she would die,” the doctor said as he closed his black satchel and left.

When an android died, it was very noticeable, as the android was never alive to begin with. They simply shut down and refused to reboot—a rare incident, often because of something on the hard drive. When a human died, it was almost unnoticeable, as they died very slowly, and then suddenly, all at once. It was some thing the android could not understand, that decay. They had seen it when the animals got sick, and then in the trees, like an android, slowly shutting down. Mia had been shutting down for a very long time now, and Will simply hadn’t seen it.

*

When the doctor left, Robby came to his door. “Was that the Red Cross I saw?” his synthetic voice vibrating a rasp that meant his voice box was malfunc tioning. He knew well that was the Red Cross he had seen, but Will feigned his ignorance.

“Yes. I had to call for the doctor. Mia is not well.”

“She’s not sick with child, is she?” Robby asked. “That is what happened with Catharine, you know. I should not have let her near the Jamison’s. Then she would not have gotten pregnant and she would not have died. I am ridiculed often, as if I were responsible for her bleeding out like that. At least Emily is good and healthy, and I don’t have to request for another human. That would even be more shameful.” Robby spoke, “To lose a human and then ask for another. If yours is not with child and is sick, you might have to experience both humiliations.” Robby talked too much, Will decided and he gripped the side of his door.

“She is not sick with child. It would be impossible for her to be, as she has

“How is your breathing?” the doctor asked. “Fine,” Mia responded.

“Can you take a breath for me?”

not been around a male before. She went outside yesterday, when the radiation was not noticeable, but still bad.”

“That was your mistake then, you’re not supposed to let your human out side. I never let Catharine outside, until she snuck over to the Jamison’s, and then you’ve seen what happens.”

“Did Catharine never ask to go outside?” Will asked. “Often. She liked the look of the garden you planted for Mia, over the fences, but I told her it was plenty enough to look at from the window. I knew if I let her outside, she would die.” Robby said simply, “And then she went outside just that once, and now she’s dead.”

“Because of complications with the baby.”

“Which would have never happened if she didn’t go outside and over to the Jamison’s,” Robby said and went back over to his yard, as Emily was crying now, and Will could hear her fussing. Pitiful cries, because, though just born, Emily was already dying. Androids, they shut down and sometimes didn’t turn back on, but their collective minds remained. When humans died, nothing was left, just as when the trees died and the animals, all traces eventually rotted and went away. Will wondered how much of Mia had already began to rot, and he just hadn’t noticed the smell.

*

“What are you making?” He asked her when he came inside and found her out of bed.

“Tea.”

“With the bitter leaves?”

“Yes,” she said, and for once, Will did not think it so strange but thought it simply as very Mia, and he stared at her like she often stared at him, and when she felt his attention, she stared back.

“Would you like to have a baby?” Will asked and Mia thought for a mo ment.

“No.”

“But just yesterday you said you would like to have a baby.”

“Yesterday was before today, now I am in no need of a baby,” Mia said, as she cradled the cup of tea, searching for that warmth, as humans tended to do.

“Is it because the doctor told you, you are sick.”

“Yes.”

“You can still be sick and have a baby, Mia. Then something of you will be left. You won’t have to rot away, like the animals and the trees.” Will spoke and Mia sat at their table, with her tea.

“I am already rotted away, Will. I am gone, just as the animals and the trees. You do not know rotting, but now you have seen it in me.”

*

That night, in all the years of being together, Mia touched Will. He felt her hands on his metal plating, in the darkness of their bedroom, and he thought to ask, “What are you doing?”

“I am letting myself feel something.”

“What are you feeling?”

“Something for you,” Mia said. “In all the times you have cared for me as a husband and as a spouse, I have never been able to care for you in return.”

“How is touching me like this, caring?”

“It is a very intimate thing we humans do, and I’m afraid there is not much you can understand of it. Just know that I care for you, because I wish to care for you, and should have said it long ago. I love you.”

“Why do you love me?” Will asked.

“Because you let me outside,” Mia said, and touched him some more.

*

“Do you want to go outside today?” A taboo question for Will to ask as Mia sat at the table, drinking bitter tea, and he sat across from her, ignoring his folded newspaper.

“Is the radiation bad this morning?” Mia asked.

“The radiation is always bad, and it is very noticeable,” Will said, and Mia sat in silence.

“Do you want me to go outside?” she asked, instead.

“No, if you go outside, you will continue to get sick, and I don’t want you to get sick.”

“Then why ask if I want to go outside?”

“Because you like going outside,” Will said, “It makes you happy, even if outside is killing you, and in here, you are already dead, and what is the point in caring for a corpse.”

“What is the point, indeed.” Mia smiled. It was the first Will had seen her smile. “I would like to go outside then, even with the radiation so bad and so no ticeable.”

So, Will took her outside. He moved to hold the umbrella above her head, but when Mia stared at him, he just gripped it in his hand and let her crouch in the grass of the garden as the ashes chorded into her hair. It was the first time he noticed that you could see his garden from the window of Robby’s house, and he wondered how often Catherine stood there.

“Thank you for taking me outside,” Mia said, and even with the radiation so bad, and the water so great in her lungs, she was happy, because no longer was she a petunia growing while everything else died around her. For once she was very alive.

CULPEPPER CIRCLE

Madison Brown Augusta University

There is an abandoned cul-de-sac across the street from my childhood home. I used to visit the pale, yellow house of a nameless dentist and play with his dog, a black Rottweiler named Megan. I remember the day I found her body-foam fizzing around her lips, a perfect semicircle of flesh torn from her throat. I watched the river of blood run down her body, a thick-copper halo blossom around her head. She could have been sleeping if not for the smell, if not for the way her tongue lolled out of her mouth, dryer than the red Georgia clay underneath her. I showed him her body and listened as his sharp sobs pierced the quiet, autumn afternoon. We looked into her eyes—two black mirrors staring endlessly sky ward—as sweat dripped down our fingertips. Sometimes, I still hear the sound of the dentist crying.

Two weeks later, the EMTs found him in bed, skin sloughing off against bloodied, Egyptian cotton sheets. He had Megan’s collar in one hand and a pistol in the other. When he died, he took the neighborhood with him. We all left, unable to forget the sound of a bullet piercing flesh, unable to escape the stench of death that permeated every corner of our homes. The pale, yellow house was abandoned when they discovered that no amount of bleach could clean the blood from the walls. Before we moved, I drew a picture of Megan on a piece of pink construction paper and slid it under the dust-caked door.

HOW MANY YEMENI FATHERS HAVE TO DIE SOMEWHERE BETWEEN MILLER AND WYOMING

Tahani Almujahid University of Michigan

١ . Even when you are unable to recognize the world, or me, you still speak to me in Arabic. How foolish I was to think you’d pledge your oath to something else. Maybe even to Allah if you decided that today was the day to wipe the dust off your Qu’ran. It’s the only one we own.

٢ . You make room for me on your hospital bed after being scolded by the nurse: I can die in the arms of my daughter. Flowers do not give me this warmth. I repeat “alif, baa, taa” up until the ع gets stuck in my throat. I wondered how you put your life into every letter, like it was your last breath, like it was every defeat and every victory. Maybe even your last prayer. We try again until I get it right.

٣ . You send me to English school with our supermarket receipts for show-and-tell. At the time, I explained why I was fascinated with the backside of them — all the detail and color from ads and coupons. It felt like a gift and my classmates didn’t understand how good they looked in a book, on the wall or fridge.

٤ . I learn how to make shahee and qahwa so I can bring them both to you before they bring out your medications. I put the mugs in a cheap plastic bag in case they spill as I drive through the potholed Southend; why I felt that getting into a car could mean dying in it. The government never cared to fix the roads near our homes. Ford spent more time putting our rijaal on the line. The pollution caused your lungs to collapse; why you sounded like the releasing exhaust from the cars you used to build.

٥ . You send me to the Islamic school on Dix, hoping that I’d pick up on the religion you failed at. Maybe it would make me softer, or kinder. You did not think that of yourself, but I saw that there was something holy in you. The other girls asked me about you and I resisted looking at them too long, like I would be found out. I would be caught red-handed, caught in the fires of Jahannam if I said you were doing well. The last time I was there, you needed another blood transfusion, and your tea was left out. Cold and waiting.

٦ . You ask me to bring the Qu’ran from the TV stand.

٧ . You tell me that history lessons are boring, but that I must know what our watan

is really like. How you still cry when you hear “ al-Jomhuriyah al-Mottahedah ” recited even though you didn’t care for politics. You weren’t defined by a national anthem. But, you were Yemeni before anything else. You have strength with your nation. You weep with your nation. Repeat: This is our unity. You say that I must collect the dust, what’s left of our people.

. You have the Arabic news hooked up to the hospital TV, and you woke me up at inopportune times to turn it on. We see the first news of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I wish I had pretended to be asleep.

. You’re in and out of surgeries and the nurse told me to go home. She asked me if I had a mom.

. When I visit your grave, I tell you the latest news about our watan. It is never any good. It makes me weep. I think about the Qu’ran, left open near your bed like it was your last mantra. When I gain the courage to open the box the nurse gave me, I see the mess you left, scattered sticky notes in illegible handwriting. All de tail and color. I put them on our wall next to the supermarket receipts.

SICKNESS

Amberly Day Ball State University

We don’t mind if Daniel dies. Unable to breathe, blue lips, a chest caving in on itself, ready to pop like a zit from the pain. What matters more is being able to buy gas and gum and cigarettes from a man making minimum wage at Speedway.

We can paint the poor people as heroes. The high-school McDonald’s worker with no gloves or mask serving up your fries did not decide to risk her life for your McNuggets. She was given the choice between survive and not subsist or subsist and not survive.

We don’t care if Anna dies. A mother of three and grandma of one, whose wit and care and pumpkin bread and memories of camping with her granddaughter or exploring the sun-baked shores of Greece don’t matter.

What matters most is money. And how bored we all would be holed up in our houses.

LETTER, WRITTEN AND REVISED

Holly Bergman Salisbury University

Where there is on my legs , read on our engagement

Where I write naked , read dressed

Where there is stayed the night , read packed up and left

Where there is space , read break

Where I write time , read to live at my sister’s Where there is me , read us

Where there is fake Ficus , read ginger cat

Where I write facing the window like , read please pick her up, Where there is bleach the leaves , read warm the cat

My Former Lover,

I cannot say I miss the extra heat of your body in my already-warm bed, nor can I say I miss your cold feet on my legs. I remember you naked, vulnerable when you stayed the night the first time. You said space, you said time, you said you need all of it but me. The alarm still beeps because you never changed the batteries, and I can’t work up enough nerve to take it off the wall. Your fake

Ficus sits in the corner of the living room, facing the window like it matters. I’ll let the sun bleach the leaves until you come get her.

WAITING THREE YEARS FOR MY AVOCADO TREE TO BEAR FRUIT

Ella Corder Western Kentucky University

Gauguin approaches my vegetable stand and tells me that I am not somebody he would paint. Red tempera drips down his chin, and I say that I can’t be confined to color—I am not Mormon, married to green with a red chin, all my egg-yolk sisterwives hanging on the laundry line having your kids—our kids— Joseph Smith’s kids—

Gauguin, I found you last night in a frog fresco grotto giving me ferociously my every desire, pounding paint brushes into my ocular foramen like a gardener

But your other women—those from, what, Mexico or something?—coming out from the creases of my eyelids from earlobes, unscathed, unpierced, sitting, lounging, nude, holding fruit, conveniently.

Gauguin doesn’t buy from me but from one stand over. He says my goodness those heirlooms are the best I’ve ever seen.

Fruit hangs on boughs on trees all down the street, hoping he looks. I hold my cash drawer closely, fading peachy into soil and my own drooping hips.

PEAR DUSTED WITH CINNAMON

Julia Norman George Mason University NORMAN

I know skin you’re pearly yellowthis is ripeness in the crease of my palm, you echo curves of the moon you’ve never claimed to be something it’s something to be alive it’s something to be whole I raise a sword announcing a delicate pierce you blush seeds and they emerge by themselves the air reveals your dewy finish with an incision, you are open for a moment, silence is four slices for stillness you gasp it’s a powder you cough it’s dark under a dusty veil you choke it’s what

I call fruitful conversation

LUNA, LUNA

Sofía Aguilar

Sarah Lawrence College

Marisol watched the boy emerge from the sea and collapse onto the shore. For a moment, he lay still on his back against the sand and coughed and sputtered. She longed to help him stand up again but stood there, frozen. Though he looked like any other boy—the pale peach of his skin, the flush in his cheeks and the looseness of his clothes, as though pinned to a clothesline strung over his head— something about him seemed to glow even in the dark.

And of course, he was a stranger. She remembered this and longed to stare shyly at her feet at the sight of someone unfamiliar. Instead she managed to stam mer, W-w-who are you?

He stood to his feet, gazed at her in a way that made her blush. You don’t know who I am? When she didn’t answer, he explained, I came from the moon.

She frowned. Was he sure? She hadn’t imagined the man in the moon to be a boy. But maybe, she supposed, he just hadn’t grown up yet?

The boy must’ve sensed her disbelief, for he twisted back and pointed a single skinny finger at the moon, whose light haloed his head as round as a piece of fruit.

Marisol, don’t you see? Aren’t you the girl who wished for me?

Her eyes widened. What he said was true—he knew her name without having to ask and when she looked up, she saw no face in the moon anymore.

Marisol hadn’t always lived by the sea. Before the Bad Night, she and her parents had lived in a small house made of brick and encircled by trees. The earth bloomed with flowers in the springtime and iced with snow in the winter. She treated birds as her pets, chased after her friends in the trees, and began the tales of her adventures everywhere but the beginning.

Then the Bad Night came. Like a monster who had waited for years under the bed without her noticing. The three of them on the way home from somewhere she didn’t remember, her father driving on a steep mountain road, the kind that’s made for only one car at a time. A Beatles song was playing on the radio, the one about the sun, which was funny then because it started to pour and her father could barely see through the fog or the wetness on the window no matter how hard he rubbed with his palm. Her mother asking if they should pull over and Marisol no longer laughing and then from up ahead, a loud honk. Two large beams of light. Darkness for a long, long time.

The moment she arrived on her abuelo’s front porch, itchy and half-hidden

in sand, he asked, You like toys?

Her cheeks flushed; she wasn’t sure what to say. She’d never met her grandfather before, only heard her mother mention him once.

She followed him into the house, set her suitcase down and winced when the wooden floor groaned in protest. How could she ever belong here? she won dered. The walls were close together, squished, smelled of fish and nothing was like home. A curtain made of small beads at the back door. Wind chimes and smooth counters. Everything in shades of blue and white instead of the green with which she’d become familiar.

Abuelo cleared his throat and gestured to the coffee table piled high with tangle-haired dolls, ripped lotería boards, dusty buckets heavy with shells that still filled the air with the smell of the sea.

Your mother’s, he said but she only turned away. She was seven, still old enough to play pretend, but after everything, it all felt silly and wrong and didn’t come so easily to her anymore.

Just then she spotted a large kitchen window above the sink, so much like the one she used to have. She walked over, stood on her tiptoes to stare out of it and almost gasped at the wildness, the fierceness of the sea. Abuelo, relieved to see something she was interested in, opened the window to let in the sound that hummed against Marisol’s ears like an unfamiliar song—violence and passion and surrender all at once. Beautiful but so unlike her trees and bird melodies and the rich scent of the earth. Now the air was made up only of salt.

For weeks after the Bad Night, Marisol developed a habit of staring out of windows. Cars, kitchen, the one in her bedroom, for hours at a time, and Abuelo was still too shy to tell her to play outside. She wouldn’t have answered anyway. She never spoke anymore, not even when summer vacation ended and she had to start second grade. A new school, a new kid, she never remembered it being like this.

How was school? Abuelo asked her every day at dinner. She shook her head, picked at the broccoli on her plate. She couldn’t tell him the truth. That kids called her a freak, a weirdo, a chicken because she could barely say a word or look up from her desk. When she turned eight, she couldn’t tell him about the hair-pulling, the name-calling, the losing of birthday party invi tations addressed in her name, the smashing of her toes when the teacher wasn’t watching—she knew it had all become a game, kids even traded money in the hall ways, always wondering, who would be the first to make her speak?

But when Marisol turned nine, one thing did change, a small victory—a telescope Abuelo made out of spare glass and mirrors and gave to her on her birth day.

That’s the Man in the Moon, there, Abuelo said. He sank his knobbly knees into her bedroom carpet and adjusted the legs of the telescope to suit her height.

She peered through the lens and smiled. His face reminded her of a baby’s:

wide eyes and curvy nose and open mouth as though permanently caught in sur prise.

Abuelo? Hmm?

D-d-does he have a name?

Well, no. But what he’s made of, does.

She tilted her head like a playground see-saw, which she always did when she didn’t understand something.

See those craters, the ones that look like his eyes and nose and mouth?

She pressed her eye to the telescope again.

They used to think those were seas. So they named them. They?

People who were in love with the sky. People who gave their wishes to the moon, he said.

She pointed outside as though saying, I thought people gave their wishes to the stars?

He patted her leg and stood up.

You can give your wishes to anyone. Not just the stars.

A-a-and they’ll come true?

Abuelo grunted but Marisol knew, as she seemed to sense lately, that he hadn’t really heard. That his head was so full of his own thoughts that he didn’t have time for hers.

At first, Marisol’s wishes had been small.

As soon as she caught the moon in the lens of her telescope, she said, Luna, luna , more than anything I wish—

For chocolate kisses that appeared the next morning under her pillow, new pencils sharpened and arranged in a bouquet on her desk, and once, a single button from Abuelo’s favorite oil-stained shirt, just because she could.

Hmph, Abuelo had grunted to himself when he tried to close the first button and instead found nothing but the frayed white thread that the man in the moon had left behind.

Marisol hid her smile behind another spoonful of cereal, Abuelo’s button pulsing like a heartbeat in her pocket.

Then her wishes grew. And she told the moon the deepest wish of her heart— Luna, luna , she whispered, I wish more than anything, for a friend.

Marisol ran to Abuelo’s house so fast even the boy could barely keep up. Who cared for trees and birds when she had the sand and the sea and a boy from the moon?

¿La luna? Abuelo repeated, staring at the boy with an odd, fascinated ex pression. He leaned back in his chair at the kitchen table and rubbed his unshaven chin.

Marisol and the boy exchanged glances. In the light, she could see now just how strange he looked. His head still carried that glow she’d seen down at the beach. His hair, which just a few minutes before had been soaking wet, was dry and sticking up in the air as if all by itself. Instead of his eyes and mouth and nose being made of craters and shadows and so-called seas were freckles and pockmarks and moles, all at once and all over his skin so pale it was almost translucent. Abue lo liked to call them lunares for he was so old he had them, too.

Marisol saw me fall out of the sky, didn’t you? the boy said, rubbing a spot near his elbow.

She nodded, her face warming with his eyes on her. She thought about ask ing if it had hurt when the boy hit the water, how long he would stay, why his head glowed like the moon was shining around him all the time.

But before she could, Abuelo asked, Chiquito , what do we call you?

Niño de la Luna, he said, and shook Abuelo’s hand.

Welcome, Niño de la Luna. You have a place to stay, Niño? No , Señor.

And where are your parents? Abuelo asked, still not quite sure if to believe. I’m from the moon, Señor . The stars are my mothers.

Abuelo laughed with his whole mouth, so much so that Marisol almost did, too.

Nice one, Chiquito . My nieta Marisol will get you a blanket from the closet. That night, Marisol’s eyes refused to close, her heart humming. She twist ed and turned in her sheets, stared at her ceiling, watched shadows flicker on her walls. Still a part of her wondered if Niño de la Luna would be there when she woke up the next morning. If he would suddenly resent her silence like everyone before him had done.

Then, through the wall, Marisol began to hear the sound of Abuelo’s radio crackle and sputter to life on the table beside his bed. She lifted her head and lis tened to Abuelo twist and turn the dial to catch a close enough frequency within all the buzz and static. Just as Marisol found her solace in windows, so Abuelo did in his radio that connected him to baseball games and old radio programs and music no one listened to anymore.

Tonight, however, he stopped on a news station.

—And this just in: we’re receiving reports of a strange visual phenomenon from our lunar friend, a man reported. He continued, The man in the moon— many are claiming—has disappeared!

Marisol hid a small grin into her pillow.

¡Buenos días, Sol! Niño de la Luna called as he and Marisol climbed and scrambled over rocks on the far end of the beach. It was the next day, Sunday, and the sun felt warm against Marisol’s skin, and both of these things almost made her want to laugh out loud and cartwheel with one arm if only she could do either.

I always say good morning to the sun, Niño de la Luna later explained as they sat side by side on a rock and ate the sandwiches Abuelo had packed them for lunch. Through a mouthful of chicken, he continued, I try to be polite, you see. He scratched at his neck until it turned red with irritation.

M-m-mosquito bite? she asked as though she understood, remembering those bumps that meant summer had come, that rose from her skin and itched her even when she slept.

He shook his head but didn’t answer, and Marisol could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. So instead she looked up, waved to the sun with her free hand. The sun says hello to you, too, Marisol, Niño de la Luna said. His eyes widened. Esperate. Sol! Mari-sol!

She smiled and nodded.

And mari is—

She pointed a single finger out to the horizon.

—the sea! he finished. He was so excited that he nearly dropped his sand wich into the water for the fish swimming under their dangling feet. You’re named after the sea and the sun, Marisol.

Her cheeks were on fire. Y-y-yes, I am. For the first time, she felt a flicker of pride for the name she’d been uncertain of all her life.

He playfully nudged her with his arm. You have a nice voice, Marisol. You should use it more.

She liked the way he said her name. She wanted to ask him to say it the way only her parents and Abuelo ever had, over and over again and with the roll of the r she’d never quite gotten right. She blushed at the thought, so much to ask for someone she couldn’t look yet in the eye when he looked into hers.

Then Niño de la Luna peered at her legs with a careful eye, and frowned.

Marisol, what happened?

She cowered and hugged her legs to her chest. She knew what he was talking about, the old bruises greenish-yellow on her skin from the kids who longed to pull her voice out of her body.

Who did this to you, Marisol? he asked.

At first, she couldn’t answer, the humiliation in her cheeks turning almost as red as the color her bruises used to be.

He raised an eyebrow.

J-j-just kids at school, Niño. Stupid ones. No one, she said, and he squeezed her hand as though he understood.

The next afternoon, Marisol hurried out of the chain-linked wire fence that protected the school from the street. Someone said her name but she was watching her feet, wasn’t sure if it had come from behind her or in front, how much time she had to outrun them, what parts of her she’d have to ice when she got home. So afraid she almost forgot that no one at school called her by her name.

Then she looked up and there he was, Niño de la Luna waiting for her

under the shade of a nearby tree and eating an apple he must’ve taken from its branches.

Buenas tardes, he greeted her. She wanted to ask what he was doing here, why a rash the size of a large coin and the color of pomegranates had bloomed on his arm. Before she could, he took her small hand in his and turned her questions to dust that fell and settled in the grass beneath her feet. He’d been waiting, she realized, for her.

Over the next few days, however, Marisol soon realized Niño de la Luna was much more than what he seemed. During their morning swims, he whispered to the ocean, which seemed to whisper back, and yet it didn’t stop his skin from itching with pain from the sun. He could catch fireflies without burning his hands and throw rocks that skipped on the water at least a dozen times, but he couldn’t walk too fast without finding it hard to breathe and could only sleep in tempera tures that made Abuelo and Marisol’s teeth chatter with cold like a cricket’s song. And even worse, it was all the newspapers could write about, what every radio station couldn’t stop talking about. They claimed the oceans would dry up without the face of the moon to guide it, that the stars would blink and die out one by one and though Niño de la Luna said it wasn’t true, it didn’t stop Marisol from realiz ing what was.

H-h-he doesn’t belong here, Abuelo, Marisol said later that evening as he crouched down and rummaged around his toolbox. Who? His face was frowned in concentration and it was clear, as it always was, that he wasn’t really listening. He smelled of sweat and oil and work done with hands and both of these things made Marisol certain he could do what she needed him to.

N-n-niño de la Luna.

He straightened but still didn’t answer her, still looking for a missing tool. Marisol stood there, as still and as frightened as the day she’d seen Niño de la Luna emerge from the sea. She was tired of not standing up for herself, of how much she’d come to rely on everyone but herself for everything.

Abuelo! she said with a stomp of her foot.

He froze. She’d never spoken in front of him without a stutter before. I wish—

She stopped herself. She wished for a lot of things: that Abuelo would help her so that the moon would have a face again, that words weren’t so hard to say, that Niño de la Luna could stay her friend forever. But even more than that, she realized, she wished for her parents and their red brick house in the forest and her life before she spent all her time watching and waiting at the windows in her grandfather’s house by the sea and it was silly, she realized, to be so young and yet to wish for so much.

Abuelo crouched down again so they were eye to eye. She’d never noticed

before how much his eyes looked like hers, wide and smiling and the kind of brown that was hard to describe.

Little girls can wish on moons and stars. But when they grow up, like you will someday, they can wish on themselves, too.

Marisol twisted her sneakers into the floor of the garage. She wondered then if she’d ever grow up or if—as she felt she’d done all her life—only keep grow ing down.

But Abuelo found the old wrench he’d been looking for then. He muttered something about a broken pipe in the back and left, and Marisol was alone in the garage to work as the sun began to disappear beneath the horizon.

In the backyard, Abuelo took care of a beautiful tree that grew lemons bigger than Marisol’s hands. Using a step stool from the kitchen, she snapped off several branches and used a roll of Abuelo’s duct tape to piece them together into a ladder. She imagined Niño de la Luna climbing it, becoming smaller rung by rung until he was the size of the raisin she’d seen all those days ago falling into the sea. But she soon found that she didn’t have enough branches to make the lad der tall enough. Returning to the house, she tip-toed past sleeping Niño de la Luna and into her room and stripped her bed of its sheets to make a hot air balloon. But halfway through tying the sheets together, she realized she didn’t have any way of making it float. There was only one thing left to do.

Marisol jumped from the bed and scurried to the window, where the faceless moon now hung in the sky like a lantern on a boat. Peering through her telescope, she caught the moon in the lens as she’d done hundreds of times before. Luna, luna, she began but found she couldn’t finish. The moon’s shadows, once so familiar and certain, were gone. Without Niño de la Luna, without Abuelo, without her parents, there was no one left for her to wish to anymore.

The door creaked open behind her, and Niño de la Luna shuffled into the room. The sight of his hair, as untamed and wild as ever, and his lunares and his arms and legs as skinny as a bird’s, made Marisol smile despite how badly she wanted to cry. Looking at him, she now knew, was like looking at home.

B-b-buenas noches, Marisol, Niño de la Luna croaked, standing beside her. But no one ever said good night as a way to say hello; they only said it to say good bye. Still, there it was, her name again. A name uniting the sea and the sun without room for the moon.

Can I look?

After she moved aside, he bent down to peer through the telescope. Though she knew one could only look at the world in silence, and though they didn’t have enough time for anything at all, she still had a dozen questions on her mind. Why wasn’t Abuelo listening to his radio tonight? Did Niño de la Luna have a real name? What would she do when the kids at school taunted her again and kicked her and called her names and how, she wondered could she say good morn ing to the sun without him?

But only one of her questions for the boy in the moon really mattered now.

Do you think you’ll ever grow up? Abuelo thinks I will. But I don’t know, she said.

Instead of answering, Niño de la Luna took her hand in his, reminding her of the smallness of herself and the fact that he couldn’t stay, and both of these things made Marisol decide that tomorrow, perhaps with a little help from her friend, she’d try to build the ladder again.

THE GROCERY LIST

Hadia Bakkar Skidmore College

Tahini, chickpeas, fresh mint, rose water, yogurt and pistachios . I run the list in my mind one more time before I escape my small house. It rolls easily off my tongue like a pupil with his scripture, and I have memorized it with similar dili gence. By the time I leave my dingy and dark building, I hear noise and I am unsure whether it is bombshells from the far distance or some loud accident that happened again at the market. I cannot tell anymore, as the bustling, yet peaceful city sounds are now replaced with gunfire. But we all pretend like it’s just another normal day. And it is, because I am getting my groceries from Abu Ammar’s bazaar, as I have done for the past ten years.

“With the pistachios comes to 2000 lira,” Abu Ammar says.

“No discount for a faithful customer today?”

“I have already added it. If I add more, I will be bankrupt.” He pauses brief ly. “ Alhamdulillah for everything, of course.”

“How is your son doing?” I ask.

“He is just fine,” he replies back. “He is happy in Jordan.”

I can see hesitation in his green eyes, and for the first time, I notice the lines on his forehead. He is debating whether to ask me the same question back, or just give me my groceries now and be done with it.

“Here you go, Umm Khalil. May God make it up to you with more money for the next shopping trip.”

Labneh, olive oil, spinach, beetroot that is a crimson red color to boil for salad. I head to Abu Ammar’s bazaar with a determination to talk to absolutely no one. Just as I head downstairs, I hear my neighbor, Jumana, reminding her son to pick up his brother from school at exactly two. “Not a minute earlier or later,” she threatens him. But her voice remains low, almost still.

“Neighbor! Salam , it’s so good to see you,” she says. “It’s been too long, come in, I will make you a cup of coffee right now.”

“Actually, I am just heading to the store,” I reply, while pretending to sound rushed, as if I have many things on my to-do list. But Jumana knows that I am in no rush to go anywhere. It is the kind of assumption that she, my other neighbors, and maybe the entirety of the city make about women of a certain age. A haja, or khalto is the dreadful nickname that is bestowed on you after you’ve reached all the milestones of your life; you’ve gotten married, had kids, they moved out to start their own families, and your husband is currently very much dead. I cannot even

blame her for this intrusion. She is kind, unlike my upstairs neighbors who keep making rumors about my solitary life now that Anas has moved out. Nonetheless, I have to get to Abu Ammar’s before all the good produce is snatched away.

“Have you heard about Nabil?” she says just as I intend to walk past her door.

“Lama’s son?” I reply, knowing that this turn of conversation will be much less cheery. With a ting of emotion, her husky voice barely above a whisper, she in forms me: “He passed away yesterday. He went to his work in the suburbs, like he does every day—his mom told me—but he never came back.” Before I can ask her how he died, she immediately continues, now whispering so that I can barely hear: “They thought he was someone else, the soldiers at the checkpoint.”

That’s all it takes nowadays: being in the wrong place, or having a last name that can easily get you mistaken for someone else. Lives in this city have become volatile waves in and of themselves, and everyone always on the brink of drowning to death.

“They went to hospital, to identify him, but his mother could barely recog nize his body because of what that they did to it, they—”

I finally leave the building and head outside. It’s spring time in Damascus, and the jasmine flowers have engulfed the city in a beautiful white embrace. I take a few off of a nearby tree, and they smell like heaven. I have known Nabil since he was five years old. I attended his overly extravagant wedding only a couple of years ago, and loved the buffet. Loosening the scarf that is firmly around my head, I cannot help but whisper, “May God help his family; may God help us all.”

Abu Ammar, I am sure, will appreciate some of the jasmine, as he works long hours on Tuesdays. Labneh, olive oil, spinach, beetroot: that is all I need. I cannot believe what happened to Nabil. He had the most charming face. He was only 30, and had just recently started a family. But the list of deaths does not end, it only grows faster and more violent. Abu Ahmad last week, or Rama, my cleaner’s daughter, the week before. I remember Rama’s mother’s scream, sharp as a knife. I think about Nabil’s mother as I enter the shop to buy my groceries. I think about Nabil.

Apples, just apples, I sigh, craving the sourness and smooth texture. The streets are haunted by the noise of explosions coming from the suburbs. I wonder if it’s coming from Eastern Ghouta this time, maybe Zamalka, or worse: Darayya. It’s funny. Funny how most of the earth does not understand what an explosion sounds or feels like. Most would think about the sound of it and how it pierces your bones. But the sound is not even the worst part. In fact, it sounds like a thunderstorm as it vibrates across different Damascene neighborhoods. The worst part of an explosion is the smell. As the dust settles into your lungs, it burns deep within your body. As if it's slowly erasing your soul. Maybe that explains all the numbness I feel around me on yet another daily journey. I step into the street and take a detour from my usual route. There is barely anyone walking today, and the

few I see are all looking down, staring at their feet, praying to escape. I walk past the bridge and look down at the Barada river. When I was almost twenty, I used to come to the river every day with my torn-up copy of Jane Eyre. My innermost dream then was to leave this country for an exciting adventure and a diverse world, like Jane, looking for my purpose across different places. If only I knew that my city was going to transform into a new monstrous place, then I would have cherished every busy street and every sweet jasmine flower. Apples, Nabil, torture. Without even thinking, I step on the edge of the bridge, looking down at the nearly dried-up riverbed. There is a girl with a yellow blouse and dark brown curls, sitting down there peacefully with not a care in the world, eating an apple. She looks up, smiling in my direction, a devilish and clever smile. The girl is me, a younger and more hopeful former-self, one I have chosen to leave behind. I feel dizzy, as if I am tied to a ship anchor, and it is driving me down to the bottom of the ocean. Each second, I feel dizzier, closer to drowning and all I want is to float. But I wish I was drowning. Not at all, it is something that has followed me throughout my life and now I feel it slip away.

It is time.

Olives , I think to myself as I open my fridge to see what is missing. Olives, butter, rice. I have not eaten much in the last couple of days, as if my stomach is anticipating something. I walk to the store thinking about olives, butter, and rice. Walking slowly across the alleyways, Abu Mohamad stops me in my tracks. “Umm Khalil, Marhaba, we have not seen your face in our store lately.” It is actually Maryam; does he not know that?

“I cannot afford these inflated prices anymore,” I say with a smile. “You and half of the country, unfortunately for my business,” he replies back. “We need all the money we can get for my father, especially now that I am the only one providing for him.” He pauses, packing away the meat in the bag, and directly looks at my eyes as if he is about to lose speech. “Malik, my son, has given you his life two days ago in a car explosion south of Cha’ am. May God be merciful.” I want to ask how he did it, for whom, and who was it against? But it does not really matter; the victims and perpetrators are identical, regardless of which side they choose.

“May God be merciful,” I repeat, barely, in an inaudible and insignificant voice. Mercy is pointless to a dead man. I pick up my walking pace, looking at the ground in an attempt to reach the grocery store unseen, and hopefully remaining ignorant to anyone else’s news. Malik, the butcher’s son, dead by explosion. Nabil, the neighbor’s son, dead on his way to work. Tortured. Olives, butter, and rice, I re mind myself, but my head is spinning. Olives, butter, and rice. Olives, Malik, butter, rice, Nabil, torture.

Chickpeas, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, cumin, parsley, bread, tahini, almonds, and Aleppo pepper . I immediately leave my bed and go to the kitchen in hopes that

something has changed. Last night, he was in my dream. As I look around my kitchen, I remember each detail. He is in the kitchen, sitting quietly. The room is filled with the morning light, warm and golden. He is wearing a cheap military uniform that is awfully dirty, and his shoes are muddy. I look at his face, dashing as always, but his black curly hair is in desperate need of a haircut. He has a couple of scars on his forehead, but other than that, he looks just fine.

“Anas! Can you get up and take off your shoes please? You’re going to make the kitchen floor dirty.” I always have to remind him.

“ Tib , Mama. But can you do something for me first?” His voice is uncom monly shaky. “Can you make me your fatteh b’ hummus, I am starving.”

“Of course, habibi .”

I bring the chickpeas to a boil and cut the stale bread to small pieces. After, I stir together the tahini, lemon juice, garlic, and olive oil, smelling the ses ame. I put some of the water over the bread to soak it in, and a layer of the boiled chickpeas with the tahini mixture. I top it off with parsley, cumin, Aleppo pepper, and roasted almonds. His favorite dish. I sit down with a full plate and watch him eat it like an excited child.

“Table manners,” I say, and he gives me a sheepish smile. “ Anas , habibi , where are you? They’re saying all of you are being transferred to Darayya.”

He does not look up from his plate. I want to ask him about so much more, but instead, I look at him intently. Only the sound of the teapot boiling interrupts our peace. I reach across the table for his hand, but the teapot screeches loudly.

“ The scent of jasmine so it blossomed, roses and basil, musk and amber, together (Ra'iihat alyasmin wazhar juri warayhan, mask waeanbar)” comes the song from Abu Ammar’s old and dysfunctional radio.

“ Yallah , come on, why is your volume not working, why is nothing work ing?” He is trying to reason with his radio, once again.

“I brought you jasmine from Jalal’s garden,” I say, finally interrupting Abu Ammar’s monologue with the radio.

“Just give me one second,” he says, while finally managing to blast the song. His attempt is in vain, as the noise of bombs from the nearby suburbs con tinue to dominate and seep into his safe haven. “What can I get for today, Umm Khalil?”

“Onions, tomatoes, and parsley.”

“I am out of fresh tomatoes. The produce is blocked, as you know.”

Great. Well, of course it is. Looking outside, I notice kids are running, but their expressions are unusually puzzled.

“Come here, kid, what is going on?” Abu Ammar shouts at a young boy who has stopped to catch his breath right outside the store.

“I don’t know! But there’s some bad news at uncle Abu Khalid’s house. It’s about his son in Darayya.”

Abu Ammar and I share a brief glance, and the radio signal breaks up the silence. I leave the store, leaving my groceries behind. Following the chatter of the bustling neighborhood to a tiny alleyway, I arrive at Abu Khalid’s house. There is a crowd of people, whispering to each other in grim voices, but I block it all out. I should not even be here in the first place. Trying to rush past people, I hear screaming, and—even more frightening—a wailing coming from inside the house. I look around again, but I do not recognize many people. Then I see Jumana in the front. I try to get her attention, but she is talking to another woman. I attempt to make my way to her, following the sound of her unique husky voice. I am almost behind her when I hear her whispering, “They're saying most of them, the bodies of the soldiers, are being kept there. I wonder if that is how they found out. The morgue on Arnaous Street.”

Another howl cuts through the crowd, and gradually everything becomes muffled, distant from me. I can only make out a couple of sentences:

“Hundreds! Thousands! People waking up dead.”

“The count keeps going up...”

“Lucky that he is a solider or they would have never got the body.”

“Darayya is a death trap.”

Darayya, Darayya.

The word keeps repeating itself, as if they are all chanting it in front of me. Khaled, dead in the army. His mother, Amira, and I went to the same school. The names, the words, are like shrapnel, each piercing through my body. Nabil, torture, Malik, explosion, Khaled, dead, Darayya.

Lama’s son. Nabil. Malik. Abu Mohamad’s son. Khaled. Amira’s son. Nabil, Lama, Malik, Abu Mohamad, Anas, Anas, Anas. Summer has come surprisingly soon this year, and all of a sudden, the sun is blazing in the afternoon. I regret my choice of clothing as soon as I leave my building, feeling the sweat drizzle on my forehead and underneath my arms. And yet, for the first time in years, the air does not smell of gunpowder as usual. How can that be?

I can actually hear the birds chirping. Fairuz is playing on the city’s radio this morning, like always. Her voice, both tender and strong, reverberates through the city’s different shops and houses. The beautiful remains of this city are still there, and they surprise you when you stop looking. Like my neighborhood now, which is vibrating with an energy I thought extinct: A young man gives away free samples at Abu Awwad’s confectionery, and another slaves away at the shawarma meat stand.

How strange.

Around me, the jasmine has been replaced with green leaves everywhere. In the Al’ Muhajrin neighborhood, I see a beautiful old church building, which I re member was accidentally bombed years ago. Now it stands unchanged as if nothing has happened. But how is that even possible? As if it is the end of a nightmare that revelled in the darkness for too long. I stop for a moment and breathe the fresh air

deeply, as if it has become foreign to me, and it is very intoxicating.

That is when I notice a young boy looking at me and laughing in a teasing manner from a distance. His black curls and green eyes are familiar. As I walk clos er to him, he starts to run.

“Anas,” I whisper to myself.

I follow him across the busy cobbled streets, and he is much faster than me. I pass by the colorful juice stands opposite the Italian Hospital, and my legs ache. Every couple of minutes, he turns back and stands for a second, encouraging me to follow him. I reach Aranous Square, as busy as it can get in the afternoon. Between the masses of people buying ironic t-shirts from clothes racks outside and the hectic ice cream shop around the corner, I see him standing in front of a bleak, windowless building. As soon as I get there, he is gone, disappeared into the dry and thin air. It looks like it has not changed at all in the last fifty years or so. The morgue. Stuck in time, but in an ominous way. The mere sight of it and its haunted rooms brings me back to my new reality. A reminder that while we try to survive, our city and past lives are forever changed, ruptured. Like shattered glass, any attempt to piece the past back together will cut your flesh.

I take a deep breath and cross the threshold.

EXPIRING YOGURT: 4 for $0.97

Matt Rogers

University of California, Davis

We were always moving product, on tray carts and in milk crates, pulling pallet jacks and packing U-boats— cases on cases— or chasing carts in the parking lot.

Keven taught me the traditions of deli men like his father-in-law before him (who is another poem entirely.)

I learned the language of Rockview Farms and Norco Ranch, scraping broken eggs caked beneath the shelves and finding milk left in the freezer.

We probably misplaced more box cutters in that backroom than— well…not more than customers who couldn’t find the sour cream (above the eggs, is that weird?)

Maybe it was the cold or all the boxes I tore open with my bare hands, but I was always making my fingers bleed. My nails turned white like they might with iron deficiency, though it was just the cost of being barely above freezing. Keven and Val bought me a cake on my last day. She asked if I was sad and he said, No, Matt hates this job. I cried in my car in the parking lot.

WORMS

Isabel Lanzetta Colorado College

The sidewalk blurred as four footfalls quickened their pace. Susana tallied each step from one to eleven until she couldn’t count any higher. At eleven, she would begin again, picturing the imaginary map that her scuttling feet were cre ating along the pavement. This, and her extended yawn caused her head to droop towards the ground, the two tufts of black hair her older sister had tied up earlier in the day bouncing in tempo with their quickening pace. She felt Malia’s firm grip on her left hand as she pulled her along the cacophonous roadside.

The day was just on the precipice of night and most cars had, by now, turned on their headlights. Music blared out of windows that were partially rolled down; a plume of smoke jetted out of a lopsided truck and burned Susana’s nos trils. The beams from the traffic heading south left small spots in Susana’s line of vision. On the sidewalk, a piece of cement had broken off and now jutted straight up. Her Skechers caught on this point and her hand slipped away from her sister’s.

A crack hovered just inches away from Susana’s nose. She had landed hard on both hands and knees. There was that warm sensation of blood starting from a new split in her body; the base of her pants dampened as it dribbled out and left its mark on the ground. She held her mouth open, not sure if she should cry. Malia hurried to lift her back onto her feet, brushing away the gravel that had impaled itself in Susana’s palms as fresh tears wet her blistered skin.

“Look at you,” Malia kissed her little sister’s cheek. “You landed like a cat!” Susana wiped the back of her sweater against her eyes. Her knee burned—her leg gings torn right through the center of a lollipop printed in that very spot.

“I want to go home,” Susana sniffled, shuffling her feet.

Malia said nothing, took her hand and kept walking. Susana repeated herself, but her sister's eyes hardly flickered. They made a sharp right moments later, and the little girl stumbled into a field of spotlights. They were standing in the gravel lot of a gas station. Only one pump had a car parked in front of it, and a man with a heavy mustache and a cigarette in his mouth eyed them carefully. The streetlights cast long shadows that trailed the girls like ghosts. One car was parked diagonally in front of the store between two spots. It had a large bumper sticker of a gun on its back window, which had a long crack running from one end to the oth er. Malia pulled her sister past the pumps, sending only a quick glance towards the man whose eyes still lingered. Her sister pulled on the front of her tank top where a line of sweat was forming, covering the top of her lacy bra.

There was a strangeness to Malia’s gait, even though she wore sneakers.

Susana thought maybe it was because of the tightness of her jeans. She had walked in on her older sister earlier that day jumping up and down, trying to pull her jeans up over her thighs. When she had seen her peeking through the doorway, Malia had snapped at her with a splintered pitch and Susana had run away. But this walk seemed to have little to do with the jeans because her sister’s hips were wobbling heavily from side to side, seemingly unfazed.

They approached the front of the store. There was a flashing sign in bright neon colors, the lights rolling through each letter over and over again. Susana qui etly sounded out the letters to herself.

Her sister pulled her through the swinging glass door.

A bell jangled as they stepped inside. The glossy white-tile floor made the room seem to stretch an endless mile. A long row of fluorescent bulbs flickered overhead, emitting a low buzzing. The sound seemed to embed itself in the dips and ridges of the popcorn ceiling. Where the thick drywall seemed to collapse into itself, Susana felt the sound lingering, as though wavering on the precipice between white space and everything else. It seemed to bounce off the tall shelves, circle about the stacks of canned soup, and hover over the gauzy floor. She felt as though she had been dropped underwater. She looked around at the sparsely populated interior, the rapidly blinking figures posed at random throughout the space. It seemed that this inner world was a channel which had turned into her brain, and her brain alone. Her ears prickled.

Malia marched straight towards the middle of the store. She turned down one of the aisles and vanished beneath a tall stack of cereal boxes. Susana felt her shoes lighting up beneath her as she walked towards where her sister had gone. A young woman stumbled past her, reeking of gasoline. The back of her hair was matted and oily, and she looked into the stocked rows without really seeing them. She caught Susana watching and took a few steps closer to her, moving her mouth with a syrupy mumbling Susana couldn't understand. The woman repeated herself, her eyebrows lowered over her eyelids. She grew frustrated and raised her voice again.

Susana . Su.

She turned. Malia was standing a few feet back, one hand resting on her hip. Susana hurried towards her and Malia took her hand again, setting off down a long row of small boxes and plastic bags. The tiles were just large enough that each step Susana took began and ended on a new square. On the other side of the loom ing shelves, she could hear a man’s raised voice. Malia had her finger on one of the items, but did not pick anything up yet. A woman’s voice carried across the store to counter the other. As the two tumbled into a high banter, Susana buried her face in between Malia’s legs, pressing the tip of her cold nose into her sister’s knee. Susana pressed her hands, hard, against her ears but Malia pulled them away.

“Don’t be rude,” she muttered. After a long deliberation, Malia let out a long breath and snatched a small box from the counter, glancing at its shiny label. Susana watched Malia finger the cash in her back pocket as she led her sister past

the wall of buzzing refrigerators. They turned left, and Malia pointed at a long row of candies.

“Pick one.”

Susana tilted her head, studying the great rainbow. They all seemed so much taller than her now, all stacked neatly from the floor to the ceiling. There were too many options, too many colors. Susana’s stomach rumbled.

“But I haven’t eaten.” She tugged on her sister’s sleeve. There was a bag of candied worms just level with her gaze. She wondered if they were really worms. She had seen worms before, in the storm drains after it rained, and she remem bered that they were brown when they were still wiggling, grey when they were not. Here, they were blue and red and pink and green and yellow. A thick layer of sugar crystals coated their fat bodies. She squinted towards them, trying to gauge wheth er or not they were squirming. None did.

Malia saw her staring at the bag of gummies and pulled them off the metal hook from which they hung. On the top shelf, a box of saltines was stacked precariously. Malia grabbed this, too, and headed towards the register. Susana followed after her, remembering the woman with matted hair. The register towered over the bridge of Susana’s nose. On the other side of the counter, a man with a missing front tooth smiled widely at her sister as he rang her up. Malia shifted her weight onto one hip, pretending not to see. On Susana’s right was a small cooler stocked with drinks bottled in plastic. She sounded out the label on a green and red bottle with a picture of a tomato and broccoli. V-8. She recognized the cover from a commercial she’d seen when Malia put on Looney Tunes for her early that morn ing. There had been a small woman, her hands gripping her waistline, dribbling the red juice onto a white countertop. Susana looked at the pouch that peeked out the bottom of her sister’s too-short shirt.

She tugged on her sister’s sleeve, pointing at the glass. Malia peered for a moment to where she was pointing, opened the door, and pulled out a bottle of dark brown soda. Susana tried to shake her head roughly, but the cashier was star ing at her hard and she could see through his missing tooth straight into the back of his throat. Susana pulled out a wad of cash from her back pocket, counted her change, and handed it to the cashier.

“Smart girl.” His smile widened, and Susana counted two more gaps in his open mouth. He had blue eyes reserved for sirens, and dogs. Outside, each lamp light glowed like irises. Her sister leaned against the side of the building, pulling a long cigarette out of the pack she had picked up inside.

A car pulled into one of the empty spots on the far side of the store. Su sana recognized its shape from the one that often parked outside of their aunt’s house. It sat low to the ground, its engine grumbling. A hand leaned over across the dark windshield and opened the passenger side door. Malia slid in as though she had been oiled for that moment, pulling Susana to her side and into the back seat.

The inside of the car almost looked as though it were carpeted, and it

smelled it too. Of ash, and dirty socks, and something else that made Susana wrinkle her nose. "Who’s that?” The man sitting behind the wheel jutted his thumb towards the backseat.

Malia shrugged. “Couldn’t leave her at the house.” “Fuck.”

Susana watched her feet kick the seat in front of her. The man leaned across his seat, putting his lips against Malia’s. He had a thick layer of hair across his chin, and one of Malia’s long strands got caught in it as he pulled away. They got out of the car. Malia opened the door to Susana’s feet. “Hey, hop in the front and eat your food I bought you.”

Susana had never been in the front seat of a car before. She looked around at the strange buttons and dials in front of her, glowing against the dark. Malia set the plastic bag down in her lap and pulled out the gummy worms. Susana heard both back doors opening, then closing again. She looked down at the bag in her lap, tore it open.

“You’re so hot,” she heard the man’s heavy breath behind her, filling up the car.

The windows were rolled up, and she imagined they were in a space shut tle, hurtling towards another planet.

With her stubby fingers, Susana pulled a pink and green worm from the bag. Behind her, she could hear the rustling of two people moving about. She watched it closely against the fleshy part of her hand. The windows began to fog over. She popped it into her mouth. The car trembled—the side of the building coming in and out of focus over the dashboard. She remembered her scab, and leaned forward to see if it was still bleeding. Her fingers were damp as she pulled them away. She touched one of the red buttons by the steering wheel. An alarm went off.

Susana closed her eyes. On her tongue, she could feel the worm moving.

Quinn Carver Johnson Hendrix College

It’s truly Chekhov’s gun, isn’t it? To stage joy in a ring designed for violence & expect violence not to barge into the rehearsal dinner drunk & sloppy. Give me a break. Nobody signs a contract without flipping the table & swinging a few fists & certainly no one is happily wed in this world. No, not without blood. You know as well as me that in this ring, wedding bells are just the same as that ring bell in the corner—when it starts ringing, someone is going to throw a punch. This time, it’s me—the beautiful / blushing / bastard / bride, dressed in white and holding an ex plosion of pink flowers in my hands. Backstage, I sewed a thin sheet of white lace over my white mask. That’s clever, don’t you think? You lift the veil only to find another veil. Isn’t that fitting? Doesn’t it just feel right? My family plays this game during the holidays—I’m telling you this because tonight I am welcoming you into my family—and the rules are simple: you take a $20, or a $10 if it has been a rough year, and you put it in a box covered in gift wrap. Then, you wrap that box inside another boxes & you wrap that box inside…Well, you see where this is going. Then, you slip on a pair of oven mitts & someone cranks up one of those old kitchen timers & you try your damnedest to rip these boxes open before the time runs out. Get it? Because marriage is a metaphor & pro wrestling is a metaphor & a pro wrestling marriage is a metaphor built on top of boxes within boxes of metaphors. Get it? The veil over my mask, my mask over my face, & what of this face? What lies beneath? Tell me, is it an act of intimacy or violence to step into this ring & let men in oven mits trying to rip back all my layers? What is it when I’m standing in front of the mirror doing the same thing? Don’t answer. There’s no time for that. Today is my wedding & listen, they’re playing my song.

THEY SAY 50% OF MARRIAGES END IN DIVORCE, BUT 100% OF PRO-WRESTLING MARRIAGES END IN DISASTER

bye bye darling falling from the sky bye bye darling as the gurney races by

the nurse held me back ignorant for lack of diamond and band of gold unavailable due to the secret we must hold

she sat me in the waiting chair and I slept through till’ the dawn she didn’t even tell me you had gone delayed from my mourning and restricted from crying over your lonely corpse my old worn feet followed the path to our home where our nightgowns still lay in our dresser side by side and your lilac perfume still rests in your indent in the soft creases of the unmade bed so bye bye my darling bye bye my one

EDITH & ABBY Kimberly Kosinski Bradley University KOSINSKI

gals like us always knew how to love

TUNNEL VISION

Elizabeth Mercado University of California, Davis

“I keep losing track of things,” my mother said. No one knows I didn’t believe her at first. There was no fear in her voice. She said it like it was incidental, like it was weather.

“What kinds of things?”

What kind of weather?

“Like what time you’re off work, when your classes start, or the last thing I ate.”

I spoke to my mother more than most. She called in the mornings. She called in the afternoon after I got out of class, during dinner, and once more before she went to sleep. If I woke up early to take a shower, I made sure to let her know so she wouldn’t call at a time I couldn’t answer.

Freshman year of college, I was always the one who called. Curled into myself on the top bunk, her voice in my ear telling me when she’d woken up that day, what dish she’d cooked Dad and Teddy for dinner, or the route she’d walked through town that day. I knew when, what, and where before she would rattle them off. Her voice let me imagine myself back in the bed she and I shared for eighteen years.

Sophomore year, I grew some backbone, moved into my first apartment, and she had memorized exactly when to call.

More often than not I overheard students just like me who had no shame in walking around with Mommy in their ear. Once I was out of uniform, back to be ing one of the students clinging to voices through their speakers, I realized she was right. I had three missed calls from her during the middle of my shift.

“Don’t worry about it. My classes change all the time. You don’t need to know them all. If you forget something, I’ll just remind you.”

Being young, I had the ability to be morbid without facing consequences. It was safe to poke that fleshy, terrified part of the brain and ask questions like, “What if Mom or Dad died today?” There’s nothing to fear because we are small and time is in abundant supply. I foolishly overestimated mine, and hers.

“Are you forgetting anything else?”

I imagined her hand over her eyes rubbing tiredness out of them. She let out a long sigh on the other end of the line. Her soft breath hummed and tickled the inside of my ear.

“No, nothing else. Nothing important.”

The day before I flew home to visit my sick mother, Peter aimed to impress

by surprising me with a birthday brunch. Wrangling half a dozen twenty-four-year olds into one place before noon was, indeed, quite a feat. Everyone had a good time.

“I could tell you didn’t like it,” he said.

“No, I did not.” I called out for blouses, and he tossed options to me from the closet. My trip home would just be for a weekend. At first, I only visited her ev ery couple months and only ever just for weekends. Flights back and forth wouldn’t pile up for another year. Peter tossed me pajama bottoms.

“Noted,” he said.

Peter liked to scare people at parties by telling them our relationship was built on lies. We’d met at one of the parties he liked to throw in college. Peter enjoyed speaking to everyone. He willingly offered his home, his time, his silence for others to feel comfortable. He found me against a wall having less than a good time.

“You look like you’re having fun,” he had said.

“I am.”

He squinted either to read me for truth or force my face into focus in his dark living room. He shook his head. “Don’t lie to me. You and me, let’s avoid lying to each other.”

I shook my head slowly. “I don’t think you’d like that.”

“Try me.”

Not lying in the first hours of meeting someone can move things along pretty quickly.

“Ask me anything,” he’d said.

“Is no one allowed to have a bad time at one of your parties?”

“No one,” he replied.

“Show me, then.”

I threw back a green jumper for him to hang back in our closet. Realistical ly, we were forced to break our promise to never lie to each other. The pact became never to trick each other.

“Did you have a good time, at least?” I asked.

“Yes, because I threw a very good brunch.”

“Takeout, proposals, and surprise parties. All of them need approval be forehand.”

“You needed to get out. You’re either at your parents’ or you work here. You’re either home or you’re home. I thought you could use some fun.”

“Now?”

“It’s not going like things are going to get better.” He tossed my denim jacket, but I didn’t catch it. It landed onto folded socks and three pairs of jeans. I had overpacked as usual. The trip would hopefully be dull. I prayed for dull instead of worse every time I flew. At least at home, Dad and Teddy knew better to leave any of our birthdays alone for a while.

“Look,” I said. “I behaved. I don’t have to like the party, but at least I

wasn’t a dick about it.”

“What about right now?”

“I can’t be a dick in the privacy of our own home?”

The clock read 12:35 a.m. Peter shut the closet and got into bed instead of arguing further. He knew me well enough to do that. I joined him.

“Did you think of what to write about your mom?” Peter’s mother is a nurse. A friend of hers in psychiatry told her that journaling was a healthy way to deal with loss, even in cases like mine. It helped to write about the loved ones in ways that made them more permanent. Happy memories, hypothetical conver sations you might have, descriptions of what they looked like at different times in your life. Take the focus off of you and your grief. Don’t hold your own hand throughout the process, his mother advised. You’ll never let anyone else hold it again. If you get stumped, she said, start by asking yourself: “What’s my favorite thing about her?”

“No. I didn’t like the question.”

I couldn’t condense her like that. She was too big. I stretched my bare arms over my head, and stared blankly at the clock. Peter leaned his head on his propped arm and looked at me with heavy eyelids.

Peter spoke in favorites. His favorite fruit is blackberries. He likes to eat them over bread. His favorite time of day is 11 a.m., preferably sunny. His favorite car seat is the middle seat in the back row but only in a full car. The middle seat will let you sit next to everyone.

“Just start with what you like about her,” he offered.

I tried humming myself to sleep and thought.

“I like her hair. It’s light, coppery. Not red, but she dyes it, and sometimes it’ll come out redder than she wants. I like her eyelids. They’re very wrinkly and darker than the rest of her face. She either doesn’t laugh or laughs so hard she cries. There’s not a lot of in-between there. She can really yell, but she’s so small. Not weak, but she carries so much I’d think she must feel pretty small by now.”

“That’s one of your favorite things about her?”

“No. I think I just started talking about her.” I still don’t know what my favorite Peter thing is. He listens, which I like.

“Are you tired?” he asked.

“No one loves me like she does.”

I don’t think I listen very well. I tried thanking him for the party, but he wouldn’t let me. I still couldn’t trick him.

Every trip to and from Mom and Dad’s, I arrived as a daughter and left as an intruder. Halfway up the house’s staircase toward the second floor, Teddy de manded I come back down. I turned to face him. His arms were stretched, gripping the banisters. If I didn’t watch myself, he might yank his bratty little sister by the arm and drag her onto the lawn.

“You can’t go up there,” he said.

“I want to see her.”

“Today’s not a good day. She just about bit Dad’s head off. Wake her up and she’ll try to kick us all out of the house.”

Dad didn’t have anything to say, so he sulked in the dining room. He hid his eyes and clenched his jaw. Anything he could say would be too harsh, so he ground his teeth instead. That used to work on me when I was a kid. When I used to swallow chunks of food whole at the dinner table. Or if I ever asked to have friends over. I thought I’d made him so angry he’d never speak to me again. “I flew all the way over here for my time with her. This is the time we agreed on.”

I knew Dad wasn’t ever really mad. He just felt small, and he was stub born. We both were. Teddy was not.

“Work with me here,” Teddy pleaded. “Come back tomorrow. What is so important about right now?”

“Because it’s mine .”

The second-floor balcony wrapped around my head, and I could see the door to my childhood bedroom. I checked my voice, careful not to wake her. The house was small but stretched upward for space. Two bedrooms on the second floor that had heard every dish clink, channel switch, and back and forth uttered within its walls since we’d lived here. “This time is mine,” I hissed. “She’s mine. I lived here my whole life —”

“Not all of it.”

“ why am I being treated like I’m here for visitor’s hours? I slept in that bed with her every night. This is still my house, and I will see her if I want to.”

Teddy didn’t follow me. The bottom of our off-white walls were still streaked in gray grime accumulated over twenty plus years. The pictures on the wall hung crooked in black, plastic frames. Some of them still featured the stock family portraits when Dad bought them. There wasn’t enough of us to fill them.

The dryer living in the closet was in the middle of a cycle. Denim jean buttons and jacket zippers smacked from inside the metal tumbler issuing a low rumble topped with pops loud enough to keep my mother lulled asleep. I still stepped lightly just in case.

I brandished my thumbnail and shoved the metal groove on the doorknob onto its side, unlocking it.

I used to walk in on naps all the time. Dad’s naps after church. Mom and Dad when they went to bed early at eight o’clock. Bedtime at any time before ten, I called a nap. I pressed my head against the door and pushed it open.

She laid on the bed the same way she had her entire life. Or my life, at least. Slightly curled into herself. Both her knees stacked on top of each other. Her hands sandwiched on top of each other underneath her cheek. She actually slept like that. She still used two pillows and slept on top of the comforter. Sheets were always too hot. The queen bed was pushed against the wall and she faced it with her back to me. Her hair was just recently dyed. The color was closer to brown than

copper. Either Teddy or Dad were guessing at her color and likely dying it for her.

When we shared this room, the bed was big enough that we could spread out and have enough space to stretch our legs. But I clung to her anyway. When I was nine, I fell asleep that way. When I was fourteen, I was much too mature. When I was eighteen, I went back to hugging her but after about five minutes we’d both had enough, turned around, and fell asleep. What would our way be now?

Every night, I waited for her to climb stairs no matter how late it got. I wouldn’t fall asleep without her. Today, she was not waiting for me. Or perhaps in waiting for me, the reason for doing so faded from her memory, and she fell to sleep unburdened. I landed as quietly as I could onto the red futon. It took up the whole second half of the room. The upholstery is perforated in squares onto finger-width fabric wrapped around a harsh metal brace. Once I got too big, Dad somehow slept on that thing for years. Someone had removed all the pillows, so I laid down pressing my hands against my face like her. My head faced the foot of the bed, and I watched her. I fell asleep deciding this was close enough.

Teddy woke me at sunset. Our mother was still asleep. He put a finger to his lips and walked me downstairs. Dad would keep an eye on her while the two of us went for a drive. I didn’t protest or kiss Dad good-bye. I followed Teddy to his car and let him drive me away.

The restaurant he chose was empty except for a mother and her son. I wasn’t hungry. Neither was he, it seemed, but we ordered coffee and blueberry muffins. Teddy chugged his cup, and I let mine get colder in front of me. He folded and unfolded a straw wrapper in his fingers. I rubbed my hands, staring at cars. After a moment I asked, “Do I look like her at all?”

We only spoke Spanish with Mom. Once we had learned enough English, she didn’t need to learn. She had the two of us call doctors’ offices and write letters of absence to our teachers for her. Teddy searched my face, but if the answer isn’t Yes after knowing my face for twenty-five years, the answer was: “No.”

My reflection stuck onto the storefront window behind him on top of the bug stains and hairline scratches on the glass. He was right.

My eyes are Dad’s. My brown skin is Dad’s. Both our noses are Dad’s. Our hair. No, our hair wasn’t coppery, but it was curly. That was hers. I studied Teddy. He carried Dad’s face too, but I was right about the hair.

“Why does it matter?” he asked.

“If we look like her maybe she’s still here.”

“She is still here. You shouldn’t have gone in there.”

I shoved a bite into my mouth, convincing myself I was hungry. “I still think I’m entitled to more time with her until I move back permanently,” I mum bled.

“You’re not actually going to do that.”

“Yes, I am.”

He looked too relaxed, slumped into the chair with legs stretched under neath the table. His feet breached my side forcing me to knot mine underneath the seat and force my back upright. I narrowed my eyes at him, but his hung. He was exhausted.

“I take my time here seriously, okay? It means a lot to me,” I assured him. “What do you think I’m doing here?” His boots were caked in white paint. His thumbs were cracked at the tips like Dad’s. Dad would ask me to pump lotion on his fingertips after long day at work to revive them. These days, Dad drove him and Teddy to work and Teddy was the one with dirt under his nails and cracks in his skin.

“I’m not talking about you.”

“You weren’t this much of a brat growing up. Really playing up the whole ‘favorite’ thing these days.”

“I am the favorite,” I sneered. There weren’t any bodies close enough to our table to keep my voice from carrying. Teddy sat a little straighter. If he didn’t brace himself, his little sister might kick his chair out from under him. “You told me all the time. Everyone did. Baby sister, daddy’s little girl. I was born a decade after you. I’m the girl. Her only girl. That kind of love and attention sets a standard for the rest of your life. When it’s gone, it’s big, okay? When you’re someone’s whole world, then suddenly you’re not?”

Firstborn wasn’t as good as the kid you didn’t need to try again after be cause you’d nailed it the second try. Teddy leaned forward. The chair’s metal legs clawed against wood.

“Would you care about Dad this much if it was him?”

I didn’t entertain the question. “Different story.”

“What about me? You are a baby. You’ve only had her half as long as I have. Who’s really losing more here? What about me losing my mom? What about Dad losing a wife?”

Teddy thought big picture. I don’t know if I’m actually selfish, but I was raised to be. I didn’t grow up as a babysitter. I didn’t inherit a job from Dad wheth er I wanted it or not. I was raised to think big, get out as soon as possible, and only come back for the holidays.

“It’s different.” I said. “We’ve known her our whole lives. He hasn’t.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He slouched back like he de cided I wasn’t a threat anymore. Or maybe he thought I was hopeless.

“I’m allowed to be upset. You’re ‘sibling-ly’ inclined to indulge me.”

“Am I still your brother if she’s not here anymore?”

Teddy wasn’t Mom, but he was up there. When I was twelve, I thought it would be fun to die for him. I thought, how cool must it be to have a little sister who looks up to you that much, who thinks an older brother was the best gift a parent could give. A kid sister that, if asked, would lay down her life for you? Mor bid thoughts. At that age I thought I was lucky to love things that much.

“I do think you’re entitled, though.”

“Of course you are.”

It’s easy to love that much when you’re in the same house. It’s easier to memorize a person. The older I got, the more he missed. The older I’ll get, the less he’ll know, but I figured at this rate we had another two or three years before I was out of his picture.

“Are you sad for her?” he asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Try feeling sad for her instead of yourself for a change.”

“No one else knows me the way she does.”

“Do you even know her that way? Or do you just have her hair?”

Peter and I, tipsy, giggling, and bumping knees against tables at 9 p.m. be came me crying in our bedroom by 11 p.m. Peter was a bit too dizzy to initially un derstand why. Our apartment was boiling, and I had taken too many deep breaths too quickly. I tried clipping my breath and exhaled in short bursts. I coughed against my own spit. My hands gripped my cheeks and pressed against them. Being touched even by my own hands might recenter me. The skin felt hot, slick, and I wished my hands were colder. I dug the tips of my fingers into my temples. More tears squeezed onto my cheeks and slid between my fingers.

“Martha, stop,” Peter said. He raised his voice, not to frighten me but be cause he was frightened. He thought I needed a strong, steady voice telling me to snap out of it. I didn’t need him to speak. I needed someone to hold me down. I doubled over and clamped harder against my face trying to get some sort of a grip.

“Stop it,” he gripped my shoulders. “Stop it . Come on. She’ll be fine.” He understood more than I thought. I liked when he surprised me like that.

But Peter sounded miles away. I pushed against my head while a surging pressure in my head pushed out. The inside of my scalp tingles and spreads down my neck into my shoulders, making me arch my neck to relieve the sensation. I couldn’t scream. Peter placed his hands gently on my forearms, but I pushed him away with my elbows. No one on this earth knows me the way she does and no one ever will. When She dies, she’ll take me with her. A wheeze rose from my stomach and caught in my throat. I opened my mouth and a sound released like I was regurgitat ing a small animal. Peter stepped back and widened his eyes.

I turned my back to him and fell to my knees in front of the full-length mirror. Whatever I dislodged in my throat let me wail. If I forced myself to look in the mirror, I might discover something she didn’t already know. I might be able take something back before she took it all with her.

I didn’t recognize anyone in the mirror.

Not my father’s face, or Teddy’s, definitely not my mother’s. I didn’t learn anything. I crawled away from the mirror, ashamed.

Peter knelt before me and held my body until my breaths became long and slow again.

We didn’t sleep but he convinced me to lie in bed with him.

The washcloth in my hand felt crusty where the congestion had dried and cold where tears soaked through.

“Tell me about it,” he asked.

“She’s happy when she looks at me, but she doesn’t know why,” I croaked. “I can see it in her eyes. The happiness is right in front. But, sometimes, there’s this guilt. Like she knows. She knows she’s forgotten something, something big. The guilt is right behind the happy. Then, the guilt will move to the front and I can’t look at her anymore.”

Every year for Thanksgiving, the best thing I could’ve brought home with me was a degree. A year before that was in my grasp, the best thing I could have brought home was Peter. Aunts, uncles, cousins, and second cousins eyed him or poked my ribs raising their brows comically.

“Oh, your guerito is cute,” my mother said.

When I called and asked Dad if Peter could stay at the house for Thanks giving, he said it was unacceptable. I told him I had bought the tickets anyway. When Peter arrived, Dad put on the overeager air of a host who suddenly had a lot to prove. I held his hand whenever he acted too happy Peter was there.

Teddy and Peter tried to establish a sort of bond, searching for some sport’s team, movie franchise, or piece of technology they could equally agree or disagree on. Peter didn’t play soccer, Teddy didn’t watch a lot of thrillers, and nei ther of them really cared about what cell phone or laptop the other owned. They’d both seen Star Wars and started from there. I gripped Peter’s hand to let him know I appreciated him for trying.

I propped my head on my mother’s shoulder, watching the crowded dining room, knowing it’d be a memory. She patted my hand clasped in hers in a beat she’d constructed. In Spanish she asked me, “You like him?”

I hummed in her shoulder that I did. I’d watched Peter bob around the house that night. Peter still likes talking. He spoke to my cousin Manny more than I had in my entire life. What he said, I had no idea. I knew he had no idea what any of my family members said to him. But Peter tries. I don’t imagine speaking with her in person. If I were to have another conversation with her, it would be a phone call. What might she say?

“What’s left of you, then?

“A lot of me left,” I’d say.

“That’s good.”

“But a lot of me is still here.”

“Oh.”

People don’t meet versions of one other. They meet amounts. I stood behind 1% of a person in line today. In middle school I was a bit overzealous and let my first boyfriend meet a whopping 70% of me. The years have exponentially reduced his knowledge. We’re lucky to meet anyone who ever breaches 60% and

says “Great, what else is there?”

“How much of you is left?” she might ask next. I still don’t know just how much of me she held.

“Who else is left?” she pressed.

“A lot of people.”

“What about Peter?”

“What about Peter?”

“How much do you each have of each other?” “80%, maybe.”

“Four years and only 80%.”

“We’ve earned it, each little bit.”

When she left for good, she didn’t take me with her. She left everything she knew behind. Every bit of me she carried was on my back now. With one per son less to carry us all, Dad, Teddy and I try to shift the weight on our shoulders as evenly as we can. It’s hard to see outside the three of us sometimes.

“I think they’ve all earned the chance to earn even more,” she’d say. I decided not to risk what might happen if I didn’t believe her this time.

SEPTEMBER

Emily Dexter Indiana Wesleyan University

I.

Last night, I came over to find you stressed, your bed covered in binders, books, and pens. I asked if you wanted to go on a walk, and you said yes, so we donned our masks and went. There was a cicada trapped between the dorm lobby’s dou ble doors, and on our way out, you held the interior door open a second too long. The cicada zipped past me—dark and larger than I imagined—and into the lobby, toward the high ceiling and further from escape.

II.

Tonight, I dip French fries into tomato soup, in the half-empty dining hall. These French fries are better than the ones we ate yesterday, when we sat beneath the statue of the two students and Jesus. All three figures wear blue disposable masks, the straps taped onto their faces. The color pops against their dark metal.

III.

We left the cicada behind, left for the air and the clouded night. We found our way to the prayer chapel, but inside, the atmosphere felt dense. In front of the front row, I sat on the stone floor and crumpled into myself. You laid down on your back, while I counted breaths. A boy sat in one of the pews, with his eyes closed and earbuds in. He was still there when we left; he raised his arms above his head. Outside, the insects hummed—the brethren, no doubt, of the lost cicada. Later I found that cicada dead, its body resting on a floorbound ceiling tile as if on a marble slab.

IV.

I underline sentences of Plato. I wash the dishes in the dorm room sink. You re-organize the titles on your bookshelf. You say someone in your unit has tested positive, and their roommate has gone into quarantine. I think about what An nie Dillard wrote, about the ritual slaughterer who wondered what could happen between his calling out to the Lord and crying for mercy. What door might open or close, in that one fragile instant? What stream might rise and burst over its usual

bank?

V.

In the morning, I will walk to the far side of campus, to the seminary with its square windows facing the long straight street. I will cut through grass and parking lots. I will yawn beneath my mask, and follow the sidewalk past the pink flowers outside the alumni center. The insects will have quieted. I will climb the stairs and sit in the large classroom, spaced out from my peers. Later in the day, I will see you, and we will smile with our eyes and ask about each other’s day and of course tell each other that we are alright.

THE BALLAD OF THE EARTHWORM

Caroline Poole University of North Carolina

Is soil the memory of the land?

If I suckle my way through this disheveled earthen compound will it remember I was here?

Is anything I do worth quantifying?

All day and night, I squish and glug around, swimming through unruly sediment, wriggling till my back aches, wondering what my job is.

I need to stop complaining.

I need to zip up my turtleneck and get on with the cold, because whining won’t make the rain come.

Sitting still won’t bring the spring. I will tell myself false positivity.

The dirt, my nectar, a crumbly cake in which I bathe my haggard body. Day in, and out, weaving around the same fleshy bulbs.

Sweet, fertile soil waiting for me, intestines of the earth.

Five hearts all beating in tandem, for one mission:

To provide, to survive, to live upon. I work for a sun that does not rise for me, and sleep under an ignorant moon. I dig under a mother reluctant to reward me for my work. Will I ever hear love back?

Will spring return, gilded Persephone in tow?

Part of me hopes so. Until then I’ll be here watching, digging,

choking on nothing there but wasted air and dirt too dense to hold memory of me. Swoon, Mother Lovely, see what I do for you.

CONTRIBUTORS

Sofía Aguilar is a Latina writer, poet, and fourth-year student at Sarah Lawrence College and originally from Los Angeles. Most recently, her work has appeared in The Sarah Lawrence Review, Melanin Magazine, Beyond Words International Literary Magazine , and The Westchester Review , among other publications. She has received the 2018 Nancy Lynn Schwartz Prize for Fiction and is a three-time recipient of the Jean Goldschmidt Kempton Scholarship for Young Writers for her outstanding contributions to her college community. You may visit her at www.sofiaaguilar. com.

Tahani Almujahid is a Yemeni-American writer from Dearborn, Michigan. She is an undergraduate studying English and international studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She currently works with Michigan Quarterly Review as an editorial and marketing assistant. She has written for the Michigan Journal of International Affairs, Michigan Daily, Writer to Writer, Spellbinder , and is forthcom ing in other journals. She focuses her writing on her experiences, language, family history, identity, love, and loss. In her free time, you can find Tahani editing her friends’ essays (and reading a good book)!

Hadia Bakkar is a recent graduate of Skidmore College. With a passion for sto rytelling, Bakkar is interested in the intersection of politics, literature, and media production. Her work is deeply inspired by her experiences as a Syrian woman living in the United States. Bakkar hopes to pursue a future career in journalism, be it print or radio broadcasting.

Connor Beeman is a senior at Ohio University studying creative writing and women, gender, and sexuality studies. With a focus in poetry, his work currently centers on the deeply interwoven connections of place, deindustrialization, and queerness within his home state of Ohio, hometown of Akron, and the greater Rust Belt. He hopes his work can bring attention to the too-often sidelined queer people of the Rust Belt and Midwest. Previous publications include Polaris, Man grove , and Ohio University’s own Sphere

Holly Bergman is a student at Salisbury University in the creative writing

program. She is the nonfiction genre editor for Salisbury’s literary magazine The Scarab . She writes a combination of both poetry and creative nonfiction and is an open book when writing about weird details of her life.

Tamara Blair is currently a first-year student enrolled at Eastern Michigan University. She is studying for a degree in marketing and may potentially minor in literature or creative writing. In the future, she hopes to someday join the book publishing industry. Writing is one of her greatest passions.

Jacob Bloom is a sophomore at Willamette University where he studies computer science and English. He was born in San Francisco and grew up in Marin County, California. In his free time, he enjoys reading, cracking jokes, spending time with his family, playing basketball, and eating.

Anna Bronson is a senior BFA Creative Writing student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Originally from a small town outside of Flint, Michigan, Anna has faith in the power of big changes and big chances. A lover of pasta, romantic movies, and alternative rock, Anna believes that the most interesting thing about any person is the depth of their heart. One day, she hopes to share her stories with the world.

Madison Brown is a senior English major at Augusta University. She spends her free time writing poetry, both formal and free verse. She has presented her work at several events, including the Westobou Arts Festival in Augusta, Georgia. She has been published in Yell! Women’s and Genders Studies Magazine and Sandhills.

Kathryn Cambrea is a student studying communications and creative writing at St. Thomas Aquinas College. She has a passion for writing and would love to share her pieces, both journalistic and creative, with the world. Kathryn has experience working in print and digital media as well as radio. She especially loves to write poetry and creative nonfiction pieces that tend to focus on love, family, female strength, and her heritage.

Angelina Chartrand is an undergraduate at Lindenwood University pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English Studies with an emphasis in creative writing. She is a writer interested in short stories that delve into surrealistic and abstract concepts. Her approach to writing has always been an exploration of complicated ideas that are grounded in reality. She considers herself an avid storyteller and reader.

Cara Clements is a graphic designer, illustrator, and art director currently pursu ing dual degrees in media studies (concentration in media making) and integrated visual arts (concentration in graphic design) from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. For years, Cara used illustration and graphic design as an outlet for

stress-relief and relaxation, but earlier this year, she decided to start expanding her reach and sharing her work with the world via her small business, Cara Mak De sign. She specializes in logo design, branding, website design, editorial design for magazines, type and image-led graphic design, art direction, and illustration. Cara is also available for design and art direction freelance projects, collaborations, and illustration commissions. To get in touch or to view more of her work, visit www. CaraMak.com or follow Cara Mak Design on Instagram: @CaraMakDesign.

Chloe Cook is an undergraduate student attending Northern Kentucky Universi ty. She serves as Editor-in-Chief for the student-run creative magazine, Loch Norse Magazine , and works on the editorial board for the literary journal, Pentangle . Her work can be found in Tule Review, Haunted Waters Press , and her debut chapbook is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in fall 2021. She currently resides in the NKY region.

Ella Corder is a creative writing senior at Western Kentucky University. She is from Somerset, Kentucky. For the foreseeable future, she plans to eat, sleep, and breathe the medical school entrance exam to become a doctor. She would like to practice in Senegal, Guinea, and Francophone Africa.

Madison Culpepper is a junior at Central Connecticut State University and is 21 years old. She studied creative writing at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts and now studies Psychology with a minor in writing. She won two silver keys and one gold key in the Scholastic Writing Awards, is published by Long Shot Books, and hopes to publish a poetry book someday.

Amberly Day is a student at Ball State university in Indiana. She studies history and creative writing, and hopes to someday publish young adult novels. She focus es heavily on diversity, especially LGBT+ representation, a community she is part of. Her poem, “Sickness,” draws from the real-life inspiration of her friend Daniel, who contracted COVID-19.

Sean DeSautelle is a senior in the Literary Studies program at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester. Upon graduation, he plans to continue working on his craft with hopes of attending a MFA Creative Writing Program in the near future. Besides writing he enjoys visiting museums, good coffee, and vegetarian cuisine. His work has appeared in 30-N, Pages and The Merrimack Review.

Emily Dexter is a sophomore at Indiana Wesleyan University. She is majoring in English and writing, and enjoys dabbling in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. She serves as a co-editor of her campus’s literary magazine, The Caesura , and works as a tutor in her campus’s writing center.

Victoria Gong has always dreamed of having a platform large enough to put on a one-per son reading/performance of the Bee Movie. She’s currently a sophomore at Harvard Uni versity, but one day she’ll step in a puddle. If asked to choose between eating a carrot and hibernating through winter, she’ll most definitely tell you the reasons she tried journalism and ended up despising it. Green is her favorite color.

Audree Grand’Pierre is a senior at Bowdoin College. She will be graduating with two bachelor’s degrees in psychology and visual arts and a minor in anthropology. She has al ways had a love for drawing and painting, as she started taking art classes at four years old. Her studies led her to travel to Florence, Italy to deepen her understanding of art history and improve her skills in studio art. Her passion for both art and the human psyche is why she loves focusing on narrative pieces that work to depict raw human experiences. Specifi cally, her paintings highlight the experiences and perspectives of Black individuals in order to create a space for these experiences to be shared.

Abby Green is an artist who loves illustrating humorous, whimsical, surreal, and satirical environments and/or interactions. In order to make more multidimensional art, she will occasionally create more technical art as practice. Exploring textures and color are vital techniques executed in her art. Currently, she is finishing her senior year at the University of Kentucky, majoring in graphic design and digital media.

Shira Haus is a sophomore at Allegheny College with a major in English and a double mi nor in Spanish and political science. Along with writing poems, she also loves to bake bread and ride her bike. She writes mostly about the complications of womanhood, her home in Michigan, and living in the woods.

Alexis Hawthorne is an upcoming senior at The University of Alabama majoring in art with a concentration in digital media. Her work is made primarily with digital media and focuses on narrative and design. The format of her pieces range from still-image illustra tions to short-form animations. She has always been fascinated with cartoons and video games and how they go about conveying their stories, so she is heavily influenced by them and uses them to drive her work. With this drive, she hopes to pursue a career in concept art or illustration.

Anthony Herring attends Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana as both an English student and a student of the Ball State Honors College (currently in his junior year). To coincide with his English major, he has two minors: film/screenwriting and professional writing/emerging media. Within the English program, he has taken many classes that have helped to improve his writing skills. Said skills have proven beneficial in his endeavors, particularly as a member of Byte BSU, an entertainment journalism organization at his uni versity. Anthony contributes to Byte as a reviewer, having produced over a dozen reviews across movies, video games, and TV shows.

Arianna Jackson is an emerging artist born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, with a focus in oil painting. Her interests in subject matter range from finding the beauty in her fears and putting them on a canvas, to exploring the world and na ture around her through art. She is currently an undergrad student at Wayne State University, studying both Psychology and Art. And hopes to one day expand her abilities, by diving into the world of animation.

Annabella Johnson is a writer from Saint Louis, Missouri. She is currently enrolled in the creative writing undergraduate program of Webster University, and has been previously published in the school’s literary magazine, The Green Fuse . She is part of the LGBT community, identifying as bisexual and nonbinary (he/she/ they.) She enjoys tea, books, and relative quiet, even at the best of times.

Quinn Carver Johnson is a senior at Hendrix College, pursuing degrees in cre ative writing and performance studies. Johnson was an editorial intern at Sundress Publications, a volunteer for the 2019 VIDA Count, and currently serves as the Ed itor-in-Chief for the Aonian . Johnson’s work has appeared in Rappahannock Review, Right Hand Pointing, Flint Hills Review , and elsewhere.

Makenzie Jones is an avid reader who first discovered her love for writing in mid dle school when attempting to recreate a long-lost and beloved book series from memory. Although she was lured away by other passions for a time, she rediscov ered a deeper passion for writing while taking an entry-level college English class... for the third time! Despite being already three years in, she promptly changed her major to creative writing through which she pursues all of her passions: from fantasy to social justice pieces. She was honored to be an editor for the Oakland Arts Review last year, and equally honored to be included as a contributor in it this year. In her free time, she enjoys obsessing over horses, video games, well-written cinema, and serving in two incredible foster care ministries: Royal Family Kids and Teen Reach Adventure Camp.

a. a. khaliq is a current English and psychology student and future medical student at the University of Kansas. When she’s not giving herself a manicure or puzzling out a poetic line break, she’s probably on Twitter, passing the time while her baked good du jour is in the oven.

Kimberly Kosinski is an undergrad English major at Bradley University. She likes Cran-Grape juice and often drinks too much of it while writing poetry.

Carlee Landis is a graduating senior of Prescott College, where she is majoring in writing and literature with an emphasis in folklore. An aspiring storyteller and librarian, she is a lover of all things magical, folkloric, and water-related. She is off now to chase long-held dreams somewhere far from the desert, preferably some

where the seasons have colors. When Carlee isn’t writing, reading, or daydreaming, she can usually be found trying to finish half-completed craft projects, horseback riding, dancing, or pestering her very tolerant cat, Bagheera. This is her first piece selected for publication.

Born and raised in Arizona, Isabel Lanzetta is a student of English and creative writing at Colorado College. A poet by nature, Isabel Lanzetta’s work has appeared in Convergence: Best Teen Writers of Arizona, The Telepoem Booth, and Curios Mag azine . She has been reintroduced to the art of fiction writing in the past year. “WORMS” is one of her most recent short stories.

Callan Latham attends the University of Iowa. Her work has been published in places such as Electric Moon Magazine, Leopardskin & Limes, and The Knight’s Library Magazine . She is the author of the chapbook, Blue Salt (Iowa Chapbook Prize, 2020), and is currently a writing editor at Fools Magazine , as well as Melted Butter Magazine.

Samuel Lawson will be graduating from the Hite Art Institute at the University of Louisville with a BFA in 2D studio in the fall of 2021. Currently he is researching MFA programs in printmaking and/or visual arts at graduate schools where he can not only further his own artist abilities, but also can help advance their program as well through a teaching assistantship. His body of work can be seen on Instagram @samuellawsonprintsandfineart or viewed and purchased at The Gallery on The Square in Bardstown, Kentucky.

Rebecca Lazansky is a senior writing major at the University of Tampa. Their work—comfortably seated in between the worlds of fiction and nonfiction—usu ally explores the complexities of their life, whether that be home, mental illness, memories, or self-love. In their free time, Beck enjoys doodling, swimming in the ocean, collecting oddities, and dreaming, as well as learning the five-string banjo (slowly, but very, very surely).

Li likes singing and eggs cooked in any style. She is grateful to her mentor, Jacob Alpert, for editing this piece. Follow her on twitter: @mashmall0w515.

Arin Lohr is a creative writing + publishing and editing double major at Susque hanna University and a first-gen college student. They are a proud part of the queer community (bi, trans, and nonbinary) and enjoy writing poetry about their relationship with gender and sexuality while also highlighting injustices and dis crimination directed towards LGBTQ+ people. Their work touches on a broad spec trum of topics ranging from trauma, to self-identity, to love, to empowerment, and they hope that their poetry can touch people with the same strength of emotion that they feel while writing it.

Sijia Ma (b.2001 in Shenyang China), is currently pursuing a BA in studio arts and quantitative economics at Smith College. She also studied graphic design at Yale University and is now studying photography at Amherst College. Sijia works in the medium of photography, performance, and graphic design. Her works have been exhibited at the International Center of Photography in New York, Janotta Gallery in Northampton, and Loosen Art Gallery in Rome. She is also the co-founder of One Centimeter Gallery.

Elizabeth Mercado is a fourth-year English major at the University of California, Davis. Her work has been published in The California Aggie and Open Ceilings. Eliz abeth draws inspiration from relationships—be they romantic, familial, or friend ships—and views them as “either fortunate or very unfortunate collisions.” She is currently pursuing a career in screenwriting.

Josephine Newman attends Temple University, Tyler School of Art and Architec ture. She is 19 years old and has been creating art for about 14 years. To see more of her art, check out her Instagram @josieenewart! She strives to one day become an art teacher and teach kids to express themselves through art as well as the im portance of art within history.

Julia Norman is a senior dance major at George Mason University. She is from Boston, Massachusetts where she grew up attending various dance programs be fore applying to college. For the past two years of school, she has been focusing on a concentration in poetry writing. She appreciates exploring the crossover between poetry and choreography and feels inspired to use the tools she’s learned to influ ence both forms. Over the past four years, she has learned that curiousness in mul tiple forms of expression can inform and celebrate the inner workings of the mind. Outside of dance she enjoys reading, journaling, cooking, and exploring nature.

Clare O’Gara is an undergraduate at Smith College studying English, poetry, and film and media. She is the former editorial intern for Orion nature magazine and received an Honorable Mention for the Smith College Ruth Forbes Eliot Poetry Prize. Clare splits her time between Oregon and Massachusetts.

Zachary Parr is a sophomore graphic design student interested in experimental forms of photography and media. He became entranced by scanography in his intro to photography class and has loved it ever since. He is a first-generation student who comes from a small town in Kansas. This is his first published piece.

Danny Paulk is a senior at Centenary College of Louisiana. Their writing focuses primarily on gender, family relationships, the South, and apocalypse (broadly inter preted). Danny is currently in the process of applying to MFA programs in creative

writing.

Rachel Peavler is studying art at Northern Kentucky University and dreams of becoming an illustrator, cartoonist, and good person. During precious hours of free time, Rachel doodles Greek gods, draws comics to express the unpleasant feelings that come with being a twenty-something artist, and drinks a lot of tea. You can find more of Rachel’s work on Instagram @peavsart.

Grace Penry is currently a senior majoring in creative writing and anthropol ogy at the University of Arizona. She loves poetry because every word receives the attention that is unique to the genre, which also makes it a more thoughtful writing process. She would like to dedicate “Fairytale” to her Aunt Beth and (late) Uncle Tom, both of whom she loves very much. Overall, it thrills her to be able to contribute to this review, and she hopes her poems are enjoyed by all.

Caroline Poole is an English and creative writing major and history minor at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. She hopes to pursue a career in publish ing post-graduation and publish more of her own works in the future. She loves the paranormal, folk music, Walt Whitman, and bears (which she should since she lives in Appalachia). She wants to thank the editors for considering her poetry for the Oakland Arts Review.

Anna Raelyn is a native Michigander attending Florida State University. She stud ies creative writing and media communications, as her two passions are writing and people. When she’s not writing, she can be found hiking with her naughty dog, Monella, or binge-watching The Great British Baking Show.

Selah Randolph is an unassuming undergraduate student, an eclectic climber, a great lover of sweaters and of trees, an abuser of commas, and an amateur writer. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, she can often be found roaming around the city writing awful poetry and jumping into rivers. Above all, however, she is in love with Jesus Christ and, through him, in love with the rest of the world.

Matt Rogers is a third-year English major at UC Davis and he will be graduating in the spring of 2021. He was born and raised in Long Beach, California. He fell in love with poetry in an undergraduate workshop in the fall of 2019 and has been writing ever since. “Expiring Yogurt: 4 for $.97” is his first published work.

Meg Rouse is a junior majoring in illustration and minoring in both creative writing and entrepreneurship at Seattle Pacific University. She is fascinated by the relationship between words and images and how the two forms of narrative communication can be blended together in new ways. For her work she pulls inspi ration largely from Brian Selznick’s The Marvels, and The Invention of Hugo Cabret .

A growing interest in graphic novels and storytelling that has bloomed in the past few years led to the creation of her piece “Night Owls,” which is an experimental attempt to blur the lines between the traditional novel and graphic novel forms.

Emalyn Remington attends the University of Maine at Farmington where she is a double major in theatre and creative writing. Although she is currently a remote student, Emalyn is the co-editor of The River and secretary of Student Theatre UMF. She would like to dedicate this piece to her father, Robert Thomas John Pea cock, who passed away in March of 2020.

Arjun Saatia is an Arkansas-based graphic designer and illustrator. He is a senior at the University of Central Arkansas studying to obtain a Bachelor of Fine Arts in studio art with an emphasis in graphic design. He primarily works with Adobe Illustrator, but he also often incorporates his own photography and drawings into his work. Often, he cites the work of Joan Cornellà, Paula Scher, and Piet Mondri an as inspirations.

Jesse Saldivar is a freshman at the University of California, Davis. Writing in general has always been Jesse’s passion, but writing poetry makes him feel more connected to others. He wrote “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” shortly after watching the 1978 film of the same name.

Ella Schmidt studies English at Bowdoin College, where she is currently a junior. In 2019, Ella received the The Academy of American Poets Colette Inez Poetry Prize. Her work has previously appeared in the Alexandria Quarterly and is forth coming in the Notre Dame Review . She is from Saint Louis.

Shreeya Shrestha is a writer currently studying under the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Born and raised in Nepal, she now lives in Boulder, Colorado. Her current musing is exploring and writing from the space she calls the middle gaia, which is the intersecting space that connects her two lives: home and present.

Laila Smith was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She is interested in suspense writing, and is influenced by famous writers of the genre like Stephen King and Dean Koontz. Occasionally, she has been known to write about more se rious topics like death or fire, but doesn’t think that the topics are her only limits. Laila is a second year at Warren Wilson College, and is studying Creative Writing and Art. She hopes to go into a career in journalism and/or professional editing in the future

Emily Tsai is a senior at the University of Maryland. She was born in the year of the rabbit. Besides reading and writing, she likes to draw and take walks. Her piece “The Piebald” was inspired by the piebald fawn which can occasionally be seen

roaming through her neighbourhood. You can find her at dragonfrewt.neocities. org.

Sydney Vincent is currently a sophomore at Susquehanna University, studying Publishing & Editing and Creative Writing with a minor in International Studies. In her free time, she enjoys spending her days outside hiking, reading, kayaking, pondering philosophical, religious ideas, and rock climbing in the Pocono Moun tains, which she calls home. She hopes to open her own independent bookstore or press one day, hike the El Camino in its entirety before she turns thirty, and move to Colorado with her crazy cat, Shelby.

Cameron Wasinger is a student at Kansas State University. He just recently found interest in painting. “Brazen Bison” was painted as a gift for his father who shares a love for the outdoors and the creatures that inhabit it. This majestic beast was created with acrylic paint and lots of time!

From Pennsylvania, Andrew Weller retells personal experience through his lyr ic-narrative poetry. Oftentimes, Andrew writes poems as a means of processing the world around him. He is a student of English at The Pennsylvania State Universi ty, where he has received the Cranage and Mihelcic Awards in Poetry. Beyond his classes and poems, Andrew works as a technical writer and teaches composition.

Julia Weilant is a sophomore at Oakland University, majoring in creative writing and minoring in Mandarin. When she’s not writing, Julia is recreating movie ballgowns and finding ways to keep her cats off her work table. This is her first published piece, and she would like to thank Professor Susan McCarty for pushing her to submit this piece for publication. She also hopes her parents don’t kill her for what she wrote.

Tessa Woody is an enthusiastic visual communication design major, and creative writing minor, at Northern Kentucky University. She works at one of the oldest independent bookstores in the nation, Blue Marble Books. When not doing work for school or her employer, she works as the art editor for Loch Norse Literary Mag azine . She was a poet and fiction writer who never thought she could write creative nonfiction, but her professor, Jessica Hindman, inspired her to prove herself wrong.

Beatrix Zwolfer is a junior studying English at Montana State University. Though she enjoys all types of creative writing, she has a soft spot for short stories and brief narrative essays. In her free time, she enjoys writing, caring for her succulents, playing board games, and reading. To her, there’s nothing better than a warm mug of herbal tea and a good book.

STAFF

Jaclyn Tockstein, Managing Editor & Nonfiction Editor, is a senior at Oak land University majoring in professional and digital writing. She hopes to one day work for a publishing house as an editor. In the meantime, she has been working as the assistant facilitator for the Meadow Brook Writing Project since 2018. It was there, while wandering about the grounds of the grand estate, that she found her voice as a writer. Now, she does everything in her will to inspire young writers to find their voices as well.

Caitlyn Ulery, Managing Editor is pursuing a master’s degree in liberal stud ies at Oakland University, having earned her bachelor’s degree in English and cre ative writing with a poetry concentration from OU as well. She hopes to eventually earn her doctorate in writing and rhetoric, intending to become a writing professor or a writing center director. Currently, she works as a graduate consultant in the Oakland University Writing Center, in addition to managing the Swallow the Moon student journal. When she is not focused on her passion for writing and literature, she can be found hiking or lounging with her two cats.

Kat Zuzow, Managing Editor is a senior at Oakland University, and plans to graduate Spring 2021. They’re majoring in creative writing with hopes to become an editor, or an author. In their free time, they can be seen playing video games, reading, or taking a nap.

Maddie Eiler, Graphic Arts Editor is a senior at Oakland University who is pursuing a Bachelor of Integrative Studies with an emphasis in communication and sociology. After graduation in December, she hopes to continue to embrace her vagabond spirit by exploring the world, cultivating community, sharing meaningful and mundane stories, and eating lots and lots of ice cream.

Cassidy Eubanks, Social Media Manager is currently a senior majoring in Cre ative Writing. She is an aspiring author and a freelance editor. When not writing or studying, she can be found binging Critical Role on YouTube, baking mind-blowing chocolate chip cookies, and dramatically lip-syncing to Disney songs.

Ashley Glasper, Copy editor is a senior at Oakland University, majoring in Integrated Studies with a minor in journalism. She is excited about graduating in Spring 2021 and continuing her educational journey by pursuing her master’s de gree in Journalism. For a career goal, she hopes to one day become a great journal ist and a freelance writer. Ashley enjoys reading and longboarding when she is not studying or working.

Emily Lawrence, Nonfiction Editor, is an undergraduate at Oakland Univer sity pursing her BA in writing & rhetoric and philosophy, with a minor in creative writing. Her intention is to get her PhD in writing & rhetoric so she can teach first-year writing at the college level. When not working or doing schoolwork, she enjoys playing Dungeons & Dragons, hanging out with her friends, watching Scrubs or Star Trek with her husband, and walking her two Pomeranian-mix dogs, Bastion and Mr. Toe.

Eileen LeValley, Copy Editor, is a senior at Oakland University. Her degree path is in journalism, with an emphasis in creative writing and studio art. Eileen is back in college after thirty-five years, with over thirty years of work experience in the hospitality management industry. She hopes to utilize her degree for her interest in freelance food writing and art. She also has one son who is twenty-seven.

Channer Podlesak, Fiction Editor is a senior at Oakland University who majors in English with minors in biology and linguistics. She hopes to work with children upon graduating in the spring, in whatever form that may be. When not at work or school, she can be found furthering her love of literature and spending time with family and friends.

Renee Seledotis, Poetry Editor, is a junior at Oakland University with a major in creative writing (specialization fiction) and a minor in French Language. She delights in writing speculative fiction and prose poetry and is hoping to someday support herself with her own writing. Her love for a good story extends to animat ed films and video games of all genres. She also loves making beaded jewelry and spending time with her two cats, Artemis and Blackie.

Caitlin Sinz, Fiction Editor is currently a senior at Oakland University. She is working towards a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing, specializing in fiction. Caitlin is looking obtaining a career in either a publishing house, or as a content writer, after graduation. When not slaving away at her own writing, she spends time with her kitten Salami or playing video games with her friends on the com puter.

Sharese Stribling, Poetry Editor , is a senior at Oakland University, majoring in English and minoring in creative writing. She is looking forward to graduating

in the spring, and continuing her education in a higher education and student affairs master’s program, with hopes of having time to continue her passion for writing in her free time. When she isn’t attempting to tackle her ever-growing to-be-read pile, she can be found watching horror movies on her couch and buying stickers on Etsy.

Jake Warsaw, Copy Editor is a junior at Oakland University, majoring in psy chology while indulging in creative writing classes to feed his creative side. He has been writing since he was twelve and hopes to pair his writing with his work in psychology after obtaining his bachelor’s degree in 2021. He aims to become a counseling psychologist and published writer later in his career. Other than study ing and working retail, he spends his time playing video games, journaling, and longboarding.

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