Spring 2022

Issue 13

poetry

Memories of the Hawthorn Tree

We were drinking light beer by a river,
There were ducks in the river,
The ducks were followed by an endless stream of baby ducks,
And light passed over the lace-woven cottages.

My friend near me, his green coat of years,
It lingered like a scent, a smell not of age,
But emptiness, and beside us, a stranger slept,
As butterflies do,

And the steady melody of her soft snores
Reminded me of my father’s chin, his pastel orifice,
A tobacco stained tempest,
Yet it was also a prayer.

And today, my feet are wet and dirty.
The dust road: my prayer.
And each morning I gather stones.
Then throw them to the water.

And each morning,
I remember history is merely a menagerie
That soils my favourite coffee cup
With Zen symbols on its side,

And the apostolic stars
They grin, as I crack
Thrushes’ necks
Beneath the hawthorn tree.

—Oisín Breen

My Heritage

I was born of bloodstone, drawn
to rock; drawn to red.
My ear was bent toward birds
in a row up on a walnut limb.

I bolted early from reality,
tethered the imagined pony.
I polished spurs. Stirred apples,
made butter in a copper kettle.

I treasured Adam’s rib along
with others in my body.
I ran. I danced. I climbed mountains,
swam in the old stone quarry.

The current in my brain ran fast.
It leaped and sparked.
I’ve lived my life―reveling in smoky
red and golden autumn dreams.

—Mary Lucille DeBerry

What's To Fear

Listen to the hawk's plaintive call,
the wind whispering to the river,
breath becoming breath
becoming silence becoming
memory becoming no thing.
It is as natural as a summer day
with the grasses bathed in light.
Remember the barefooted days decades ago
your body, a thoroughbred
itching to run?
Now it is an old mare with a lame leg.
Soon you will grow tired
of the terror that grips you in the night.
Pain is part of the great mystery
and you must hold it with
the tenderness reserved for
fragile beauty.
A dragonfly, translucent on your wrist,
a newborn folded into itself,
the deepening blue at day's end
before it lets go
into night. 

—Pamela Hill Epps

Three Aubades

When the sun rises                 the sun
washes the hills                       studs the sky
with new violet                       transfigures earth
and the old green                    rich with celebration
of myriad seasons                   rekindles desire
when bird and insect              and all the cells
leaf and flower                        you long thought dead
join the palpitant                     pulsing
parade, and day                       once more
dawns unused                          vigorous
as the first morning                  as reveille
then bones and blood              the old verities
know tide pull                          again emergent
north star burning                   lighting
its last red embers                   your one choice—to rejoice

—Connie Jordan Green

Curriculum Vitae OR I Know Everything (after Kendrick Lamar’s “Momma”)

I know everything.
I know Black people. I know white people.
I know everything. I know how to talk.
I know how to write. I know
everything. I know history. I know culture.
I know your history better than you
know mine. I know everything.

I know rhetorical shit. I know everything.
I know Socrates. I know Aristotle. I know
Plato was a genius with a grudge. I know
everything. I know literature. I know classics.
I know your definition of classics don’t resemble mine. I know

everything. I know DuBois. I know Hegel.
I know Richard Wright. I know Dostoevsky. I know
Ellison. I know Baldwin. I know Foucault. I know everything.
I know Toni Morrison. I know free birds sing
just as good as caged ones. I know intersectionality.
I know Kimberlee Crenshaw’s greatest hits is a remix
of Anna Julia Cooper.

I know everything.
I know collegiality. I know politics.
I know academe is just intellectual
capitalism. I know everything. I know
“the ways in which.” I know abstract shit.
I know everything. I know theory can explain all
until it can’t. I know everything.

I know “Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion.”
I know race is a social construct. I know
so is everything else. I know the master’s tools
will never dismantle his house. I know
you’ll pay me to try. I know everything.
I know I’m just a token
of goodwill to the students protesting outside.

I know everything. I know intellectual integrity.
I know my worth is non-negotiable
(but, for the record, starts at $80k). I know dignity.
I know the price of admission. I know my salary
won’t make a dent in what it cost me to get here.

What I do know, and paid dearly to never forget,
is that ultimately, like you, I don’t know shit.

—Gabriel Green

Other Worlds

Constantine, sleepless at the Milvian Bridge, steps out for air to inspect the stars. He sees a miracle in the sky, one flaming star with six points.

Stacey, with her glorious strawberry-blonde crown and a different therapist, chooses not to hang herself, or does it later and her roommate cuts her down in time. She pulls herself together, with help, and fulfills her promise as a writer. Or I accept her invitation to dinner with her friends, and somehow change her life, and mine.

Judy G., turning down my invitation for a weekend alone at my place in the woods -- what was I thinking? she never liked me that way -- suggests (as she did) that I ask Monica instead. And I do. And then what? All those dreams fulfilled, perhaps, and maybe some of hers. She doesn't meet Martha, or after we have parted, or we stay together and my two failed marriages evaporate as in a dream, undreamt.

Or they turn to three.

The software startup convinces me to come in one more time, and offers me a job, stock, options, the wealth of the Indies, and reasonable working hours. I take it. The company succeeds with my help, and my options are worth a fortune. Kate gets half in the divorce, which still has no reason not to happen.

So I bind others to my dreaming will.

—David M. Harris

City of Memory 

In pictures it looks like something we’ve seen before, it’s not that different from the solid state except for the lacy edges.  Turning around or turning back, as if we’re sewing up the holes in our pockets, not taking anything out like an album in a drawer—when you don’t know what you’re leaving out is it worth finding out?  The light stays in the interior of the beam, like the story of the light, or the page it’s written on, the walls are soft enough to stick things into.  Parking isn’t a problem.  When we need to do something it’s often because of something else we’ve done or something that happened to us, as if the difference between what it was and what it is is just what we want it to be.  Cupping our hands as if they’re starting to leak, reminding ourselves to back everything up—if something’s in the way it’s probably because there isn’t any other place for it. We often think there isn’t anything that hasn’t already happened—I believe Kierkegaard knew what he was talking about when he said life is only known backwards, as if we need to keep turning around in order to find out where we’re going, honestly I don’t think we don’t remember enough to be forgetful.  Not putting anything down that we need to pick up later on.  Nothing is plowed under or evicted, we still have soft spots, when there’s nobody in front of you you turn around and hold onto the person behind you, letting your chins touch, opening your mouth and pressing your lips together:  under the tongue it’s always the same temperature.

—Peter Leight

Instructions For How to Live My Life

if I should die.
Use resistance as formaldehyde.
Refuse to accept the fact of change.
Reserve the right to refuse,

and refuse the right to be reserved.
Stop eating when you’re upset.
Burn off the rest in punishing workouts.
When you hear about emotional eating

or exercise addiction, don’t identify.
React to every word or change like it’s a harpoon.
Pump your cortisol day and night ruminating on safety.
When you have to set your alarm,

forget to turn it off.
Believe you can remember everything else.
Resent always being called upon for miscellanea.
When you read—and read everything,

save acting on it for later.
Make mountains out of marginalia.
Believe the dark is made of bears.
And if you should die…

—Megan Wildhood

Cthulhu

Over the course of one April Sunday, my neighbor
Culled the grapevine between our yards.
Tentacles wound forty feet through chain link,
Obscured the weedy corner behind the garage,
Protected my woodpile
Under a cantilevered awning of suckered arms,
Succor to Japanese beetles.

Gone now, beast and perhaps, beetle.
Oddity in a grass ocean. The crabapple
Dances farewell, its flowered branches wave in the snow.

Keep It Between the Ditches

Blind Abo Olafsson lost his white cane
And is taking his walks without it.
A Korean War vet and 93, forgive him
for leaving it, like a cup of Starbucks,
on the roof of his pickup before
driving south down County Road 3.
He had been picking corn all day for his nephew
and was distracted by dreams of
uncountable light.

—Sara Dovre Wudali

creative nonfiction

Thick, Curly Hair

It’s a girl, she said to two people, who deep in their gut thought they would hear the opposite. Swallowing our shock, we looked to the screen as the technician showed us just how much hair you already had. We spied little squiggly lines waving around in the amniotic fluid.

Months later, with my mother by my right side and my husband and the attending nurse each supporting one of my legs, I pushed a baby into the hot, fluorescent lights of this world. Sure enough, you emerged with a full head of silky, fine black hair.

You know it will all fall out; she’ll probably be bald for a while, they said to two people, who were wondering if they could keep you alive long enough to lose a single strand. We smoothed down your wild mane, which seemed to be soaking up whatever radiance it could each day so that every day after your birth, your tresses were lighter than the day before.

Months later, (you never did lose that hair, never even had a bald spot), your hair texture changed, as I knew it must. A baby born to two very curly-haired parents could not have straight hair. It started with the ends curling ever so slightly and the back layer of your very thick locks spiraling from the roots. All the while, your hair continued to absorb all the brightness of the world and there was a nimbus making its way around your head.

She looks like a little doll with all those ringlets, they said to two people, who were so grateful to finally be pulled from the fog of surviving your first year. It was the ring of fireflies, the corona of sunshine, the bonnet of light around your face that pulled us out of our daze and burned the mist away. Your honey-dipped spirals acted as our lantern, brightening up our days.

Months later, when the coily corkscrews had worked their way around your entire head, the battles began, as I knew they would. A little girl with such a firelight inside of her would not allow her glorious crown to be flattened by the assault of wash day. Bribery and threats were employed in order to rinse away the grime that assailed the splendor of your diadem.

Tell your husband to get ready to fend off the boys, they say to me, but I believe we will raise you in such a way that a bodyguard will not be necessary. If our strategy proves successful, you’ll grow up fully aware of your inner torchlight and all the dazzling powers you possess. These “boys,” whoever they may be, will be struck by your aureole and their only response will be to marvel at the rays emanating from every part of who you are.

Years in the future, I pray we see them all, I know I’ll always be able to find you in class photos, at birthday parties, in any crowd anywhere in the world. The blaze of whorls around your face will act as your flare, signaling me to where you are. And every few days, at least while you’re little, I know you’ll eventually let me win as I pull my fingers full of conditioner through your thick, curly hair.

—Celesté Cosme

Dear Diary

As a kid, I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a teenager.

During a bout of strep throat, I begged my dad to buy me Teen magazine along with my penicillin and 7-Up. I pored over the pages as though pursuing a master’s degree. I read the issue cover-to-cover, over and over again. From skincare routines to saying the L-word, what to expect on prom night and does-he-like-you quizzes, there was so much to know! An ambitious 10-year-old, I needed to start now; junior high a mere two years away.

Flipping through that first magazine blossomed into an insatiable desire to learn everything it meant to grow up. I’d create shopping lists, knowing that no teen girl could survive without a pot of Noxema, or Doc Martens. I’d wonder if I could ever be as pretty as the Barbizon girl advertised in the back of Seventeen magazine. YM’s “Say Anything” column, a collection of reader-submitted embarrassing moments, showed me just how traumatic the next few years would be. I prepared for my period leaking through my pants, or getting busted picking a wedgie by my crush. Wow, being a teen was sure going to be full of embarrassing moments!

Writing in a diary felt like a critical activity for any teenager. Imagine my excitement when my mother bought one for my 10th birthday.

Four-by-six inches with gold-trimmed pages, encapsulated by a shiny cardboard cover decked with pink hearts. And then, the coolest part: a lock and key. I’d hide it somewhere really secure, like my underwear drawer.

I started writing that very night.

July 1, 1992. Then, Dear Diary.

I bitched about my 5th grade teacher (coffee breath to the max!). I complained about warbled-voiced Cassie Nelson landing solos in every class musical. I wrote about my crushes. Andrew, the shy, adorable one; Mark, the bad boy whose shiny bowl cut cornered the market at Lily Lake Elementary. Joe was the funniest kid in our class. He used a lot of hair gel, and liked rap music with Parental Advisory warnings. Edgy!

Specifically, I recall lamenting how one of the boys I liked didn’t know I existed. I mean, of course he knew—there were only 25 kids in our class. But did he drift off to sleep to the sounds of Mariah Carey’s Music Box, thinking of me like I was thinking of him? Maybe, but I doubted it.

It was quite clear why he didn’t consider me his “Dream Lover” or “Hero” or the Mariah to his Tommy Mattola. I was hideous! I was fat, weird, and didn’t have a spiral perm, which is clearly what makes a 10-year-old boy’s heart palpitate. I slammed the door to my bedroom, plopped down at my desk, scribbling in blue erasable pen, “I’m going to get a perm, get skinny, and get him!”

I’m simultaneously embarrassed and heartbroken that pre-teen thought I needed to change everything about my body for boys to like me. Especially when the actual reason boys didn’t like me is because they were also 10 and only cared about playing Sega Genesis and whether or not their parents were going to get them a Starter jacket for Christmas.

A few weeks later, I hit up open skating at the local rink with my two best friends. Our moms sat in the bleachers, gossiping and drinking Diet Coke. I stepped off the ice to ask my mom for a snack from the concession stand. She and the other moms laughed, and I asked, What’s so funny?

Oh, we were just talking about which boy you like. Andrew, Mark or Joe!

Omg. Here it was. My YM “Say Anything” moment. And I wasn’t even an actual teen yet! How did she know? I couldn’t even bring myself to talk about my crushes to my friends.

That evening, I retreated to my room to work out my feelings. It was then I saw the gold button below the keyhole. All one needed to do to crack the code was slide the lock’s button down. My mom not only read it, but told everyone what I’d written.

Mortified didn’t scratch the surface.

At the time, I wanted to part the clothes in my closet and step into Narnia, praying the fart cloud of shame couldn’t follow me. I hated the moments my mom poked through the hard shell I’d built around my soft skin. For as long as I can remember, I never, ever cried in front of my mother, fearing it would expose the places that hurt me most. When I got my period at 12, I said nothing—instead, I used wadded-up toilet paper, then wrote letters to Tampax asking for free samples. I found their address in an issue of Teen magazine. With my secrets out in the open, she was locked and loaded with ammo to hurt me and wasted no time unleashing the bullets. 

Years later, my own father said my mom bragged about reading my diary, saying, you have to check this out! It’s hilarious! She’d started reading it immediately, as though it was the whole reason she bought it in the first place. I’ve read through my old notes, and they are, indeed, hysterical. However, in between the mortifying confessions, I’ve found ample proof of a troubled child, seeking love and validation. I cannot believe my mother read that I thought I was fat and ugly in my own handwriting and ignored it.

When faced with an opportunity to love me, she laughed at me.

There will come a time when my little girl loathes something about herself, and I can already feel hot tears streaming down my face. 

This is what it’s like to be raised by a Borderline mother. Instead of being uplifted, you’re shamed. Instead of being loved, you’re neglected. She’s not crushed by your low self-esteem. She loves it.

I never wrote in a diary again.

—Molly Katt

Crumbs

2003

Mom and I have a secret. A secret made of saccharine, starch, syrupy sweetness. A secret that lowers us from the weightiness of the world into a miniscule metropolis. One that pays homage to cavity-causing glucose bombs and fibrous whole grains alike. The secret involves no other than our white Cuisinart toaster.

Every few days, Mom lets me empty the crumb tray; a mundane, oft-neglected task. I pull out the contraption, wide-eyed and eager, as if I’m a miner descending upon specks of gold. My eyes scan the contents that lay within. Though for what, I’m unsure. Sprinkles from my Pop Tarts—white, red, yellow, orange—pop out, confetti-like. Then there are the brown granules from Mom’s morning toast. And a lone dollop of icing, if I’m lucky, from my brother’s weekend cinnamon buns.

What fugitives of breakfasts past will I find? The tray is a graveyard for all the particles that don’t make it. A final sendoff before they enter the realm of the landfill, spared from our salivating mouths and nutrient-hungry intestines.

Unlike the other chores Mom gives me, this doesn’t feel like busy work. It’s as if a subconscious impulse tucked away inside of her was trying to tell me something. How could I make sense of these fragments? What imparting words did they carry? Some answers aren’t ever answers, Mom teaches me, but gateways to more questions.

2013

“Shit, I’m already ten minutes late for class!” Anthony says, glancing down at his phone. “Can you just give it to me?”

He watches as I fumble through the cabinets, trying not to make noise yet failing miserably. A delicate rouge spreads across his plump cheeks. As his tousled blonde locks frame his boyish features, I can’t help but wonder if I’m staring at a porcelain figurine.   

I prematurely pop the bagels out of the toaster. They’re somewhere between soft and crispy. Warm enough to partially melt the cheese, though not enough to strip the turkey slices of their chill. I fashion sandwiches for the both of us, willing my hands to work as if an imaginary timer sits in my periphery, ticking down the seconds. My apartment hangs on to the glutenous aroma, captures the silence that lingers before the calamity of the day gives way.

“We’ll meet up after class, yeah?” I ask Anthony, allowing my eyelids to droop as I lean in for a kiss. His chapped lips meet mine. I’m momentarily whisked into the bubble of bliss that envelops every young and in love nineteen-year-old.

“Mhmm,” he says, grabbing his skateboard, which he props against the same chipped part of the wall each day. He turns back with a sheepish smile. Then, as the front door slams shut, sending a reverberation through the small space, I’m reacquainted with a searing loneliness. Like clockwork, it visits me at the same time each day. Yet I remain defensive, unwilling to acknowledge the asphyxiating grip it has over me.

Alyssa appears from the bedroom we share. It’s clear she’s been awake for some time, the sleep long having abandoned her almond-shaped eyes.

“Morning,” I say, in as chipper a voice as I can muster.

“Hey,” she says, her voice flat. Be roommates with your best friend, they said. It’ll be like an endless sleepover, they said. 

I move aside with my untouched bagel, making space for Alyssa to retrieve a bowl and spoon from the cupboard.

“You have your fem studies lecture today, right?” I ask, looking to now fill the silence I so recently savored.

“Yeah, not until two though,” she says.

“Nice,” I reply, rummaging my mind for additional points of conversation. Coming up empty, nervous tics begin to emerge. Tap, tap, tap. My fingernails drum a tune on the table, and I reach for my phone, hoping it’ll provide a useful distraction. No new notifications.

I sigh, nibble on my breakfast. My eyes dart around, looking for an anchor to occupy my attention as I take larger and larger bites. Alyssa’s lavender pajama bottoms. Stained doilies on our dining table. Twelve shot glasses lined up above the stove.

The silver toaster catches my awareness, sitting idly in its own corner. Then I remember. The crumb tray. I give the appliance a good shake, then lean against the cool countertop, tucking my fingers into the handle at the bottom. Like a child about to peek into her stocking on Christmas day, I brace myself. Then I open it. My eyes focus and refocus in the low lighting, attempting to make sense of what sits within. I’m enveloped in a cocktail of feelings, hit with an intoxication that pulls me down. Disappointed, distraught, dismayed. Save for a few stragglers here and there, the tray is empty. 

2018

Sandhya bustles through the kitchen. The fluorescent lights cast a sheen upon her caramel-streaked hair, which she’s pulled into a loose ponytail. Her wrist moves up and down, maneuvering the chef’s knife through a beefsteak tomato. The sound of the knife against the chopping board reverberates across the off-white kitchen walls. Thun, thun, thun.

To her, that beefsteak is Dad’s head, I think.

Dad, meanwhile, hasn’t budged from his semi-supine position on the leather couch in the living room. Every so often I hear a crunch, as he reaches into the bowl of salted peanuts, which sits atop his distended belly. It’s followed by a slurp. His habit of self-soothing with a glass of Johnny Walker began as an occasional indulgence. Then a weekly occurrence. Now it’s a daily routine, more predictable than his circadian rhythm.

I sit at the marble-top dining table, gazing down at my novel. The words appear foreign, as if I’m reading Khmer. Or Hebrew. After enough time seems to have passed, I turn the page, keeping up the charade of engrossment. Yet, my attention flits around the room, bouncing beyond my control like corn kernels popping in a steel pan. My reptilian brain is on high alert, expecting a surprise attack at any moment. Don’t let your guard down, it whispers, leaving a trail of icy breath across my neck.

I’m not myself here. It’s as if, by stepping through the black gates of the residence, I shed my identity and don a corset that buckles my lungs into place. Thoughtless. Speechless. Breathless.

“This is your home,” Foi, Dad’s older sister, reminds me. But my inner compass points away, navigating me to where, I’m uncertain. Though I know it’s anywhere but here.

Sandhya’s voice slices through the cloud of animosity that hangs over the space. “Dinner is ready.”

I jump to attention, shutting my book and standing to shuffle the grey chairs into place. The dining table is scattered with random acquisitions of the week: a gas station receipt, breath mints, hot sauce packets from Taco Bell. I push them to the periphery. My eyes scan the surrounding space for something to occupy myself with. As if reading my mind, Sandhya nudges a loaf of bread toward me. Tucking it under my arm, I face the dozens of drawers and compartments that inhabit in the kitchen, a product of Dad’s recent renovations. Another aspect of his new life that feels extraneous.

I look for the toaster. I expect to see it in its usual spot, next to the empty yogurt containers. But it’s not there. My head becomes heavy as I sift through the remainder of the grey cabinets. Cockroach carcasses, mold-infested marmalade, a chipped piece of fine china. And what the hell is that stain? I pinch my nose in disgust. What was once orderly has succumbed to disarray. A sudden bout of melancholy cloaks me, wetting my eyes so that all becomes a blur.

“Wh-where’s the toaster?” I ask Sandhya, diverting my gaze to the wooden floor.

“Oh,” she pauses for a second, startled, as if I’ve pulled her from a trance. “It’s in the other pantry down the hall.” Sandhya slides into her seat at the dinner table, furthest from mine.

My breath slows as I approach the hallway. Dad gives me a buzzed smile as we cross paths. He reaches to pat my head. But I shift my body away and return his affection with a scowl, unable to muster the energy to mask my enmity.

I flip the switch on the left side of the pantry. The single bulb on the ceiling flutters for a few seconds, then casts out a dim light that bathes me in its warm glow. I scan the belongings that are stacked to the ceiling, that cover every square inch of the brown floor. The scents of my childhood waft over me, and I pause. Clove, ginger, turmeric. A smile begins to form at the corner of my mouth, then recedes. I overhear Dad and Sandhya in the kitchen, their shrill voices piercing my newfound bubble of peace.   

My concentration returns to the task at hand. Perched in its own forgotten crevice is the toaster. It’s the only unfamiliar item taking residence in the cramped space, the black exterior and shiny metallic knobs uncharacteristically contemporary in this closest of spices traded during the Silk Road era.

I grab hold of the toaster, allowing its weight to press into my arms. The gates of my past burst, and I succumb to the nostalgia for a brief second. What might it hold? Where might it take me? My shoulders relax as I’m filled with curiosity, with anticipation. Using the tips of my fingers, I pull the tray open. Clusters of chaos take up every square centimeter—nay, millimeter—of the 4x6 crumb collector. There are black burn spots, caked on granules that show no sign of surrendering their precious real estate. My eyes scan for a sign of recognition, for a familiar scent to communicate that all is well. Finding none, I slam the tray back into its place. And accept that it’s another thing in this world that’s damaged beyond salvation.

2021

The midmorning sun floods through the glass doors. My neighbor’s lawnmower gives off a low hum in the distance, helping to downplay the incessant chatter within my mind. I’m in the midst of a Zoom meeting. Except instead of being urged to sit in front of our screens, we are instructed to take a short walk. And to notice. To notice something that yearns to be seen; to be explained. 

I pace the kitchen of my townhouse, running my hands along the magnets that hold baby pictures and physical therapy exercises to the refrigerator. “Lake Tahoe, Vancouver, Seattle Aquarium,” I read aloud in a whisper.

The digital clock shows 10:33. Only four more minutes. A sigh escapes my lips as I feel the pressure rising in the distance like a tidal wave.

This is a mindfulness exercise, I remind myself with a chuckle. 

Three years in this home, and its contents begin to feel familiar. Familiarity, ironically a sensation with which I’m most unfamiliar. Yet I find myself reeled in by its presence, by its promise. A promise of peace, stability, and planting strong roots.      

I hear Mom’s footsteps upstairs. Watch as she saunters down the steps, humming to herself, which I know signals she is seeking momentary refuge in one of the taped off sections of her mind. Inaccessible, indescribable, integral.

Ready to resign myself to the magnets, I happen upon the ceramic plate she’s left in the sink earlier. My eyes follow it back to the toaster. The toaster. The toaster. The toaster.

I shuffle to its abode, where it’s plugged in beside the overpriced Costco blender I thought I’d use every day, but seldom do. My neck cranes forward, peering down into the twin toasting compartments. I allow my attention to linger there, taking in the tiny pieces that lay scattered throughout, savoring the bready scent that opens a cornucopia of possibility. 

The crumb tray slides out easily, yet I have a sudden impulse to close my eyes. To allow the moment to pass, to shift my observations elsewhere. But the secret—our secret—it beckons. And its pull is too strong for me to resist. Without further hesitation, I take it in, holding my breath like a pearl diver preparing to enter the deepest part of the ocean.

A meticulous medley of brown bits. Oddly uniform in their color, their consistency, their placement. My extremities tingle. I’m wrapped in a giddiness that feels out of proportion to the situation at hand.

Returning to my seat, I will the tray to retain its composition forever. To hold it all together. But I exhale, succumbing to the fact that it spins in a state of persistent flux. Never the same, an infinite combination of odds. Some painful, others rife with pleasure.

—Brina Patel

Mothers Perfume 

My mother wore vanilla fields perfume.

Her room always smelled of a field of flowers as my brother and I snuck into her bed under the cover of moonlight. The house felt too big, her scent ending in the middle of the staircase, never blooming in our upstairs rooms. It felt like her protection ended when we couldn’t smell her.

My blankets smell like vanilla, as moonlight steals in through the windows, I feel the covers shift as my son sneaks into my bed, crawling up into my arms as I pretend to be asleep.

The overstuffed blue couch, the coatrack on the kitchen wall…totems of her ever-vigilant love, watching over us as we crashed down the stairs on a carpet tube, slid on socked feet across the hardwood floor of the dining room, and even watched every song we jammed to on Guitar Hero. Her perfume would linger on our clothes while we were in school, a quick inhale to root us in safety.

Vanilla settles around my apartment, tickling the nose of those who walk by the coatrack in the hallway, and drapes the shoulders of anyone who sits on the couch. Gently nodding along to my son, as he plays Rock Band drums.

For a while, on Fridays, I could smell the faint linger of fried fish trying to overpower the vanilla, as the weight of work settled heavily onto my mothers’ shoulders.

Sometimes the vanilla doesn’t cover the scent of work, my heart heavy and limbs sore. I wonder if my son can smell it as he greets me at the door, a smile pushing its way out regardless of my fatigue, my tired arms reaching for him.

We didn’t know, my brother and I…as children often don’t, but when she changed her perfume, she threw a way a piece of her past. A piece she helped me remember as joyful, but for her, the memories are more complicated. I think, maybe now, I understand.

—Amber Pierson

The West Virginia Brown Dog

Rescue dogs in West Virginia come in all shapes, sizes, and breed configurations, but there’s one thing you’ll notice when you survey your choices: most of them are brown. More specifically, their hues trot along the color wheel, from ecru to tan to the color of wet dirt, but basically, what you’ve got is a mess of brown dogs to choose from.

I have one of these brown dogs. She’s dog number three. Does anybody really need three dogs? Probably not. Two is manageable, and we had two. Then, I got that assignment.

Admittedly, it was my idea to write about a local rescue called The Road Home Animal Project for a northern West Virginia publication. I asked the rescue president to bring a foster dog to our interview for a photo. She brought Minnie. Minnie wore a green tartan puffer coat. Her ears stuck out from the sides of her head like Yoda’s, and her deep, dark eyes sat large on her face. She trotted along with us at the park as we talked, sniffing the ground and winding her leash around our legs. She’d been in foster care for several months, and her siblings had been adopted. The rescue couldn’t understand why nobody wanted her.

By the end of our interview, someone did.

Minnie’s arrival unleashed chaos. Within weeks, our house was trashed, our carpets stained. My wooden spoons were splintered, and the remote control looked like it had been gnawed by an angry beaver. Sleeping in on Saturday mornings was out of the question, as was sleeping alone. (I’d assumed Minnie would sleep in her crate, but when I went back and read the “Where Puppy Will Sleep” clause in my puppy contract, it clearly said, “Puppy will sleep on human’s pillow, without exception.”)

What have I done, I asked myself. Life was so simple. Everybody was house-trained and nobody chased the cats and all the kids’ stuffed animals had heads. I yearned for my old, easy life as I shivered in the snow at 2am while she sniffed the ground, too distracted to pee. I mourned as I fired up the carpet steamer—again—and chased her through the supermarket parking lot when she leapt out of the car. I wondered why I thought I needed a puppy. Not that she kept her puppy body long—within months she’d gone from twiggy to barrel-shaped, and her head began to catch up with her ears, growing into a dense cube she used to whack our knees and butt the cats away from their bowls. She was adorable in that funny-looking way, but it was hard to figure out what Minnie was. On the inside.

Technically, Minnie’s a mixed breed, but here in the Mountain State, she’s what’s known as a West Virginia Brown Dog. The West Virginia Brown Dog may not be recognized by the American Kennel Club, but it’s a real thing. So real, in fact, that the Kanawha-Charleston Humane Association declared June 20, 2013 “West Virginia Brown Dog Day,” in honor of our state’s 150th birthday. Shelter visitors could adopt a West Virginia Brown Dog for $20. The ads didn’t include a formal description of the discounted canines, but they didn’t need to. West Virginians know one when we see it.

The West Virginia Brown Dog is smallish but sometimes biggish. It’s sturdy but possibly delicate or, conversely, a brutish lug. It’s not petite—unless it is—and it’s usually somewhere between Labrador- and chihuahua-sized. It probably has hound in its DNA, which you’ll see in the way it follows its nose, and pit bull, which you’ll see in the shape of its skull. The West Virginia Brown Dog is adaptable, loyal, ornery. It’s a well-tempered, squirrel-chasing counter-surfer. It rides in trucks and Subarus and canoes. It hikes, goes to the office, and sleeps on your furniture. You can dress it in a sweater, sports jersey, or puffer jacket; West Virginia Brown Dogs go with everything.

The rescue advertised Minnie as a miniature pinscher mix, and as she grew into weird proportions, we imagined what other breeds might lurk in her DNA. I saw beagle; my husband stuck with min pin. We both saw American pit bull terrier in her stoutness and clownish behavior. But the West Virginia Brown Dog recipe can have many ingredients, and puppies often come from a long line of other West Virginia Brown Dogs, so it can be difficult to identify which pure-bred ancestor claims responsibility for a block head or curly tail. Overcome by curiosity, we ordered a doggy DNA test, swabbed her cheek, and waited.

I think we’re fond of these brown dogs because we see ourselves in them. Not only in their scrappy, adaptable nature, but also because the ancestry of a West Virginia Brown Dog reads a lot like that of a multi-generation West Virginian. Swab our cheeks and you’ll find a heavy dose of Scots-Irish heritage, a good bit of German and English, and a smattering of Welsh, Swiss, Polish, Italian, Hungarian, and African American. You’ll also hear a variety of accents. In my hometown of Wheeling, many speak as Pittsburghers do: my grandfather, a Harvard-educated, fourth-generation Wheeling native, worshed his clothes and trimmed the booshes. In the central and southern parts of the state, you’ll hear the speech of Appalachia, traditionally referred to as Appalachian English. Some scholars have claimed it’s an archaic, Elizabethan throwback. In 1978, Dr. Cratis Williams of Appalachian State University wrote, “the dialect of the Appalachian people is the oldest living English dialect, older than the speech of Shakespeare, closer to the speech of Chaucer.” That’s debatable. More likely, the dialect evolved from the speech of those Scots-Irish ancestors, and variations exist within the different regions of Appalachia. North Carolinians sound noticeably different from West Virginians because, like West Virginia Brown Dogs, little about Appalachian English is uniform, not even the way Appalachians pronounce the word “Appalachia.”

Most Appalachians say Appa-latch-uh, and many feel that if you say it with a short a, you’re a true Appalachian; if you say it with a long a—as in, Appa-lay-shuh—you’re an outsider. Sharyn McCrumb, an Appalachian author from North Carolina, went as far as to say, “Appa-lay-shuh is the pronunciation of condescension, the pronunciation of the imperialists, the people who do not want to be associated with the place, and the pronunciation Appa-latch-uh means that you are on the side that we trust.” Not everyone agrees.

Appalachia North author Matthew Ferrence grew up in western Pennsylvania. One might not immediately think of Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia, eastern Ohio, and southern New York, as Appalachia, but, per the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), they are. In Ferrence’s memoir, he recalls grad school at West Virginia University, where he learned from other Appalachians that he’d been pronouncing the word incorrectly. The realization reframed what he thought he knew about himself and his fellow Pennsylvanians.

“…I grew up among Appalachians who pronounced ourselves as App-uh-lay-shuns. What does it mean when you grew up as a boy saying the word wrong? What does it mean when you’re from a place where everyone did?” Ferrence considers the notion that he and his fellow northern Appalachians were, therefore, “bad Appalachians, deniers of our heritage, willful self-exiles.” But Appalachian scholars, he writes, agree that there’s no correct pronunciation, despite what the McCrumb crowd crows in loud numbers.

The debate isn’t likely to be resolved, even in West Virginia. Like its signature brown dog, the state may be more easily defined by what it isn’t than what it is. And it’s not just the state’s inhabitants and their linguistics that are a mixed breed—it’s West Virginia itself. Because nobody is quite sure where we fit in this country, geographically speaking. Not even us.

West Virginia is the only state that lies entirely within Appalachia (as defined by the ARC). On an extremely long day trip, you could travel through South Central Appalachia, Central Appalachia, North Central Appalachia, and arrive in my neck of the woods in Northern Appalachia, having never left the state. Four of the five ARC-defined regions cover West Virginia territory, making us an Appalachian Brown Dog, too.

In terms of region, the U.S. Census Bureau lists West Virginia as a Southern Atlantic state. However, the “west” in West Virginia came about because we chose to leave the south. Still, southern West Virginians tend to identify with the south anyway, while northern West Virginians feel like northerners. True northerners would probably disagree; culturally, West Virginia couldn’t be more different from New York or New England. So, when asked, we offer a vague quip about being the northernmost of the southern states and the southernmost of the northern states and leave it at that.

In terms of latitude, we’re too mountainous, our land too crinkled by plate tectonics and erosion, to be considered central, like our immediate neighbors in Ohio. Some—like the Bureau of Labor Statistics—call us a mid-Atlantic state, but the foreboding Allegheny Front shields us from the busyness and density of the other mid-Atlantic states, and we remain a quiet vacation spot for D.C. residents. The Federal Trade Commission labels us “east central,” with Ohio and Michigan. The US Office of Management and Budget lumps eastern West Virginia counties in with cities like Cumberland, Maryland; Alexandria and Arlington, Virginia; and Washington, D.C. itself, for statistical purposes. How could we possibly know where we belong? The only thing we truly know is that none of these out-of-state places feel much like West Virginia.

Something changes when we leave West Virginia. Regional differences within the state cease to divide us. Our home is the common thread in our mixed-breed DNA, the reason why, when ex-pats and college kids return, they inevitably take a photo of the “Wild & Wonderful” sign at the state line and post it with a hashtag like #countryroadstakemehome. Beyond our borders, we’re all just West Virginians, defined by our inability to fit anywhere else.

West Virginia is the mutt. The proud brown dog that declared independence in 1863 and continues to do so. Don’t call us western Virginia. We aren’t Pittsburgh or D.C. We’re West-by-God Virginia, locked in by rivers and mountains, curving and windy and infuriatingly impassible without a map and Dramamine. We like our hot dogs with mustard and slaw and our actual dogs vague and mud colored. Like Minnie.

The results of Minnie’s DNA test surprised us. I was wrong—she isn’t beagle. She is miniature pinscher and pit bull. The other ingredients included Golden retriever, chihuahua, American Eskimo dog, boxer, pug, and something the lab calls a supermutt, which may be American bulldog and/or Cesky terrier. There’s a lot of room for uncertainty, and we never know which breed is causing the behaviors we laugh at. Certainly, Minnie wouldn’t be what she is without those breeds, but even if we could define her, each West Virginia Brown Dog is more than the sum of its twisting chromosomes.

When I started including #WVBrownDog in social media postings, I discovered other West Virginia Brown Dog owners whose loving companions look like mine. They’re out there. And while some states have chosen an official breed, as North Carolina did with the Plott hound, the West Virginia senate adopted a resolution in 2020 to designate an official state canine: the humble shelter dog. They are brown. They are motley—mutts born to mutts born to mutts. The breed standard, if one existed, would list but one essential characteristic: a loyal heart bred in West Virginia.

—Laura Jackson Roberts

Impossible Math

On a fine spring day in 2017, my brother-in-law pulled off a busy thoroughfare and came to a stop under a non-descript bridge. I’ve been to the spot, since then. The road feels like it’s about to break free of the city and the vehicles whip by at highway speed. He found a refuge just a few feet away from the traffic. It’s an ugly spot, but one of those places you’d be thankful for if you had a flat tire or needed cover in a storm.

It was a Friday and Bruce had a ten o’clock tee time. It had rained lightly in the night, but the day was bright. By late afternoon, he and my sister would be on their way to visit my husband and me, at our acreage. But he didn’t even make it to golf. The details are hard to piece together.

His phone lay on the passenger seat, unused; he’d missed his exit to the golf course. All we really know is what the dash cam on the semi-truck tells us: he stepped out of his grey Toyota and ran straight into traffic. Footage from the news that night zooms in on his Birkenstock, a classic news technique—to drive home the loss—one I might have considered using myself back in my journalism days.

The police report said he died from blunt force trauma. But, eight months later, the chief medical examiner made the final ruling, what we already knew to be true—adult male, age 49, suicide. Suicide—just one little word, a word that I’ve now pulled apart and teased to bits.

Webster-Merriam’s dictionary states suicide is the act or an instance of taking one’s own life voluntarily and intentionally. Bruce was one of 4157 people in Canada whose death fit this definition in 2017. Accepting that a loved one is never to be seen again is hard enough. But I was about to learn that looking for signs of a voluntary or intentional death was a special kind of torture.

A police officer arrived at my sister’s front step by late morning. My niece hadn’t left for work yet. Over a hundred miles away, I got the call at my desk. The officer had the right inflection in his voice, his words as kind as the horrific scene could allow. Despite that, his training didn’t stand up to the wailing in the background. Eventually, I snapped at him. “Pass the phone to my sister.”

Her voice seemed to hit the ground, and all she managed was a small, “Oh Mish.”

From the beginning, the therapists discouraged re-enacting the days leading up to Bruce’s death. “The trauma’s going to make you want to keep revisiting what happened,” they said, “but you’ll never know why, and it won’t bring Bruce back.” They were right, of course, but it didn’t stop me. I thought persistence could reveal Bruce’s intention, make the definition of suicide fit.

As early as elementary school, I ordered my world with stories. With one leg dangling over the metal bar that attached desk to seat, I secretly gave numbers character traits: in my imaginings the number three had been the villain, two and four, smart identical twins, while six was the hero—and eight, no one liked eight. Eight had been the bully. With my number people, I’d weaved adventures and circumnavigated the dry mechanics of math. I was terrible at math and continued to be terrible at math. But until Bruce died, I’d thought words were more reliable, that I could organize them into something resembling perfection.

One of the first calls we made was to Bruce’s therapist to cancel his upcoming appointment. He’d been seeing her regularly and a medication review with a psychiatrist had still been a month away. Secretly, I’d hoped she’d say, “yes, it’s terribly sad but I can explain it to you.” But she didn’t say anything like that. Instead, she’d disintegrated into apologies, genuinely shocked. Bruce had slipped through her net of experience. The emergency room hadn’t caught it either, when Bruce had tried to get his medications looked at sooner. Collectively, the professionals had swung and missed: it’s easy enough to do when depression is estimated to be a risk factor for 90-95% of suicides, but only 20% of people with depression ever consider ending their life, and even fewer attempt it.

The experts couldn’t point to Bruce’s intention to die, so like a fool, I went looking for it. 

I started at the beginning.

My sister and I had known Bruce since elementary days. We grew up with a slew of kids, a homogenous and unruly gang of professors', doctors’, and artists’ children who, in between piano lessons, hockey or swim practices, ran wild through our university neighbourhood. We rode BMX bikes and stole Dutch potato chips from Sunlight Foodland. We travelled in packs to the forbidden tobogganing hill, the one with the deadly wooden fence at the bottom. Later, the spot doubled as a good place to try smoking and putting our hands down each other’s pants. If any of us had childhood scars, our middle-class privilege had encased them well.

After I’d scoured the past, I dissected the months leading up to Bruce’s death. Could I piece together if Bruce had been one of the 48% who spend less than ten minutes between the time they think of acting and attempting a suicide? But I came up empty. There was no smoking gun. No note. No trail of crumbs to disaster. Almost a year in, I was more lost than ever.

Three days after the anniversary of Bruce’s suicide, on what would have been Bruce’s 50th birthday, Kate Spade hanged herself. Three days later, Anthony Bourdain missed dinner and then breakfast at his hotel in France. The coroner ruled his hanging “an impulsive act.” How did the coroner know this? No one had given us the gift of certainty.

I was glued to the analysis as media tried to reconcile the immense appetites, curiosities, talents and privilege of these celebrities with their intention to die. They didn’t ask, but the question was never far away. How could the bad have outweighed the good?

This is the refrain of suicide, even for regular folks. “But they had such….” Fill in the blanks. Try to do the math. But the math never adds up. For those left behind, the bad never outweighs the good. Suicide forces us into this impossible math, this balance sheet in the sky, because the definition tells us that someone made a choice to leave us, and that even if that choice was fleeting, it was a choice. Because without intentionality, what would suicide be—just another kind of accident?

Sometimes I look at the twitter message the city police issued that morning: Stoney Tr SE is closed at Chapparral Blvd while we investigate a serious collision. Expect major delays in area. A serious collision—oh, how many times I have wished, for my sister and the girls that, if Bruce had to die, it could have been an accident. This could have spared them the deep unknowing.

In recent years, there have been efforts to acknowledge some of the harm in the language of suicide. There’s a slow moving away from the Christian-Judeo harshness of the term “committing suicide”—it’s association with sin. But we should also reject how loudly it speaks to intent. I accept it’s a familiar old marble that rolls from our mouths so easily. But commitment is a strong word. One we normally reserve for marriage, crimes and adultery, things that arguably require consequences to be weighed and hotel rooms to be booked. Many suicides don’t meet this bar. And when someone rejects what comes so easily in favor of “died by suicide” or even “took his own life,” I find myself spared the trial of looking for Bruce’s intention.

As a seasoned English teacher, Bruce appreciated a good grading system. He didn’t oppose pointing out who did well, and who did badly. But, even so, my head spins when I think about how if Bruce had somehow survived, he may have heard at his bedside that he’d had a “failed attempt.” And, mind-bogglingly, some now give him the dubious label of a “successful attempt.” I think it’s safe to say Bruce would have steered us toward the use of the more neutral options of fatal and non-fatal attempts.

I don’t need the vocabulary of suicide to be perfectly curated, and I’m used to seeing people struggle to reach this impossible standard when they speak to me. Most of the time, I can cringe and move on when oversimplifications and speculation are loosely slung around me. And when I hear someone make an honest effort, even a fumbling poorly executed one, it feels as if they have hooked a towrope onto my broken car. It's welcome relief, in a terrible mess.

In the end, a story saved me from my own terrible mess—a mess where Bruce was becoming obscured, his humanity wiped out, under the glare of my spotlight; a mess where knowing Bruce’s past, or his history with depression and anxiety, wasn’t ever going to help me understand his acute crisis. For this, I needed to tell myself a story:

In my bedroom, flames lick up the walls; great tongues of heat rise and forcibly find their way down my throat. My hair singes and curls at the ends, turning my head into an acrid ball of fern fronds. I can’t get to the door. For a split second, I freeze. It’s flight or fight time. In two swift leaps, I go from burning in the room to jumping out the window. The flames chase me. I think of no one and nothing except for the heat. I die on impact. I don’t burn.

Through the lens of the story, I now see Bruce’s suicide not as an act of intention, but rather, as a crisis of self-preservation. I believe Bruce would have felt he was running not towards danger, but towards safety. And, as grim as it sounds, I believe if you are unlucky enough to be trapped in a fire, you will also jump. If you get caught in this moment, there will be no place for remembering, weighing consequences, seeing a future, or appreciating the greatness in your life. Choice will have long since passed you by—and you won’t even know this. You will only live if help or luck intervenes.

Before Bruce left through the attached garage, he did what we’ve all done a thousand times: cursory goodbyes for his wife and daughter, then out the door. He would have put his golf bag in the trunk, knowing his oldest daughter also had a bag packed, and was about to get on a ferry to meet up with friends and celebrate her acceptance to medical school. There weren’t any last-minute calls or texts for his daughters. This is the intensity of fire.

Even children don’t get proper goodbyes in a fire.

The last time I saw Bruce was two months before he died. We were staying the night to pick up our son from an early morning flight. We’d had an appropriately boring mid-week evening watching the Oilers botch another hockey game, and then over coffee the next morning, Bruce asked me about what books I was reading. It was our connection—the English teacher turned vice-principal, and the journalist turned wannabe writer. I can still see Bruce reaching for his book and showing me the title, but I hadn’t been listening and I still can’t recall it. Excited to see our son, I said my cursory goodbye and went to the airport.

I don’t do the impossible math anymore. I see it for what it is: reductive and speculative. Instead, I listen for new words, words that are full, complex and kind. Words that speak to a kind of math that works—a math that is inherently about Bruce.  

a man who loved others + a man who was loved = a life that is > than how he died

—Michelle Spencer

fiction

Facts in Peoria

It didn’t matter that her hands were small, nor that the park was full of strangers that morning: men on benches reading the obituaries of other men, women carrying grocery sacks who looked like the women on TV shows, the same celery leaves protruding, the same weary expressions. She had come to choose wildflowers to give to her mother on her birthday, and mornings were best. Drops of dew still clung to the Arrowhead asters and Blue Flag irises. Her mother loved flowers, and all of her vases were empty, had been empty since her father’s accident two years before. He was confined to the couch or his wheelchair, and did little but watch game shows and fill in the squares of the crossword puzzle in the Peoria Journal Star.

The accident hadn’t been his fault. One couldn’t blame the falling pig, either, as harmless in death as it was while living. Just a weighty thing. No, that distinction went to his co-worker at the meat processing plant, Jim Stillwater, who often showed up drunk for second shift. That afternoon he’d been too drunk to operate the crane mechanism that brought the beasts down for final inspection prior to slaughter. Final inspection meant the sniff test, the look-over, the injection in the abdomen, and the purple stamp that read PASSED. This particular pig—in life—had responded to the name Fritz at a farm down in Cairo. Fritz had paralyzed her father from the waist down. But Fritz was not the culprit, and her father and Stillwater were still tied up in court after two years. Her father wanted two million dollars. Stillwater was bankrupt. The plant had fancy lawyers from Chicago. The lawsuit might last years, they all suspected.

So, with Fritz long turned to sausage, her father tuning into Hollywood Squares, Stillwater probably sipping the day’s first beer over at Hodge’s, and her mother checking groceries at the Peoria Get-n-Go, she went to pick flowers. The next day—a Saturday—would be her mother’s 35th birthday, and she wanted to make it special. She had no money to spend, of course, but there were numerous empty vases strewn around the house and she figured she could fill at least two of them. That would give her mother solace, and solace—and perhaps a good massage after standing up for eight hours at the Get-n-Go—were exactly what her mother needed. I can’t do much for her, but I can do this, she thought. Her father’s workmen’s comp check would cover the cake, and maybe the neighbors would bring over casseroles and Pepsi. There was going to be a party. A party needs flowers.

Among the strangers arrayed around the park that summer morning was one who looked familiar. The school janitor? No. Uncle Eddie from Omaha? No. Redd the Plumber who fixed the bathtub on Easter? No. Then she recognized him. It was Stillwater, wearing his plant shirt with the strange slogan on its pocket: “Live High on the Hog.” He carried a coffee thermos in one hand and a steel lunchpail in the other. He called her over. “Hey, Missy, c’mon over here and say hi to Uncle Jim.” Her name wasn’t Missy, but she went over anyway. “Pickin’ flowers for your pretty mother, I suppose. Well, what a fine little lady you are for that.”  

“Tomorrow’s her birthday.”

 “I know that. What I don’t know is why your daddy ain’t here helpin’ you out. A little thing like you might get lost in a park this size. Mind if I give you a hand?”

The girl didn’t know what to say, so Stillwater hovered around her for five minutes as she plucked and nestled, nestled and plucked. The air was beginning to warm up. Thunderstorms were in the forecast for later that afternoon.

“Irises mean hope, you know, and these little asters mean faith. Every flower has a meaning, just like every body has a soul distinct from all the other souls of all of the other bodies. Even pigs have souls. You daddy’s the only person I know who ain’t got one, and that’s a shame. It’s the God’s truth and it’s a shame.” Stillwater was warming up, though he didn’t appear to be drunk. Maybe a little tipsy, that’s all. “I never meant for that pig to fall. It was faulty machinery and the damn plant knows that too. I wouldn’t harm your daddy. Your mother’s too fine to lose a fellow like him. You just go back home and tell him that. I meant your daddy no harm at all, swear by Jesus. Swear by my mother’s old Bible. No, little girl, I ain’t no killer.” She was about to run away, but he continued. “It’s the damn plant. They don’t give a rat about what happens on the floor. It’s all the meat to Arizona, New Mexico, that’s all they care about. You tell him that. You tell him.”

Back home, her father kept his eyes dead-set on Bob Barker and The Price Is Right. He looked pitiful to her, with a half-eaten plate of eggs on the couch and his arms curled up in a pillow obtusely. She wanted to tell him what Stillwater said, but she had other things to do. She had to call Maude’s Bakery about the cake and tell the neighbors about the party. There would be a party because there had to be. There’d be a party because her mother deserved it. She was turning 35, and that was a fact. She was going to drink a glass of Pepsi with ice cubes and have a plate of green bean casserole. Those were facts. That’s what was going to happen.

—Carl Boon

Sunny Sundays

Ava opens the blinds to let the light in because that’s all that makes sense to do. What her mother Rose always did. Does. She looks at her mother now, pallid skin fading into the chintz fabric of the chair, that hideous chair.

Can something so ephemeral, teetering on the edge of consciousness, be described in present tense?

A cascade of dust particles rain down as Ava pulls the blind slats slack. She watches them spin in late afternoon sunlight across the floor, attempting to fill some of the empty spaces in a house that has always been too big for the two of them. Ava can almost see Rose’s large hands throwing various curtains open with one, violent jab, darting from room to room until she had attacked each one. Sunlight, Rose used to say to a tiny Ava once the snot on her face had dried and the sobs became whimpers, cures any ailment. You could go mad from the darkness. Ava used to wonder if it was as simple as that, if they had left New York because the tall buildings too often blocked the sun from hitting their Brooklyn stoop. In their oversized Connecticut house, the sun knew no bounds. On summer days it felt as though the sun never set, burning through the spotted windows, saturating the house with a sticky heat, leaving the floorboards swollen like overwatered plants. Ava would dance through the many rooms tinged yellow-white.

She waited to feel happy.

“Mom,” Ava says loudly as the last of the dust hits the floor. “It’s Sunday.” Ava wonders if she’ll be caught in this lie, or if the two women are floating so far from reality that the days are starting to tumble backwards over one another.

“Get me my purse,” the body that now inhabits Rose says to no one in particular. Yet the phrase rings with the smallest bud of familiarity, as if she were misremembering a line she once had to utter in a school play.

Sundays were for them, like they are for most people, steeped in rituals. Ava remembers the slow drip of the mornings; the sunlight first filtering in, followed by the smooth warble of a Sinatra album coming in distorted through the scratchy speakers of their old stereo. A lazy spiral of coffee steam would eventually drift through the air. Rose would dress in her version of “Sunday best”, donning crisp pantsuits in harsh colors and unforgiving stilettos that screeched against linoleum. Ava would grumble her way into a dress and quieter shoes. The pair would stand out among the throngs of sweatpants and starchy jerseys, pacing the hospital-white corridors bathed in a faint neon glow from the various store signs that surrounded them. They would squeeze through the narrow spaces between department store clothing racks, Ava trying to escape her mother’s lectures on different fabric types. They would pause at the little glass jewelry cart because Ava loved to hold the glass beads up to the fluorescent lights, watching their shiny translucent surfaces expand with beams color. They would lick cinnamon sugar off soft pretzels while creating backstories for the other families that, like them, passed large chunks of time away at the Bradford Mall. They would, in these moments, feel normal.

Ava wears sweatpants today, waiting for Rose to say something in protest. She doesn’t. Even Rose is only dressed in a plain skirt and a pale blue sweater. They drive to the mall in silence, enjoying the emptiness of what is, in a distant reality, Wednesday afternoon streets. When they enter the overly air-conditioned mall, Ava misses the pairs of eyes that would pause over their formal attire.

It had been a false Sunday once before. Ava remembers hands digging into her shoulders and white stars cartoonishly popping in front of her eyes. Being shaken. There was an awful taste in Ava’s mouth, like dried, curdled milk. She could not tell if it was the early morning, right before the sky wears its navy blue silk, or still the middle of the night. She fumbled for her lamp, the one that swelled with floating red balloons when turned on. She then saw her mother’s face being worn by someone else, her blue eyes rimmed red and looking hollow, her mouth just a violet slash in the middle of her face, nostrils flared, chest flushed.

It’s Sunday. Bradford’s having a huge sale, and we have to beat the crowds, Rose insisted, her eyes flying in their sockets like windshield wipers.

It’s Tuesday, Ava said softly, I have my presentation on Teddy Roosevelt in the morning. Go back to bed, Mom, the mall’s closed.

No, Rose yelled, stamping her foot. Car. Now.

Ava didn’t get dressed, didn’t brush her teeth. She padded down to the driveway in fleece slippers and a matching set of dessert-themed pajamas, the rancid acidity still in her mouth. Her head buzzed against the incessant chirping of crickets. Rose touched the printed chocolate chip cookie on Ava’s shoulder. I’ll get you a new matching set, she smiled, and in the light of the car, Ava could see mauve lipstick stuck on her teeth.

When the kind police officer, arriving after Rose’s yanks at the locked doors set off the mall’s alarm, found the two of them milling in the floodlights of the parking lot, he pulled Ava aside. He crouched down, making himself much shorter than Ava, who was tall for her age. He smiled gently. How old are you, Ava?

I’m ten, Ava said, straightening. Double digits.

And has this happened before? Your mom taking you places in the middle of the night?

Not a lot. Just to the town’s fall harvest festival before the lights had come on. And to a school holiday concert that had already happened months before.

Do you feel safe living with your mom, Ava?

Ava paused, wondering whether this was a trick question, like the multiple choice questions where the answers were A, B, C, or “All of the Above.” Ava’s teacher told her to stop choosing only “All of the Above” as an answer, though it was the most tempting answer choice for all the questions. Her teacher, after hearing where the cops found Ava and Rose at four in the morning, would tell Ava she could do her Teddy Roosevelt presentation next week.

Of course I feel safe. She’s my mom.

Ava looks at her mom now, vacantly staring at their pretzel stand, no recognition at all. Ava wonders if it was easier for Rose to transition into fading memories when she already had a fractured mind.

The thing Ava always hated about Bradford Mall was that it lacked a large fountain, like they have in malls in the movies. She reaches into the comically large pockets of her sweatpants, feeling for loose change. She extracts a penny and a dime and tosses them into the trough of the drinking fountain. Rose says nothing of this strange activity, and instead walks ahead, walking toward something she doesn’t know. The coins sit lamely in the shallow basin, un-wishable.

—Melissa Feinman

The Waiting Room

The clock says I’ve been here for two hours. Past the sliding doors leading to the emergency ward, everything is covered in plastic. The doctor hasn’t returned. In the back corner by a six-month-old pile of Pottery Barn, a chunky little white kid slides halfway off his chair and taps his tiny feet without any music. He isn’t tapping to a set rhythm, and there isn’t much purpose unless he’s trying to get more steps to register on an old-school pedometer clipped to his belt buckle. But who wears those anymore? I can envision an elderly man with high blood pressure doing the same, shaking away at it while waiting for a triple-cheeseburger with a side-order of truffle fries at the corner diner. These two images—boy and man—conflate into one.

I see him returning home and lying to his wife about how he thinks these walks are getting easier. In my daydream, this elderly boy-man is three-and-a-half feet tall, wearing an oversized flannel shirt, yet maintains a geriatric, patchy hairline, and lifts himself on a stepping stool to peck his wife on the cheek as she finishes loading the dishwasher. He kindly refuses one of her kale smoothies for lunch—doesn’t have the appetite—while showing her the 5,000 steps he fabricated. The daydream falls away, and I’m back in this waiting room, looking around at all the worried, tearful eyes, and can’t help but feel ashamed for being so absent.

Everyone is scanning each other, knowing that since they are here and not in the other room, they’re waiting for somebody to come out—or not. Everyone takes assessments of each other’s emotions; all in the eyes since we’re all wearing masks now. We, myself included, are all determining what might be the appropriate demeanor to perform—should we let our worries bubble over? Turn over some chairs? Yell at the desensitized front-desk nurse? Or should we keep everything to ourselves since everyone else seems to be doing that? I can’t be certain because, as I said, we’re all wearing masks. Some are kind enough to nod, give a squint implying the tight curl of a smile. I look away, slightly embarrassed for staring too long, yet grateful for their perceived kindness.

I’m sure every one of us at some point today caught ourselves staring at this chunky little white kid dissociating from what’s going on, drowning out the cries, the gasps, the do-somethings flying around this emergency waiting room with his tap-tap-tapping. I am sure we’ve given him many lives to distract ourselves. A dance number for a grade school talent show. A village idiot hopping over a bonfire to ward off pestilence. A doctor coming through those sliding doors with better news.

—Matt Gillick

Club Cherry

If she walked through the door, she would no longer be a teenager.

OK, she would be. A glass door leading into a humid roller rink wouldn’t suddenly age anyone, not physically anyway, not by more than a few seconds, but Shauna was pretty convinced that the entryway in front of her was a portal to adulthood.

Her outfit had been planned for weeks, a smiley face turquoise tube top and ripped, light-wash jeans with red-and-white stripes racing down each side. This was the night she doused herself in Gap Dream body spray and slipped her older sister Becky’s tattoo choker around her neck. This was the moment she had been waiting for since eighth grade started.

This was Teen Night at Club Cherry. 

As soon as they got to the club, Shauna’s best friends, Jenny and Jane, bounced through the door, self-assured as any two girls who had turned 14 with three sophomore soccer players’ numbers in their backpacks would be. Shauna was still 13, four months shy of Teen Night’s 14-18 policy, but as far as she knew, no one carded at the doors of Club Cherry. What would she show them anyway, her Thomas Jefferson Middle School ID?  

What she would do, she decided six days ago, was walk right onto the dance floor with her head held high as “Barbie Girl” blasted on the speakers and her lip gloss gleamed under the club’s ceiling of unevenly placed disco balls. If they weren’t playing “Barbie Girl”? Then she would sing Aqua songs in her head. It didn’t matter because she was doing this and everything was going to be perfect.

By day, the Cherry Lane Roller Rink was like every other suburban skate complex: worn-down carpets butting up to a cement-walled, slick wooden rink, faded neon paint clinging to the walls, sugary slushies and greasy French fries served next to the counter where kids borrowed skates, or rollerblades if you could balance like a normal person, which Shauna could not. Jenny and Jane owned matching rollerblades, dark gray with bright pink-and-turquoise triangles and swirls and purple wheels. Shauna borrowed Jane’s pair exactly once. While attempting to skate in a straight line to the end of Jane’s block, she shook in a sort-of forward direction for seven seconds, then fell down. She scraped both her knees and her right elbow and Jane laughed and Shauna immediately vowed to never rollerblade again. 

There were no roller skates or rollerblades or any other wheeled objects for Shauna to make a fool of herself with tonight, because on weekends, the complex transformed into Club Cherry, a teen nightclub frequented by every eighth grader and high schooler within a 10-mile radius. Becky had been a regular at Club Cherry, which meant Shauna wasn’t allowed to go near the place. But then three weeks ago, Becky didn’t close her bedroom door all the way, and Shauna snuck peaks at her sister lying on the floor, her feet propped up against her bed. Becky was twirling the cord of her hamburger phone around her hand, and she wouldn’t stop whining to one of her friends, complaining that the club was so over because the only people who showed up anymore were losers who didn’t have fake IDs and wouldn’t go into the city to the real clubs. Or eighth graders.

With no sister there to publicly question her existence, Shauna felt free for the first time to step onto the hallowed floor of Club Cherry. She looked around the parking lot to make sure no one was paying attention to her, which of course they weren’t, and squished her forehead against the front door. It was cloudy inside from fog machines and cheap cologne, but she spotted Jenny’s outline talking to a couple of short freshman guys from their neighborhood. Jenny and Jane walked with the confidence of girls who knew every inch of Victoria’s Secret by heart. Shauna was better acquainted with Wet Seal’s layout. This also explained why she was the only one currently wearing pants, which for the evening housed her school ID, her and Jenny’s lip glosses, two quarters, and the number to a taxi company, in case it was too dark or scary to walk back home later.

Shauna squeezed her arms against her sides to keep her tube top from slipping down and stared at the neon sign hanging above the front entrance. Only the “Cherry” part blinked red with a sad hum, like it was biding its time before fading into oblivion.

The door swung open and Shauna jumped back to avoid getting smacked in the face.

“Get your ass in here!” Jane yelped.

Jenny edged around Jane and bounced into the parking lot. She grabbed Shauna by the elbow, nearly tipping her over. 

“There are 10th graders inside,” Jenny whispered.

Before she left the house, Shauna ditched her Adidas Superstars in favor of her sister’s matte, maroon Doc Martens. These boots were made for ass kicking and melting into the cement, either of which would’ve come in handy as Jane left the safety of the door frame to fix Shauna. It felt like Jane was staring into her soul, but Shauna was pretty sure her soul consisted of nothing but Teen Beat and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so there wasn’t much to see.

“Chill,” Jane said, brushing a hair off her Shauna’s shoulder. “You definitely look 14. Maybe even 15.”

Shauna doubted that. Maybe a deep breath would help. That’s what people always said, right? And what better time than the present to test that sage advice out. Shauna sucked a shallow breath in through her nose and exhaled hard enough to scare Puff the Magic Dragon. She linked her hands through her friends’ arms and flashed her best fake smile.

“Let’s do this,” Shauna declared.

As soon as the air conditioning hit them, Jane and Jenny shook their arms free, waved to the bouncer, and bolted for the dance floor. Shauna stood in place, praying the bouncer believed she was 14. Blinking the room into recognition, she spotted a manager in his office to her right, chewing on a pencil as he smirked at two blonde girls sitting on the other side of his desk. The bouncer kicked the bottom of his stool, keeping the beat to Ace of Base’s “Beautiful Life.” Straight ahead, Jenny twirled her hair and Jane bit her lip as the short dudes from before held their hands out towards them like acne-scarred Frankensteins. To Shauna’s left, three boys fought over the Bart controller on The Simpsons arcade machine, and a group of giggling girls in ringer tees, patchwork flares, and Puma sneakers sat next to them on the skating checkout desk, kicking away any underclassman who skirted their territory en route to the bathroom. 

Shauna squinted her eyes, aiming her gaze at the redhead in the group. She recognized the cherry-covered baby tee the girl was wearing, and the cobalt Pumas attached to the blonde next to her, with soles covered in heart doodles, had definitely been strewn across her family’s entryway last week. Those were her sister’s friends, and in the center of the iron-on patches and denim and hairspray was her sister Becky, an unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth. 

Shauna beelined for the rink just as Becky titled her head towards the door. She hopped off the counter and her pack followed her outside, obedient as always.

Becky was supposed to be at the movies tonight and she claimed to hate this place and she definitely, definitely didn’t smoke. Shauna’s eyes darted around the dance floor, hunting for Jenny and Jane. They had moved on from the Frankensteins to a couple of soccer players whose numbers they didn’t have. They were like ninjas, if ninjas only had eyes for hot, older boys to make out with. Stomping towards her friends, Shauna wondered if she too could become a boy-catching ninja.

She screeched to a stop behind the guys and tapped them on the shoulders. “Super sorry, but I need to borrow these two,” Shauna said, grabbing Jenny and Jane’s hands and dragging them towards the exit.

“What the hell, Shauna!” Jane squeaked.

“Yeah, they were cute! Like, really cute!” Jenny added.

“I promise they will still be cute in, like, two minutes, but we’ve gotta go outside,” Shauna said.

“Are there cuter boys outside?” Jenny asked.

Shauna twirled around to face her friends. “Jenny! Becky is here and she has a cigarette and it’s freaking me out and I need you to not be like—” Shauna flailed her arms around. “—this.”

Jane looked shocked and amused. She patted Shauna on the head. “A cigarette, eh?”

Shauna pushed Jane’s hand away. “Yes. So, let’s go.”

“Let’s,” Jane said, stepping in front of Shauna to lead the way. Jenny quickened her stride to catch up with Jane.

At the edge of the parking lot, a row of coupes was lined up along the gravel, pointed towards the narrow row of trees that separated the property from an old folk’s home. Becky commanded the group, leaning against a white Mustang, cracking jokes at the expense of everyone still inside the rink. Shauna tip-toed towards them as best as she could in clunky boots, getting a few feet away before yelling her sister’s name. Becky’s eyes opened wide like an anime cartoon. Her cigarette fell out of her mouth and into a shallow puddle.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Becky grumbled, picking up her wet Marlboro Light. She clenched her mouth, trying to shake the cigarette dry. Jane and Jenny flanked Shauna, eagerly eyeing the soaked butt. 

Becky slowly lifted her head, one eyebrow raising as she laser focused on her little sister. “You’re not supposed to be here, Shauna!”

“And you’re not supposed to be smoking, Becky!” Shauna yelled back.

“I’m not,” Becky said, whipping out a fresh Marlboro and lighting it. Shauna had never seen an episode of The Twilight Zone, but she was pretty sure she was in one. That or she was about to become an after school special. Maybe Jennifer Love Hewitt would play her. That was something to look forward to when she was grounded for the next six months, because there was no way Becky wasn’t getting to their mom first. She wasn’t sure exactly what she had done wrong, but she knew it was something.

“You want one?” Becky’s redheaded friend asked, flashing three cigarettes in front of the eighth graders.

“She doesn’t,” Becky answered.

“We do!” Jenny grabbed two cigs before Becky could say no again. Jane scrounged through her minuscule purse to find the pale pink lighter she could finally use on something other than incense. 

Shauna plucked the last one from the offering hand. Her very first cigarette. Health class VHS tapes filled with images of disgusting lungs and tracheotomies flashed through her mind. Jenny and Jane coughed and giggled with the older girls as Shauna rolled her cigarette back and forth across the palm of her hand, her fingers burning in anticipation.

Becky blew smoke out of the side of her mouth like the coolest girl Shauna had ever seen, which she was, despite fiery eyes wishing they could bore a hole through the center of Shauna’s skull. A lighter appeared in front of Shauna, softening her features with a yellow glow, and her grandpa’s image flashed through her mind.

Shauna and Becky’s grandfather smoked a pack a day. He coughed after every third sentence and his sweaters smelled like mothballs caught in a campfire. Becky never smelled like burnt mothballs. She smelled like Baby Soft and cherry Lipsmackers.

Becky cracked her neck from side to side. Jenny and Jane hadn’t hesitated like this. Orange embers glowed at the end of their glittery lips. 

Jane snapped at Shauna and waved her lighter.

“Now what?” Shauna asked.

“Stick the cigarette in your mouth and breathe in,” Jane said. Becky’s friend nodded behind her.

Shauna looked at Becky and inhaled. Before she could wonder if she was supposed to hold her breath or exhale quickly, Shauna doubled over, coughing her way to what she assumed was a quick, early death. Becky took the cigarette from her hand.

“You guys go inside. I need to talk to Shauna,” Becky told her friends. “Take Jenny and Jane with you.” 

Rather than protest, Jane flicked her mostly full cigarette onto the gravel, suffocating the lit end with her chunky platform heel, just as she watched Becky do. She straightened out her faux leather skirt before pulling Shauna’s top up a centimeter. Jane nodded, admiring her work before she and Jenny tailed Becky’s friends into the club.

Becky pulled Shauna by the belt loop towards the last car in the row, mostly hidden from plain view by rock piles from the demolished building across the lot. She stepped back and looked her sister up and down, taking in every item Shauna had stolen from her room.

“Why are you here, Shauna?” Becky asked.

“It’s Teen Night!” Shauna said. She was feeling a little dizzy, but a good kind of dizzy, the kind she imagined was just like being blissfully high.

“This place is lame. You shouldn’t be here,” Becky said.

“But you come here. Why can’t I?” Shauna asked.

“You’re too good for Club Cherry.”

“You calling me a snob?”

“No, I’m calling you smart,” Becky said, scoping the parking lot. Spotting a trash can two cars down, she tossed her whole cigarette pack in gracefully, like a seamless foul shot, then cracked Shauna’s cigarette in half and let it join its brothers. Shauna’s lips parted in confusion.

“I won’t tell Mom if you don’t,” Becky said, wiping her hands on her thighs.

“Tell her what? I didn’t do anything wrong!” Shauna said.

“Doubt that’s how Mom’ll see it. Look, I’m gonna grab my friends and go to the diner. I’ll be home by midnight. Watch Jenny and Jane, OK?”

“Seriously, what did I do wrong? You were the one smoking first!”

Becky leaned in and gave her sister a hug. Shauna’s arms stayed at her sides. “I’ll see ya at home. And if you get any dirt on my boots, I’ll kill you.”

“This isn’t fair, Becky!” Shauna yelled at her sister’s back. Becky threw up a middle finger and swaggered through Club Cherry’s doors with a confidence that didn’t come from the two of them growing up under the same roof.

Shauna walked over to the garbage can and peered down. Becky’s Marlboro Lights seemed to be glowing. She reached in and snatched the pack, squishing it down in her back pocket, safely next to her school ID and the taxi company’s number. Aqua seeped through the windows, the bass getting louder and louder as she got closer to the entrance.

There was no need to hesitate this time, not really. Shauna had already stepped through the front door once. She had made her way to the dance floor, granted without actually dancing or even smiling at a single boy. She even managed to keep Becky’s boots spotless, despite the parking lot dust and the drinks and the sweat splashing all around her.

Shauna reapplied her lip gloss, or maybe she swiped on Jenny’s; they all tasted like imitation vanilla bathed in glitter. She took in the neon sign once more, buzzing like the inside of her head, and cracked open the door. 

She nodded at Becky and Becky ignored her and she slid next to Jenny and Jane, whiffs of smoke hitting her nose as she whipped her head around, her throat burning as she tried to scream along to “Barbie Girl.”

—Emily Krauser

The stars, baby, the stars.

I have always looked up at the stars. I can grasp the science. Burning spheres of plasma, held together by their own colossal gravity. Visible electromagnetic radiation beaming down to become pinpricks of light in the void. I understand that people have tried to assign significance to their presence and patterning, making myths and drawing astrological shapes between the dots. Thinking that the light shining through the cracks in the crystal spheres will give our existence and mortality meaning. Believing that when we die the stars, or what is beyond them, will become our home. I once read that the iron that’s bound to every hemoglobin molecule in our bodies was once part of a star. That all elements that make us up, from the carbon to the oxygen to the trace elements of rare minerals, are all products of our starry universe. I imagine when our planet is obliterated by the eventual expansion of our sun, what makes up our bodies will return to the blackness, swallowed up and spat out to swirl and eddy in the cosmic streams like so much space dust. Like a return.

But I can’t see any stars in here. In fact, I can’t see that much. There’s the walls of my room. Painted a calming taupe. The machines I am plugged into, their blinking lights. A few photos in frames. Some flowers, wilted in a vase. There’s a window, high above my bed. It is light in the day and black at night. When the sky is cloudy the square I see is grey, and when it’s clear it’s blue. But at night, with the light pollution of the building, all I can see is a black square. No stars. On sunny days sometimes the nurses open the window. The pane leans backward from the top, pushed back against the bracket. If it’s still I can hear the waves in the distance. Even though I only saw the beach from the car the day I was admitted, I still remember what it looks like. A long thin strip of white leading to a rocky headland. A grassy foreshore with palm trees. When I hear the waves I imagine them crashing into the rough promontory of weathered stones, slowly wearing away the softer rock until all that is left is the cratered pools. I see water churning up the sand with every rolling heave, dark rips and sand banks and a murderous undertow.

I am going to die soon. I accept this as a reality rather than a concept. I think that I am the only one at peace with it. Every day I undergo a succession of treatments that are designed to prolong my life. I find it ridiculous as on a long enough timeline we all meet our end at some point. We are all returned to the earth or atmosphere, the particles and elements that make up our bodies breaking down to become something else. The only thing that will be missing, of course, is our consciousness. Our sense of who we are.

Whoever I am is not going to die in this room. I have quietly decided that this is the case, and before I am too weak to move I will leave this space. I will see the stars again. I will see the sea.

Before I was sick I would slip out of the house after my parents were asleep. Silently unlatching the front door, slipping my shoes on my feet, I would walk away from the house into the home paddock. In winter the dewy grass would wet my shoes, my toes quickly numb from the cold. In summer the dead grass would crunch under my soles. Our water tank was cut into the hillside below the house. In the darkness I would climb its concrete walls and then lie back, my legs dangling over the lip into the void. The milky-way would be spread out above me, its galaxial cloud a haze of light, the individual stars burning into the night sky. Staring up into the emptiness, the cold roughness of the concrete pressing into my skin and bones, I would imagine that there were other people looking at the stars as I was. Even if they were in a different place or in a different time zone, we were threaded together by the constellations above. Stargazers in the company of other stargazers.

I have planned my escape assiduously. Because I am legally under the guardianship of my parents I am unable to refuse treatment. I begged to be allowed to say no to the drugs that make me feel nauseous, woozy and tired. When I asked my mother if I could stop she rested her head on the bedcovers. Her body shook. My father left the room. I heard something bang outside in the corridor. I have not asked again. From what I have been told the only hope I have of surviving my illness is to go onto a clinical trial. It has not been tried before. I would be the crash test dummy, so to speak. I have no desire to have chemicals whiplash my blood stream, wrenching my cells and catapulting me through a burning shattered windscreen of pain. So I have decided to leave.

To begin there is the timing. I have studied the rotation of nurses and have decided that the best time to leave is just before the midnight rotation, when one team is packing to go home and the other is setting up their work. Then are the machines. They need to be turned off in a very specific order so as to cause the least disturbance, and even then there will only be so much time before someone is alerted and comes to check on me. Then there is the CVAD. The central venous access device. I won’t bore you with the details of my treatment, but given that it has been going for so long the tubes feel like they are part of me.  Sometimes I imagine the whole thing as an internal game of Pacman, the treatment running around madly trying to clean up all the dots, only to be swallowed up by something new that comes around the corner.

So I begin. First the nasal cannula. I sit up. Then I disconnect the IV line, leaving the picc still attached. I swing my legs over to the edge of the mattress. Then the machines. I have rehearsed this so many times in my mind it feels automatic. Three switches. Then the electrode patches. Free.

I look down between my legs. My feet hang bare over the blue grey floor, scored by scratches from heavy equipment. I shut my eyes and concentrate on my lungs and try to find the moment of silence between breathing in and breathing out. I open my eyes to the fluorescent light, and gently slide down off the edge of the bed. I know I probably have a minute before someone comes to see what it going on. My feet touch the surface. It is cool under my naked soles, and then I am walking. Looking at the floor in front of me. Through the door to the corridor. The glowing green exit sign in my vision. The diagram that signals a staircase. Hand and shoulder on the wall, lurching to the fire escape. Push down the bar and into a floodlit stairwell. And down the stairs. One at a time, holding the bannister. My field of vision focused and small. Stars dance on the periphery. The edges are hazy, but I descend. I know that by now they would be looking for me. The concrete floor feels like it is about to rush up and swallow me. I am on the ground. I vomit onto the stairs, take a moment and step over the mess. I feel better.

Time passes and I am at the end of the staircase. I push the exit door and it only partially opens. I lean my shoulder into it, and close my eyes. The black swims like plasma and it gives before me. A dark carpark underneath the building, mostly empty. I can see a street light, and head towards it. Even though it is dark it feels like a new day.

Out in the street the air feels warm on my skin. There is a wind blowing through the trees above. I look up at and see their palm shapes black against the darkness. The light given off by the hospital renders the sky an orange charcoal.   

The sound of the waves in the distance lead me to the beach. Every now and again the swell strikes with a deep thump, and as I get closer the sound of each set becomes more distinct and clear. I can hear the waves hiss onto the sand and there is wind in my ears. The whistling makes it sound as if I am under water. The concrete gives way to grass, which then becomes sand.  Up and down the beach it is completely black. I am alone. I don’t look to where I have left, and place one foot in front of another as I walk towards the headland, away from the light. The sand is coarse and hard and wet. There are crunches of shells under my feet, made soft by my time in the hospital. It hurts when I step on them and l like the pain.

I walk for what seems like a long time and then stop. The rocky shelf is a black shape just away in the distance. I take off my clothes and sit down, naked and exposed in the dark. I look to where I have been. The beach curves away. The hospital is just a distant haze behind the trees. There is a sheen of light on the sand, the sluicing, hissing water and scrabbling shells. My footprints have already become indistinct as the rising waves erase my passing. I close my eyes and lie back, lying my palms flat to the beach. Inside my eyelids it is utterly black. The wetness of the sand soaks into my skin. It is cold, but not unpleasant. The sound of the crashing swell and the fizzing surf fill my ears. I can feel the granules of beach sticking to the pads of my fingertips. So many larger things broken into smaller things. A strip of sand made up of trillions of grains, all unique, and all at the whim of the water and the currents.

I open my eyes. The stars, baby, the stars. Exactly where I thought they’d be and exactly where I left them. Spread out above me, the constellations and ungrouped pinpricks, all drawn across the sweep of the night sky. The crystal domes illuminated by the countless points of light, burning eons away, expanding and contracting, sending streams of space dust across the universe to land where it will. I could be anywhere underneath these stars, but I am here.

As the stars circle so the tide rises. The water reaches my feet, my hips, my shoulders, my head. I have never felt so fearless nor so calm. The water closes over and the stars disappear.

Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.

—Martin Toman

Poetry

• Oisín Breen

• Mary Lucille DeBerry

• Pamela Hill Epps

• Connie Jordan Green

• Gabriel Green

• David M. Harris

• Peter Leight

• Megan Wildhood

• Sara Dovre Wudali

Creative Nonfiction

• Celesté Cosme

• Molly Katt

• Brina Patel

• Amber Pierson

• Laura Jackson Roberts

• Michelle Spencer

Fiction

• Carl Boon

• Melissa Feinman

• Matt Gillick

• Emily Krauser

• Martin Toman