Satori 2023

SATORI L E G AC Y

Winona State University Student Journal of The Arts 2023

© 2023 Satori All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Published by Satori Winona State University Winona, MN 55987 Cover Art- Sugar Loaf by Joe Eichele

This edition of Satori is dedicated to Dr. Ethan Krase, 1972-2023.

Dr. Krase’s legacy as a professor, colleague, friend, husband, and father will have a lasting effect on the hearts of us all. He was a role model and an inspiration to young writers and the Winona community. He will be dearly missed and always remembered.

Satori Staff Faculty Advisor Dr. Jim Armstrong Editors Gabriel Hathaway Van Herman Madeline Schonitzer Brianna Strohbehn Page Sutton Willow Swinbank Emily Venné

Editors’ Note We want to first thank everyone who has helped and supported us in this process and throughout our collegiate journeys. We all spent time reflecting this year on the idea of “legacy” and the lasting impact we make on each other’s lives.

As we part from the comfort of each other and our community, it is important to think back on the moments of strength, hope, love, laughter, and growth that made us who we are today. We hope the legacy that this edition represents will be regarded with the benevolence it deserves.

Table of Contents Seasons of Me................................................Madeline Schonitzer ����������������������������������8 Farmers Park..................................................Izabella Setla �����������������������������������������������9 The Neon Green Night Light......................Brianna Strohbehn ����������������������������������10 who says there is only one way to love?.............................................Emily Venné ���������������������������������������������11 “Are you sure it really happened?”....................................................Madison Grove ����������������������������������������12 Webbed..........................................................Keaton Riebel ������������������������������������������13 The Threads That Bind................................Catherine Fruzyna �����������������������������������14 Stripes............................................................Esther Stoy �����������������������������������������������16 Gumdrops.....................................................Madeline Schonitzer ��������������������������������17 Haiku.............................................................Willow Swinbank ������������������������������������18 Disconnected................................................Arin Hendrickson �����������������������������������19 I Don’t Care that the Queen is Dead...............................................Brianna Strohbehn ����������������������������������20 This Year is For Sunshine in a Cup, Nothing Else........................................Page Sutton ����������������������������������������������21 *Woeful at the Edge of the World.........................................Augusta Drenckhahn ������������������������������22 Up You Go....................................................Patricia Corbera ���������������������������������������32 Four Months Until Forever..........................Page Sutton ����������������������������������������������33 The Aegean-Roofed Earth Star......................................................Brianna Strohbehn ����������������������������������34 Blackberries...................................................Madeline Schonitzer ��������������������������������35 Meditate and Procrastinate..........................Arin Hendrickson �����������������������������������36

* indicates winner of Winona Prize in Creative Writing

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I Love Them..................................................Madi Bonebright ����������������������������������� 37 Look Out.......................................................Patricia Corbera �������������������������������������38 Finding a Way Together................................Brianna Strohbehn �������������������������������� 39 Flowers...........................................................Savannah Egger ��������������������������������������46 *Questions for a Pollinator...........................Augusta Drenckhahn ���������������������������� 47 The Difference Between Ladybugs and Asian Beetles is Miniscule...................................................Page Sutton ��������������������������������������������48 Haiku.............................................................Savannah Egger ��������������������������������������49 Lastelle...........................................................Danica Kilibarda ����������������������������������� 50 *Under the Trees by the Sea..........................Tyler Janssen ������������������������������������������� 51 Frank Ocean..................................................Lily Gruenhagen ������������������������������������ 61 It’s a Shame....................................................Page Sutton �������������������������������������������� 62 the door to heaven is only ours to open..................................................Emily Venné ������������������������������������������� 63 Climbing Devil’s Doorway..........................Brianna Strohbehn ��������������������������������64 I Didn’t Cry During Pride and Prejudice ......................................Madison Grove �������������������������������������� 65 Gestures.........................................................Keaton Riebel ����������������������������������������67 Mile Marker 15.............................................Beth L. Halleck ��������������������������������������68 Spring at Petit Portal.....................................Daniel Schulz ����������������������������������������� 74 Memories of a Globe.....................................Emma Rabehl ���������������������������������������� 75 Archeology is a Humanity Degree............................................................Catherine Fruzyna ��������������������������������� 76 Windows to Winona.....................................Brianna Strohbehn ��������������������������������77

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Seasons of Me

Madeline Schonitzer Summer begins fading away, and green leaves radiate yellow.

Babies born in sweet summertime stop suckling on their mother’s breast and take their first steps. Crying wanes and words begin to formulate; parents become sane once again. No more diapers and the first day of school, sent off in a big yellow school-bus matching the color of the leaves surrounding us, marking the end of summer.

The air becomes cooler, and the yellow hues melt to orange.

Dull silver Toyota Corolla, never having to ride that dreaded school-bus again. Responsibility heightens, and college begins. Four years, dozens of books opened, and thousands of pages read. First job, first apartment, maybe I’ll marry this person? I think I will marry this person, white train trailing down the aisle scattered with petals of orange begonias leading the way to forever.

Wind whips bitterly, orange becomes burnt, darkening into deep red.

Mini versions of you and me running around, 18 years of constant chaos. School, dinner, soccer practice. Their runny noses and scraped knees, scarlet blood dripping down little bruised legs onto crunchy leaves. Long embraces and so many “I love yous,” a couple “I hate yous” too. This time watching graduation from the audience, adjusting gowns while crying tears of joy. Strands of silver, wrinkles appear. Only a couple more years until we retire.

Frost covers the grass in the early hours, red dries out to brown.

40-hour weeks turn to dust. Let’s spend our winters in Florida. Browned skin makes gray hair look better, anyway. Maybe help hide the wrinkles too. Visits from family, no more temper tantrums or snot-filled faces. They really do look like us now. A few visits every year until we’re spending our winter months, and every month in dull nursing homes.

Wispy white flakes of snow scatter the ground amongst piles of dried up, crinkled leaves. Bare branches shake with loneliness. You pass first from skin cancer. Maybe those months spent in Florida could have been traded for a couple extra years. They were such good months, though. No one will ever hold my wrinkled body again, other than for the crabby CNA trying to give me a shower. I’m ready to go, I want to go. I lay in my death bed for months on end, until finally I am frozen in time, forever.

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Farmers Park Izabella Setla

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The Neon Green Night Light Brianna Strohbehn

the dorm room microwave blinks 1:08 in fluorescent green the same shade as that palm tree neon sign at the shabby motel my mama would visit when money was tight and Daddy was far away. the man always got us two rooms— one for me and one for him and mama so they could jump on the bed in the darkest hours of the night. through the gaps in the ripped blinds, I’d watch the neon green palm tree flicker, sometimes synchronizing with the bouncing on the other side of the thin paneled wall, and dream of the warm tropical places Daddy always got to go to.

I’m far from the neon palm tree’s grasp now, but the green light still haunts me— or maybe it comforts me— as it lulls me to sleep while I practice forgetting.

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who says there is only one way to love?

Emily Venné

because I say drive safe and text me when you get home and I pack happiness in a bowl and smoke it last because I think I prefer leftovers over the main course, and I give you water before the sun awakens and I get dressed in the dark so as not to disturb your closed eyes and still breathing.

I try to show you how much you save me everyday and I talk of the future saying we and us. and before my soul found yours, she would turn towards the boy she loved while her heart backed away at the same time. she pushed through the push and pull lasting six years and it stretched out the fibers of her heart, leaving love dripping down her cracked ribs because she could not help but love excessively in the only way she knew how. and he saw her chest spilling out love but there was nothing he could do to stop the flood. because who says there is only one way to love? and you see, I was an anxious person for twenty-one years before knowing you, but no fruity combination of SSRI’s could calm the pretty panic that piloted my every move. no batch of beer or baseline bacardi could calm my ailment and it might be naive of me to call you my cure, but I think the second my soul saw yours something in me stilled and I am not aware of the exact moment it happened. but I like it that way because I breathe in your shampoo and the smell of sage and when I look at you there is a haze in my mind that makes it easier to float through life, but this time peace is all that overflows from my chest. and the you that fills my head now sounds like soft guitar and first drafts of poems and freezing wind and it sounds like snowballs thrown and uno matches won and lost and matches lit over and over again and maybe we could be the kind of match that burns forever.

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“Are you sure it really happened?”

Madison Grove

Yes. Just like I am sure that when I fell at 5 years old Racing my brother home on our Walmart Bought bikes, That it really fucking hurt.

The red streams of rock and dirt just Confirmed the fear that I already felt.

Just like when I was 10 and sprained my ankle in kickball.

No one asked me what I was wearing while Running to home base.

The word “slut” Vanished from their vocabulary.

Just like when I was 12 and I got braces.

No one shamed me for complaining about the excruciating pain of moving teeth.

I spent the next 3 years rerouting molars against their will to Appease the ones around meTo make their pain more comfortable than my own.

So, what changes at 15 When a girl screeches, “He hurt me”?

When is she no longer certain of her own body?

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Webbed

Keaton Riebel

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The Threads That Bind Catherine Fruzyna

I put on a podcast. I’m alone in my room, but my roommate will be back soon. I have a plastic-wrapped bag on my desk titled “Daria” and “2020 fall fleece” written on a card tied to the coarse fiber, softly wound into a braid inside. I pull one end free and spread the two-meter-long cord of wool into a looser sheet of fiber. I test the density of the sheet, and once happy with the way it pulls between my hands, I wrap it loosely around my left forearm. The podcast is just chatter in the background as I pick up and hitch the cotton-candy fine lock of wool to my wooden drop spindle.

I am thinking about today’s class on Athena—goddess of wits, war, virtue, and weaving. Athena, who was both claimed by men as one of their own and held herself apart from them with an air of contempt. Why would the virgin goddess of wisdom and war bother with the handicrafts of the household?

I twist and drop my small spindle like a top and watch the inch-long lock wind into a foot-long line of thread, and while the wood top is still making its pirouettes— too fast for the eye to see—I pull a continuous and careful pinch of wool from around my arm. I can feel the lanolin, the oil that coats raw animal fiber, between my fingers, and I think of Arachne, cursed by Athena to live as a spider due to the godly perfection of her weaving. Did she know the names of the sheep whose wool she so proudly spun? Were her hands strong and yet oil soft and sensitive from the pull of fiber between fingers, like mine? Was she alone as she worked, or did she listen to the soft and unguarded conversation of the women around her? Free from the company of men for the endless hours it took to make the dirty piles of wool into the woven sheets worth wearing; did she sing and twist and bend to the woof of the loom?

I wind the twisted meter of thread around the rod of the spindle, adding fractions of grams of weight to my spinning top as I work. I listen to the artificial company of the podcast and fall into the familiar pattern of spinning, pinching, slowly lowering the spindle, picking it up, and winding the wingspan of yarn, and pulling another handful of fiber from around my arm.

For a few hours, thousands of years apart, we move in sync, working to a beat that echoes in the rhythm of creation and connection. Women’s work is holy enough for Athena, and while I work, I understand why. Socrates had his scholars, his creation of reason and rules proving useful to those around him—but the maidens, the wives, and the daughters too young to be—they had those hours working together. They created and passed down community and connection to the world, with their hands working and building their unnoticed legacy to the beat of brushes and looms and spinning rods of wood polished with years of use, that time together a divine refuge for women.

For a few minutes, while my arms burn and my back pulses with each breath, I understand why a goddess of wisdom and war would carry a spindle along with her arrows and bow. The call to create aches just as much, if not more so, as the primal call of destruction. Today, I am spinning not only to the same beat as Arachne, but

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for the same reason as Athena—a desperate movement to calm the constant twisting and pulling in the mind of someone too used to taking and breaking and thinking.

The relief of quiet creation and quiet company, where the only thing taken is the time stolen to breathe and work, a process wholly feminine and so human. Athena is wise and proud, but also vengeful, for all her merits. She did not create spinning or weaving, like she created so many other boons to humanity. This was one gift the human women could give to her, as holy as war and birth.

My spindle is almost full now, the weight much more of a strain than it was when I started. It affects the thread, pulling it thinner and requiring more force to turn it each time I reach down in my dance. This yarn is not dyed, but Daria’s coat is not perfectly even, and I count rounds of pale gray and dark gray so opaque it’s almost blue on my spool of single ply thread. The thick braid of fiber felt so much lighter than this roll of yarn, but it could be the strain in my shoulders deciding that for me.

Tomorrow, I will have to unwind this work from the rod of the spindle and wrap it onto a toilet paper tube, starting again with the other half of the braid, finishing this ancient collaboration between my palms and the prepackaged evidence that a sheep with a name once lived and grew—but for now I just admire the work.

Arachne took pride in her work, once. It was only mentioned in a short paragraph in the textbook, shorter than the page used to discuss how men interpreted Athena’s art, but there was so much the textbook missed. There is nothing written about Arachne’s son, a child raised in the world of spinning and wool as much as Athena’s son, Erichthonius, who was created with wool. A baby, sleeping beside her in a basket lined with cleaned and softened lambs’ fluff, while she sat at the loom. Did she weave for him, to clothe him and keep him warm, or for her own pride, earned at the awe of all who watched her work? Did she know when she spun the rope that she would use to end her life? Was there extra care in the twists to account for the weight of her mistakes, the perfect hubris that left no room for humanity to breathe its flaws into the tapestry? Was she so wrong to compare herself to Athena, both complicated and misunderstood women, both fighting for respect in a world turned against the feminine, the mothers, and those that must create? Maybe it was Athena’s shame in that need for simple work to calm the human emotions that caused her to destroy Arachne’s perfection, not so close to humans achieving the divine, but of the divine seeking comfort in the humanity of women’s work.

My roommate is back. I stop the last spin a few turns early. I unwrap Daria’s wool from around my arm and wind it into a cord, and then a braid. I put it back into the plastic bag, and I pause my podcast.

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Stripes

Esther Stoy

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Gumdrops

Madeline Schonitzer When my sister and I played doctor, We pretended DOTS gumdrops were our pills.

We thought they had the bitter taste of cough syrup, And we wouldn’t eat them otherwise.

We’d magically be all better After taking them.

That’s what pills do, right?

My dad had his own sort of medicine.

He couldn’t get it from the candy store, though.

He stole them from my mother After she got a hysterectomy to make sure she didn’t have any more of his children.

He got them from his doctor, Until he stopped prescribing them.

Then he’d go to the ER, Until they put him on a special list to make sure he couldn’t get them.

He took them from my grandparents, His addiction a priority over their old age.

Isn’t medicine supposed to make you all better?

Locked office doors for days on end, Ribs peeking out from under pale skin, Cold sunken eyes, Gray stubble taking over, Constant paranoia, Dozens of versions of the same person.

Dozens of doctors Dozens of robberies Dozens of broken hearts Dozens and dozens and dozens of those little white pills.

Maybe we should’ve offered Dad some of our gumdrops instead.

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Haiku

Willow Swinbank

Cycle of Solitude Slamming doors silence Sneaking up the stairs alone Softly she’s weeping

Painting Perfection

Turquoise painted sky

Spattered with fluffy white sheep Idyllic morning

Erased Softly drifting down

The snowflake hits the cement

Lost to history

The Time-Turner Tick-tock then silence

Hands reversing to before My whole life anew

Cries for Help

The trees are weeping Distraught from the human’s hands Who is listening?

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Disconnected

Arin Hendrickson

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I Don’t Care That the Queen is Dead Brianna Strohbehn

Queen Elizabeth II died at the age of ninety-six, but you’d think she was fifty-three by the way her death rumbles around the world, yet the death of our loved ones —our worlds— fizzles into a whisper never bound to shake the world. my grandmother did not die with a gasp or a cough, nor with pain or suffering. it was simply breathing and then not, only mourned by her family, her church, and the staff that had to turn her sheets. there was no media press release— only tears and mourning, a marriage of more than sixty years gone in the tiny period of time it takes lungs to reinflate. her death may have sounded a whisper, but it roared in the ears of our family: ABSENCE, ABSENCE, ABSENCE. it escaped from our lungs in cries: JUST A MOMENT LONGER. but the world heard nothing, our screams silent and futile. her sudden death tore our worlds apart, yet the earth kept turning. in silence she left and in silence we stay because the world does not care.

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This Year is For Sunshine in a Cup, Nothing Else Page Sutton

we know exactly what we’re all doing when we say “no, go ahead, I’m okay” to the hot-pink girl out of the grabbag of “thinks-their-life-ishard-but-has-never-watched-someone-die girls,” and the “thinks-their-life-is-hard-buthas-never-gone-a-day-without-attention gremlins,” who insists on speaking at a decibel that floods every unbrushed unwashed hair follicle on my scalp with a disturbing, annoying, dumbfounded numbness. we just want her to speak a little quieter and it’s not because she takes up too much space, it’s because she takes up the space with aggression, and without asking to do so in the first place. She’ll write poetry that has no image attached, like if Faulkner was devoid of his Faulkner-ish, and everyone nods and applauds because if they didn’t have her to hold up, they’d be alone with their thoughts, in a brain cloud of neurotransmitters that aren’t connecting because of that thing she said to them yesterday off-handedly at dinner that they haven’t given a second thought, until they pause. and they see themselves in the mirror. and they notice how bloody and bruised their necks are. oh, and she got new boots, just like the girl’s whom she learned how to cheat on tests from in high school, and the heels are lead, and if you get stomped on in those there’s no healing that will help you to relearn a non-suffocated breathing. just trying to coexist; but in a way that is pleasing and acceptable to her. it’s about finding peace in a softer voice, one that gives you refuge and will never look at your boobs, and then your ass, and then pause. and then ask why your body had to be built the way the gods spun for it to be. a love of your own who knows what real music is made out of, and knows it doesn’t sound like J-Cole. the person of your life, who when you fall to the sheets at night, strokes your hair and says “babe, she misspelled the word ‘allegiance,’ don’t pay her any mind.” most importantly, it’s about remembering how to do the basic things in life without a preamble apology.

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Woeful at the Edge of the World Augusta Drenckhahn

Deirdre, seated on the cracked and crumbling porch steps on the edge of her tiny town, brought a cigarette to her lips. The smoke, somewhere between pure white and gray, swirled up in miniature alabaster plumes, forming whorls and swirls as it blew away on a crisp lake breeze.

The breeze, ever-present this time of year, sent volleys of leaves jumping, skittering over the cracked, lopsided sidewalk that stretched out before the haunted woman, short as her ambitions.

At the end of the short walk, crisp brown flowers shriveled and quivered in the breeze, some hanging by the thinnest of tendrils, clinging to a life that slipped ever further from their grasp with each smoky inhalation and exhalation that passed Deirdre’s lips.

Her eyes stared, glazed and blank, at the world before her, old, boxy houses like her own. No children played on the swings and slides across the road; the late October chill, too cold even for the town’s hopeful residents, forbade any but the most ardent outdoorsy folks to venture into its clutches.

Deirdre didn’t see the old man sliding his way down the sidewalk, hunched against the cold, or the wiener dog across the street, two houses to the left, who sat on the white porch like a burnt-red bun on a white tablecloth. She didn’t notice when a single petunia shook and fell to the sidewalk below her dented mailbox or heard the creak of the next-door neighbor stepping onto their porch to sweep, sweep, sweep their boredom away.

And Deirdre, flicking a tuft of ash down to the faded ashtray beside her, certainly didn’t notice the final few sailboats bobbing in the marina with their vibrant sail covers, or behind them, the roiling lake, part of the Mighty Mississippi River itself, gray and vengeful, dotted with whitecap blips. If she’d noticed the bobbing sailboats, she would have fixated on the rectangular windows on their sides, black and narrowed like sad eyes; the hulls’ bobbing motions would have been nods of agreement: Yes, this is a mighty sad world. A sad, sad world, they’d say to her. What a damn shame, this last statement, heard in her husband’s voice.

That’s what he’d said to her last week, sitting in the industrial hospital in the room with the splatter-painted horse on the wall: “What a damn shame.” And at the moment, she’d thought, Yes, it is a damn shame, isn’t it? Cancer is a damn shame.

Last night, she’d lain awake staring at the yellowed popcorn ceiling to the empty sound of a needle scraping over a record before it stopped ringing out in the silent room. She’d lain alone in the bed made for two; Timothy wanted to stay on the sofa, watching his nature documentary, some local story about nineteenth-century clam harvesting or some such thing. And so, she’d lain alone, thinking just how much of a damn shame it all was, a damn shame that he couldn’t put down the Lucky Strikes,

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and now look at where we are! That night, she’d sworn to quit her own habit, but the numbness the little, red-dotted box brought beckoned her.

Yesterday afternoon, she’d pulled on black pantyhose, slipped her feet into toonarrow, low-heeled shoes, and wrapped a wool jacket around her, the fabric matching that of the damned wiener dog across the street. At the Family Grocer, she’d walked beside Timothy, her fingers wrapped around the bend in his elbow, so familiar to her fingertips; they knew where to rest on their own. And at the checkout counter, they stopped behind Ms. Elrod, the sole widow in town, her basket filled with only the barest essentials: a box of pasta, a can of beans, and a bright white vitamin bottle.

Deirdre had studied the older woman, who had to be in her seventies by then, noticing the way her liver-spotted skin stretched across her thin hands, the four tendons sticking up like the dirt rows Deirdre passed in the fields on her way into the city. The little pale blue veins, the same color as the lake on a calm day, pressed up against the woman’s pale skin. She, a woman who’d lived far longer than Deirdre had, lived through far more adventures alongside her Herald than Deirdre had with her Timothy.

She’d looked at Timothy as Ms. Elrod counted out her coins, taking in his stillyouthful face with its few lines—laugh lines—framing his full lips. His graying blonde-red hair showed his age the most; they approached their forties, much too young to part. She’d looked between Ms. Elrod and Timothy, and as the older woman left the store to the tune of the little tinkling bell, Deirdre was caught in a sudden wave of fear, fear because she didn’t know how to be a widow, didn’t know how to navigate the world without Timothy’s presence there to soothe her, and how would she ever remember to pick up the antacids or the low-fat yogurt he favored, even though she said it tasted like sour candy? Then she’d realized she wouldn’t even need to buy yogurt, and an image of the yogurt-less fridge stopped her from approaching the cashier. The purple yogurt containers sat in her basket, taunting her, and Timothy had to pry the basket from her hand and pay for the groceries himself while she watched him, taking in every little movement and sound, trying to remember it all.

On the porch steps, she blew out another stream of smoke which the wind carried away, the little curlicues of alabaster-gray drifting past the sweeper and the wiener dog, invisible as it continued its journey to disappearance.

Deirdre snuffed the cigarette in the ashtray, the crumpled instrument lying dejected, crooked as a slinky in its cracked ceramic dish with its faded floral border, the pink carnations as dead to Deirdre as the shriveled petunias beyond the cracked walkway.

A sigh drew out her breath, drifting out as her cigarette smoke drifted on the breeze. A sigh of weightlessness, emptiness, all the white and gray areas of her life coming to fruition as two fading lives lay in the house behind her, constant reminders of the approaching loss; in the recliner, Timothy’s father, Richard, watched another ancient football game, from the days when football footage came across the screen in grainy images, the ball an elongated brown blur over the pale green field. Occasionally,

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a little faint whistle sound reached Deirdre, followed by, sometimes, a thud on the armrest, some muted comment grumbled in anger about a team entirely different than the two that played on TV. To Richard, every player that made a good play was Archie Manning. His mind could understand no difference. This sometimes extended to Deirdre and Timothy as well.

Sometimes, Deirdre was Charlotte, a British woman Richard once courted back in his show jumping days. Other days, she was Iris, Richard’s late wife, a woman whom Deirdre bore no resemblance to, save her bushy brown hair. When he clasped her hand and asked her to make some of Iris’ famous snickerdoodle cookies, she could only oblige his wishes, going into the kitchen and whipping up a batch just for him, of which he’d later take a single bite and furrowed his brows, asking her if she changed the recipe on him again.

Other days, when she passed his recliner, he’d smack her on the bottom and shoot her a sly grin; she never thought anything of it—she knew he thought she was Iris.

Out on the porch, Deirdre ran a hand through her windblown hair and stared at a diamond-shaped paint chip on the stair below before squeezing her eyes shut.

After all these days, she still refused to let the tears fall. She knew they’d make their grand entrance one of these days, when the pain built up, expanding to reach every cell, ventricle, and synapse, and then the floodgates would burst in a cascade of wild torment. But today, she could postpone them a while longer, just a while, enough time to bring Timothy a container of low-fat yogurt, enough time to press a kiss to his cheek, and later, kiss tiny smears of yogurt from his strawberry-sweetened lips.

As the final smoke curlicue fizzled out, a single vanishing puff drifting to nothingness like the final spurt from a steam engine, she stood on stiff legs. A joint popped in her knee and the steps creaked beneath her.

A foghorn blast echoed across the lake’s churning water. If she cared to look at such trivial things as trains, she would’ve noticed the red streak speeding in slow motion along the Wisconsin side, past the tiny town across the water, the faded Canadian Pacific blurring on the engine’s side. If she’d cared to look, she might’ve noticed how the train rolling along seemingly to infinity was made up of faded red cars and nothing else, some russet and some rusted, more coppery. If she’d cared to look, the flashes of red might’ve reminded her of the love within her heart, little glimpses of passing memories, her full life of love with Timothy. As the screen door banged shut behind her, the final train car disappeared beyond the distant shore.

Timothy’s eyes snapped open and creeped shut, quivering. Deirdre watched his eyes, the little flashes of green—green like the final living leaves on the Wisconsin bluffs—and caught glimpses of their russet-brown flecks.

She sat in their wide armchair, the one with the scratched cherry wood frame that ended in four clawed feet. She sat with her legs draped over Timothy’s and her arms around his body, one behind his neck, supporting his head, and the other resting in a

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lazy slump against his forearm.

On the TV, Archie Manning threw a touchdown pass that culminated in grainy cheers bellowing from the speakers. Richard, as usual, yelled—as loud as he could at his age—and smiled, showing a mouthful of yellowed teeth between thin, wrinkled lips. Tufts of sparse stubble sprinkled his chin and cheeks.

Deirdre remembered the hope she’d felt when she’d brought up Archie’s sons to Richard, the hope that resounded in her at his snappy response. She’d offered to turn on a Colts game, claiming Archie’s sons were pretty good players by her standards, but he’d shook his head, said no, no. Those punks don’t have a clue what they’re doing!

She’d smiled and reminded herself not to get her hopes up, told herself he’d make some comment that revealed he wasn’t improving. Sure enough, later that day, when she’d joked about switching the channel to the Giants game, he’d furrowed his brow when she’d mentioned Eli Manning. She’d tried to ignore the sudden stab in her chest, wondering why she continued to let herself hope when it did nothing.

Richard cheered as a grainy orange streak whizzed across the field.

Deirdre studied Timothy’s face, searching for any visible sign of sickness. His face had always been gaunt, his cheeks hollow whenever he wasn’t smiling, which was often nowadays; this, she’d noticed. His angular face remained familiar to her in its clean-shaven state. His nose, straight and slim and sharper toward the tip, she could recognize even without a glimpse at his other features. His eyebrows, thick like the checkmarks he made on grocery lists, always bothered him; he claimed they made his eyes look too hooded and angry. All these features, the same as they were when they’d married, excepting the faint lines that showed on his forehead and framed his mouth.

She noticed the change in his smiles most. He smiled to reassure her often, but the smiles were shorter and looked more like grimaces at times.

As Archie threw a touchdown pass in a brown blur across the fuzzy green turf, Deirdre leaned toward Timothy’s gaunt face, its thinner frame an almost imperceptible change, and let her lips do the rest, let them find his smooth cheek, the jawbone sharper, more pronounced under the soft plane of skin. The kiss lasted long after the player left the endzone, and two or three plays later, her forehead met his when he turned to face her, eyes closed in near sleep. Hers stayed open until the winning team celebrated with energetic leaps on the field and fell shut as the evening sun retreated from the stained windowpanes, back across the sidewalk and the wide lake, and beyond that, another red train whizzed along the shoreline in an everpresent, infinite blur of color.

••• Marmalade lamplight spilled across pretzeled legs and flush bodies. A pair of smooth legs with curves along the thighs and calves wrapped around a hard body, and another, straighter pair of legs wrapped around the smoother legs and the smoother body, holding that body in place along with firm, flat palms, and long fingers that rested on angular shoulder blades: Deirdre holding her husband together, and he

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reciprocating, though they both knew it was more the latter.

Her head tilted back. Hair fell across her shoulders when Timothy tugged it free of its bun and tossed the ponytail holder to the floor. A sigh, long, drawn out, like stress releasing itself in an audible breath, masked the sound of the little elastic hair band hitting the floor.

His heated lips, soft as the skin beneath her breasts, brushed against her collarbone, tracing the little, angular edge, leaving little damp traces of saliva on the skin. His face moved lower as he pulled her into his lap, arms still strong enough to carry her weight and the sorrow she carried within herself. His lips grazed her sternum, a whisper, and then his cheeks, eyelashes, nose, and lips pressed, hard, between her small breasts; barely an A-cup, she’d always been ashamed of them until these moments when his face met her sternum, fitting between her breasts like they were made for his face alone.

His breath tickled the peach-fuzz hair along her breasts as he sighed. His eyes, halfshut, met hers, clear but dreamy. “Oh, Deedee,” he breathed, twisting her hair around his fingers, “you’re gonna be the death of me, I just know it.” He grinned, his sharp canines indenting his bottom lip.

She froze, rigid against his loose body. “Stop it.” She pushed against him, and he relented, letting her slip from his grasp and his lap at once.

He rested his cheek against her back as she turned away. Her feet hovered just above the hairband on the floor, the little circle a slight shadow against the floorboards.

“You know I hate it when you say that,” she said, the words strained. She crossed her arms over her breasts.

“I know.” His nose brushed against her mussed hair, his whispered breath hot against her goose-bumped skin. The bed creaked as he reached behind him and tugged a fleece cat blanket to him, draping it across her shoulders, tucking it beneath her chin.

A gentle hand turned her face toward his. “I won’t say it again, baby. I promise.”

Her dark irises reflected the upside-down lampshade against the far wall when she looked at her husband’s face, every inch of which she’d come to know so well over the years, the features more familiar to her now than her own mother’s. And then: “I don’t know how to do it without you,” she said. Her voice broke as she broke, collapsing into him, convulsing with dry sobs that shook her tired limbs and Timothy with them, wrapped around her as he was, holding her together.

As they shook, somehow remaining whole, she found she couldn’t cry true tears; her dark eyes rested against his chest, as empty as the future that stretched out before her.

•••

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Snow flurries swirled in tiny tornadoes beyond the window. They obscured the lake in the distance, though Deirdre never noticed it, even on the clearest days.

Her hand shook like the wild flurries outside, the spoon in her hands full of a dollop of vanilla yogurt, just a bit darker than the falling snow.

The scent, something halfway between burnt cream and fresh cucumbers, wafted toward her nose each time she scooped another dollop for Timothy’s waiting mouth.

His lips, still full despite his sunken cheeks, grasped at the spoon. His eyes had seemed to recede further into his face with every week that passed, and his teeth, still the same as always, looked much too large in such a slim face.

A tear-shaped drop of yogurt dripped to his shirt and Deirdre clutched the container until it collapsed in on itself. “I’ve got it, sweetie,” she said, forcing a shaky smile. “Don’t worry.” She dabbed at the shirt a few too many times, finally tossing the tan cloth napkin onto the bedside table, forgotten.

She scraped the final spoonful of yogurt out of the container and cursed her inability to keep her hands steady. Steady. Strong. Steady and strong. You’re so strong, the doctor always reassured Timothy; you need to stay strong, he told Deirdre. Where had the strength gone?

She stared at the spoon in her hand. She’d thought she might do this for her children, the children they’d never had—she’d thought they might spoon-feed their children together—but she’d never expected her husband to be on the receiving end of the spoon.

His hands grasped hers, which were still clutching the yogurt container, and which now released both the container and the spoon, sending a white vomit-splatter across the floorboards.

She glanced down at it, stricken, and then down at their joined hands. A long exhale brought her forehead and body down, limp, and her head came to rest against their hands. “Oh, God,” she whispered, audible only to herself. “Oh, God.” Her hands clasped his tighter.

And then his went limp, falling to the bedspread, falling, and rising, also, in short movements.

She glanced up at his face, relaxed, loose, as loose as a bony face could be: peaceful and painless in sleep.

Strength didn’t matter any longer; this was what Deirdre understood. Now it was all about keeping Timothy comfortable.

From the glider chair beside the bed, she watched his stomach rise and fall, rise and fall, wondering, as always, what she’d do when the breaths paused. These thoughts never stuck around long; she pushed them from her mind, focusing instead on his face, his hands, trying to memorize every inch of him, every hair and freckle, for a day when she could look upon them no longer.

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He spent more time asleep than awake now. When he awoke, she spoon-fed a few soft foods to him before he fell back asleep.

She held his hand sometimes, the tendons as prominent as the exposed roots in the lawn outside, poking through on this warmest of winter days, the melting snow as heavy as Deirdre’s heart. She’d offered to bring him outside earlier that day. She’d stood with one hand on the wheelchair in the corner, the other clutching a thick, fleece blanket, hoping he’d say yes; he loved the outdoors, or used to, when he still had the strength to bring himself outside.

Now, he wanted nothing more than to lie in bed, to sleep away his final hours, a choice Deirdre understood, but one she hoped would change, nonetheless. She wanted him to see the lake and river one last time, the sailboats wrapped in their thick, tight blue tarps for the winter, waiting to slip into the waves again come springtime, when she feared more than the snow would leave her.

His eyes fluttered in the weak winter light.

Her wedge of sunlight barely warmed her, but she sat straight, ready if Timothy requested food, water, anything.

Outside the room, Richard’s quiet snores drifted through the cracked door.

“Hey,” she murmured, sliding her hand between Timothy’s. His fingers moved along her skin the slightest bit. “Are you hungry?”

“Mmm,” he hummed.

“Yes?” She moved to stand up from the glider’s steep-angled cushion, but his fingers tightened.

“No.” His voice caught in his throat, scratchy. “Stay.”

“Okay.” She settled back into the aqua cushion, sliding forward to clasp his hand tighter. She watched his eyes shut again, noticed the tiny grimace on his tight features, the way his lip twitched and lines showed beneath his brows. Her hand tightened, though not enough to hurt, never enough to hurt.

Overcome by a sense of protectiveness, she picked her away across the bed, careful not to bump or knee him. She sank down on the other side. Now level with his body, and her eyes level with his, which now moved to meet her gaze, she smiled, sliding her hand into his under the covers.

“Timmy,” she whispered.

His chilled fingertips grazed hers, cold, like metal railing in winter.

“Do you remember when you took me to see the lights?” She spoke into his shoulder, remembering their second anniversary, walking and driving under the glow of Christmas lights in every color and shade, blinking, flashing, twinkling, everchanging bulbs welcoming visitors and locals alike to one of the largest Christmas light fests in the Midwest. Black, ice-cold Lake Superior had stretched out in a gaping expanse of nothingness beside Duluth.

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His fingertips pressed against hers, an answer.

“God, it was cold.” She emitted a wry chuckle. “But you were so adamant about seeing as much as you could—you didn’t drive all that way for nothing.”

His lips moved against her hairline, a smile.

“I couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel, but you wanted to go down to the damn lakeshore.” She remembered the untouched snow blanketing the cream-colored lighthouse, the top, where the light was, black, blending with the night sky, but the pale world around her seemed to gleam from the glow of the far-off city. Snow had covered the jagged black rocks where they’d both picked their way across, careful not to slip on hidden ice. She remembered how they maneuvered to the pebbled shore and gazed out across miles and miles of thick ice. She’d stood shivering on the shore, bundled in her knee-length coat, her mitten-clad hands stuffed in her armpits, until Timothy joined her, and they stood at the shoreline, at the boundary between land and water, present and future, and watched the blue-black stillness for hours or minutes or no time at all, seconds reaching ever closer to morning.

“I never thanked you for taking me,” she said. She cleared her throat as hot pinpricks stung her eyes. “I never thanked you for taking me, but I want you to know it was the best night I’d had in a long time, maybe my whole life, and I want to thank you for it now… thank you for taking me to see the lights.” She lifted her head the slightest bit, gauging his reaction.

His lips curved upward. “You’re welcome… Deedee.” And then nothing. He went silent, and his breaths slowed to the steady rhythm of sleep.

Beside him, she sighed and laid back against the covers, staring up at the black ceiling, her physical world dark, though in her mind, Christmas lights danced in a whirlwind of rainbow flashes, enough light to brighten her world.

••• “C’mere,” Timothy whispered to her, the room dim. He lay in shadow and Deirdre sat in the light, silhouetted for Timothy against the frozen lake world beyond.

She scooted to the edge of the glider chair and held his thin hand, pressing a long kiss to it, the waxy skin growing wet with tears. She hadn’t cried in weeks, the shock turning everything numb, but in here, the dusty scent of decay that permeated everything, the white walls that surrounded, whiter than the snow outside, reality and loss hit her in full force.

She’d begun wondering when it would happen, the loss she dreaded most. Any day now, she knew, but how would she be ready? How could she live without him, never needing to pick up his special yogurt, his preferred razor brand, or surprise him with a new tie at Christmas, some outlandish cartoon print that made her chuckle, which he always wore to humor her. She’d never lived alone, and sure, she’d have his father, but for how long? Richard hardly recognized her anymore; she lived as a figure of his past. She wouldn’t ever be Deirdre, at least not the Deirdre she was with

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Timothy.

He turned his face to her, his eyes watching her lips on his skin, closing at her touch. “Deirdre.”

She glanced up.

“I don’t want you . . . to stop living.”

She waited for more, but when he stayed silent, she nodded. “I won’t,” she said. “I promise.” But she didn’t know how she would. She’d only ever lived as a component of a partnership; she didn’t know what it meant to navigate the world alone. She squeezed his hand, sniffling, trying to keep the tears at bay, and then met his eyes, which were still as vibrant and bright as the day she met him.

He glanced down at the blue comforter, and then his eyes creeped to something over her shoulder, out the window where tiny skaters on the lake skirted across ice under a cloudless cobalt sky. “I’d like it . . . if you stayed.” His eyes met hers. “I don’t want . . . to be alone.”

She nodded, trying to force words through the tightness in her throat. “Mmm” was all that came out at first, a single heaving sob choking off the rest, and then: “Yes.” She nodded, kept nodding, convincing herself, of what, she didn’t know. “I’ll stay.”

She exhaled, shaky. “I’ll be here u—” She shut her eyes, clasping his tissue-paper hand tighter. “Until the end.”

••• Three weeks later, their room stood empty. Creases in the fitted sheet hinted at a life there and gone. On her side, the sheet was smooth, untouched, un-lived in.

She spent her days on the couch now, or in Timothy’s recliner, wondering if her scent would someday overpower his, if someday, she’d no longer detect his musky man smell.

Silence permeated the house. Richard had since moved into an old folks’ home where other elderly citizens welcomed him with wide smiles and open arms. Deirdre, with dead eyes, visited him every morning, dressed in a light jacket of Timothy’s, which dwarfed her thinning frame, and sat with Richard while he regaled the residents with stories of his past, and Archie Manning, and asked who she was at random intervals, other times referring to her as his wife, which she’d expected, but which jarred her still; the reality of her widowhood hadn’t sunk in yet. Maybe it never would.

“Have a good one!” The front desk nurse dressed in carnation-pink scrubs waved at Deirdre on her way out the door.

Deirdre returned the wave with a forced smile. When she got outside, the smile dropped, and she drifted down the sidewalk to a place she hadn’t been in months, drawn on a phantom wind to a place of her past.

•••

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A month later, Deirdre’s feet traced the path she’d followed daily for weeks. She descended blocky limestone steps and stepped up onto the pier, pockmarked with smooth little stones embedded in the cement, and stepped over the knee-high cleats that dotted the pier every few feet.

She walked to the end, where the lake stretched out, waves crashing against the cement wedge beneath her in a great wet whoosh, a few of the ice-cold droplets hitting her fevered cheeks.

Out on the water, eager sailors heaved their mainsails higher, the billowy fabric catching the wind, sending the boats heeling at steep angles. She imagined the spray of water, the hissing sound it made as the boat bobbed over waves and crashed back down, the white frothy droplets exploding in white fireworks along the hull.

She imagined herself at the helm sometimes, leaving her town behind on a temporary excursion, imagining what Timothy would think if he saw her out here, whether he’d be surprised or shake his head with a lazy smile, used to her antics, plans, and ideas, never doubting any of them.

She breathed in the aroma of seaweed and freshwater, cool and crisp, the calm breeze bringing warm hints of summer, which waited around the corner to bring the world back to life.

As she stood on the pier, she looked across the steady, rolling water and saw it all.

She took in the sights she’d refused to notice, couldn’t notice, for hazy, grief-ridden months. A pelican soared with his neck crooked, his yellow beak bright against the budding bluffs behind him. He soared with black-tipped wings over sailboats and rolling water, heading to his species’ favorite fishing spot offshore from the marina; this she knew from the days she spent here, a silent observer in this world she’d never taken the time to see before.

Across the water, a long, rusty streak pulled ahead of the tree line, speeding along its track, straight and steady. The horn blasted, loud, metallic, echoing across the water. And Deirdre lifted her arm in a wave, knowing they likely wouldn’t notice her at this long distance, but knowing it didn’t matter regardless. As she let her hand fall back to the railing, the engineer rang the horn twice in quick succession. Hello, goodbye, and everything in between.

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Up You Go

Patricia Corbera

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Four Months Until Forever Page Sutton

it’s different with him because when I send song suggestions to him on rainy nights when my soy candle is lit and a mug of chai rests on my crisscrossed knee, he listens to them with ears so twitchy and attuned that I can tell he isn’t interested in anything but the music because he knows that there’s a reason I told him to listen. he has the foresight to realize that after the song is over, i’ll ask if he liked it and everything in our relationship is carefully riding on that yes or that no. I never have to beg for his attention; the permission to be in a goofy mood is always there, I’m able to cry and giggle in the same sentence without feeling like a crazy bitch. when he lies down next to me, we don’t struggle to keep the beat with our breaths, and somehow we fall into time, every time. he tells me when my frizzy hair is in his face because he knows that his self-worth should not and does not come second to mine, he pulls my scabbed fingers away from my mouth when I’m in a nail-biting frenzy, he tells me it’s okay to take a minute for deep breathing and he sends me instagram posts that explain what box breathing is and how to reset my emotions and how to take care of hedgehogs and how to build birdhouses out of toilet paper rolls. I hold his pinky finger instead of his hand when we’re out because my hand is too small for his fist, he guards me because he sees how shrunken and small I’ve become, and he holds me tight in a little snow globe, that even when shaken still glitters. it’s different with him because if I asked him to come to see me, he wouldn’t say that 100 miles is too far of a drive, he’d get in his sea-blue Impala and sing sea shanties on his voyage. it’s different with him because I know for certain he’ll love me forever: not because he told me, but because he listens to the songs I send him.

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The Aegean-Roofed Earth Star Brianna Strohbehn

lay me on the Aegean roof of my rusted-out houseboat and try to ignore the sticky screen door clacking in the wind. look at the stars—so bright on the river that light can’t touch— and dream of where we’ll end up after here. just focus on you and me and the heat building between us. the sirens will come, but keep your eyes on mine— be present with me. hold my hand tight, tighter—and let the boat drift far from here. ignore the leaking gas cans we dragged across the rusty deck. think about making us into a star here on Earth— aren’t you supposed to dream my dreams with me, my love? hold me in your crushing grip and don’t mind my tears as I pull the lighter from my pocket, scrape my thumb across the trigger, and watch the stars become not so far away. we’ll be there soon, darling.

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Blackberries

Madeline Schonitzer My teeth pierce through dark indigo flesh, Reminiscent of the night sky we laid under Last night. The seeds crunch between my molars, my mouth filled with a universe of stars.

The sweet juice soaks my mouth, Leaving me yearning for the flavor of you.

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Meditate and Procrastinate Arin Hendrickson

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I Love Them

Madi Bonebright the telltale lines of blue-black ink and gray shading that decorate my arm in designs I’ve tailored to my personal taste, each stinging poke of the needle depositing ink under my skin, making the outside of me a distinct representation of the inside, the original canvas giving way to permeative art.

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Look Out

Patricia Corbera

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Finding a Way Together Brianna Strohbehn

I was peeling potatoes in the galley on a drizzly evening when the captain came in and said, “Son, we’re sending you off to Germany.”

Whether fact, fiction, or a bit of embellishment (as I have come to expect from my grandfather), this is the scene that always precedes my grandpa’s stories about his time deployed in Germany.

However, this story begins even before that fateful night on a night nearly a year before Tim’s deployment began. This story begins on the night of Timothy Quam and Barbara Miller’s first date on the 17th of May in 1973.

••• After graduating high school, Barb worked at Kresge’s Five and Dime1 at the lunch counter. One of the gals she worked with, Tina, introduced her to a good friend, Tim. The two spent their first official date swimming in the cold spring water at the nearby lake. They didn’t bring bathing suits, so they swam in their clothes. When the sun went down, the cold lake water seemed freezing as their clothes clung to their bodies on the drive home.

During that first summer they spent together, Barb worked an externship in nearby Charles City for her medical assistant class. At the end of July, Tim left for basic training, leaving the young couple to only communicate via letters. Tim and Barb saw each other for only a few hours on Labor Day after a late flight left Tim and his battle buddy stranded at the airport in Chicago, Illinois. Desperate to get home, they split the cost of a cab all the way from the Windy City to Mason City, Iowa.2 Tim was home again for the first part of November and then again at Christmas.

After he graduated from basic training in the early part of 1974, Tim was notified of his upcoming two-year deployment to Germany. Tim and Barb breathed a sigh of relief to know Tim avoided being sent to either Vietnam or Korea, and Barb knew without a doubt that she would be in Germany with Tim. On February 23, 1974, Tim and Barb were married, as Barb was already three months pregnant with their daughter. Their whirlwind life continued as Tim was shipped off to Germany just a few weeks after they were wed.

At the airport, Tim scraped together some money to buy a standby ticket to 1 Before the hallmark of the discount store, “five and dimes” were popular because all their merchandise sold for either a nickel or a dime. S.S. Kresge, Kresge Five and Dimes’ founder, began his career in partnership with J.G. McCrory with stores in Memphis and Detroit. When the Kresge chain celebrated its 40th anniversary in 1938, the chain had 742 operational stores across the United States. In 1962, Kresge’s opened the first Kmart discount store. Kmart would go on to buy out Sears; both have since gone into financial ruin.

2 According to Tim, it ended up being cheaper to pay the 330-mile cab fare to Mason City than it would have been to fly into the local airport.

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Germany but was bumped off the overfilled flight. Rather than sleep on the overseas flight as he had planned, Tim spent the night curled on the floor of the airport terminal in hopes of securing a spot on the next day’s flight. Thankfully, he did find a seat on the flight. When the plane touched down in Germany, he scrambled to the Army base, but his deployment was already off to a bad start. Tardiness is unacceptable in the military, and Tim was a day late to his assignment.

On top of that, Tim already had a poor record in the Army. Before coming to Germany, he had enrolled in the Army’s buddy system with his cousin Steve. The two enrolled in Airborne Ranger School,3 but quickly quit after both received serious injuries—Tim a broken collar bone and Steve a broken leg. Tim’s collarbone healed poorly,4 which meant he couldn’t do enough push-ups according to the Army’s standards. The instructors at the Airborne School tainted Tim’s young record with “not motivated” as a result.

His tardiness, combined with his already poor record, made Tim’s commanders leery of him. “I’ve got an eye on you, Quam,” his captain said with a squinted glare, and began to closely monitor Tim’s behavior during the following months.

As it turns out, being a soldier wasn’t all that hard for Tim. He was stationed in Aschaffenburg,5 just a few miles from the Soviet Zone, as a member of B Company, 1st Battalion, 7th infantry, 3rd infantry brigade. In the first few weeks after his arrival, Tim completed two weeks of orientation where he submitted marriage paperwork so Barb could come to Germany. He also completed a third week of basic German culture and language lessons, though the language lessons only taught him a few numbers and basic greetings.

After the introductory period, Tim and his company, a group primarily made up of experienced Vietnam War veterans, went to Wildflecken, a German military base in the Rhön mountains,6 for training. The first day of training began with a chilly, but sunny start. However, the sun quickly gave way to drizzle, which turned to rain, then snow, and then sleet. The sun finally came out again, only for the cycle to start over again, all within the course of a day. Tim quickly realized that Germany was a completely different world compared to the Iowa plains he was raised on.

Tim got into the groove of military training and proved to the captain that he was 3 During the Korean War, the Ranger Course was founded. Its purpose was (and still is), “to develop combat skills of selected officers and enlisted men by requiring them to perform effectively as small unit leaders in a realistic tactical environment, under mental and physical stress approaching that found in actual combat.” Since its founding, the rigorous 61-day course has seen relatively little change.

4 More than 45 years later, a “distant break of the right clavicle” still shows up on all of Tim’s CT scans.

5 Several US military installations were stationed in Aschaffenburg during the Cold War. US occupation began in 1948 and lasted until 1992 at the end of the Cold War. Aside from its military significance, Aschaffenburg is home to the Schloss Johannisburg, which replaced the castle of Johannisburg that was destroyed in 1552. The oldest parts of the city date back to the Stone Age. 6 The Rhön mountains were formed in part by volcanic activity. Because of the breath-taking views, the Rhön mountains became a popular location for castles in the Middle Ages. Ruins of such castles can still be seen today. Today, the Rhön mountains are a popular tourist destination for hikers.

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anything but unmotivated. Tim kept his nose clean and started to excel as a soldier.

His secret: reading the manuals provided by the Army. Lots of soldiers didn’t read the manuals, but they clearly laid out how to be successful in all aspects of the job.

Reading, absorbing, and applying the information in the manuals helped Tim go far in the Army. Because of all the rules and regulations, Tim thought it was much easier to be a soldier than a civilian.

As Tim began to figure out life in Germany, it was finally time for Barb to join him abroad. At the end of May, Barb came to Germany on a charter flight and arrived to their small Heimbach7 apartment.

When he came to Germany, Tim was ranked at E3,8 which meant he was too low in ranking to secure on-base housing. Instead, he found an apartment in the small town of Heimbach, about a mile off base. The tiny one-bedroom apartment was in the attic of a house with slanted ceilings that crowded the space. Their landlord spoke no English and they spoke no German, but Barb found it wasn’t so hard to get along with one another.

One afternoon, Barb walked down the block to the landlord’s house to pay the rent and didn’t return home for nearly an hour.

“Where have you been?” Tim asked when she returned.

“I told you, I was paying the rent,” Barb replied as she set down a plate of desserts, shucked her jacket, and peeled off her shoes.

“It doesn’t take an hour to pay the rent.”

“We were talking.”

“What do you mean you were talking?” Tim asked incredulously.

“We may not speak the same language, but we understand one another. Besides, she baked us dessert,” she said, gesturing to the overflowing plate of German pastries she’d placed on the table.

The following month when Barb went to pay the rent, she brought the plate back with an American dessert for her landlord’s family. The plate passed for eight months until they moved to another apartment in Heimbach.

••• Being an Army wife to a deployed soldier wasn’t always as easy as sharing desserts with the landlord. At the time, the saying in the Army was that if the Army wanted you to have a wife, they would’ve issued a wife.9 Not to mention that there were a 7 Heimbach is home to the Hengebach Castle, which was destroyed during the fire of 1687, and left in ruin until 1904 when restoration began. Today, the castle is owned by the city of Heimbach and is used as a tourist attraction.

8 In the Army, soldiers begin as “Privates” and move up from there. The duties of E3s (also called Private First Class [PFC]), include “carrying out orders issued to them.” Generally, PFCs come into Basic Combat Training (BCT) with prior military training experience.

9 I’m told that this is less true today, as the Army is much more accepting of soldiers traveling with their wives and children. At the time in 1974, this was less true. However, Tim and Barb said the captain

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limited number of soldier’s wives in Germany, so they created a close-knit group.

Upon coming to Germany, Barb joined the informal “wives’ group.” Whereas in the Army, soldiers only interacted with men a rank above or below them, the women interacted with families from all rankings and hardly talked about rankings.

Unbeknownst to Barb, she made quick friends with the Battalion Sergeant Major’s wife.10 Tim had just earned his stripes as an Acting Jack11 and was excited to celebrate his promotion at a mandatory event. Barb went over to socialize with Sergeant Major’s wife, which meant Tim and his friends had to sit with Barb and the Sergeant Major.

After a night of stilted conversation and some intense sweating from Tim and his two buddies during the meal, they hightailed it away from the Sergeant Major, saying it was “better to be out of his sights.”

In nearly all of Tim’s memories from Germany, this one included, his two best friends were almost always there. Henry “Hank” Shadbolt, Tom Morgan, and Tim Quam made up their group, informally called the Three Amigos.

Hank was originally from Port Orchard, Washington, and he was the biggest perfectionist Tim had ever met. His boots were always shining, his uniform was always pressed to perfection, and his room was always spotless. Tom Morgan was originally from somewhere in Nevada and rounded out their friend group.

The three of them were virtually inseparable during their time in Germany. Hank, Tom, and Tim all earned their Acting Jack stripes together and earned their Expert Infantryman Badge (EIB)12 together. During their EIB training, they underwent three days of intense drills that included a 12-mile forced foot march through the forest, a rigorous physical fitness test, and several challenging skills tests.

Trainings like the EIB testing and later the NCO Academy13 all meant Tim was gone for weeks as a time. Barb calculated that during their first in Germany, Tim was gone for five of the twelve months. It made being married tough, and it got even more challenging when they welcomed their daughter.

••• enjoyed having Barb around because the men cussed less and were always on their best behavior when she walked into the room.

10 A Sergeant Major (SGM) is an E9, meaning he ranked far above Tim. Sergeant Major is the highest enlisted rank in the Army. One of Sergeant Major’s main duties is to assist Officers with battalion management.

11 This is a term that isn’t commonly used in the Army anymore. An Acting Jack was an E4 (Specialist [SPC]) who had more active leadership roles than a regular Specialist.

12 The EIB was created during World War II and is now only awarded to Army personnel with infantry or special forces occupational specialties. Since the 2000s, the training has included tests in land navigation, weapon qualification, forced foot march, and station testing in individual tasks, such as first aid, call for fire, map reading, and weapons proficiency.

13 Tim also attended the Noncommissioned Officer (NCO) Academy during his time in the Army.

During the 22-day course, soldiers complete challenging individual and collective trainings to prepare for modern fighting.

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For weeks, a soldier in Tim’s company had been joking that Barb was in labor, so when the Platoon Sergeant sent the same soldier to tell Tim it was the real deal, he didn’t believe the soldier. Once Tim found the Platoon Sergeant, the Sergeant said nothing. Instead, he turned Tim by the shoulders and pushed him out the door.

Tim and Barb didn’t have a car yet, so the Platoon Sergeant drove Tim and Barb home to pack a bag, and then back to the dispensary to take Barb via ambulance to the hospital in Frankfurt. When they arrived at the hospital, two other women were also arriving in ambulances ready to have their babies. The staff ushered the women into the same ward at the hospital and were mortified to see that all the women were dilating at the same speed.

“I’m not sure what we’re going to do. We only have one delivery room, but you’re all dilating at the same speeds,” a nurse told Barb.

“I don’t care what those other two gals choose,” Barb told the nurse, “but I’m going first.”

And Barb lived up to her word. Jennifer Anne Quam was born around 8 p.m. with the other two babies being born around 10 p.m. and midnight.

Jen was born nearly three weeks early with a bout of pneumonia. Upon being welcomed into the world, she was quickly hooked up to oxygen and taken to the NICU. As Tim described it, she looked like a marshmallow with sticks for limbs because of her premature birth.14 Two days after she was born, Tim came back to Frankfurt to visit Barb and Jen again, along with his friend Hank. On the train ride to Frankfurt, Tim and Hank decided that one of them would be Barb’s husband the other the baby’s father. They shared their plan with Barb, who gave conniving Hank a stern warning against it.

When the nurse came in later during their visit and noticed the two men at Barb’s bedside, she said in broken English, “What’s this? Two husbands?”

Barb gave her nastiest glare to Hank, and he wisely chose to spend the rest of his visit in the waiting room.

••• After nearly a week spent in the hospital, Jen finally came home to their slanted-ceilinged Heimbach apartment. Tim and Barb began to settle into a groove as they adjusted to being new parents and life in Germany. As young parents, they grew both independently and together, Tim through his job and Barb by learning to pay bills, organize things for them to survive, and be Jen’s primary caretaker. However, life continued to throw challenges at them as a young American military family living abroad.

14 Jen, my mother, insisted that I not include this description, but I’ve used my authorial discretion and included it because it paints a clear picture in the reader’s mind. It reminds me of building snowmen on snow days in elementary school… I can assure you that this description no longer applies to her, so she shouldn’t find it too offensive.

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Many Germans disagreed with the American occupation of their country and shared their distaste either with nasty glares or vile verbal comments. That, coupled with the threat of Soviet attack, always heightened the awareness of the military’s duty in Germany.

Each year, the soldier’s dependents had to attend a briefing concerning the protocol for a potential Soviet attack. The briefing, especially after the first one, heightened Barb’s nerves about the seriousness of their situation.15 Living in Aschaffenburg, the Soviets would likely be knocking on their doors before the alarms even had a chance to ring. Some of the most nerve-wracking moments for Tim were at the Czech-Slovakian border, where they watched the enemy sitting in towers, watching them in kind.

In less than a year, Tim had become a husband, father, and active-duty American soldier. He found pride in being a part of an organization, a part of something that was bigger than himself. With the Soviet threat just miles away, he held fast to the phrase, “There’s no atheists in fox holes.”

He began to take his faith more seriously than he had in high school and vowed to wait for Jen’s baptism until they returned home to Iowa. “I don’t want some stranger to baptize my baby,” he argued.

••• During Tim and Barb’s second year in Germany, they bought a car and did some traveling, which included seeing some magnificent Lutheran cathedrals. Tim’s favorite cathedral was in Rothenburg.16 Inside, hulking organ pipes lined the walls. He dreamed of playing Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”17 on the glorious pipes but didn’t know how to play the organ.

Aside from touring cathedrals, Tim and Barb loved to combat their homesickness by visiting American restaurants on their travels. Frankfurt and Munich had McDonald’s, Dairy Queen, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. After more than a year without American fast food, visiting the McDonald’s in Frankfurt was heaven.

On one especially cold winter evening, Tim and a fellow soldier ventured to Kentucky Fried Chicken in Frankfurt––nearly a twenty-mile drive—in his friend’s unheated car. The two soldiers wrapped themselves in their Army-issued sleeping bags, 15 Many parents at the briefings were upset because of the Army’s evacuation plans. Should a Soviet attack occur during school hours, children would be evacuated on school buses to Holland and women and children at home would be evacuated to Holland via private and military transport, meaning they would be separated. Thankfully, this didn’t apply to Barb because Jen was too young to go to school.

16 Rothenburg, formally called Rothenburg ob der Tauber, is one of Germany’s three remaining completely walled cities. To Nazi ideologists, Rothenburg was a prime example of a quintessential German “hometown.”

17 In its unabridged form, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” which roughly translates to “In the Garden of Life,” plays for 17 minutes and 5 seconds. The single was shaved down to 2 minutes and 52 seconds, but some radio stations continued to play the longer version. The longer version wasn’t available as a single because a 45 RPM vinyl couldn’t hold the entire song. Instead, listeners had to buy the full album, which they did; the album sold 4 million copies, the most of any album in history by Atlantic Records.

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clothed Jen in as many layers as possible, tucked her into Tim’s sleeping bag, and set off for the city. When they arrived back to Heimbach and delivered chilled chicken to Barb, she marveled at their stupidity.

“If you knew I drove the car to work, why didn’t you just come get it?” she laughed.

••• With all their highs came lows, too. The first few years of marriage were incredibly difficult but being so far from home is probably what kept them together—they had no other choice. When they were angry with one another, taking the bus home wasn’t an option. Instead, they had to face their issues, even if they spent some nights going to bed angry.

One especially challenging weekend, Tim spent nearly the entire weekend on-base recording music with a friend who had just gotten a new stereo system. The weekends were practically Tim and Barb’s only time together, so Barb was especially mad to be ignored for a stereo system.

When Tim arrived at home on Sunday evening, his uniform and boots were sitting by the door.

“What’s this for?” he asked.

“You may as well move into the barracks because I’m obviously not giving you anything you can’t get there. I’ve had it!”

The next day, Barb was greeted with a bouquet of flowers and chocolate cake, so the weekend was forgiven.18 ••• After two years in Germany, Tim had served his deployment and they moved back stateside, this time to the state of Georgia. Although life’s challenges were far from over, the young couple had learned a lot about being parents and spouses during their time in Germany.

Above all, Tim and Barb learned that as a married couple, you need to talk to each other. Once that quits happening, then you’re in trouble.

“We were just young kids trying to find a way. 48 and a half years later, we’re still at it,” Barb said as she reflected on their time in Germany.

Another daughter born, a cancer battle fought, a heart attack overcome, and a slew of other life challenges later, Tim and Barb are still doing just that—trying to find a way, together.

18 When my grandma recounted this story nearly 50 years later, she did so in passionate, vivid detail.

Grandpa may have been forgiven, but the story was surely not forgotten.

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Flowers

Savannah Egger

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Questions for a Pollinator Augusta Drenckhahn

Where would you go with your body that defies gravity? Could your fuzzy shoulder shawl keep you warm in the wind off a mountain stream?

Could your legs clamber over rocks on steep slopes tread by mountain goats? Would tiny bell-covered flowers stick stalks up on slopes, curlicue petals like nineteenthcentury curls, elegant mountain coiffure for your sticky black feet, brush of imperceptible antennae, and golden globe of treasure below translucent wings? Would you stay if a tradewind storm carried you away over prairies and waterways to betray your queen? Could you live in a tall, rocky world, away from the sweet nectar of life, that only world you’ve ever known? Could you do it alone?

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The Difference Between Ladybugs and Asian Beetles is Miniscule Page Sutton

My mother likes to take long, silent, winding walks through cemeteries, stopping occasionally to pensively read the Johnsrudes and the Olafsons carved into the wide flat stones that littered the ground and when I was younger I used to walk with her, and I’d notice a shimmering ruby ladybug wander over the carved letters. I assumed that the ladybug must be hopelessly lost, because something so sweet couldn’t possibly have made a home in the midst of something so hollow, naked and black, but when I turned fourteen and I was finally a woman my smile broke at my first experience with period cramps and the light that shone on me dimmed, and walking through cemeteries turned into some sort of mission, and the ladybugs looked content now, like they had found pitiful protection in the disparity of a dark death.

The silence with which my mother strode the oak-lain trails of the hillside cemetery in our town always seemed ominous—daisies died in the cracks of the path— but when I entered womanhood in a frenzy, the realization that my mother paid the ladybugs notice all along was harsh, the realization that they were Asian Beetles was harsher, and it pained me with the sting of a poison so strong that it’s been years since I visited a cemetery on my own terms and of my own conviction, without thinking of my mother who in a way, is already dead, and in another way, has never seemed so full of life.

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Haiku

Savannah Egger

toad

little toad sits in

the hand of a child innocent, patient

koi

coy koi swims gently

its fins maneuver upstream peaceful, pleasant koi

bird eager little bird

hear your mother call you now breakfast is ready

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Lastelle

Danica Kilibarda

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Under the Trees by the Sea Tyler Janssen

Mid-March drizzle flows down from the gray clouds above Washington Park, and I can feel the cool, gusty winds cutting deep down to my bones. I’m not dressed for the occasion. Jeans, trail running shoes, and a t-shirt aren’t the ideal combination to combat the last dregs of winter. There’re only a few days until the official start of spring, which I like to believe will bring with it a sense of renewal because I’ve run myself ragged these last few months. Seasonal depression and a depressing anniversary take my legs out from under me every winter, and this is the first year in four years that I’ve had something in my life that made me want to fight—enter Ellie.

Ellie is my closest friend, and the second person to ever earn my adoration. She’s a bluebird who sings songs that remind me what hope and love are. Ellie reminds me, through her unpredictable personality and through her lived history and through her funny face that never fails to make me smile, that this life we live has some meaning, even if I struggle to see that meaning without something or someone to focalize my views. This combination of traits is, from my perspective, why she’s here with me in the Pacific Northwest. She’s someone who deserves the world because, for the time being, she’s part of how I’m centering my own world.

I hear her heavy breathing ahead of me. She’s much less acclimated to hiking than I am, and that shows itself in a number of unfortunate ways; mostly, with her choice of clothing. I can’t help but chuckle whenever I consider it. She really thought that jeans and a cotton shirt would be of use in the tail-end of an extremely wet Northwestern winter. I can’t deny that this moment would feel inauthentic if she’d actually dressed for the occasion, though, and maybe it’s for the best that she suffers ever-so-slightly for the reward awaiting her at the end of our time here in Washington Park.

That reward is the basis for this whole trip, after all. She’s here because I made a pinky promise and I don’t back down from those. I take them seriously, perhaps too much so, because they’re an extension of childhood naivety. There’s an innocent version of myself, an image from childhood buried deep in my brain, that I only risk baring when I know I will follow through. There’s something essential about pinky promises too, this idea that whoever is trying to make you pinky promise must genuinely care about you. It’s a really simple, yet beautiful, thing to participate in naïve child-like oaths.

I pinky promised that I’d fulfill her dream of seeing the ocean and the Washington redwoods because I love her, because part of our friendship is founded on me making dreams and wishes become reality for her. She hadn’t traveled before meeting me, whereas I’d seen a vast majority of the United States before ever knowing of her existence. She hadn’t even hiked the Sugar Loaf trail before me, which is basically a requirement to be considered a citizen of Winona, Minnesota.

A cross-country road trip. 3,880 miles in 9 days, the course of our spring break at

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Winona State University. We’re going from the Midwest to the westernmost ledge of the continental United States, and with that journey (as with every journey) comes its own unique set of frustrations and hiccups and costly expenses. Whether it was the four days of crying and homesickness on Ellie’s part that marred the beginning of the trip or the alternator failure in Napavine, Washington that cost me $800 USD before it was said and done. Whether it was the South Dakota snowstorm that drowned us at Wall Drug or my own sleepless nights spent wide-awake in my bed worrying about Ellie’s experience up to that point. Whatever the issue, I held faith that we’d overcome it.

“Time for a break?” I ask.

“No, I’m fine,” Ellie says, her face beet-red.

We continue on for a few more minutes. The trails of Washington Park are steeply inclined, which normally wouldn’t be a problem; however, the trails are muddy and the path to the Redwood Observation Deck isn’t well-maintained, not by any sane standard, that is. The development team was smart enough to sparsely populate the park with benches, at least, and I see one of them when I look over Ellie’s shoulder.

I listen to her, the trudge of her feet and the sharp breathing tell me that she isn’t defeated, but she’s clearly tired.

“Let’s go look at that bench, bluebird. I wanna see what the plaque says,” I smile as she looks back, clear relief showing in her eyes.

The plaque was supposed to be nothing but a coy ploy on my part, but something about it strikes me as we approach. It’s black and gold, a commemorative plaque dedicated to Mark Poitras (1954-1996), fixed against a background of black wood.

Following the commemoration are two quotes. One of them is from Henry David Thoreau: “Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing, along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever.”

The other quote isn’t cited, but I assume it’s from a loved one or from the family of Mr. Poitras: it simply reads, “We miss your gentle presence,” and that stands out because it feels so simple. It’s elegant in its simplicity, but it says so much about the man.

It reminds me of my own great-grandfather, who I thought was my grandfather for a big chunk of my life. It reminds me that Milton drove school buses and fought fires for a living, yet went home and made latch-hook rugs that he’d then distribute to people he loved. It makes me think about how driving aimlessly and burning shit are the things that keep me afloat some days, when I’m grappling with the depths of my own mental illnesses. My great-grandfather protected others while doing the things I love to do; so, why does it feel like being myself will somehow backfire on me and the people I love?

Part of it is just mental illness; misfiring neurons and neuro-chemical imbalances that leave me down and out, lied to by my own brain.

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Another part of it is the complexity that I’ve slowly established over the course of my life. Mark Poitras and Milton Janssen are both remembered for their gentle presence. I have convinced myself that there is no “we” to miss me, that my presence is somehow caustic and damaging, as opposed to gentle and loving.

The part that I find myself fixated on most days is my perception of the historical proof I see when I reflect on my past, the proof that I am that destructive presence that my great-grandfather would be disgusted by. That proof begins with his death.

Milton Joseph Janssen died in 2007, and I never got to attend his funeral. I don’t know the exact timing, but a year or two prior to his death my mother took me and fled from my father, landing us in the middle of nowhere—otherwise known as Gilbertown, Alabama. I was under the impression, then, that my father was a dangerous man with dangerous friends and that he’d do insane things to get back at my mother for taking me. I blamed myself for that. They weren’t in a good relationship from the start, but I had broken them apart. My very existence created this hell on earth, paved with fragments of a broken family, that prevented me from attending the funeral of the first man to show me love and empathy. The man who rubbed whiskey on the inside of my infantile gums because I was a colic son-of-a-bitch well into the first year of my life. The man who, in conjunction with my wonderful great-grandmother, Mary Arlyne Janssen, took care of me when the problems between my mother and father got too volatile.

The day in November 2007 when I was told of his death changed me. I have a distinct line in my memories where some feel lighter and happier, and the memories that come after that line, the day of his death, are always tinted more darkly. I’ll find myself remembering the sad and the bad parts of my life with so much more clarity than the happy parts. I am not a clinical psychologist, and my therapist can only hypothesize, but we both believe that I developed childhood depression based on that event and that it has never let me go since.

The next time I experienced death, I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry at my first funeral. I didn’t cry at a lot of pivotal moments when I feel like a “normal person” would have.

Over the course of the next fourteen years, leading up to the “today” of this essay, I would go on to gain and lose more than ten people who I expected to be around for the rest of my life. I only cried for two of them, and I would argue that the reason I cried for them was comorbid with other stresses of the time, not solely over their loss.

That doesn’t sit well with me; I failed to protect them, to save them like Superman––my great-grandfather—whose shoes I want to fill so badly. I failed them, and then I couldn’t even bring tears to bear to cry for their loss. Does that make me a monster?

I would say that it does, but I’m notorious for giving myself unfair evaluations.

That notoriety, I think, is part of why I hike. Whether it’s long, aimless drives or large, pointless bonfires, nothing holds a candle to what a serene day amongst the trees can do for my mental state. I think that’s why I shared my love of hiking with Ellie, because I think of it as some sort of mythical panacea for all of the problems one can face.

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Hiking serves to give me some sense of instant gratification that intellectual pursuits just don’t give me. I’m too paranoid that my writing will be bad to ever relish in the completion of it. I’m too reliant on the feedback to my writing being positive to ever relish in the act of writing it. There’s also the issue of natural intellect, because my ability to write a passing paper with almost no actual investment in the topic serves as a curse that makes me feel like (almost) no piece of writing I ever write is actually an achievement; it’s all just a byproduct of a strong subconscious ability to put words together.

Ellie confounds me in this regard, because Ellie just doesn’t care. She writes what she writes and doesn’t care about the feedback. The only time feedback bothers her at all is when the reviewer likes a piece of her work that she hates, and even then she can still feel the gratification of a work well-written because of the mental energy she dedicates to every word she puts down on the page. If she likes something, she likes it regardless of any other influence.

I can’t imagine the mindset that goes into that. I can’t even imagine being so able to clearly define your likes and dislikes; the subject of my favorite color demands a three-minute explanation for god’s sake. Where she applies herself and gains dividends, I slip by narrowly and end up getting nothing.

Some combination of these characteristics is why I identified myself as “a failure who never even tried” in the first suicide note I ever wrote.

That notion of failing applies across every aspect of my life. There was a time when I wasn’t so hung up on it, but that time has long since passed. My time to ignore my status as a destructive failure ended when a young woman by the name of Ravyn Novak was stabbed twenty-seven times—to death—in an alleyway in Lima, Ohio on February 19, 2018. She was a childhood friend who developed into a lover over the course of our short lives together. Ravyn used to use her unnaturally cold hands, likely an undiagnosed case of Reynaud’s syndrome, to steady me. Without her, I fell spectacularly into the depths of my own despair.

I discovered alcoholism and a quad-chemical-dependency in conjunction with her death. When the tune of her bathtub-singing died out, so did my will to resist all the coping mechanisms available to me. I’d developed depression from seven onwards, puberty gifted me a nasty case of insomnia, and my father had given me PTSD long before any of that; yet, I’d resisted turning to smoking or drugs or alcohol.

The reasons changed with the years, sometimes it was an impulse not to end up like my druggie dad, other times I found my mom’s smoking habit absolutely disgusting, but more often than not I resisted because I didn’t want to make the people I actually loved worry about me more than I knew they already did. I failed them all when she died. I spent the first year immediately following her death out of my mind. I don’t know how I never overdosed or gave myself alcohol poisoning.

Hell, maybe I did and I just never sobered up between surviving it and my next hit. I honestly wouldn’t know.

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I don’t think I would have gone so far off the rails if not for the surviving relatives of Ravyn’s family. Despite me being several states away at the time, they made a point of blaming me for her death. They claimed that she was out shopping for a gift for me, since I was scheduled to visit her in the weeks after her death. They drilled it home.

There was one particular night, they’d asked me to come over to help them get rid of some furniture and to clean out Ravyn’s family home. Ravyn’s mother, Michelle, had died roughly one year prior to her daughter, so the surviving family was going to sell their home. I had no say in that, unfortunately.

They spent that night purposely making my life hell. Making me move the same piece of furniture twenty times, making me clean every room from top to bottom, and topping it off by tripping me down a flight of stairs. That was their last real vindictive move, and I came out relatively unscathed, but that night stays with me. The way in which they spat my name, the way in which they placed it all on my shoulders. They way in which they solidified my understanding that I fail, and have failed, and will fail again. That I am a failure.

The only time that I don’t feel that I’ve failed is the byproduct of my legs moving to a physical location. I can fail at anything, except putting one foot in front of the other and reaching a goal. Even if I don’t reach that place, whatever it is on a given walk or hike, I succeeded in the journey. That action, the journey-by-foot, is the only thing that I can reconcile “failure” into “a journey well-journeyed” and feel good about myself. I think that fact is why I turn to walking when things are at their absolute worst. I cling to the people and things that remind me that I don’t fuck up everything. That’s why I cling to Ellie.

Ellie can be anyone, though I certainly want the particular version of Ellie being talked about in this essay to be aware of the value of her individuality and existence.

What I mean by saying that anyone could be Ellie is that I just need someone, anyone who I can say that I’ve succeeded in relation to. There’s a sense of validation that comes with saying, “I made that happen for you,” that’s heavily narcissistic and probably toxic, but it’s a requirement to the current version of me.

I’m going to take this a step further and call walking a form of penance. I view my very existence as destructive, my actions as continuous failings; yet, the more I walk, the more I can justify my continuation. Every single time I put my trail-runner clad foot down to the trail ahead, I’m walking a road to redemption with miniscule profit, but profit nonetheless. It’s a progressive pilgrimage with no goal other than selfsustainment.

While Ellie is important because of her co-mingling with me, what she changes in me just by providing her perspective; there is another cast of characters that hold an equal (if not greater) place of influence in the making of my current view—enter, Marcher Arrant and MPeach.

I’ve always been inclined to the vagabond life. That statement does not mean that I romanticize being a drug-addled sidewalk-sweeper. That statement does not mean that I hate any different way of being. I, as an individual, would simply identify

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as a vagabond. There was a time before I knew that word, when I was just a teenage runaway receiving guidance from an older man who gave me the tools to survive in the world. At that time, I wasn’t aware of the legacy of 1930’s hobo-train-hoppers. At that time, I wasn’t aware of the overlap in modern punk culture between graffiti and vagabonding as a way of life. All I knew was that trains had cool art on the sides, and that they were my only option for escape.

In an ironic move on the part of Fate, the same year Ravyn died is when MPeach put a foundational series of paint-lines on the side of an old grainer. Somewhere out there, riding the rails around the Midwest, is a Canadian Pacific grainer with some white paint on the side in the shape of a moving truck. On the side of that truck is a quote from the song “Walking” by Eyedea, which says, “Walkin’ until I find myself.”

This graffiti has yet another layer, because under his own signature, MPeach added the words, “Marcher Arrant.” I went to Google immediately, flying through link after link learning about these two. I learned about MPeach and his iconic legacy across the Midwest from a Medium article, and learned about Marcher Arrant’s prolific influence on modern vagabond culture via the Angel and Z podcast.

I quickly went on to send them both messages, finally making me realize the beauty of social media. Over the course of (about) a year, we became friends. They’re part of a graffiti crew called the Abe Lincoln Brigade, which includes a number of highly recognizable vagabond artists who are known around the world.

In that friendship, I began to realize the duality between these two crew members.

MPeach has a family, has roots. He works, he cares for a child. He just so-happens to live in a convenient area of the Twin Cities that allows him to do his art and have it pop up around the whole country. In stark contrast, Marcher Arrant is a vagabond in the truest sense of the word. No home, no roots, (almost) no family, no chains by which to be tied down. I like to think of myself more as a student of Marcher, and a friend of MPeach. Marcher is all the things that I romanticize, whereas MPeach is a grounding element that reminds me that there is a balance between being totally disconnected and fully connected.

Marcher is the one that I find the most parallels with, and in some ways that’s a frightening thought. Something he said to me in a recent conversation is locked on repeat in my head: “I walked too far, now I’m too far gone.”

I’ve considered if this is a sustainable path, and it certainly has worked for Marcher these last thirty-or-so years, but to hear him going off the deep end reminds me that his is the path I find myself following. To walk as penance is one thing, and I could play devil’s advocate and say that it’s mildly self-destructive, but to let it become what it has become for Marcher––a death sentence––is too much. I’ll quote the man himself: “I’ve finally decided to accept my fate, amor fati. I was born to walk, go for broke, and die young. Too far gone. I’d rather live a king in my own world and die young than to live to old age a peasant in someone else’s… I’ve lost all faith. The only thing meaningful to me is my walking, it’s the only thing I trust… I accept walking as my

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entire life now, with no hope for anything more.”

I say this is too much, but these are similar to thoughts I’ve had and will have again. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt to watch a friend and mentor fall apart at the seams. And that pain is my own reminder for why I’ll never let myself go over Marcher’s ledge. I don’t want to accept the world of complete disconnection that Marcher has decided to embrace, and that’s why I have people like Ellie in my life.

That’s why I had people like Ravyn. That’s why I still look into my whiskey glass from time to time and wonder if I was smiling when my great-grandfather rubbed whiskey into my gums. That’s why, even as I risk entering into Marcher’s world, I keep myself grounded with people in that world who found the balance, like MPeach.

Ellie and I did eventually move on from that bench, and into the final leg of our journey. Mark Poitras’ bench was an uncomfortable thought experiment for me, and I would be lying if I said that I weren’t a bit more solemn after having stopped and read that plaque. There was suddenly something very religious about this whole experience, as though some part of my brain expected revelations to be revealed in the grain of the mighty redwoods we were nearing.

“How much farther?” Ellie piped up, breaking the silence.

“From the sign we passed a while back, I’d guess we’re almost there.”

“In other words, you don’t know?”

“You’ve got me there.” I couldn’t help but smile, feeling a bit goofy.

“It’s so beautiful here…”

Ellie was right, of course. The entirety of Washington Park is gorgeous, and even with spring not having sprung, it was lush and green. All kinds of trees, the constant pitter-patter of small wildlife making their way through the brush, and in its own way the muddy trail we were following was beautiful as well, even if it was plotting to ruin the floor mats of my car later.

There’s a certain exuberance you feel when you’re near the end of a journey.

It’s time for all your expectations to get paid off, after all. It’s a good feeling, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t mortally afraid of it. The weight of what these redwoods represent is a weight that I’ve already grappled with once on this trip, and I didn’t handle it well the first time.

On Quileute Reservation, near the town of Forks (for the Twilight fans out there), is La Push. La Push is a small seaside community with a beach that rests on the tongue of some world-eating serpent. That’s how it appears to me, anyway; something about the rows of rocky spires breaking out of the water about a half-mile away from the beach reminds me of a mythical creature like Jormungandr or Leviathan.

La Push is where I really showed Ellie the ocean for the first time. She’d crossed the Puget Sound with me on a ferry, sure, and we’d made a pit stop in Clallam Bay, but her first chance to really see the seemingly-infinite expanse of the water and to get her feet wet was at La Push. It was here that I fulfilled the first half of my promise, and it

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was here that I nearly broke down entirely.

Ellie and I each found horse conch shells on La Push beach. She found hers first, and it was a sort of whitish-orange color. I found mine a while later, and it was a sort of blackish-navy color. I went on to make a necklace out of mine, hung from a silver chain so that I’d always be reminded of an all-too familiar sense of pain; a silver heart pendant that sits locked away in a memento box—my last remnant of Ravyn.

I think that’s when the pieces started to fall into place for me. They formed a picture that I knew wasn’t sustainable, but it’s one that I wanted to embrace so badly.

Ellie, who I’d dubbed “bluebird,” was taking on a similarly important status in my brain as Ravyn, the “blackbird” of my past. That’s not to say that they filled the same roles. They’re very distinct individuals with shockingly little overlap in personality or humor. Yet, I can’t deny that the only other person I would’ve gone 3,880 miles out of my way for was Ravyn.

That revelation hadn’t sat well with me then, and I’d be lying if I claimed that I’ve navigated it fully since; but there I was, about to come across the redwoods that would fulfill the remaining half of my promise and it was all that I could think about. I was afraid of whatever revelation would wash over me when we saw those trees.

Fate doesn’t wait for anyone, and to fear my fate is pointless. Amor fati is probably the only good thing to come out of Marcher’s suicidally-depressed ranting. I recognize that fact and step forward out of my mental fog, ready to face the future with a smile on my face.

I raise my eyes, I suck in air. We’re here. I see the bark of the first redwood as we crest the last small hill of our journey. Ellie gets the first picture with the first tree, a Coast Redwood transplanted to Washington Park from Northwestern California.

I get the second picture with a tree much deeper into the grove, a Giant Sequoia transplanted from Sierra Nevada. Much like the horse conch shells, her tree is a much lighter shade of reddish-brown, where mine is such a dark shade of the same color I’d think it was coated in a layer of soot.

I can’t get over the thematic repetition of the trip. It’s a series of her first, me second. Her experiences colored more brightly, where mine are consistently tinged with an inevitable darkness. I think it’s a reflection of our mental states, she’s thriving whereas I’m surviving.

“Thank you, Tyler,” I hear quietly escaping Ellie’s mouth. She isn’t breaking down, she’s crying tears that I can only assume are of joy.

“It’s no big deal,” I reply. To me, it really isn’t that special.

I don’t mean to say that the trip means nothing or that I won’t value the memories for the rest of my life, but the idea that I’m unique for being willing to do this doesn’t sit right with me. Raising up the people you love should be the bare minimum in any relationship. There’s also the fact that I never learned to take a compliment, so I’d rather just act like I’ve done nothing.

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Ellie begins to do the things that she feels she needs to, which includes FaceTiming both of her parents and cracking jokes about the Ewoks from Star Wars.

It comes to my attention that I’ve got no one to turn to with a similar impulse. I recognize the weight of where I am, yet the only person I have to share it with is right in front of me.

It hurts to recognize your own disconnection. It hurts more when you have a model, Marcher Arrant, for what you’ll become if you stay that way. Where would I land if Ellie died just like most every other person I’ve loved? I begin to feel faint there, on the Redwood Observation Deck. I find my way to the nearest bench, of which there are three. Two of them are made of redwood, while one is the same blackwood of Mark Poitras’ bench. I chose the blackwood bench. I can hear the waves of La Push resounding against the back of my mind, a memory of another time when this sense of revelation washed over me like a drowning tide.

“Hey, Tyler, are you okay?” Ellie had gotten off the phone, and was watching me.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lie, reaching into my coat pocket.

I remove from that pocket a small black box with a bright pink ribbon, and offer it up to Ellie, who’s now sitting beside me on the bench.

“This is for you.”

Ellie takes the box from me, inspecting it for a moment before finally opening it.

Inside is a necklace; it’s a silver star with five apatite jewels forming the points. I can see her actively choking back some words, perhaps some tears, that she isn’t ready to share.

“You know I’m a sentimental dude. I figured you’d appreciate a physical reminder of this place, of the trip, of me.” I’m blushing, there’s something intensely awkward about such a gesture.

This is the first time that I’m admitting that part of this trip was about giving Ellie an unfiltered, pure memory of me. It’s also the first time that I’m admitting to myself that I wanted to give her that kind of memory. Something that was undeniably me.

Ellie doesn’t say whatever she was choking down, she just hugs me for a long time.

“I love you, too,” I whisper.

We hugged for a moment longer, though eventually we had to disentangle ourselves. I leaned forward and looked back, taking a peek at the plaque on this bench. Much like the Mark Poitras’ bench, this too was a dedication. This one didn’t have a familial quote, though; this bench just had a quote from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which read, “Let us, then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait.”

The Longfellow quote, in combination with the quote from Thoreau which occupied the Poitras bench, summarize my goal with this essay in a disturbingly accurate way. Longfellow captures the progress that I wanted to achieve, the ability to engage in amor fati without heading down a road devoid of possibilities like Marcher.

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Thoreau, on the other hand, captures a sense of hopefulness that I wanted to achieve in that spring will come, that love will be renewed, and that following my path will end as pleasantly as ever.

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Frank Ocean

Lily Gruenhagen

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It’s a Shame Page Sutton

it’s a shame we’ll never truly know for sure if the man who threatened our peace that night was a friend of yours. the redhot image of a ghost I thought I saw when he spoke flashes behind my eyes when I close them, and when I force myself to break through the ashen fear and open them, you’re there, lighting the flame of my insanity and making me seem, I don’t know, hormonal? or as if my brain was the Baltic and you were a Russian destroyer, I was with NATO— each waiting for the other to launch their missiles first— the difference being that I don’t fire unless fired upon. we all maintained what pitiful peace we had left for as long as we could, trying to avoid the imminent crash-bang of our emotions that would occur if we were to cut our connection to your power supply. the flashlight you held was running out of batteries: if you had wanted it to keep shining, you should have started cranking the handle. but I think that’s what we’ve finally unearthed through the therapy you enrolled us into- a lifelong bond of broken smiles and falling-off band aids- you never wanted the light to shine for us. nothing was supposed to be illuminated but your own ego, nothing was supposed to be sacred except your self-image. and the fiery ghost that haunts us all when we see pisspoor graffiti in places you thought were secret or sneaky (they weren’t, you’re not), it will die a terrific and not-so-tragic death the day that you realize that “apocalyptic” isn’t such a positive adjective.

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the door to heaven is only ours to open Emily Venné

and I find the greatest peace knowing that my blue green pots of gold will not grant you any further luck because I do not plan on looking in your eyes ever again, not if I can help it. because after learning how you treat others behind closed doors I struggle to connect the version of you that I knew with the one described. but I think that was your iniquitous intention all along, and I wanted to believe that my ears were not fully working when I heard the stories. but as I flip through our pages, I realize that I had begun to grieve the loss of you before I knew I had too. and you said that I deserve more than what god gave me at the door of this world, but my front door was always open for you and yet you never granted me the truth or honesty I relentlessly gave you. and it took months but we – I was not the only one who let my guard down– each began to wear our truths on our sleeve and we were sure to strip ourselves of hate and worry in each other’s company but you did not. instead, you armored up and tucked strings of half truths down your sleeve and buttoned them up with Lilith lies and caffeinated colloquies. because I spilled secrets to you I never dared to clean up without your company, and betrayal was something I had never felt before. not like this. but when I hear your voice bile rises in my throat and the calmness you once instilled in me morphs into redhot anger I haven’t felt the need to unleash in years, and I never thought that fury would be an emotion that binds three souls together, but this is what you have done and I know that we deserve more than what god gave us at the door and this golden knob is one only we can turn.

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Climbing Devil’s Doorway Brianna Strohbehn

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I Didn’t Cry During Pride and Prejudice Madison Grove

I was warned by many That when I witnessed the climactic end, The tears would flow.

Like yours did when I told you I didn’t know if I could stay.

Your heart sank like Mr. Darcy’s when Elizabeth rejected him, The first time.

My friends cried in front of the illuminating screen, Like I did when I had to think about a life Without you.

I didn’t cry during Pride and Prejudice Because when I wanted to run, like Elizabeth, you Chased me without hesitation.

I’ve never felt like Mary Or Lydia.

(Maybe once Jane) Because when you saw me inch towards the exit, Preparing to leave us behind in a place where our human flaws could no longer Diminish the love we once built, You came through the mist on a Summer morning with your trench coat And sweet nothings filled with everything, The words flooded so effortlessly off your Tongue, Like their salty tears that held gravities hand and Glided down their cheeks.

I didn’t cry during Pride and Prejudice Because when I wanted to run, You ran faster.

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And before I even knew it, You had caught my ever-reckless heart Before it could make its endless cycle of Escape.

You see, I’ve always had my own Mr. Darcy, And that’s why I didn’t cry when the rest of my friends Found theirs through a small black box With scripted lines and empty hope.

I knew that when I returned home, my Mr. Darcy was there In bed waiting for meWaiting to ask me, “How are you Mrs. Darcy?”

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Gestures

Keaton Riebel

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Mile Marker 15 Beth L. Halleck

I am the kind of person who has always taken note of milestones, not just the traditional milestones of graduation, marriage, birth, and death; but also ones that connect me to other people’s lives. When I turned sixteen, I remember thinking, this is the age my grandmother was when she told my grandfather she was eighteen and they eloped; and a year later, this is the age my cousin was when he died by suicide; and many years later, at 49, this is the age my dad was when he got prostate cancer and my parents struggled through impotency. This habit links me to my extended family and invites me to imagine what it would feel like to have been in their situation. What brought them to that place? Would I have done the same thing or how might I have handled it differently?

I’m 53 now, have been married to Carew for 30 years, have four living children, and two grandchildren. I’ve lived in the Middle East, on both coasts, but all told, the upper Midwest has been my home the longest. It is here that we got married, here where we returned to start a coffee drive-through with my parents, here where our youngest was born, here where we built a community, and here where we eventually buried our second oldest.

I’m never sure what word to use for the day when Galen died, a day when something so unexpected, so foundation shaking, so traumatic happened; a day that clearly marks a before-time and after-time. Sometimes I call it his deathday because the anniversary of Galen’s death is a mouthful, and doesn’t quite fit. After all, we call the day someone is born their birthday, so why not call the day someone died their deathday. And even though we might observe the anniversary of a tragedy where lives are lost, like September 11, that context is usually reserved for formal, community mourning, not for the deaths that happen in families every day.

••• While most people might resist giving more than a passing thought to death, my family indulged in countless dinner-table death conversations while I was growing up.

The first death that joined us for dinner was when my mom’s dad was electrocuted in the basement of his business when I was 10, and Mom was just 33. She worshiped her father and his death left her adrift. She was in graduate school at the time and started keeping a journal as a class assignment. Through those journal entries she worked out why she felt so angry at the funeral home that prepared Grandpa’s body. My uncle had sent over a suit for Grandpa to wear, but the funeral home called back and asked someone to bring over underwear too. Grandpa was an extremely private and modest man and Mom was sure he would have been terribly embarrassed to be seen naked by a stranger. A year or two later when she related this story, she concluded, “It should have been one of us getting him dressed. It should have been his family.”

Note to self: Is the family allowed to dress their deceased loved one?

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We expect the deaths of our grandparents and our parents even if we don’t want to face that eventuality. We want desperately to believe, though, that we will never, ever have to face losing a child. But if we were to be completely honest with ourselves, all parents probably feel some latent fear that their child might die. I’m sure that fear is partly why I put my babies in car seats, blocked off electrical outlets, diced hotdogs into pea sized pieces—to keep them safe, to keep them alive. That fear is why I paced until my child returned from their first solo trip after getting a driver’s license, why my stomach bottomed out when I spied my child at the top of the flagpole, and why I couldn’t breathe until my child was out of surgery. I couldn’t relax until I knew they had survived.

I’ve seen first-hand how bottomless a parent’s grief can be. One early June day, in Chesterton, Indiana, my 17-year-old cousin didn’t come home—and a shotgun was missing. They searched for him for months. When the autumn leaves had finally fallen, a hunter found him less than a mile from home. The weather had rendered the note he’d written indecipherable. At the funeral, my uncle’s silence echoed in the church as loudly as my aunt’s wails. She was given, or maybe asked for, medication to help her sleep, or forget, or numb the pain. And five years later the unimaginable happened again—they lost their older son essentially the same way.

Over the years I watched them go through the motions of living. They tried to start over where no one knew of their tragedy, but the problem was… no one knew of their tragedy. When they’d meet someone new, eventually that person would ask, “Do you have children?” My aunt once commented that she didn’t know how to answer: if she said “no” it felt like she was denying that her boys ever existed, if she said “yes” the person asked the usual follow-up questions that would force her to say they had died. And then the conversation usually died too.

Understandably, people often don’t know what to say next when they learn your child has died. Should they express sympathy? Them: I’m so sorry. Me: Thank you.

Should they ask how the child died? Me: They died by cancer/accident/suicide…

Them: Oh, I’m so sorry. No matter what they say I find myself trying to put them at ease, because they feel worse than I do that they unintentionally brought the conversation to a topic that must be excruciating.

Even within the family, my aunt and uncle couldn’t let down their guard. A few years before we moved back to Minnesota, my aunt and uncle had also moved to the same town, just down the country road from my parents. One day after we’d all enjoyed a family dinner at my parents’ house, my aunt snuggled my 18-month-old son while she rocked him on the porch swing. I’d been thinking how sad it was that she would never have grandchildren of her own and how blessed we were to be close to family now.

“If you’d like, I’d be okay if the kids called you Grandma Sue and Grandpa Rodger. You could be their honorary or adopted grandparents,” I offered.

“No, I wouldn’t want that,” she bristled.

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I’ve wondered why she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, let herself say yes. Would letting another child play the role of the grandchild be a constant reminder of why she didn’t have her own grandchild? Maybe she believed that letting go of any of the mantle of grief, letting in any joy might suggest that she didn’t love her boys as much anymore.

Ten years later, I was still puzzling over how my aunt and uncle had handled their grief. My mom and I were lingering in the living room, curled up on one of the two cream loveseats, enjoying a renewed ease that had been absent from our usually close relationship. I had just finished a hard, overdue conversation, asking her to see a doctor about some memory lapses I’d noticed, and she’d reluctantly agreed. She’d felt the strain, too, in the weeks I was working up the nerve to broach the subject and had been terrified I was going to tell her we were moving away. We gazed out the window at the hillside that my aunt and uncle lived just beyond. The conversation meandered to how strained the relationship had become with them, and how they had never seemed to let anyone get close to them after their boys died. I remember so clearly my proclamation, “Maybe they’re not ever going to figure it out. Maybe they are here to show us what it looks like when we don’t figure out how to live with our grief. I just know this… if I ever find myself in a similar situation, heaven forbid, I will do it differently. I will not turn out like them.” I did not know that less than two weeks later it would be my turn.

Dictionary.com defines a milestone as, noun, 1) a stone functioning as a milepost; 2) a significant event or stage in the life, progress, development, or the like of a person, nation, etc. It is painfully obvious that Galen’s death is a milestone as per definition two, a significant event. That date also functions as a mile marker in the timeline highway of my life, orienting me to where, or when, I am. Duncan graduated high school and moved away that same summer…we went on pilgrimage to Haifa, Israel the December before…mom’s first symptoms of Alzheimer’s started ten years ago.

My turn came on May 9, 2012, and it hit me like a flash flood. My instincts told me the only way I could survive was to let the current guide me. It was such a shock to my mind, my body, my heart and my soul that I completely surrendered, and only found my footing when I had to. And there were a lot of had to’s, especially those first few days.

We had to let his high school know. The counselor had called the police to do a welfare check because Galen hadn’t shown up for school. His friends were worried too because he had stopped responding to their texts. The counselor asked me, “What would you like us to say if someone asks what happened?” I replied, “You know how he died, right? Then you have our permission to share as many details as you feel the person asking can handle.” I’d seen what grief looks like when we try to hide the truth; we were going to be open as we could bear.

As family and friends streamed through the house, we had to decide how available to make ourselves. We chose to let our community embrace and enfold us in their love,

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their grief, and their compassion. Sometimes other parents formed eddies around my husband in one room and me in another, sometimes Galen’s friends would drift into his bedroom, the room where he died and where they’d played so many games. And even that first day, when everything felt excruciatingly raw, we managed to smile when someone shared a funny memory of Galen. And I felt the first inkling that we would eventually find joy again.

We did other things that would not be considered mainstream. Galen was not embalmed in accordance with the tenets of our faith, the Baha’i Faith, and therefore Minnesota law required he be buried within 72 hours. We had to make arrangements without delay. A story about Trappist Caskets on Public Radio years had stuck with me—how they made the caskets from their own sustainably harvested forest, how they prayed over each casket as it was being built, how they planted a tree for each person buried in one of their caskets—and they could be delivered anywhere in the country in just a day or two. The woman who answered the phone projected the perfect balance of compassion for our loss, and professional efficiency. When she called back to confirm the delivery on Friday of the simple, shaped oak casket with natural cotton lining, she added, “The Brothers met and would like to offer the casket for free since Galen was a child… if you are comfortable with that. All we ask is that you pay the fee for the delivery driver.” I could barely voice my gratitude through a fresh flood of tears.

When the first responders took Galen’s body away, they asked which funeral home we wanted to use. I didn’t hesitate, “Fawcett-Junker”—I had been friends with the founder’s wife for years and knew I could trust them. Mr. Junker called us once Galen had been transferred to his care and we confirmed that we could use a Trappist Casket. Then we made another unusual request, “We would like to bathe and shroud Galen ourselves.”

When my mom’s mom had died thirteen years earlier, hospice had guided the family through their options and what to expect. The hospice nurse had said, “We always tell families they can give their loved one a bath, but I don’t know that anyone ever has.” Grandma spent her last month in a hospital bed in Mom’s living room, with the two cream loveseats and two pink wingback chairs forming a semicircle around her. When Grandma finally passed on Christmas Eve morning, the two sisters shampooed her hair, bathed her with washcloths, and rubbed lotion into her delicate skin. Mom called later that day to share the news of Grandma’s passing. Knowing that Mom had wanted to, I asked, “Were you able to bathe her like you wanted? How was it?” Mom replied, “It wasn’t hard at all. It felt like the most natural and loving thing I could have possibly done for her.”

Note to self: Families always used to bathe the body. Remember to ask about that when Mom or Dad or Carew dies.

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If the funeral director was surprised, he hid it well and assured us that he could facilitate our request. I wasn’t sure I’d actually be able to do it. I’d imagined bathing my mom like she had done for her mother but I’d never considered I might need to do it for my child. Galen had been dead a couple hours when I found him, and his appearance was difficult to bear. I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing him like that again. My husband, a former police officer, tried to reassure me that it would be okay. Mr. Junker had laid Galen on a slightly inclined stainless-steel table with a rim around the edge. I glimpsed Galen’s face, which now looked much more like himself, and knew instantly that I could indeed do this. Mr. Junker showed us how to adjust the temperature on the hand-held sprayer and assured us he’d be right outside if we needed anything. We stood facing each other as Galen lay between us and began washing his arms and legs. As I washed Galen’s fair hair with the Johnson’s Baby shampoo I’d brought along, I told him how much I loved him; and noting the bruising on his neck, I gently scolded that this wasn’t the answer. Carew washed between Galen’s legs in a feeble attempt at modesty, because even though he was only 15 his body was practically full grown. When the bath was done, we rolled Galen from side to side, sliding the wide lengths of cotton shroud under his back, around his front, wrapping him from toes to neck. We paused to consider if we wanted to wrap his head as well. Bathing and shrouding were also part of our religious teachings, but were not obligatory, or common, for American Baha’is, and the guidance was not specific on this point. We settled on leaving his head unshrouded, called Mr. Junker to help us transfer Galen to his casket, and after saying a prayer and our final good-byes, we screwed the lid into place.

Our two best friends had been keeping vigil in the lobby and embraced us as we emerged. They both remarked that we looked more at ease. Indeed, as Carew said later, “It felt like this is what we’ve been waiting to do since he died.” The constriction in my throat had relaxed and I finally felt like maybe I could eat a little bit of something. My mother noticed the shift right away when we got home. Carew and I conferred and agreed that we would invite our children and the grandparents to see Galen later that day. We wanted them to have a chance to say goodbye in person, to see his face one last time, to maybe find some healing like we had.

We gave ourselves permission to wade through this river of grief in whatever way felt “right” to us and encouraged others to do the same. The mother of Galen’s best friend approached us and asked if some of his friends could play a composition at the memorial that they’d written for him. “Of course,” we said without having any idea what it might sound like. Another of his closest friends asked to play a solo.

Again, “Of course.” Somehow, even in the depths of our own grief we recognized the community’s need to grieve and made room for them too. I have to say we were quite surprised when we arrived at the church the next morning to prepare for the memorial, and heard the soloist practicing “Roxanne” by The Police, a song that he often played on the piano when he and Galen talked on the phone. I’d like to think that we modeled for these young people, and our own children, a healthier version of

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grieving than what I saw with my aunt and uncle. I’d like to think that we gave them permission to talk about the hard things. I’d like to think that they wouldn’t need to grieve again for a long time. But I was wrong.

Over the next seven years, our community lost four more teens by suicide and four in accidents. We knew each of the families to varying degrees and attended every funeral save one. It felt like wading through a backwater slough to keep showing up, to keep seeing myself reflected in the next grieving mother’s face, to keep showing up and showing up and showing up. But just as I had friends I’d looked to who had lost children and somehow managed to piece together a new version of living, I had unwittingly become that same glimmer of hope for these families; that if I could figure out how to make it through the next day, then maybe they could too.

All of my children are now older than Galen will ever be. As each of his three younger siblings approached their 15th year, I braced myself. Would they make it through, would they survive? I’d read that statistically they were all at a higher risk of suicide themselves now. My head knew that there was nothing special or significant about that particular age, but my heart and my body weren’t convinced. And now, instead of marking each of my children passing Galen’s final milestone, I see them reaching milestones he never will.

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Spring at Petit Portal Daniel Schulz

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Memories of a Globe Emma Rabehl

As time leaks I sit at my desk studying you Deadening the murmuring of classmates I listen to you turn clockwise making rasping sounds from old age I notice the dust that coats your skin since no one seems to tend to your display You guide me onto an unforgettable journey I watch you swivel and spin until you eventually slow to an end Getting me lost in a memory with all of my friends We would give you one big whirl Then close our eyes and use our fingers like a pin To abruptly stop you and to uncover our destined vacation win If you are lucky your finger will find A gorgeous country that would be worth your time But if unlucky and you land in blue You will need a vessel to sail through the cerulean zoo I reached my hand out to spin the wheel but instead on my shoulder I begin to feel My professor tapping me awake, and making me realize I was in a daze A daydream about how gratifying it was To sit by the globe and play our futile game

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Archeology is a Humanity Degree Catherine Fruzyna

They say the first sign of humanity Was a healed femur from caveman bones.

Those cracks are proof that someone loved somebody Enough to turn the wild into a home.

They dug up an old woman’s jawbone, too— With empty sockets long before her death, Who found her food soft enough to chew?

Her life was not survival of the fittest?

They healed the sick and took care of the old, Doing all that they could do on their own.

So one day the moral of their bones is told; No one makes it out of this life alone.

Those long-dead souls had it right the first timeWe needed love in order to survive.

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Windows to Winona Brianna Strohbehn

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