Short Beasts

The first time I met Adina Milford I thought all witches were old and all ghosts were dead people. I was wrong on both accounts. Adina appeared in homeroom halfway through eighth grade. A velvety snow had fallen that morning, making the town look as gentle as a postcard. Bundled children stuck their tongues out and hurled snowballs at each other on the way to school. They crammed their boots and coats inside slim lockers before the first bell. Adina hovered in the classroom doorway. She was squatty and wore her hair in a long braid swung over her right shoulder. Hal noticed her first.

“DayDay, is that your Mom?” Hal asked me. Cody sneered and high-fived Hal who never let me forget my old stutter. When I told Hal to shove it, Mrs. Watkins overheard.

“Darren Ross, would you like detention?”

“No, ma’am,” I answered.

She’d already made up her mind. That afternoon I spent forty minutes organizing cabinets until Watkins released me. Hal and Cody were waiting in the lot behind the school. Cody knew a house where we could admire a young woman who undressed without drawing her shades. Darkness fell early, and I was a lonesome latchkey kid.

In the dimming twilight, the streets were booby-trapped with black ice and snow drifts. Cody rode in front. He popped wheelies and flew over mounds of dirty snow, one arm in the air. Hal followed close behind, his fingers barely tickling the handlebars of his ten-speed. I stayed in the center of the road. Hal kept me around because he needed a pecking order with someone else at the bottom. I stayed because I needed a pack. My dad had bailed on us for the third time since July. Mom said it was just “a break,” but “a break” got longer each time he left. Mom worked as a secretary and picked up a second job at an auto-parts store. Lately, she came home to cook and cry and fall asleep to Barney Miller reruns.

We stopped in front of a Queen Anne with thick icicles dangling from the eaves like stalactites. Cody motioned to us to duck down behind a row of boxwoods. We held our breath, anxious for a shapely silhouette to appear in one of the bedrooms.

A set of footsteps soon quickened their pace and slowed behind us. We turned and saw a bundled figure standing on a sidewalk, a single braid pulled over her right shoulder.

“What?” Hal demanded.

Cody gestured for her to scram.

Adina didn’t move. She eyeballed us like we were grubs in daylight. I crawled out from behind the boxwoods first and hopped on my bike. Not long after I heard the angry hiss of Hal’s ten-speed. I didn’t wait for Cody. When I got home, my mom was asleep on the couch, still wearing the green vest from the auto-parts store.

The next week, Cody and Hal hatched a plan to get Adina “set straight.” After she thwarted our peeping tom adventure, they followed her and spotted her reading in a busted treehouse behind the old Cooper place. Hal had taken stock of the hideaway: books, dried flowers, and a woolen blanket. Cody held out a palmful of matches. They wanted to pile up her treasures, make a bonfire, then take a leak on the flames. I was the lookout.

The road to vengeance was pockmarked with gravel and salt. Cody rode in front, smacking his bare-knuckled hands together each time he cursed Adina and her eyeballs and her old-fashioned ugliness. Hal hooted with laughter and hurried to keep up. I kept my distance. I had chosen between fighting two different kinds of shame: the burning bug-shame of Adina’s knowing gaze or the shame of a lonely coward who wouldn’t ride into danger with his friends. Fighting shame with other people was easier than fighting shame alone. But the closer we got to Adina’s treehouse, the more the bloated knot in my stomach writhed and swelled.

The Cooper property was a wooded patch of thistle and knotweed, which surrounded a blackened and hollow colonial. The house burned before I was born, but there were no buyers, so it stuck around, a jagged scar on the edge of town. Cody and Hal ditched their bikes behind a snowbank. I watched their shapes bound through the underbrush and set the brown stalks to twitching. The twilight sky was cloudless as the sun slipped behind the horizon. I leaned my bike beside theirs and followed the laughter through the bare trees.

Fat plumes of wet smoke quickly belched out every side of the treehouse. I clutched my stomach and crept closer, certain I could hear a crack of footsteps behind me. Adina? Nobody answered. My eyes burned with soot; above me the splash of urine signaled that Hal and Cody had finished and would soon descend the rickety stairs. I blinked to keep focus, waved my hands in front of me, and felt my fingertips brush against a thick braid. Adina? Cody called after her right before he scrambled down the tree so fast, he dead-dropped fifteen feet to unforgiving ground. Hal chased her next, but I soon lost sight of them both. The driver said Hal rode straight into traffic, his fingers barely touching his handlebars. Adina Milford vanished into cinders, rumor, and memory.

Hal and Cody have been gone for so long that some days I wonder if they were even real. But whenever I get behind the wheel of my car to leave this town for good, I feel a long braid brush against my neck, and the car heads home. Every wrong turn, shortcut, and straight shot leads me back here like a curse. I see the sun is shining today, and the road is flat and wide; lord knows I want to take it anywhere but here. But I was the lookout, so Adina Milford makes me wait and wait and wait.

Martha (“Marty”) Keller‘s work has appeared in Flash Frog, Fictive Dream, Fractured Lit, Milk Candy Review, Lost Balloon, Cagibi Literary Journal, Midway Journal, Bridge Eight Literary Magazine, Brilliant Flash Fiction and elsewhere. Her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions anthologies. Over the years, she’s worked in strip malls, skyscrapers, and high school classrooms.

JoJo and her mother Justine have a party every Thanksgiving Eve, so JoJo’s old high school softball friends can drop by. The entire party takes place in JoJo’s wheelchair-accessible bedroom. She sits by the huge flat-screen TV mounted on the wall by the bathroom door. Her long blonde ponytail hangs over the back of the wheelchair. Every few minutes, she reaches both hands under a thigh and lifts it from the seat, readjusting the leg. Then she lifts the other.

In her junior year of high school, JoJo dove off the rocks at low tide, six blocks from her home, and broke her spine. She’s fifty-three. She’s lived at home with her mother, 91, all this time, on Cordova Street, while her siblings, all older, got married, had kids, bought houses—some nearby.

Five years after JoJo’s accident, her mother’s house burned to the ground. A wiring problem. JoJo and Justine had been a few blocks away at JoJo’s sister’s house for a barbecue. They heard the sirens. No one we know, I hope, Justine said. With the insurance money, they rebuilt the house to accommodate a wheelchair.

JoJo’s bed stands in the center of the room—a regular full-size bed with a knobby wooden headboard and footboard, blue sheets, a brown comforter. One side of the bed has been slept in—the covers rumpled, thrown back the way you do when you get out of bed in the morning. On the smooth side, aging high school friends sit in a row, calling out memories. Remember, remember? I remember, JoJo calls back, laughing.

JoJo’s clothes hang in a closet without doors.

Justine sits on a folding chair a few feet from JoJo, her walker within reach. She wears a royal blue fleece zipped to her chin. Her luminous white hair is short at the sides and back, with a soft, thick wave towering above her forehead, almost punk-rock. One of JoJo’s brothers—a deep-voiced man wearing a t-shirt tucked into ironed jeans—brings Justine a paper plate of pizza.

“No, honey, I want that other stuff—isn’t there pasta or something? And get a bowl to toss that salad.” He returns with a small bowl of pasta and a small bowl of salad. “No, dear, I meant a big bowl for the whole salad, so you could toss it before people serve themselves.” He smiles, rolls his eyes, shakes his head. Justine says, “I know I irritate you. It’s my job, long as I live.”

The bathroom is getting retiled—JoJo’s siblings pooled their money. It was already wheelchair-accessible but hadn’t been updated since the fire, decades ago. The work’s been abandoned for the holiday weekend, but the workmen re-hung the mirror above the sink. They placed it at the level a standing woman applies make-up.

A Sticky Note with spidery script clings to the middle of the mirror: “Hey Einstein, my daughter isn’t up here. Hang this lower.”

I wash my hands with a Sticky Note for a face. I’m a stranger to JoJo until moments ago, a new friend of one of those high school friends, swept along on the way to yet another party, a different one, my evening’s actual destination.

But I never forget this house, where burning is a blessing and some jobs last as long as you live.

Halina Duraj’s work has been published in journals including The Sun, The Harvard Review, and Ecotone. She teaches literature and creative writing at the University of San Diego.

When my father died, I cleared his house. My mother was long dead; my sister lives half a world away. It was me or nobody. I took a few days off work, stayed in his empty home. In the silent evenings, alone, I missed my wife and kids, freshly aware of our mortality, the inexorable progression; child, parent, grandparent, finale.

He never used a computer; he used a typewriter or wrote longhand. In old age, he bruised his feet kicking the world forward by writing letters to the local Council’s minor functionaries. A dustbin needed here, a bike path required there. He kept copies of his letters; he kept the replies; a mountain of paper.

The papers went into 25 numbered boxes. I packed up his tools and some ornaments and shipped it all back home. Everything else was trashed. I cleared out his wardrobe and chest of drawers, stuffing his clothes into black plastic garbage bags. Under socks and underpants, I found a green leather journal held shut by elastic bands, a piece of paper secured beneath them. “Destroy Without Investigation”, it read.

I spent my last evening in that house seated at the kitchen table with a bottle of red wine and a pizza, the unopened journal in front of me. Did I want to know my father’s secrets or not?

I honored the wishes of the dead and destroyed the journal, unopened, unread.

Back home, I wondered about my father and his secrets. When the long winter evenings arrived, I settled down to read through the contents of box after box. The kids had their homework; I had mine. I wanted to know more about the man behind the curtain and the secrets that were to die with him.

I read his diaries; I read correspondence. I sympathised with a man who wanted to improve the world, but also with the clerks constrained by bosses and budgets. He was pugnacious and persistent. They were polite and patient.

After weeks I reached the end. Finished! There had been no secrets to blemish the family name, but I did understand my father far better; I had found the person in the parent. I admired his struggles, an old butterfly beating its wings against ancient stone. Each of the 7.5 billion of us chooses the tiny mark we make on our planet, whether to scar or sculpt.

A few days later, we were all together in the living room; my wife reading, the children doing their homework. Seated at my desk in the corner, my back to the family, I finally reached the end of my emails. I glanced around at the kids; heads down over textbooks, they ignored me. What did they see? A back turned on them? A parent? A person? Were they even curious?

I am going to buy a leather journal of my own to leave behind. Will my children honor the instruction, or will they open it? And what will be written in it?

Gordon Pinckheard lives in County Kerry, Ireland. Retired from a working life spent writing computer programs and technical documents, he now seeks success in his sunset years submitting short stories typed out with one arthritic finger. His stories have been published by Flash Fiction Magazine, Every Day Fiction, Daily Science Fiction, Cabinet of Heed and others.

I steered over to the public washroom, a freestanding hub of entrances and exits, to lean my bike against the cement-block wall. A bearded man standing under his ball cap gave me a dentist-approved smile. I micro-stepped toward him and said, “I forgot my lock.” He nodded. “I’ll keep an eye on your bike.” When I entered the building he stood beside my bike.

Over a million bicycles not reported stolen get stolen annually.
That’s a million owner-improved bikes, permanently disappeared.
Some with custom-fitted saddles.
Upgraded pedals and wheels.
Hi-visibility rear-light for safety.
Bottle cages and bell.
Signature rock chip on the down tube, painted steady-handed blue.
Lucky-Cat stem cap, a birthday present received last year.

I exited the washroom. The bearded man twisted the brim of his ball cap over the back of his unsmiling neck. He straddled my bike, hunched forward and gripped the handlebars. I yelled and he yelled. “My bike!”

On the pedals he stomped and angled my speeding bike between the public washroom and a timber-framed pond. His scum-water reflection flew from my pointing-pointlessly finger and disappeared behind a hedge.

I ran until my feet cemented to the bike path in two furious exclamations. One ear turned toward the faint distant whirring of my bike’s flywheel before leaning deeper into unwelcome silence. The path showed my abandoned shadow rudely contorting: the form resembled a cyclist without a bike.

At my back, an unsympathetic slap slapped the water. I defensively turned. A fetching-stick wagged the pond’s middle before it surrendered to the splash and sputter of a retriever dog’s jump. When the fetched-stick’s dog bounded to its dryland master, the pond-water bunted against unyielding edges, and I remembered. My bike!

Stepping forward, my face facing the freestanding building. I read the posted sign: “Please use the other entrance.” The sign arrowed where a bearded man stood. Still beside a bike.

Laurel Smith is a writer whose publications include Monsoon poems (Cyberwit), The Right Red: From Viewer to Learner (University of Calgary), and several magazine reviews of authors and artists. Writing is an expansion of Laurel’s visual art practice.

Between bites of biryani and samosas, she divulged the edited version of her childhood. He nodded in agreement and sighed, his eyes deep, inky pools, in frames of jet lashes.

Gazing into his right one she envisioned their baby daughter with his eyes, her red hair, and dimples, their Labrador and a terracotta brick house. In his left she saw heavy silence, raised voices, custody battles, siblings separated.

“Fancy a drink?” he said as they zipped up jackets.

“Not tonight, I’ve a deadline,” she said to his left eye, then hesitated. “Maybe next week?” she added to his right.

“Okay,” he smiled, then something flashed across his face, as she glimpsed him frowning into her left eye.

Ellen Townsend is an art teacher and writer. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Flash Fiction Magazine, Friday Flash Fiction, 50-Word Stories and Paragraph Planet. Her stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio.

You draw your shirt closed over your breasts, lining up the buttons until they kiss the soft spot beneath your chin, shoes abandoned at the doorstep. You are gifting me this truth: you have left willingly, and all that I am is tucked inside your skin. We rouse the same hour of dawn, with enough time to chase after you. We ready our rifle, the silver gleam of metal the color of your eyes. The rain softens the ground outside, and your tracks are easy to follow. We believe this to be your mishap.

You have named us Älskling in every iteration of your hunt and come into our houses invited. Into the red-paint wooden one with the apple trees, the one with broken windows, the stable where we slept on the hay, the yellow cottage by the brook with nothing but a bronze kettle in the kitchen. You appear in the yard, or outside the window with a knock, or by the maypole in your summer dress, or in the rain with your hair down to your ankles, or at the side of our kill in the woods. You bare your teeth in a smile too angular to be kind, and in our love for you we affirm your humanity.

We forget the hardness of your shoulder blades when we wrap our arms around you from behind, the scent of rotten wood seeping from the slope of your shoulder into your back. You tear our hair from our scalp with sharp fingers as we sleep and place the strands upon your tongue in ritual as the self that lives in our ribs and heart and eyes falls into the pit of your stomach. We dream of your hands scavenging our bodies for the only thing you want, a sheen of faith coating our tongues from half-hearted prayers. You try to salvage whatever bit of human you can from us. Enough to last the night and some.

We should have closed the windows and turned our backs when the door rattled. We should have let the rain soak through the linen of your dress until you yowled and chased yourself into the woods like other animals do, overturned into paws and tail and prowl. But before you tumble into the clovers and the cow parsley, before you lap the lingonberries from their stems with your ridged teeth and fatten yourself on the squirrels, before you seek out another lover for your list—know that come sunlight on the crest of pine trees, we have stirred in the absence of your hands rummaging through our bodies.

Shelter in the moss when our feet break the wet branches on the ground. Leap at the turning of our eye to your position. Trample the cloudberries beneath your paws and trap your breath between your teeth. Know as you close your lips around the pith you have scraped from the roof of our mouths, each man-burrow you upheave is another rifle seeking the perfect shot. Know your legs are swift. Know we are more numerous than you are quick. Know that we will find each other.

Know that as you pause, holding your tongue in your soot-color maw, all you have devoured longs to be killed.

Faye Wikner was born and raised in the lingonberry forests of Sweden and now resides in New Jersey with her cat, where she teaches Intro to Creative Writing. She is the Associate Editor of Map Literary and reads prose for the Adroit Journal, and her work has been published in CRAFT Literary, The Colored Lens, and elsewhere. She was the fiction runner-up of the 2025 Hayden’s Ferry Review Fiction & Poetry Contest and the runner-up for Feign Lit’s 2025 Reign Prize. See her site.

Boyfriend writhes around on top of me and gazes hungrily into my eyes. He exclaims that he loves me and life is amazing and this feels so great. I do not respond. I am traveling back in time, returning to the church where I first saw Him.

The height of summer, and yet I wear my small patent leather shoes and my woven white tights. I stand at the bottom of the basement stairwell, and my sweaty little hands rattle a doorknob. The metal is warm and the gold plating flakes onto my skin. Mother Mary looks down at me from the stained glass in the window, her eyes downcast. Sad Mother Mary.

I hear heavy breathing, turn around, and He is behind me. With His strong and capable hands, He turns the knob. We go behind the door. I see flashes: His long brown hair; His critical expression; His slender torso. Movements that amaze and confuse me, illuminated by His glow. It comes from within.

After a time incalculable, my hand grips the knob again. I am back on the other side of the door. It was cool and bright and clean in there. I wonder how long I was with Him. I rattle, pull, and push, but the door will not open. Pressing my ear to its wood, I strain to hear any sign of Him, but there is no sound. I am alone.

I learned when I was young that He is angered by what Boyfriend and I do. I know that when Boyfriend wriggles around on me, images of Him will appear in my mind. But this is not enough. I want Him to be there after. I pray that I will open my eyes and see His bare feet, His piercing gaze, His hairy fingers, His towering height, His patent leather shoes, His woven white tights, the bottom of the stairs, the doorknob, the—

Shades of blue, red, and green dance through the dust hanging around me. Looking over my shoulder, I see they are coming through Sad Mother Mary. I move my hands, swirling the particles around in the captivating light. Could this be a gift from Him?

Mother and Father once promised that if I grew up to be smart and sweet, and if I fattened my brain at church and school, I would meet a man like Him. They promised that the man and I would have lots of smart-sweet babies together. Our smart-sweet babies would grow into smart-sweet children. We would live in a big old house with spectacular stained glass windows. Our smart-sweet children would run around in the captivating light, all with their patent leather shoes on and wearing their woven white tights, all at the bottom of the stairs, all rattling the doorknob, all turning around, and—

Boyfriend rolls off of me. I look out at the elm beyond my window, and I can see the edge of every leaf illuminated by the street light. Boyfriend turns over, pretends to sleep, and wonders what I think about in my fattened brain. I think about how Boyfriend is not the man my mother and father promised me. Boyfriend is what I must settle for.
I drift away as I watch the elm. I dream that Boyfriend and I are getting married, and that I am in the church. Under my dress I wear woven white tights, too warm and too small. In the mirror I practice what I will say another day, far in my future, when I tell Boyfriend about Him. Tears drown the words in my mouth. I know He will leave me forever if I marry Boyfriend.

I hear footfalls thundering in the church and people shouting at one another. My reflection is gone. The mirror has become a door. Looking over my shoulder, I see the shouters emerge at the top of the stairs. They stare down at me in my small patent leather shoes and my woven white tights. My little hands wave at them. I wonder what they were shouting about. I wonder why they are staring.

Everyone must have someone like Him who lives out of sight, tucked away in the corners of their eyes. I wonder, without these Hims, what would we think about when our Boyfriends are up there squirming? What would we cry about on our wedding days? What would we remember about those basement doors?

Polished wood, gold plating, and the blues, reds, and greens of Mother Mary.

Madison Ellingsworth likes walking in Portland, Maine. She has recently been published in Fractured Lit, Apple Valley Review, and Gargoyle Magazine, among others. Links to Madison’s published works can be found at madisonellingsworth.com.

I called you Tsubomi when we first met, when spring was young, and the cherry blossoms still clenched their fists. Tsubomi—蕾, a bud, something waiting to bloom. You had a way of standing, arms folded behind your back, as if holding onto a secret. We sat on a stone bench, drinking amazake from paper cups, the warmth pressing against our palms. When you handed me my cup, your fingers trembled slightly, and I told myself it was from the wind.

I called you Hana in the summer, when the cicadas screamed and the air smelled of wet pavement. Hana—花, flower, something in full bloom. We sat on your balcony, peeling the skin off peaches, the juice slipping down our wrists. You held my chin with two fingers and wiped a drop from my lip. The night was thick, our yukata clinging to the sweat on our backs. I told you, you are so beautiful when you laugh. You said, I laugh the same way every season.

In autumn, I called you Kaze, when the persimmons ripened and the river carried red maple leaves downstream. Kaze—風, wind, something that shifts, something that cannot be held. We stood at the train station, our shadows stretched thin under the paper lanterns. You held my wrist when I turned to leave, and I thought, maybe I had misheard the way your voice curled around my name. You asked if I wanted to share a persimmon, splitting it open with careful hands. The flesh was sweet, but there was something bitter underneath.

In winter, I stopped calling you anything at all. I saw you on the other side of the bridge, your breath forming soft ghosts in the cold. The river was half-frozen, the koi moving sluggishly beneath the ice. I thought of your hands, of the way they once pressed warmth into mine. You turned away before I could raise a hand to wave.

The wind still carries your name to me, sometimes. And every time, I wonder if you ever learned the one I never had the courage to give you.

 
Asmi Mahajan is an emerging writer who finds reading and writing to be deeply cathartic. Beyond the written word, she enjoys café hopping, experimenting with new styles of matcha and bubble tea, and practicing calligraphy and brush pen lettering. Whether it’s through ink or experience, she’s always looking for new ways to express herself.

Alone she sat alone, surrounded by all the world shouting buy-buy in the by-and-by from the black and white television, the three hundred twenty-nine channels clicking on one by one on, lasting five seconds, four, set on a timer that would occasionally hold for a count of six, then fall back to a three-second pause, so the next cycle, better behaving, would fast catch back up, but it never did. She felt beyond practice of use herself, but grateful redundancy in more than word alone.

The blue chimes jim-jammed in the holiday chill due to the window open. The widow from Toledo told herself she admired the hot air. “It tries so hard, itself sweaty e’en indoors, dontcha know,” and Jim poured her another ice-popping fizzy drink. Her tongue was always hot from saved-up chatter. She lived for one.

“You don’t have another doctor’s appointment ’til next month, Mama, so the diabetes should be in arrears or at least in check.” He laughed. “A check shall be in the mail!”

“How is your di-a-be-tisss, son?” She sipped cold. She needed no help.

Her only son and child childless drank his water, iceless.

Jim stood, performing more of his last calisthetics of the morning. He had trouble with certain words and more, come from genetics, the talk. This was his warm-down after a morning run of cruisin’ past the nearby campus, all on break.

“I do not have the diabetes, Mama, you know I do not.”

He had flown home two days before, direct from Idlewild, with all his bags by then their tags the JFK like that, transferring to LaGuardia and/or Teeterboro for show— “JFK a president, not so good, a louche, not a very kind or generous president even, and father? What with his own time, money, energy profligate prostate prodigal like that.” He breathed hard, and stretched. He was proud of his alliterations and his physique for his age. They paid well back East for such, the fancy advertisers for his copy. He almost said penis, but not in front of his aged mother. His mind and more upon p’s and q’s.

“Diabetes done.” One of them. “Dog-tired daggard.” Talked over the other.

“You don’t need to set up that threadmill again, I hope, not after all that huffin’ ‘n’ puffin’ right before turkey.” She made her way to the kitchen like an antiquated conveyor belt, plodding for a reason out of rote or else, but unknown top-of-mind to her by then if ever she’d rightly understood the passage of time, its bequeathing more than burnt meat. “Bad for the heart,” she kept repeating as she griddled hotcakes and sausage, loaded with thick gravy sauce of peppercorn flecks and coarse-salt flakes, mired in thought within and talk without, spilling her mind and mouth across the tiny room, finally:

“Junior, why you got to leave again so soon? I wish I could see you more often, even without a wife in tow.” It slipped out. “More ‘cakes?” She almost said kid. He had stopped caring.

She set the chipped plate on the makeshift dining table, recent gift of a good-wish donation outlet (thanks to a church-lady’s phone call). She did not let Jim fuss over her with gifts but so much, and he eww’d over the grease dripping off and out onto his mama’s paper napkin “borrowed” from the fast-food joint a block away, her standby restaurant in shuffling distance when funds were tight and days not so snowy. His mother, long forgotten of the Senior Jim, folded two of those serviettes up her kitchen-coat sleeve, ignoring Jim’s last of innumerable grunts, his lack of real-world rest, no more verbal response yet. He bent another time or two. She ate, but in the kitchen, free hand on the counter wiping, efficient and productive. Already her thanksgiving meal, her boy home, regardless of his ways or hers. Countless reasons over grace, bowed, praying.

“I’ll be back by suppertime,” he said, primed for action outside the house. “I love you, don’t you forget, don’t stay up if past your bedtime. I’ll get mine, don’t you worry.”

A rural native of the southeastern United States, R. P. Singletary writes across the genres of fiction, drama, poetry, and hybrid forms – and dabbles in other media. His short monologue “MONO fe in gratitude” appeared Off-Broadway this past autumn as part of the 2024 Apron Strings project at AMT Theater in Hell’s Kitchen (NYC). His solo show of 50 literary+visual works “ONE OF US” filled the ATL-Fulton Library Headquarters Gallery in autumn 2008. Published fiction, poetry, drama, and hybrid works in LITRO, Feign Lit, The Wave – Kelp Journal, Worktown Works (U.K.), en*gendered, The Collidescope, Rathalla Review, Wicked Gay Ways, Cowboy Jamboree, Stone of Madness, 100subtextsmagazine, and elsewhere. Affiliations: Dramatists Guild, Authors Guild. See his website and socials @rpsingletary.

“Who are you?’ The gentleman had demanded abruptly. He appeared as though he could have been framed forever with one hand in his suit pocket, a pipe balanced between his lips.

Not having expected to be addressed so directly, Kaya looked around, assuming it was a case of a mistaken identity.

Looking at him again he asked, “You! Boy! Who are you?”

Stumbling on his words he blurted, “I’m Kaya. Who are you?”

“I’m the train manager.” He calmly replied.

“Why are you sitting in third class then?”

“Don’t you know it is rude to ask questions like that! But since you ask, I am hiding from my wife. She wouldn’t dare step foot in a 3rd class carriage, so she’ll never think to look in here. Perhaps she will even assume that I’ve alighted the train at an earlier stop and try to pursue me, or someone like me, through the streets of Kayseri!” He chuckled at the thought.

“What do you mean, someone like me?” he gently inquired.

“Ah well, aren’t we all so similar in the end, does it really matter if it is me, she is chasing after? Or just someone like me?”

Kaya thought hard about the question.

“You see, I can try my hardest to convince myself that I am me. Me.” He pointed at himself with the newspaper.

“I can say ‘This is November! Not yesterday, or tomorrow! This is I, not Mehmet or Orhan! I am here on this train, not on the moon!’” He gestured to the moon outside, faintly visible in the purple smoky dusk above the plain.

“I have a scar on my hand, a mole on my chest. I can look at my watch and tell you it is four in the evening.”

“Is that the time already?”

“No, boy! Aren’t you listening! Don’t you feel it as well? The uneasiness?”

Kaya asked all his senses one by one to see if he could find the uneasiness, the lie.

“Don’t you see! After all that, I am Mehmet! I am Orhan! I am the train manager. I’m that girl over there, flicking the ash from her cigarette out the window with the thoughts from her mind. I’m that man over there, sweetly dreaming about his first love as his nostrils flare.”

“Don’t you feel it, as we hurtle from one place to the next? This strange place where we are nowhere at all? Where time doesn’t exist? Not until we arrive at the next station anyhow, at 16:46 exactly. We are nowhere my friend, apart from in an elastic moment, stretching from one infinity to another.”

Time had taken on a different quality on his journey, it was true. Though twenty hours had already passed, it felt more like two.

Just when Kaya was preparing to announce his agreement, the man abruptly got up from his seat and hurried along the carriage.

Hannah Katerina is a writer based in Palermo, Italy.

Life starts with the urge to be swallowed. Then follows the want to pulse, then the need to hurt, to kick to prove our existence. Around the seventh week we grow the most crucial parts of our eyes and by the thirty-ninth – we learn to scream. It’s been plenty of time since I first used my voice and I think my voice box is starting to rust, because I haven’t used it since. Not the way I should anyway.

“Hi.” The Jacobite Train rolled straight through my life.

Your eyes make me want to be swallowed again; dark like abysses. More stars twinkle in the right one than in the left. It’s hard to differentiate between “Hi.” (with the intention of making an acquaintance) and “Hi.” (with the intention of absolute devotion) when you look at irises like that. So void of colour and yet in the most striking of shades.

And then I see all the hypotheticals of us in other lives, right on the greyish whites of your eyes. The one where you are unconditionally mine and the ones where you aren’t. That’s when the itch spreads from my shoulders and down to my fingertips. I want to hug you. Tighter. Preferably forever.

Take your sorrows off and give them to me. I will hang them by the fireplace, as if they are a rain-soaked coat and listen. Talk to or ask me to do so. And I will. I will speak all the words I never was courageous enough to write about you.

Isn’t it comical, my own devastating God? The one who spends every eve spewing her ink-coloured guts on paper can’t tell the difference between lust and ardour.

And all this to say I love you, perhaps. For I don’t know how to sound out the words, I let them suffocate in my throat and pray that the you-shaped hole in my heart will be just a birth defect the pathologist will discover upon my death, and not the cause of this incessant lusting over the one I could never call my own.

Eva Axelle Moller is a writer, poet, and university student. Her work explores the intersections of memory, love, and the self, often blending lyrical intensity with narrative clarity. She has won national awards for creative writing. Beyond her academic and literary pursuits, she is building a career in storytelling and visual arts. She shares her poetry and projects at @evaaxellemoller_.

When I see the map of China, for some strange reason, I am reminded of Madeleine de Scudery’s Map of Tenderness. In 1653, this lady drew a map of an imaginary land that represents the path to love. All the place names on De Scudery’s map refer to a mood or an emotion.

On the map, there is a lake called The Lake of Indifference. It is certainly Xi Hu, the West Lake, in Hangzhou. This body of water makes the city unique. It seems that nothing can be done without the imposing presence of this lake.

Paradoxically, being a constant feature in the city makes it, indeed, indifferent. I walk in the historic area of the city near Nan Shan Lu. It is infested with tourists. There is a mosque of the Hui people and a monument dedicated to printing. In the West, few know that printing was born here before Gutenberg. For a foreigner, except for Beijing, Xi’an, and Lhasa, all Chinese cities, especially the centers, are pretty much the same. Tall skyscrapers, luxury brands, perfectly identical perimeters. But that’s not the case in Hangzhou, thanks to the lake.

Of course, there are modern buildings here too, even a Nikola dealer and endless McBurger’s outlets. But the lake prevails and dominates everything, as if to remind us that China is vast and different. When I first moved to Hangzhou, of which I didn’t even know the existence, my Korean colleague, very kind, took me to the city center because I was already in crisis after a week. I needed Western food. Well, Western food doesn’t really mean anything. I needed edible food, and especially without meat and fish. So, he takes me to the Terry Centre, probably the largest shopping mall in the city.

Beautiful, spacious, clean. When I entered the supermarket on the ground floor, I felt like a child in a toy store. Overwhelmed by excitement and my colleague’s smiles, I dive into the products: peanut butter, all kinds of cereals, pizza, gluten-free pasta, packaged dried fruit, but above all, olive oil. It’s my favorite and the healthiest. It’s quite expensive, but I think it’s better to spend money on food than on buying the latest yPhone.

Happy and reassured to have found my refuge, I fill up the cart and head to the cashier. 1200 RMB. Shocked by the amount, I ask the cashier if she added everything up correctly. She, too, smiles and says, “Yes!” Not at all pleased with my silly spending, I leave. This time, the Korean doesn’t smile but laughs, “You couldn’t resist, right? It happens to everyone.” I start to think that maybe my salary isn’t that high after all. But I was wrong; I just needed to adapt, understand, and embrace where I live. That day was also my first encounter with Xi Hu. Thinking about the expenses and the crowd around (it was a Saturday afternoon), my face indicated that the lake is just a lake like any other.

I couldn’t understand why my fellow countryman, Marco Polo, was enchanted by it. It was a different time; there were no shopping malls and selfies. He must have appreciated it in all its splendor. The poet Ouyang Xiu also mentioned it. I have read some of his poems, including the one about Hangzhou. It goes like this:
“The beautiful spring breeze has arrived. I return to West Lake The spring waters are so clear and pure. Green they could be lately…..”

And then I stopped. I love poetry, in the broadest sense of the term, but this one was definitely boring and didn’t help me understand the beauty of Xi Hu. Disappointed, I return home. I ask the Korean colleague if he wants to go out for dinner. He tells me it’s already late. It’s 5:30 pm. He’ll have a bite at home and then read a book. Another lesson learned in the first month. Chinese people eat earlier than me. They have lunch at 11:30 am and dinner between 5:30 pm and 6:00 pm. Usually, I don’t eat before 1 pm and before 9 pm. In the first few months, I missed out on any invitations. Either it was too early for me, or it was too early for them. After all, I couldn’t eat unless I was hungry.

Moreover, my diet is not really understood around here. Once I was invited to lunch. I didn’t know that Chinese people share all the dishes. Being picky, I was initially disgusted. I was afraid of getting hepatitis every time I touched the chopsticks. Another habit to remember. The other guests, being kind, reassured me, seeing my awkwardness, “Do you want a fork?” No, I replied, thinking that was the problem. I’m in China; I have to do as the Chinese do.

I love potatoes, especially those cooked Sichuan-style or those from northern Beijing. The first ones are sautéed in a small wok with oil, garlic, onion, and chili. The second ones are cut julienne like carrots, lightly fried in a pan, but always with chili. My mother is right: anything with salt, chili, or fried is good. It was a struggle to pick up just one potato with the chopsticks. Having grasped the technique, I still couldn’t manage to hold it properly. Was it too much oil, or was it my poor skill? So, I just impaled it, to the amusement of the other diners.

My favorite food is jiaozi. Near my home, close to the Xixi campus, there is a small JiaoziDian (the “dian” at the end of Chinese words is like our “-eria,” for example, pizz-eria) that has four vegetarian options: tofu, tomatoes, eggs, chives, and mushrooms. It’s inexpensive, but I consider it much better than those expensive places where you pay a lot and eat very little. Jiaozi are similar to Italian ravioli and tortellini.

Italian-born Australian Matteo Preabianca (Matt Bianca), is a linguist, lecturer, and translator whose work reflects his extensive travels across several countries. Fluent in Italian and English, he channels his dual cultural identity into a diverse portfolio that includes published English poems, experimental music albums, and novels. He holds a PhD in Socio-Education applied to languages and an MA in Advanced Buddhist Studies. He works with English, Italian, Mandarin, and Pali, and is the creator of The Gentle Law, a platform exploring Early Buddhism and Western philosophy. He writes on culture, languages, philosophy, and animal rights, blending intellectual depth with contemplative insight.

Carrie’s mom died at age thirty-six. Her dad when he was thirty-eight. Six to eight years. A red semi blared its horn when Carrie corrected the brief swerve out of her lane. While the semi passed, drenching her windshield in a wake of dirty water, the wipers thumped across the window like a metronome in double time. Or perhaps that was her heart. She gripped the wheel until her slim knuckles resembled vellum stretched over bone. Today was Carrie’s thirtieth birthday.

She stole a glance at Jeremy, her oblivious husband, currently muttering the contents of his cue cards in the passenger seat. He was defending his dissertation today, and she wished that was the reason he hadn’t acknowledged her birthday, but it wasn’t. Valentine’s Day had been overlooked too. The fog forming on the inside of the Toyota’s windows didn’t clear with heat or cold, or her harried swipes. Everything but inaction made it worse. It condensed on her neck, in her lungs. She turned off Forbes Avenue and into Pitt’s dreary campus. Jeremy had moved back in a month ago. He said things would be different this time.

Students and professionals with umbrellas skirted around their vehicle, clambering to eight a.m. classes while Jeremy packed away his cards. Six to eight years wasn’t enough. While the dappled throng of headlights, rain slickers and rain drops dulled her vision to a glittered haze, Carrie contemplated how to make the most of her remaining life. Suppressed longings and bloated dreams gurgled to the surface, almost forming an agenda before her eyes, then Jeremy said something. He sounded muffled as though under water.

“What?” she asked, blinking back into the present with a gasp.

“I said, can I have a kiss for good luck?” Then planted his lips on her before she could refuse.

The soured chocolate milk on his breath blasted the last of her domestic reservations away. Jeremy never remembered to brush his teeth unless she told him to. Morning and night. There were so many other things she wanted to do.

“Pick me up at five?” he asked.

“You know I schedule appointments until six,” she said. “Take the bus home.”

“I hate the bus. It’s so uncivilized,” he said. “Can’t you reschedule and skip out early? Let’s go out and celebrate. I’m thinking, the Cheesecake Warehouse.”

Her eyelid twitched. He knew she hated chain restaurants. “Celebrate what?” she asked, as the last threads of her patience unraveled.

“Umm, the end to this long overdue dissertation? Me successfully defending it? Me getting my PhD? What else is there to celebrate?” He scoffed. “See you at five.”

In a flurry of blue suiting and red Charlie Taylors, Jeremy ran towards Posvar Hall, a brutalist concrete building that was as grim and soulless as March in Pittsburgh. She pulled up the Travel Dealz app on her phone.

***

Carrie touched down in San Diego three hours past the time she was supposed to pick up Jeremy. She had only the clothes on her back, her purse, and the in-flight magazine that featured the Instantaneousgram-worthy Carlsbad Flower Fields—a surreal landscape that looked like a real life Candy Lane board. While in line at the rental car’s outdoor kiosk, she wondered if Jeremy had given up and taken the bus. She hadn’t checked her phone, hadn’t even taken it out of airplane mode, yet. The sky was big here. And the air was so dry, the perspiration at the nape of her neck had crystalized, feeling like chalk on her fingertips. He would be furious.

She arrived at the flower fields around sunset, when the Tecolote ranunculus blooms were bathed in the golden hour light. The flowers stretched across the hillsides in rows of burgundy, magenta, orange, yellow and white, bobbing and swaying in the coastal breeze. Each flower starts its journey as a bud, the size of a shooter marble—she learned this from overhearing a tour guide—and expands into a palm-sized blossom containing one hundred and thirty petals. When the tour ended, the field fell silent. The only sounds were the crinkle of bouquet cellophane, the distant river of Interstate 5 traffic, and the buzzing of Carrie’s silenced phone. The buzzing halted as soon as she blocked Jeremy’s number.

A spark of finality arced through her. She was in California, all by herself. She’d never done something so brazen or independent in her entire life, and it filled her with the yearning to press forward, see even more, do even more. First, she wanted to stop at the outlet mall butting up against the flower fields and get herself a suitcase and some new clothes; a new identity. Then, she’d stop by the hole-in-the-wall Cantina she’d driven past and get a burrito the size of a newborn. And a jalapeño margarita too. She wanted so badly to hit the gas and never look back. But.

Carrie propped her phone on an irrigation pipe for a timed picture of herself among the orange and pink ranunculus, her face and arms turned up to the apricot sky in a jubilant stretch, long auburn hair blown backwards. Four tries, and a bunch of judgmental looks from tourists later, she got her Cartier-Bresson decisive moment, and posted the image to her Instantaneousgram, writing only:

I was thirty years old when I learned #YOLO. Goodbye Jeremy. P.S. Congratulations on your PhD. If you can find the car in long term parking, you’ll never have to take the bus again.

As the last of the sun dipped below the riffling flowers, Carrie took a deep breath, let it out slow, fully planting herself in the moment. She could feel the layers around her loosening and expanding in a slow acquiesce. Death was inevitable. Fact. One day she would die. Fact. But until then, she would bloom.

Meryl A.H. Franzos grew up primarily in California and the Bible belt of Michigan, plus a few other places salt bae-d in there. She now lives and writes in Pittsburgh. Her work has appeared in Litbreak Magazine and soon, The Fourth River.

Papa makes peppers and onions. He lets them get brown and slimy before he puts me in. The oil boils me up before I can feel it—not that I can feel it—I can’t feel where I begin and where the peppers and onions end.

Papa pulls a wet sniff in through his nostrils like jumbo jet engines with black hairs bushing out. I smell so good, Papa says, I smell so good there in the pan. Papa breaks me up with the wooden paddle. He uses it to swat the fat flies away from my good smell. I leak my juices into the peppers and onions, and everything in the pan is wet.

When they took me away, did the wet creep down Papa’s nostrils like jumbo jet engines, and get caught in the black hairs that bush out? Did the wet roll down his spidery red-veined cheeks?

After they took Brother last week, I heard Papa in the house, tearing in two. It did not rain that night. Just a cold damp. I laid in the barn with the straw warming underneath me.

I could have guessed that Papa spilled a pan of boiling oil onto the bushy black hair of his toes again, but I knew. I was all alone out in the pen. No more Brother to help me warm up the damp straw.

Papa douses the peppers, onions, and I in white table salt from a shaker shaped like a green John Deere tractor. The fat flies scurry around on the cabinets, wet with steam, above the stovetop. I am boiling away. Can Papa see me in the steam? Can he feel me when he breathes in my good smell?

The rain came three days after they took Brother. Papa was wet when he fell into the barn door. He did not see me at first. I watched him from the dark corner of the pen, but I could smell him all the way back there. His breath smelled like Brother.

Was he thinking about how hungry he would be with Brother still in his belly? Did he already know that I would be next? Had he already made the call?

It was not long before Papa saw me hiding. He drifted over, hands gripping the metal fencing, wet rolling down his face. I tried not to breathe too deeply but I could feel the whites of my eyes bulging out. I could not hold my breaths in.

Papa put his bulging hand like a meat mallet on my ribs next to where my heart was thumping. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Papa said, the wet coming faster. I’m sorry, Papa whispered. I’m so sorry. Every S was a hiss. No other letters made it through.

I could not ask where Brother had gone. I took deep breaths and waited for Papa to tell me. Every time he spoke, it was a hiss, and more wet would come out. Papa kept trying and trying, and kneading his meat mallet hands in my sides, until he finally pushed himself away into the fence. He made his falling way out of the barn. I stayed there in the dark while the rain scraped against the walls.

There is not much of me left. It is time for me to leave Papa’s pan. He scrapes the sides with the wooden paddle, and ushers the peppers, onions, and I onto a curved plate. Spidery cracks like the ones in Papa’s red cheeks run through the center. He moves us around to cover them up, then brings the plate with him to the couch and sets us on his lap.

Papa sighs like he is going to tear in two and stares down at the plate. I know he can feel me now. He can see me in the peppers and onions. Still he grips his fork and shoves it into the pile. Wet comes out of his bushy jet engine nostrils. The wet comes closer and closer as I move towards Papa’s mouth.

Papa’s lips peel back and I can see that his tongue is yellow. The betweens of his teeth are browned like he has been eating mud. There is so much pink and red and brown and yellow in Papa’s mouth; his mouth is a painting. Papa’s eyelids sink closed and he takes another breath as he slides the fork between his teeth.

The peppers and onions settle with me on Papa’s wide yellow tongue. He seals his lips closed, and it becomes dark. Dark like the cold damp of a rainless night. Dark like the barn without Brother. Dark like the back corner of the pen.

Papa gnashes his muddied teeth together, and moves me around with his wide yellow tongue. He mixes the peppers, onions, and I with his spit. Then he swallows us down.

Madison Ellingsworth likes walking in Portland, Maine. She has recently been published in Fractured Lit, Apple Valley Review, and Gargoyle Magazine, among others. Links to Madison’s published works can be found at madisonellingsworth.com.

The early morning silence in the gas station is unbearable. It makes even the low hum of the fridge against the back wall feel like a jackhammer on my ears. My eyes glaze over cans of coffee in black and white and every imaginable shade of brown, searching for something to get me through the next ten hours. An unsweetened black cold brew should do the trick. I open the frosty glass door and reach toward the back of the fridge to get the coldest one. Only then do I catch a glimpse of something bright pink screaming for my attention behind the cans.

Curious, I push them aside and pull out a bubblegum-colored milk carton. On the front is a drawing of a smiling cat with a milk mustache. It’s a carton of Miyabi Strawberry Milk. I can’t remember the last time I saw one of these at a store. Not since I was a kid, I think. Has it really been that long? I turn the carton over, looking for the expiration date. There isn’t one. Then I notice the picture printed on the side, under the word “MISSING.”

My eyes are still half-shut, but I recognize my old denim jacket covered in pins and my aviators with the blue lenses. I remember laughing with my friends from school on the curb outside the arcade while one of them snapped the photo. Didn’t I leave this in my room at my parents’ house? Why is it on here? I haven’t gone missing. I go to work every day and then I go home. It’s been that way for years now. When did I disappear?

Behind me, the cashier clears his throat. I check my watch. Ten minutes have already passed. With a sigh, I shove the milk carton back in the fridge, taking a coffee and shutting the door. I need to get to work.

Alyson Floyd is an artist, writer and director from Houston. She is currently studying graphic design and writing her first novel.

It’s our first holiday together and you’re all excited because we’re about to take off, but you have no idea that I’m holding on to the armrests like I’m holding on to the earth, stuck in a cycle of intrusive thoughts, too afraid to move my body in case I move in the wrong way and trigger a catastrophe.

As the plane begins to move, I turn to you and feel a sudden sense of dread rise in the pit of my stomach; the kind of dread I imagine a parent would feel for their child when sensing they were in danger, a dread which my therapist tells me is born out of a love stronger than the love I have for myself.

Before it’s too late, I want to capture the feeling of being here with you, existing in the world at the same time. I want to tell you how much I love you, but when you hold my hand in yours and say, don’t worry, everything is going to be okay, there’s a part of me that wants to believe you, there’s a part of me that wants to be unburdened by my need to look back in the direction of home, repeating the image I have in my mind of our lives as they were before we left.

Billie J Daniel is a new writer based in London, from a working-class background. He graduated from Central Saint Martins with a degree in Fine Art and currently works as a teaching assistant. In his time away from writing, he likes to go birding with his partner, play board games with his friends, and analyse his favourite sport, boxing. His work explores ideas of love, connection, anxiety, and trauma. See more at his site.

My first night in Morocco could have been different. Sitting in my riad, alone, I am staring at a fresh soup made from some vegetable I have never heard of. I smile, thinking about the woman I met on the plane. While my eyes are still reflecting those bright colors we don’t have back home, and my ears still echoing with prayers of this alien language, I hope that my stomach does not get upset by the tap water I drank, despite my mother’s multiple warnings. I try the soup, making some noise while eating it, as I remember that’s how it’s done here, and I don’t want to disappoint the locals. Or am I thinking about Japan? In between my slurps I hear a sound, a rhythmical tick tick, like water hitting a metallic surface. I look around, searching for the source of the noise but then I am distracted by the waiter who brings some delicious fried bread, which I garnish with low-quality packaged cheese. Shukriya, I say, although I will learn only later that is what they say in Pakistan, not Morocco. Tick tick. Here comes the sound again, and my mind goes back to Madeleine. I know her name because I dropped my bookmark while reading a collection of short stories by Borges on the plane. She picked it up and tapped on my shoulder to inquire if it was mine. Pretending I was in shock, I said it was and thank you very much. Tick tick. The waiter is back with a goat tagine that smells like it is still alive. Tick tick. She asked, “what book are you reading?”, and that led into an hour-long conversation in which I learnt her name and her phone number. Tick tick. I ask for a glass of wine, but they do not serve alcohol here. Tick tick. I check my phone but there is no message from her. Tick tick. I finally see that the noise is coming from one of the big ceiling lamps, fanoos as they call them here. A bird is trapped inside and it is trying, unsuccessfully, to escape. The bulb is on, so I wonder how the poor thing is not frying. Tick tick. The waiter finds me staring upwards with my mouth open. I gesture at the bird. He smiles, and leaves me. Tick tick. I look at my phone again. No reply from Madeleine. Tick tick. The light is suddenly off, and I am relieved. In the dark, the bird and I share the saudagic feeling of being trapped in a cage of solitude. I am just lucky mine is a bit bigger than his. Tick. Tick.

Davide Risso grew up in Italy, but his itchy feet led him to live in Ireland, Germany, the United States, and travel around the globe. Scientist by training, writer by passion, rock climber by vocation, his fiction has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, RumbleFish Press, Literary Yard, and Cranked Anvil among others. Check his site for more.

The yoga studio I go to has a small paved garden at the back.

Pinned to a window overlooking the garden, there’s a notice that says they are creating an urban wilderness. The best way to nurture a flourishing ecosystem, it says, is to stand back and let nature take its course.

So far the urban wilderness is an empty birdhouse, a patch of nettles and what looks like a rotting Christmas tree.

I joke that I’ve had the same philosophy with my garden for years. My instructor does not find this funny. She shakes her head like I’ve misunderstood something important, like she’s disappointed, like there’s no point even trying to explain something profound to someone like me.

I feel her disapproval for months. She whispers gentle encouragements to everyone in the class but me. She praises someone’s Flying Pidgeon that is clearly nowhere near as good as mine. She walks past my mat with heavy feet, correcting my posture by prodding my shoulders a bit too hard. Sometimes I have problems with online bookings that I suspect are not really a computer glitch at all.


Once, in front of all my classmates, she reminds me to please put my blocks away neatly this time. The shame is unbearable.

Still, I stay committed to Yoga II on Wednesdays. I thank her for another great session, subtly alluding to the fact I am her most devoted student.

Just when I think I cannot endure this punishment for much longer, she tells us that this will be her last class at the studio. She is going to India and does not know when she will be back. I say that sounds lovely but I am devastated.

At the end of the session, she plays a gong to signal the end of our time together. The undulating beautiful sound shakes me to my core.

I open my eyes and turn to my instructor. She nods slowly and smiles, seeing in my wide eyes a moment of true wonder.

It’s then that I know myself.

I am an empty birdhouse. I am a patch of nettles. I am a rotting Christmas tree.

Robin Forrester is copywriter and procrastinator based in London. He spends his time writing poems and short fiction when he should probably be working. He lives with his equally sleep-deprived partner and two young daughters.

My very first memory – I was three or four.

My mother’s girandole earrings (I later learned it was pronounced “jeer-an-dou-lee”), with three green stones dangling at the bottom, the centerpiece slightly lower than the other two. Not Swarovski, but Jablonex, mass-produced behind the Iron Curtain in the neighboring Czech Republic. All year round, Mom kept them locked in a box wrapped in a handkerchief smelling of “Pani Walewska,” a fragrance sold in ultramarine bottles for 5 zloty (also the price of a Shane Nuss chocolate on the black market). She wore them only for New Year’s Eve parties. Dressed in a brocade gown trimmed with lace, with Mary Quant makeup applied to the eyelids but with her nails bitten to the quick, she let me hold them for a few moments before vanishing with a puff of an oh-so-delicate scent like a Communist-era Cinderella. No pumpkin carriage with horse-mice was waiting for her, but an Ikarus bus provided by the steelworks where she worked.

The second – the age of unreason. I was six.

My first dog (I’m on number ten now), a pinscher and terrier mix with crooked legs and a stumpy tail that I, eager to stand out, named Frog. I cried for an entire week when she died at fifteen.

Still figuring out the number, but definitely around the time I was ten—the age of defiance.

Winters with sledding, ice skating, frozen rivers, and my dad’s warnings.

“The ice will break; you’ll fall in and drown like poor Erika,” he roared.

Erika was a fifteen-year-old with special needs who lived in a tiny flat above the delicatessen, which sold Spanish oranges at Christmas, otherwise unavailable at any other time of the year.

Of course, I ignored his advice; the ice broke; I fell in but survived and never told Dad.

Through six to ten and even beyond.

Summers brought excursions to a town on the Warta River with its storks (monogamous creatures), the perfume of newly cut grass (no aroma can match!), lime trees (casting shadows in the burning heat), and acacia honey on rye (caviar cannot compete).

For two weeks, we pitched a tent behind a vast manor house where Ludwik, my maternal great-great-grandfather, a passionate drinker and adventurer, had squandered away his money betting on slow horses and fast women. Mom whispered through clenched teeth that education was as good as wealth and that I either study or marry a rich man without a gambling problem.

We took a 12-hour train ride to the Hel Peninsula in August, lugging cardboard suitcases with no wheels. Despite its scary name, it was heaven on earth. I lay belly up like a beached whale, face to the sun, from morning to sunset, with no sunscreen save a thick layer of Nivea cream on my shoulders. I can still hear the echoes of a vendor selling freeeeeeshshshhhsh bluuuuueberryyyy piiiiiieeee and smooooked eeeeeeelllll!

But in particular, I recall the treasure hunt for tiny pieces of prehistoric resin immortalized by the cold waters of the Baltic in caramel-colored amber. I kept them in velvet sachets for the remainder of the year to bring back summer warmth on chilly winter mornings.

Next on the list, regardless of the number – early adolescence.

The amusement park that visited our town twice a year. A tandem of tired ponies tugged along a kitsch carousel and a cotton candy cart. It was where my first boyfriend (an eighth grader with pimples and crooked teeth) shot a magenta flower with crepe petals and a wooden stem for me. At twelve, I valued it more than the most exquisite orchids I received later in life. Including the fake diamond ring, my first husband gave me instead of a real one. Cheap bastard!

And the one that tops them all—the queen, king, pharaoh, and emperor of all numbers.

Strangely, my children, because I never wanted to be a mother. I lacked the nurturing instinct that we’re meant to be born with. But here they are, at the very top of the list.

Each one is different, one-of-a-kind, and loved from the first heartbeat. I reveled in every millimeter of their growth and celebrated their achievements. But I also treasure the times when I was eager to swap them for a pet parrot. I honor the arduous but extraordinary path of single parenthood far from my homeland, in distant South America.

The memories flow fast now.
• Superb.
• Great.
• Memorable.
• Middling.
• Ordinary.
• Forgettable.

But where are the terrible ones? For some reason, they are gone. Perhaps because I believe life must be lived and commemorated as it comes, with subtle pleasures and intense pain.

I am reminded of the song “Honrar la vida” by Eladia Blázquez, an Argentine singer-songwriter. The song has been covered by many artists across Latin America, becoming a timeless classic that celebrates the beauty and complexity of life.

J.B. Polk: Polish by birth, a citizen of the world by choice. First story short-listed for the Irish Independent/Hennessy Awards, Ireland, 1996. Since she went back to writing in 2020, more than 150 of her stories, flash fiction and non-fiction, have been accepted for publication.

“I know you know a lot of musicians,” he says out of nowhere as we’re hugging goodbye. “But I want to sing at your funeral.”



He’s strangely insistent and repeats himself twice.



Oh, good god, I think. Because while I’m quite ill, my death isn’t imminent, he hasn’t sung professionally in decades, and he’s getting worse—now he’ll even make my last hurrah about himself. 



I want an alternate reality, a better one, where he’s just the kind guy who’s my close friend and not somehow this stranger, as well. 

But his moods keep pivoting faster than a cheetah on Dexedrine and his fits of grandiosity are ballooning like a Macy’s parade float gone rogue.



Later that night he sends a 15 paragraph email comparing himself to Bob Dylan.



I reply, “I love you, but you need some fucking help.” 


I sleep for a little while and wake up at 3:00am exhausted.



I know he’ll ignore me again.



In the morning I wake to a 20 paragraph email in which he’s now both Placido Domingo and the Pope.



I don’t respond—there’s no point anymore. I’m done.



I cry a little as I get dressed for work.

Litsa Dremousis is the author of Altitude Sickness (Future Tense Books). Seattle Metropolitan Magazine named it one of the all-time “20 Books Every Seattleite Must Read”. Her essay “After the Fire” was selected as one of the “Most Notable Essays 2011” by Best American Essays, and The Seattle Weekly named her one of “50 Women Who Rock Seattle”. She recently left the Washington Post, where she’d been an essayist who wrote extensively about Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Her work has appeared in Esquire, Hobart, McSweeney’s, NY Mag, The Rumpus, et al.

Sending you a prayer all the way from a memory of lovers on a beach in the middle of the Pacific waiting for the sun to fall, waiting for sea levels to rise.

There is a bar in Kihei on that same Pacific island where we eat fried food with the burnouts and alcoholics. Drink a cocktail. Have some fun.

Sending you a prayer from my backyard in Albany, CA. How is the weather in Amsterdam? How late does it stay light outside in the summer? Where have all the people gone? Do you go to Bruges the way that I want to go to Bruges? Does Colin Farrel’s ghost wander the streets?

I pray for you while I walk the canals with the boats’ low grumbling across the water. The very small wakes they leave rippling behind them. The tall Dutch men, the blonde Dutch women. They drink icy riesling by the bottle. Oh how I’d love a glass of icy riesling from the bottle with you in a boat while we gently motor in the black water of the canals.

Instead, I get as high as I can tethered to the dog sniffing for chicken bones, discarded trash (she thinks we are still in Oakland). But there are no chicken bones or trash in the streets because this is Amsterdam and the Dutch are a clean and orderly people. Public transportation works. The city operates at a high level.

There is a bridge over the Amstel that I walk across to get to Sarphatipark. It is wide and black at night with slivers of light flashing like chrome across its surface. Street lamps, homes. My girlfriend is still working. I am the dog. I am tethered to the dog. Tonight she looks for kebabs. De Pijp sometimes is a smorgasbord for dogs. And tonight my spirit takes a step outside of my body and I see myself and the dog from behind and I see that I am not here.

Joel Tomfohr’s writing has appeared in Joyland, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, X-R-A-Y, BULL, Hobart, and others. He teaches ESL to immigrant newcomers from all over the world at Fremont High School in Oakaland, CA.

Your father died an hour before you were born.

There was a lot of screaming that day. Your mother, air hissing through her clenched teeth and hands grasping at empty air, pushing while surrounded by white walls and the bitter smell of antiseptic. Garbled words of a foreign language grabbed her by the cheeks and shook her. There was no familiarity in this cold hospital. No family waiting outside for her. Only two nurses and a supervising doctor clad in white who watched through deep set eyes as she struggled. She was only twenty, and the stack of her two decades seemed pitiful in the grand scheme of things.

Four miles away, your father’s car sped through a red light. It was promptly t-boned by a semi and flipped twice in a blinding arc of light and screeching metal that momentarily lit up the night. Stained pieces of baby blankets, a stuffed bunny, and his body were among the things scraped off the cold concrete.

Later, your mother told you his death registered as a drop in her stomach. Perhaps it was a vague premonition, or a stray kick from you. Her next breath weighed cold and wrong in her lungs. At that moment, she knew your father wouldn’t make it in time to see you.

Of course, you don’t remember any of this. At that time, you were a screaming sack of skin barely conscious enough to register its own existence.

In the rare moments when she let something slip about your birth, you accepted the information hungrily, forever searching for the pieces to a puzzle you’ve been trying to solve your whole life. Where did it go wrong, you wondered. When was the moment your mother decided loving you had become a chore?

You grew up the way a weed did, rooting into cracks and sprouting when everything around it willed it to die. Home was a derelict building squeezed between the corner store and an abandoned apartment.

You spent your days in the darkness of your room, hunched over to avoid hitting your head against the low, sloped ceiling. The slivers of light that leaked through the shuttered window lit the hardwood floor orange, dimming when a car raced past.

There was a constant heaviness in the air, almost a presence of itself, and it seeped deeper under your skin as the years went by. It was the dead stare of your mother in the early days, when all she seemed to do was lay in her bed and stare at the ceiling fan no matter how much you called out. It was a harsh hand that smacked your cheek with bruising force when you talked for too long. It was running to the corner store at 11 PM, begging please, just one more time, and dashing back with a handful of lotion for your mother’s eczema.

At night, when the quiet itched and pulled at your skin, you closed your eyes and held your breath for as long as you could–until your head felt light and you couldn’t tell whether the mattress was below you or above. Your chest jumped up and down in a facsimile of a breath, reaching desperately for air through your pursed lips.

It was then, as your lungs threatened to burst, that you felt alive.

Years passed by like a slow trickle of molasses. You and your mother moved to a better neighborhood, but living in a white-picket suburban house didn’t seem to improve anything. Late night conversations about your father faded into heated arguments about college and familial duty. You didn’t hold your breath anymore because the sting of disappointment every time you inevitably came gasping for air got tiring.

(Some days, you wondered if it was possible to mourn a dead man that you never met.)

You aren’t sure when it started.

A hot breath in your ear, or a hand brushing through your hair. Seeing a shadow in the doorway when you were certain your mother was asleep. Piece by piece, your subconscious constructed your father from browning photos and your own appearance. Sound didn’t come until much later, because imagining a voice was a bit tricky, but you came to find that it didn’t matter how he spoke. Just that he did.

You’re doing good, he would say, mouth twitching in a non-smile from his spot just past your peripheral vision. Just a little longer.

He doesn’t talk to you that much nowadays. Just stands in the corner, staring into the back of your neck. You don’t turn as you clean shards of soju bottles off the floor, unflinching as glass digs into your calloused palms. Your mother is knocked out cold on the couch, surrounded by the stink of alcohol and something more bitter.

You know what he wants you to do. What she wants.

There’s a larger piece of glass on the floor that slots neatly into your palm, glinting a green-edged smile under the fluorescent lights. It’s funny, you muse, as you hold it up. This cycle of leaving.

In the bent glass, your grotesque reflection almost matches your mother’s.

Outside, the crows sing.

Jenna Hong is a student at the Orange County School of Arts where she spends her time studying creative writing and literature. Her work is forthcoming in Inkblot, an OCSA-led magazine, and she has been recognized by the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards.