Unbroken Journal Issue 3

by Sarah Glady 1. Counters There are a hundred dead gnats lining the edge of my freezer. Don’t worry, this is just like my family’s fridge, he says—I am embarrassed, but glad that he is in my kitchen. He is old to my home, more than familiar, but still accidentally breaks my ice tray trying to separate the cubes and unweave the squares. I try to wipe up all of the bodies. There are too many.

2. Alaska The whole first half of morning has been shrouded in clouds and bear-discouraging yelps, when we climb Gavin Hill and Harbor Mountain. We have to find our names, from before, we have to find where he and I put it when we came here, she demands—I was looking up, looking at the stale snow and the fog. I had come to her to run away from my thirst and cactus and sorrow. I had flown to her to untangle. There are too many questions in the desert. I am cold and at the top; all we can see are clouds.

3. Cubes He is new to me and wants to know why I love glaciers and need to go to Antarctica. He doesn’t understand their value—he dreams about Patagonia, and so when I explain my adoration of the bleakness, the intensity of the mammoth frozen cities, he only leans in closer and drinks his water. Later, we will watch stories about the mountains and screens light us up and I will twist our sleeves and fingers and ankles together.

4. Snowpiercer The train is an arc, the train holds all life after the people sparked the rapid stampede and suffocation by the glaciers. As we watch, we are cold. We are here, alive in the desert, and so I will not pay for heat. Why don’t they leave and join the others in the field of ice, he asks—it is