Byzantium no.30 Spring 2020

Byzantium Number 30, Spring 2020

Copyright 2020 © Cal Poly English Department ISSN 2692-1421 (print) ISSN 2692-143X (online) Byzantium English Department California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo 1 Grand Ave. San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 Printed in Saline, MI, by McNaughton & Gunn Produced and distributed in San Luis Obispo, CA Byzantium is an annual literary journal celebrating the creative writing of Cal Poly students. The journal, produced entirely by students, was first published in 1991 at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, where it remains today. We aim to publish emerging writers, to celebrate literature, and to inspire creativity. Byzantium is published annually in June.

Byzantium welcomes submissions from all Cal Poly students, regardless of major. We, as student editors along with a team of readers, read the entries anonymously. The selected works are entered into Cal Poly’s annual Kevin Clark Poetry Writing Contest and Alfred Landwehr Fiction Writing Contest, where they are judged by professional judges located by the editors. From these contests, the winners of both fiction and poetry categories receive cash prizes in addition to being featured in Byzantium alongside the editors’ choices.

Byzantium 2019–2020 | No. 30 Managing Editor

Katherine Flitsch

Poetry Editor

Sam Mackenzie

Fiction Editor

Jay Bergquist

Art Director

Hope Golden

Fiction Readers

Claire Ervin Emma Merwin Aidan Hoey Amanda Simonich

Poetry Readers

Alex Diaz-Kokaisl Kaitlin Goodpaster Isaiah Kim Wendy McCullough Matthew Pringle Cole Tretheway

Faculty Advisors

Dr. Mira Rosenthal (Department of English) Prof. Mary LaPorte (Department of Art and Design)

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Table of Contents Editorial Note | vii

Poetry

Tongue-Trippin Cole Tretheway | 5 Underground Grief Julia Zumalt | 6 Tinder Date #5 Nathan Shipley | 21 Merry Christmas. Also, Where is Bora Bora? Alexandra Sara | 24

First Place, Kevin Clark Poetry Writing Contest Daytime Drinking Farah Sallam | 27 I Am What I Eat Ethan Hundertmark | 42 Bill Doug Caylor | 43 Far From Eden Ryan Bausch | 55 Farmers’ Market Benediction Sarah Rabbon | 82

Third Place, Kevin Clark Poetry Writing Contest Guadalupe Dunes & Solomon Creek Lucas Dodd | 85 These Days Clarke Andros | 107 Los Campos Luke Bartell | 108

Second Place, Kevin Clark Poetry Writing Contest

Fiction

The Liar & His Lyre Ellie Desmond | 1

Third Place, Alfred Landwehr Fiction Writing Contest Ghosting Marisa McAdams | 9 For Her Calista Lam | 29 Isabel and the Oak Tree Caroline Roberts | 44 Search for Earth Isabelle Watson | 57 Sea Sick Abby Edgecumbe | 88

Second Place, Alfred Landwehr Fiction Writing Contest The Sister’s Coat Mia Daniele | 110

First Place, Alfred Landwehr Fiction Writing Contest

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Contributors | 122 The Byzantium Team | 126 Acknowledgments | 128 Special Thanks | 129

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Editorial Note We, the editors of this year’s journal, are proud to be a part of the significant 30th publication of Byzantium. We edit this journal and write this note in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic, and even in these uncertain times we seek to maintain Byzantium’s literary commitment of celebrating the original fiction and poetry writing of Cal Poly students. The journal you hold before you is a testament to the creativity and dedication that has gone into the stories and poems that fill these pages.

We returned to the eponymous 1927 William Butler Yeats poem, “Sailing to Byzantium,” in curating this year’s collection of student work. Over the course of the 2019-2020 school year, we had the privilege of reading a myriad of promising submissions, and we had the challenging task of selecting just a few to represent the aspirations of this journal. Woven throughout these works is a spirit of celebrating the natural world and wondering upon humankind’s place within it—poems and stories that feature the best, the worst, and the mundane of humanity. Among these pages are also many pieces that directly resonate with “Sailing to Byzantium”’s nautical and natural setting and themes. Reflecting upon the works that we ultimately selected, we can see the spirit of Yeats’ poem in this resulting catalogue of nature and human experience.

Both this year’s journal and the three decades of Byzantium’s publication are indebted to its invaluable support system, without which the efforts of Byzantium could not be made a reality. For their continual insight and guidance, we dedicate this 30th anniversary publication to the English department and the Art and Design department, as well as to the creative writing faculty, who work tirelessly to foster and support our student writers. We further dedicate this collective to Dr. Mira Rosenthal and Professor Mary LaPorte, who have guided us through this endeavor of producing and publishing this journal. For their devoted work, we thank them. vii

Sailing to Byzantium William Butler Yeats I. That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect.

II. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.

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III. O sages standing in God’s holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.

IV. Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

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Ellie Desmond | The Liar & His Lyre

The Liar & His Lyre: A Most Unbelievable Tale Told by an Unreliable Source Ellie Desmond So get this: a man walked up to me last night, right? I’m drunk as fuck and he asks me if I want to play ping pong. Like, ping pong ping pong. The game that rich people call table tennis. He’s dead serious too, he’s holding two paddles and a little ping pong ball.

Holding it up and waving it like “Yeah, that’s right. Ping Pong. You know you want to.”

I said sure and followed him to a little back room. It’s all dark and shady in there, there’s a little old woman in the corner knitting. He sees me looking at her and looks back and forth between me and her, then he has the fucking nerve to say, “you see her too?

Thank god, I thought I was the only one.” At this point I feel like I’m fully tripping on something, even though I never took acid that night. I mean I’m drunk, but not hallucinating/psychotic drunk, just like adventurous/friendly drunk. You have to be high as a fucking kite to see shit like that frail old woman with reading glasses and old-people slippers.

He must’ve noticed me panicking because he started patting me on the head and saying, “there, there, ping pong, ping pong,” over and over until I looked away from the woman and back at him. He gave me a paddle and held up the ball, reminding me I’d promised him a game. We faced each other—there’s no ping pong table in sight—and he served the ball and it hit me in the face.

“Point!”

I bent over to try and find the ball where it had fallen, but then I heard him clear his throat and I looked up and he’s standing there wearing a shit-eating grin on his face and holding the ball in 1

Ellie Desmond | The Liar & His Lyre

his fingers. Wiggling it like before.

Swallowing, I squared myself up and nodded, ready this time.

He served again and I hit it, and suddenly we were playing ping pong without a table. As soon as I started getting the hang of it, I glanced over to the corner and the woman is still there, knitting, and looking directly at me. The ping pong ball hit me in the face again, and when I looked back at her, she was smiling. She got up and started walking towards me and Ping Pong Man, who didn’t seem to notice her at first and kept trying to start another rally with me. After the third ball landed in my gaping mouth, I turned to him and gestured violently toward my hallucinated grandma.

He finally looked over and understood my fear. He grabbed my arm and whispered, “I’m going to step in front of you when I’m done talking. When I do, don’t look back, no matter what you hear, and do not stop running until you find the man with yellow hands.

He’ll protect you from what’s about to come.” Then he stepped in front of me and I ran as fast as I could because I was not about to get murdered at a house party by some grandma that no one else could fucking see.

Behind me I heard Ping Pong Man scream. He’s probably dead. I don’t know, I didn’t look because I knew I was next. The man with yellow hands was surprisingly easy to spot and I kept running until I almost crashed into him. He looked at me, his eyes two thin purple lines that knew me better than I knew myself. He took my hand and walked me towards a door. Standing in front of it, he looked at me with pity and leaned back, falling through the door like it was mist, and disappeared.

With Yellow Hand Man gone I had little hope left for my life.

I figured that he knew what he was doing, so I stood where he had been and leaned back just like he had done until I started to fall.

Nothing caught me. I fell peacefully for about twenty minutes in pitch darkness, believing I was in the clear, until I looked up and saw that I was in a hole, the knitting woman looking down at me 2

Ellie Desmond | The Liar & His Lyre

from above. The peace I had felt moments ago from falling into eternity vanished, and panic ensued. I started flailing around, screaming.

Her face was the face of death and I had seen it too many times that day.

Ten long yellow tendrils slithered into my peripheral from below me, wrapping around my soul, and pulling it down faster than my body was going. It felt like my heart and lungs were being flattened and all I had left of my mortal life were my eyes, which had stayed where they were, forcing me to bear witness to my own soul being dragged to hell. Then there it was: hell. A forest. The yellow tendrils of the yellow-handed man sank into the ground after I landed on the padded green earth safely, my body following suit and painfully reabsorbing soul into flesh.

I can’t explain how I got out, except that I was helped by a beautiful woman who did not exist and a ball that was not round.

She brought me back to that same place from which I had left this world. I gave her my praises and raised an altar in her honor; given that she did not exist, I could not thank her in person. I’m religious, now. An experience like that can change you.

That brings me to my last point. Why I am telling you this and why I need you to know that I’m really just fulfilling a promise, that what I’m about to do is nothing personal. You see, in order to be released from hell, I had to make a deal. I’m sure you’ve heard of the type, an eye for an eye and whatnot. The woman who does not and never will exist is who you might call God. She’s actually really nice and hot as fuck but that’s not the point. I asked her to let me out, seeing as I had only fallen in to escape the knitting woman.

She told me she understood, but that since I had already seen her in her dressing gown (it was the middle of the night, after all), I would need to replace my soul in hell with another. This, as you may have guessed, is where you come in. I’m fairly certain you have a soul, so you meet the minimum requirements. I will forget that any of this happened once your soul replaces mine in the pit. The 3

Ellie Desmond | The Liar & His Lyre

forest, sorry. I’m still getting used to the terminology.

So, now everything is cleared up, you understand, right? Why I disappeared last night and why today you have to die.

Third Place, Alfred Landwehr Fiction Writing Contest

Judge’s Citation “The Liar & His Lyre” is short and weird and a lot of fun. It carries the reader along in the voice of its unreliable, first-person narrator through a shape-shifting landscape. For me, the narrator is the story’s point: an “I” trying to hold together in a collapsing, symbolic world.

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—Silas Dent Zobal

Cole Tretheway | Tongue-Trippin

Tongue-Trippin Cole Tretheway At the bottom of the barrel I’m tongue-trippin Shoulder-bumpin Wasted on words.

Toss me a toss-up, cus I’m tip-trickin Slick-slidin Scootin on scuds.

Hey, cross my heart and I’m comin-to.

Cross my eyes, too, it’s a scary-dairy world out there.

Fetch me a milk, woulda?

Don’t look at me like that.

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Julia Zumalt | Underground Grief

Underground Grief Julia Zumalt I. I wonder how long you could have survived inside there, like a frog or a salamander in that moist dirt.

You’d be high-society in no time, sharing tea with the head centipede.

Still, life isn’t the same under a rotting log.

You can rest in that soft soil, but I know you couldn’t last— the bark would’ve snagged your lilac skirt.

II. Your hands were cold when I pulled you from that cushioned grave.

Your eyelids lipped in moss. Mushrooms rising from your ears.

I wrapped you inside my arms like I was freezing, like maybe if I held you long enough, I’d be warm again. But your hair was stiff with hairspray from the fun home, like from a long day of work. It’s odd— your gardenia perfume easily covers the smell.

III. You wanted to be cremated when you died, little, flaking bits of you mixing in with the living.

A tad macabre, if you ask me.

I wish you’d had that in writing, or we wouldn’t be here— your head rolls as I lift you from that clammy velvet box, sheets and pillows swallowing you. You’re nodding.

I kiss you on the forehead. I heave your body above ground.

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Julia Zumalt | Underground Grief

IV. Your skin is so soft. Always so delicate.

I worry. Did anyone tell you they loved you before you went?

I will tell you, again and again, this time around— I love you i love you iloveyou. *** I imagine you stir mid-slumber. Moss and mushrooms missing.

I keep dragging your body, even when I hear your voice.

I try not to look. I can’t let grief stop me this time.

V. You didn’t like fire in life. Too scared to light a kerosene lamp.

I once held your hand, to steady it, you trembled as you watched the orange lap hungrily for your shaking fingers.

But you still lit the wick. How we danced in the glow...

You are not here to steady my hand, and I know. I must light the wick.

VI. It’s funny. I think I can hear you scream over the rushing flames.

I know baby, I’m sorry, kerosene will have to do. I think I see you waking up, eyes blinking in the smoke and head twisting for a way out.

Silly. Those ropes would be too tight to untie, anyway.

You had wanted to die, I know it. Dead-end job, pastelcolored wallpaper eating up your insides.

I mean, you did die, years ago.

Horrible car crash.

That heart I stole from you is gone.

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Julia Zumalt | Underground Grief

VII. I tried to get you to love me again—but you just couldn’t remember how beautiful we were together—it hurt to realize you may be feigning more than the amnesia. I’d never hurt you, baby, but that woman is not you. Lila... I hate that she’s wearing your perfume.

And I tried. I Really Fucking Tried To get rid of my grief. But I realized, I could never accept how she stole your life from you. You. I know you’re helpless, her prisoner stuck under that rotting log.

VIII. That witch pretending to be you­­— she’s gone now.

Lila, darling, you hear that? It’s done.

You’re free. And I am so ready.

I cannot wait to see you again.

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Marisa McAdams | Ghosting

Ghosting Marisa McAdams He would very much like to devour her alive, this fragile young thing sitting before him. Across the table draped in white, there she sat, draped in red like the wine in her glass and the color of her lipstick, the majority of which had smudged off onto her wineglass rim and cream linen napkin. He could see her lips moving, her teeth the same off-white color as the napkin, shaping syllables with careful articulation. He could sense the register of her soft-spoken voice, the nasal quality of it, as she parroted key terms and concepts she’d copied off the whiteboard during her 101 lectures: the Heinz Dilemma, Bronfenbenner’s ecological systems theory, Piaget’s theory of constructivism, something about Sigmund Freud, et cetera. And as she spoke, he could feel the anxious energy seeping from her skin, filling the air between them like static. This, of course, he attributed to a harmless case of first-date nerves.

Over the course of their two-hour conversation and first two meal courses, he had gathered the following pieces of intel: One, she was a child psychologist. Trying to be, that is. Currently enrolled in her first year of community college (despite being in her early twenties) with quite a way to go before her goal became a reality.

Two, she was alone. There was no one in her life who would mourn her inevitable loss. No one who would take notice of her empty seat in their afternoon lecture and wonder at her absence.

No one who would come across a picture of her one day, months after her passing, and feel the chasmal ache of loss carving a fissure across their chest.

And three, her name was Corinna, as in Ovid’s Amores: the white-necked mistress whose beauty rivalled that of the fabled Semiramis.

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Marisa McAdams | Ghosting

She preferred Corey, though. Fair enough.

The flow of the conversation between Evan and Corey, as his date so liked to be called, eventually stagnated, as stilted first-date conversations often do. Lovely as the girl was, her conversational skills were evidently a work in progress. If fate were not to take the path that it was to, Evan would have pitied the poor children who found themselves subjected to the girl’s nervous prattling—provided that she ever managed to finish her degree, that is.

Anxious to disrupt the silence, she asked him, “How’s your whisky, by the way?”

Slightly more bitter than the brands he was used to, but nothing he couldn’t handle.

“Decent,” he replied in a mild tone. “Filet mignon any good?”

It better be good, he thought. It better be the best goddamn steak you’ve ever tasted, because I’ll be damned before I shell out fifty bucks just to get ghosted by someone again.

He couldn’t afford to let her slip away. Not when the taste of human flesh had been denied him for so long.

“Oh, the steak is just divine,” sighed Corey, her statement punctuated with an awkward chuckle. (Evan highly doubted that, as good as filet mignon was, it was possible for a cut of meat to assume godlike status.) “Literally melts in your mouth, like butter or something. I didn’t think it was possible for meat to do that. How’s your, uh, tilapia vertebrae?”

Evan sighed down at his dish. One would imagine the uppity chefs of a Michelin-starred establishment like this one would take the time to debone their fish, but no. Here lay the tilapia, pin bones protruding from pale shreds of meat. Practically nothing but skin and skeleton. It reminded him of a previous date, Helen, whose gaunt, bulge-eyed face could not launch a thousand ships, but whose mouth could launch a thousand lines of discourse in re the pressing issue of climate change. Damned ecology majors.

But Corey. Corey Sun, the twenty-one-year-old child develop10

Marisa McAdams | Ghosting

ment major, with her heart-shaped face and dimpled smile, was an entirely different dish. Imperfect, but tender nonetheless. The type of girl who would melt into his hands. In his mouth.

“I’ve tasted better, honestly,” said Evan, pushing his plate of fish to the side.

“You sure you don’t want some?” She proffered a forkful of steak glistening with juices and rosemary butter. “I’m telling you, Ev, you’re missing out on some good stuff here.”

“I’m good.” The corner of his mouth quirked up at Corey’s use of a nickname, simple though it was. “Tell you the truth, I’m finding the present company to be far more appealing than the cuisine.

Prettier, even.”

“He finds me more attractive than a piece of dead meat,” said Corey to no one in particular as she shoved the forkful of steak into her mouth. There was a glint of sarcasm in her voice. “How flattering.” Her feigned nonchalance did nothing to conceal the rosy flush that bedaubed her skin like watercolor paint, brought forth by the wine and a sudden burst of flusterment.

Underneath the table, Evan’s fingers dug into his pant leg. In the flushed heat of the moment, he pictured himself lunging forward wolf-like to sink his teeth into Corey’s delicately rouged skin, incisors and canines tearing at peach-soft flesh to expose blood and bone and tendon.

In reality, he sat there. Smiling. Evan wasn’t one to rush things.

He was a patient sort of fellow, willing to take things slow. He was a gentleman, the model of modern chivalry. That was what his previous date said of him before things went south. Well, south for her, north for him. A goddamned gentleman he was, one who held great respect for women and their bodies, especially when the latter was deboned, seasoned, and cooked properly. (The taste of human flesh, as Evan had discovered in his culinary endeavors, paired excellently with a Cabernet reduction sauce.)

He would bide his time. Wait for the next hour to strike. Wait 11

Marisa McAdams | Ghosting

for the subsequent hour, even. Until the time was ripe for the picking, he would wait.

A simpler man might have chosen to pull a Mickey Finn to hasten the process, but Evan was far too clever, too confident in his own abilities, to resort to such clichéd tactics. In any case, he had found, by way of past experiences, that alcohol in itself was a singularly powerful incapacitating agent when consumed in large quantities. And he, being an economically privileged man in possession of a generous spirit, always made sure that his dates were well-supplied with copious amounts of fine wine and liquor.

And for first-time drinkers like Corey—who filled their wine glasses nigh to the brim and strove, with greedy abandon, to atone for years of sobriety within a single night—inebriation was all but a guarantee.

“Now.” Corey pushed forward, elbows creating two small hills in the tablecloth—the notion of proper table etiquette was lost on her, apparently. “Tell me, Evan. Who are you really?”

He regarded her with a smile as he leaned back in his seat.

“Just some ordinary guy on a date with an exceptional woman,” he replied.

“Not what I mean. See, Evan, we’ve been talking for quite a while now, and we’ve gotten to know each other a fair amount. But we’ve barely scratched the surface.” As she said this, she ran one long, pink-painted nail across the tablecloth. “I mean, I know it’s only our first date, but I wanna know who I’m really dealing with here. See, the mental image I have of you right now—it’s flat. Underdeveloped.”

“Ouch.” He took a sip of scotch.

“You know what I mean. You’re a nice, smart guy who dropped out of law school to pursue your culinary passions, who paints watercolors in his free time while listening to Vivaldi, who likes Korean BBQ and reads classical lit—Homer, Ovid, the like. But I want to know what lies beyond that. I wanna know what makes you...you. You know?”

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Marisa McAdams | Ghosting

Sitting there, listening to this girl speak to him like some awkwardly overeager high-school guidance counselor—it made him want to laugh. It felt wrong, like a child playing dress-up in her mother’s clothing, except he was supposed to take her seriously.

“I see,” said Evan, offering a smile that he hoped was teasing rather than mocking. He raised the glass of scotch closer to his face.

Swirled it around. “Trying to turn me into one of your patients, Corey?”

“You’re a bit older than my target clientele,” said Corey, tucking a lock of spider-black hair behind her ear. “But you’ll do in the meantime, I suppose. So tell me. What’s your story?”

Evan’s backstory could be contained within the span of a single letter-sized page of double-spaced twelve-point Times New Roman text, and no significant detail would be omitted.

The essence of twenty-nine-year-old Evan Patrick Walker could be crushed down into a single word: generic. He was born to a construction executive and a real estate agent in one of many moderately affluent, white-bread families in one of many middle-class, cookie-cutter subdivisions in one of many sleepy Midwestern towns in the United States of God-blessed America. Evan’s life was painfully, pathetically lackluster. His lack of suffering was in and of itself a form of suffering. Everything was either handed to him directly or attained with minimal effort on his own part: money, education, friends (thanks to his mother, who had acted as a liaison of sorts between him and the neighborhood kids when they were in grade school), housing, more money. All the components necessary for a fulfilling lifestyle—with one crucial exception.

Believe it or not, romance was the one area in his life in which he remained unsated. Perhaps he was not handsome in the classical sense—his face too narrow, his complexion wan and colorless, his 13

Marisa McAdams | Ghosting

gray eyes sunken and drooping at the corners as though he were in a perpetual state of gloom and exhaustion—but where he lacked in physical appeal, he more than made up (or so he presumed) in charm, in intelligence, and in superficial familiarity with works of classical literature. Titles. Authors. Strategically selected quotes. He plucked one out of context, like a worm from a pail, skewered it on a hook, and cast his line into a sea of potential mates. Sea was perhaps not the most suitable term in this context, as it implied natural beauty and immeasurable depth. Reservoir, probably. But Evan took what he could get. And if that meant shoveling his way through a succession of bland, unseasoned dishes before accruing the honey-sweet fruits of his labor, then so be it. He had five under his belt thus far; with luck, and plenty of tact, Corinna Sun would be his lucky number six.

Of course, the story with which he presented his date was more or less different than the one expounded on above. He was good at cover stories. His situation necessitated it.

All the while, Corey listened with rapt fascination, cradling the bowl of her wine glass without pausing to take a sip, as though the taste of pinot noir might somehow interfere with her hearing capacities.

There are many who would argue that Evan’s methods of obtaining fulfillment were “evil” or “inhumane,” but one must consider the following: did not his abject boredom, the cataclysmic dullness that came with living a life of ease, excuse this one indulgence? Indeed, he held no other vices. He’d had no prior experience with sex or drugs, and even when he drank, it was never to the point of inebriation. Those who knew him—neighbors, family, friends—would doubtlessly characterize him as quiet, pleasant, mild mannered. A smart, well-adjusted individual from an upper-income 14

Marisa McAdams | Ghosting

household in a decent neighborhood. If cannibalism was the singular vice that held him in its grasp, then where lay the fault but with the universal forces that dictated fate, or, perhaps, with the corrupt society that had molded his psychological development? Really, there was no easy answer to such a question.

“Well, that’s me,” said Evan, finishing off his carefully crafted spiel with another swig of his drink. “So what happens next? You diagnose me with some psychiatric disorder, we call it a day, and you charge me sixty bucks for our session?”

“If I were a licensed psychologist, maybe,” she said with a wink.

“But I’ll settle for a nice dinner as compensation. And maybe a little...something afterwards?”

He had to appreciate her boldness, even if there was nothing tactful about it. At least he knew he was getting somewhere with her.

Before he could spring in for the kill, Corey—perhaps interpreting his hesitation as a silent rejection—blustered on, “Anyway.

Was that—I didn’t come off as too prying, did I? I know I might come off as nosy to some, but really, I’m just—it’s just interesting to me, learning about people. It’s my belief that you can understand so much about a person by going back to their roots. Their childhood. So much of who we are is rooted in our pasts. It can explain so much about us—belief systems, possible motives for our behavior...”

“Of course,” said Evan. “So what did you learn about me?”

Her red-painted smile was stretched out a touch too wide— nervousness, perhaps. “I haven’t made a diagnosis yet. But, then again, I’m not a licensed psychologist. I’m only a student.”

“Why aren’t you, by the way?” Evan leaned forward, elbows pressing into the table, the notion of proper table etiquette be damned. “A psychologist, I mean.”

“Well, I’m still in the process of obtaining my degree,” said Corey. “Can’t exactly jump from Point A to Point D just like that, much as I would like to. And of course, I’ll still need to earn my 15

Marisa McAdams | Ghosting

master’s, and PsyD—” “What I meant by that was, why are you only now starting on your undergrad degree? Financial difficulties seem to be the most common excuse for this type of situation. Alternatively, lack of motivation, or some combination of the two. But you...I don’t know. There’s something about you that tells me the circumstances are more complex.”

“Interesting. Wonder what’s telling you that.”

The urge to appeal to flattery, perhaps. “I’m not sure. But I’m intrigued, I have to admit.”

“It’s sort of a...it’s not an easy story to tell,” said Corey. Her gaze landed upon her napkin, and she furrowed her brow at the lipstick stains as though they belonged to someone else. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“What’s there to stop me from wanting to know? We’ve got time,” said Evan, spreading his arms as if to indicate said expanse of time. “Hell, even after this place closes...we’ve still got time for—as you said—a little something afterwards, don’t we?”

“My sister,” whispered Corey.

“What?”

“You wanted to know why I started college so late. You could say my sister was the reason.” Picking up the napkin, she proceeded to scrub the color from her lips. “Well, step-sister, really, if you want to split hairs. But we were so close, the prefix hardly mattered.”

“I...wasn’t aware you had one. A sister, I mean.”

He hadn’t been aware she had anyone.

She deposited the rouged napkin onto the table. “I don’t. Not anymore.” A sober expression stole across her face, draining some of the brightness from her features.

“Ah.” Had he asked the wrong question? “I apologize, Corey.

And I understand if you don’t feel comfortable—” “No, no. I think it’s necessary to talk about her,” she said. “I don’t think I could explain who I really am without bringing up 16

Marisa McAdams | Ghosting

some ghosts from the past. Maybe that’s all I really am, you know?

Just an amalgamation of ghosts from the past. It doesn’t take a psychologist to know that loss produces pain. But I never knew how much of myself I would lose...

“Maybe that’s a part of why I joined as many dating sites as I could. I was trying to find something to fill the void of companionship I was left with. I didn’t need a romantic connection, per se. I just needed a connection. I just needed...someone to talk to.

Someone who wasn’t a therapist.”

“Well, in that case, I’m glad we found each other,” said Evan, keeping his voice gentle. “You’ve been nothing—nothing but lovely since we met.”

She coughed out a laugh. Some of her lipstick had bled onto her teeth. “Even online?”

“It’s not often that a girl messages you first.”

“No, I guess it isn’t. The funny thing is—my sister met her friend the same way.”

“Just a friend, huh?”

“It was supposed to be our secret,” said Corey. “She told me, and no one else, about him. She was afraid our mother would find out, get upset. But, God—that was the last thing my sister should’ve been afraid of.”

Her voice halted, and Evan wondered if he should discourage her from continuing. There was a strain in her voice that seemed to portend an oncoming rush of tears, and Evan wasn’t prepared to handle such an event, should it come about.

But Corey continued in an unsteady voice: “She made me promise to keep it a secret, and I did. I told our mom she was staying with a friend from school. The night she went out with that guy—that same night was probably her last one. If only I wasn’t such a good sister.”

“It’s not your fault,” Evan murmured. “We all do things we regret later in life.”

17

Marisa McAdams | Ghosting

“Do you want to know the strangest thing?” she said. “When they found her, her bones had been picked clean. Not by the natural process of decay. And not by any animal, either—although the humanity of the culprit might be disputed. Someone had actually—I think they—but who could have done something like that?”

Again, she grasped her wine glass by the bowl; in lieu of ingesting its contests, she fixed her stare upon some vague point in the distance—somewhere beyond where Evan sat—with an expression that Evan could not describe.

His own hand tensed around his glass. He took a cautious sip.

“Um,” he said. “What did you say was—what was her name?”

As though deaf to his words, she said, “After they found her, I made a fucking mess of myself. Never left the house. Would rarely even leave my bed. Would never speak to anyone. I retreated so wholly into myself that I no longer knew who I was. I forgot who my friends were. At first, I thought it was out of grief. And it was— for a while, at least. But really, it was fear—fear of him. I was afraid he would come for me next.” Again, she paused, but when she spoke again, there was a note of concern softening her voice. “Sorry, are you feeling okay? Should I—is this too much?”

“No. It’s—it’s fine,” he managed to say. In truth, he was feeling quite drowsy. The corners of his vision wavered. The scotch had taken its toll on him, he supposed. Had he really drunk so much of it? “I-It’s fine. Go on.”

“Anyway, it’s been four years since her death. The police managed to find her body—what was left of it—but they still haven’t found the guy who did it. I didn’t have much information to go on.

She never told me his name or showed me a picture of him—she was secretive like that, even with me. He was this nameless, faceless figure. All I knew about my sister’s friend was the way she’d described him. Nice, sensitive, artistic. Her ideal type, in a nutshell. Not the handsomest guy out there, but he had a pleasant smile. But you can’t exactly base a police sketch off of that description alone, can you?”

18

Marisa McAdams | Ghosting

“I...suppose you can’t,” Evan heard himself say.

“So I promised myself something. I promised myself I would find the man who had destroyed my sister’s life and body and my own sanity. I promised myself I would climb out of this hole I had fallen into and finally do something with my life. And once I had accomplished something that gave meaning to my existence, I would be able to die happy. Because that’s all we’re trying to do with our lives, right? Follow our impulses, our desires, the pleasures of the flesh. We’re all going to bite the dust at some point; we might as well go out with a smile. God knows my sister didn’t.”

His mind, his vision, felt as though it were trembling and fading from his grasp.

“You sure you’re feeling all right?” She chuckled—the sound was cloying, strangely saccharine. “Didn’t tell me you were a lightweight.”

“I’m not. Just...tired, is all. It’s been a long day.” His own voice sounded strange to him. Distant.

“Should I ask for the check?”

Evan raised the glass of scotch to his lips. Empty.

“Please,” he said.

To the careless observer, they might have looked the picture of an innocent young couple after a successful first date, flushed with wine and whiskey and nervous ecstasy.

His body was huddled flush against hers, limbs dangling listlessly, and her arm curled around him in a grip that was firmer than he would have supposed. The car into which they stumbled felt different than his own—was it the seats? the smell?—but he figured he could always return to the restaurant to retrieve his car. There was still time.

But now—now, he was grateful for a few moments of respite.

His mind was too heavy for him, and his only desire was to shut it out.

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Marisa McAdams | Ghosting

The car dipped ever so slightly. The sound of a door shutting.

Then, a voice.

“Thank you, Evan. For taking a chance with me,” it said, quiet and breathless. “And I’m—sorry things had to come to an end like this.”

“Me too,” Evan murmured, or at least he thought he did. As night descended upon his consciousness and his vision succumbed to the darkness like a dying star, the only thing of which he was certain was that he could no longer be certain of anything.

20

Nathan Shipley | Tinder Date #5

Tinder Date #5 Nathan Shipley I really had fixed it so perfect—figured out how

to fold the seats of my car down —it was an SUV— the second and third rows

so it made a kind of bed in the back so she and I could do it

—comfortably, at least— well, as comfortably as one could do things

(I hardly knew her and she hardly knew me) —even threw

a pillow and sleeping bag back there I’m trying to prove something to myself, but I don’t know what it is We drove around for a while Yes the stars do look beautiful tonight I asked her to take her shoes off—didn’t want to get dirt on the seats—thanks She wanted to cuddle first Which was O.K. I guess

I didn’t mind 21

Nathan Shipley | Tinder Date #5

pretending for a bit But it went on

for what felt like forever Then we did what we came

here for (Folding ourselves into darkness

deeper and deeper as we go—feeling our bodies

slip into this hollow in time

—letting it happen

all at once) At one point she bonked her head

on the ceiling We smiled —separately—

in silence I suppose the advantageous nature of nihilism lies purely

in the compellinglessness of everything because everything is nothing

really but a chemical mirage Her face Her lips

Her chin resting on my chest while we talk and while I play with a seat belt afterwards 22

Nathan Shipley | Tinder Date #5

I might have become attached But no— I prefer the release of self-repudiation

the orgasm of futility the ecstasy of disappearance I drove her back to her apartment and then got Taco Bell and drove

home Rolling the window down, it really was a lovely evening that night

23

Alexandra Sara | Merry Christmas. Also, Where is Bora Bora?

Merry Christmas. Also, Where is Bora Bora?

Alexandra Sara It’s 2019 and I use a habit-tracking app to record how many days I practice self-love. I’m on a fucking roll and I want Tim Cook to know.

Take a sip of fresh-squeezed new moon at the Black Friday Sales and turn over a radical new leaf, lick my fingers and get the aftertaste of natural deodorant that doesn’t work and costs me twice my hourly wage.

I keep thinking I’ll make bruschetta and buy baguettes, and when they go stale, I think I’ll make breadcrumbs, and now I need to barricade my doors against the snowdrift of carbohydrates that landslide when I open my freezer.

I’m not ready for 2020 because 2019 still has so much it’s waiting for me to become.

It would be fortunate if there was a singular confusion, one conundrum to be proven or dispelled, consensus on whether vapes give you cancer and whether the ketogenic diet is optimal for human performance or just makes you smell like meat.

Can I put Instagram in the recycling?

Was Cars the movie of our generation?

Does a dog have an IP address, and, if so, can I send him mail?

Am I bilingual if I speak more than one of the Five Love Languages?

24

Alexandra Sara | Merry Christmas. Also, Where is Bora Bora?

But it’s 2019 and this year has been an eight-limbed confusion, squeezing through holes you didn’t know existed and suckering onto insecurities you’ve just been taught that you have.

It’s 2019 and in 2018 the phrase “how to make slime” was googled more times than “how to tie a tie,” “how to register to vote,” and “where is Dubai.”

It’s 2019 and porn made for women is still so disappointing and misogynistic that this non-voting, geographically confused, unkempt slime enthusiast somehow features in my fantasies.

It’s 2019 and I’m eating cereal in front of “8 Hour Bird Bonanza: Videos for Your Cats to Watch.” I’ve convinced myself the tinned, buffering bird sounds count as soul-cleansing, aura-resetting “nature bathing” and I’m so desperate that I ignore T-Mobile putting my account into overdraft after hour six.

It’s 2019 and it’s a double-rainbow confusion, giving us every shade of FOMO, self-doubt, and imposter syndrome painted twice across the sky. There’s a pot of bitcoin at the end, so long as you can get past the troll who will try to clickbait you into riddles: “If not ALL men, then, WHICH men?”

It’s 2019 and I haven’t kept up, but really, who has? I’m letting Google autofill my New Year’s Resolutions for 2020.

First Place, Kevin Clark Poetry Writing Contest

Judge’s Citation I was taken by the voice of this poem­—ironic, but not cynical—and 25

Alexandra Sara | Merry Christmas. Also, Where is Bora Bora?

by this poet’s ability to tackle the personal, social, and political absurdities of our time without ever resorting to generalities or clichés. The poet’s use of detail, particularity, specificity is excellent.

The poem is complex and complicated, funny and self-aware.

—Ellen Bass

­

26

Farah Sallam | Daytime Drinking

Daytime Drinking Farah Sallam Daytime drinking in a cold, dark room.

I sit by a lamp shade—navy blue.

It outlines the contours of my plump figure, As I look through binders and binders of us.

A photograph was taken Only weeks ago.

I keep it tucked away from the other prints, Slipped in between my torn jeans, Protecting dimes, nickels, and quarters in my pockets, And imprinting the image on my skin.

I’ve been daytime drinking, More and more...

Steeping my mind in stolen spirits.

My flesh more supple like round oranges, Ready to be squeezed into a fresh drink Or ground up as a candied delicacy.

I remember your eyes were like a wishing well, Pools of gold that I could drown myself in.

You were so soothing, A fortune teller to behold.

You knew of my future, And you knew of my past, By just peering into my ever-present lies.

You knew how deep, how submerged I would be in lackluster liquor; 27

Farah Sallam | Daytime Drinking

Because you knew why I preferred the feverish fields spotted With moonlit freckles Rather than the corrosive confines Of my old forgotten home.

Daytime drinking, As you know well, Was a bad habit of my father’s.

He would take in whiskey Like he would inhale warm air, As he would lament about how my mother Perished by his pale blue hands.

Daytime drinking Filled me to the brim with primeval bliss.

Bloated from bubbling champagne and your enthralling murmurs.

I know we both remember the pitch of your shrill voice after the backs of my palms struck your face.

My father would think of time better spent By the chartreuse plains of Rosemary Lake, Watching the clouds pass by; And he would pray for better days, Pining for the October sun, And then he would slap me upside-down In hopes things would change.

And now, I do too.

As I carry change with me.

28

Calista Lam | For Her

For Her Calista Lam Birthday Party I’ve got liquid cake all over my forearms. It’s been swirling inside his stomach for about an hour, along with roughly fourteen shots of the finest Apple Smirnoff. I got lucky; cake was all he ate today. I want to toss this jackass outside to sober up, but I won’t because I’m nice. I take a good look at the fool. Sitting on the floor, propped up against the vomit-stained sofa, he blinks sluggishly.

Drool runs down his scruffy chin and onto his bare chest. His shot glass is a casualty tossed by the wayside. A singing card addressed to no one sits open in his lap, playing a cheery rendition of “Happy Birthday” on repeat. Black ink is sprayed all over the opposite wall where the pen exploded when he threw it. Later I’ll find his shirt soaking in the kitchen sink amongst disintegrating chunks of vanilla cake. He’s muttering to himself about the holes in his sock.

“Pee?” he says to his protruding pinky toe. I roll my eyes.

“Yeah, yeah okay.”

I lift him by the elbows, and we shuffle down the hallway. Actually, I’m shuffling while he hangs off of me like a baby possum. His head swivels and hits the wall with every step, and I let it happen because he deserves it. I push the door open and sit him on the toilet because there’s no way in hell that I’m going to let him attempt to pee while standing.

“Kev, just stay there and take your pants off. I’m gonna wash off.”

Obediently, he fights with the tie on his sweatpants. I turn the sink on and get to work rinsing his stomach contents out of my watch. The smell is making my head swim, and I want nothing more than to burn the skin off my arms. Angry doesn’t begin to explain how I’m feeling right now, but I can’t bring myself to show it. I wipe the watch face gingerly. It reads: Sunday, October 15, 11:24 p.m.

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Calista Lam | For Her

As I look over at the man dry-heaving into the toilet bowl, a wave of remorse washes over me. This is my little brother, Kevin.

He’s twenty-four years old, and today was his daughter’s 4th birthday.

Dreams Back when we were kids, I was jealous of my brother. I hated that charming smile of his that could get him through every door. I hated that he never got in trouble because he could argue his way out of anything. I hated that he received everything he wanted because my parents were weak to his begging. I hated that he snorted cocaine off the dining room table our family sat around every night.

Of course, our parents never knew that bit.

When he realized he wanted to become a teacher, Kev enrolled at some university on the east coast that I had never heard of. My parents were excited that Kev finally found his calling in life. They didn’t have much, but, being supportive parents, they didn’t give a second thought to paying his tuition, renting him an apartment to live in, and giving him some pocket change to “enjoy college to the fullest.” At the airport, Dad patted Kev on the shoulder, and Mom smiled proudly at her son, who had grown to be much taller than her that summer. They hugged him goodbye and reminded him to take care of himself. He reassured them that he would, promising to see them in three months for Thanksgiving break. And with a grin, Kev walked through the gates and disappeared—for three whole years. For three years there were no phone calls, no visits home, no traces of my brother anywhere. Naturally, my parents were distraught when they learned that their son had dropped out of school a month into his freshman year.

We hunted for Kev for about ten months before the stress started to wear us down, and our lives quickly spiraled into a living hell. My parents’ worry turned to anger, and they took it out on each other. Mom became depressed and quit her job. She spent her days in the house, having nowhere she cared to go. Dad began 30

Calista Lam | For Her

spending weekends at the office. We rarely used the dining room table anymore. I hated Kev for what he had done to us. I moved out as soon as I could.

Sunshine It’s been seven years since the day we dropped Kev off at the airport. He lives with me now, but for the time he’s been staying here he hasn’t put much of an effort into getting his shit together.

It used to be worse though. When he first moved in, I was determined to help him get his life back on track, whether he liked it or not. I nagged at him for weeks until, finally, he scraped together some faked-up resume. Miraculously, he managed to land a parttime job at a plant nursery, loading and unloading bags of fertilizer.

I would’ve been proud of him, except for the fact that he would turn around and use most of his paycheck to buy Diet Coke, dollar scratchers that were always duds, and cigarettes to alleviate the disappointment. He came home looking and smelling like actual shit.

Once he got home, he’d flush two ketamine tablets—“Sunshine Pills,” as he called them—down with the Diet Coke and get fucked up on my sofa. The only thing I ever asked of him was to chip in eighty bucks for rent in exchange for living here.

Luck One time I asked Kev how he got into drugs.

“Well, as you probably guessed, I started up in high school,” he said.

I nodded. “With what?”

“I think it was...grape Swishers.” He paused to stare at the ceiling lights. “I was over at a buddy of mine’s place and his dad had left a pack out on the kitchen counter. So I took it. It’s been downhill ever since.”

“What did you do next?”

“LSD.” 31

Calista Lam | For Her

“Jesus Christ, Kev. How did you get your hands on that?”

“You know Danny, right?”

Yeah, I knew Danny. Danny’s got shit for brains. I nodded.

“Well, Danny’s older brother pushed drugs out of his Caravan back when we were in school. Sometimes he’d send me off with care packages filled with different kinds of drugs, and I’d get them for free because I was good friends with his brother.”

I looked at him skeptically.

“No seriously, it was so much fun. Me and Danny used to get real fucking stupid in his backyard. We’d smoke blunts, snort crack, take shrooms, anything. Even if we didn’t know what it’d do to us.

It’s like fear wasn’t cooked into our DNA; we felt invincible. There’s really no other feeling like that in the world.”

He stared out the window. The setting sun sank into a pool of powdery pinks and purples. Clouds streaked across the sky like chunks of drying paint spread thin across a canvas.

I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes. Kev waxing poetic about his backyard escapades hardly interested me. “If it’s so much fun, why don’t you do it anymore?” I asked him.

Looking back at me, Kev replied, “What do you mean ‘Why don’t you do it anymore?’”

“I haven’t seen you snorting anything off a table lately.”

He looked at me like I was the idiot in the room. “That’s because I liquify it and shoot it straight into my blood.”

Duh. Obviously.

Guest The day Kev came back into our lives is still a difficult memory for me. It was New Year’s Eve, four years ago. A live broadcast of Times Square played on the television and a countdown of the final hour until the ball drop flashed in the lower right corner of the screen. Mom and Dad were cooking dinner in the kitchen as I poured champagne into plastic flutes. I could hear our neighbor’s 32

Calista Lam | For Her

party guests shouting and laughing when I heard two knocks so faint, I almost didn’t catch them. I was the closest, so I opened the door. And there stood a man I knew but did not recognize, with a baby in his arms.

The ball dropped and the world celebrated the new year as we stood in tense silence in the living room, taken back to three years ago when our lives had come to an abrupt stop. Mom broke the silence first.

“Kevin? What the hell are you doing here?”

Kev gave her a wan smile. “It’s good to see you too, Mom.” “Don’t give me that,” she said, her voice slowly rising. “You betray this family and suddenly you have the nerve to show up like nothing ever happened?”

Kev grimaced. “I’m sorry. I really don’t know what to say right now.”

He shifted the infant from his right arm to his left.

“Whose baby is that?”

“It–She’s mine. I think.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not.”

I took the shaking baby from him. He had her wrapped up in some kind of vinyl shower curtain, so I quickly transferred her to a warm blanket. After sitting Kev down in a chair, I took a good look at my long-lost brother. I could see bright red and green veins peeking out from beneath his almost translucent skin. That cheerful face that used to glow with mischief now appeared sunken and gray. His forearms were dotted with purple and blue targets.

Mom’s gaze remained steady on Kev. Her eyes were bloodshot, her mouth pinched into a thin line that curved down at the corners.

She looked so tired.

“I want to know everything that happened.”

Kev sighed. “Okay.”

He spoke. We listened for a long time.

33

Calista Lam | For Her

Even though the questions I had so desperately wanted answers to for all those years were finally being revealed, I hardly listened to what Kev was saying. I kept my eyes on the baby sleeping in my arms; I didn’t want to look at Kevin. I felt the anger first.

How could he do something so selfish? Then, sadness. Why did he turn out like this? He got everything he ever wanted. Relief. After three long years, my brother is finally home. Grief. I don’t know who he is anymore.

I wasn’t sure of how to feel.

By the end of his story, Kev’s voice was hoarse. “I need help,” he said. “Please. I can’t do this on my own anymore.”

Mom’s tough exterior crumbled. She held her face in her hands. As she cried and heaved, Dad rubbed her back to comfort her. Tears ran down Kev’s hollow cheeks. I was crying. Dad looked solemn. We said nothing as the room filled with the sound of my mother’s heartbreak.

To my surprise, Dad spoke up. He almost never talks.

“I don’t think you realize how badly you’ve torn this family apart,” said Dad. “And apparently, you also screwed yourself over in the process. I hope it was worth it.” Dad looked at the baby.

“Where is the mother?”

“She’s gone.”

“What? She ran away?”

“No, she’s dead.”

Dad panicked. “Jesus Christ... What the hell did you do?”

“No, no... She overdosed on her own. I swear.”

I hugged the baby close.

Dad pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. He looked deep in thought.

“Here’s what I’m going to propose,” he said after a while. “Your mother and I... We will raise the baby. You won’t have to do anything.”

Kev, whose head was quietly bowed, looked up. Dad glanced over at Mom. She looked hesitant, but she nodded.

34

Calista Lam | For Her

“In exchange,” Dad continued, “You will never speak to or see the girl ever again. She will grow up never knowing who you are or who her real father is. She’ll have a normal life, and you won’t get the chance to ruin that any more than you already have.”

I looked down at the infant in my arms and realized that she was too young to understand the decisions being made for her. I felt numb. I looked at her father, who seemed uncertain of what to do.

“You won’t let me even see her?” Kev asked.

“That’s right.”

“How could you? She deserves to know who her father is.”

“I think she’d be much happier without knowing her parents were a pair of drug addicts. She’s already been through so much.

You’ve done enough.”

“Dad, please. She’s all I have left.”

Dad exploded.

“Grow up already! Instead of thinking about yourself, think about the baby. We can give her a chance at living a fulfilling life.

But you? No, you’ve destined her to a life of suffering. The baby hasn’t stopped shaking since she got here. Does that seem normal to you?”

Kev was trapped. He wouldn’t be able to give the baby what she wanted, or what she needed. He was too young, too uncertain.

Taking responsibility for her life would hold him back—it would hold her back. He knew this too.

Kev looked at the infant for a long time. She held onto my pinky with her hand.

“Fine, take her,” Kev said through clenched teeth.

“That’s the smartest decision you’ve ever made in your life,” said Dad. “Now, I think you should go. Say your goodbyes.”

I moved to hand the child back to Kev. But instead of reaching out to take her, he rose out of his seat and took a step back.

“I think it’d be better if I just left,” said Kev. He turned to go.

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Calista Lam | For Her

“Wait,” said Mom. Kev paused.

“Why did you leave?” she whispered.

“I never liked school, I couldn’t pretend anym—” “No—why did you leave us?” Her voice faltered.

Kev’s eyes wandered to the television screen. Footage of cascading fireworks alight in the New York sky glimmered off his tearstreaked face and drowned in his oil-spill eyes. He wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand and smiled. “I don’t remember.”

He took one last look at his daughter before opening the door and walking out into the night.

Afterparty It’s Monday, October 16, 9:18 a.m. My back is seriously killing me. I pop two Advil’s and wait for the pain to subside. In the living room, Kev is snoring softly on the sofa. The birthday card quietly sits open-faced on the coffee table. Cracking open the window to air out the odors of Kev’s solo birthday party, I start cleaning up. I toss the broken pen into the trash. Scrubbing sort of helps take the ink off the wall, but a faint, gray stain stubbornly remains.

I toss Kev’s shirt into the washing machine and the shot glass takes its place in the sink. Vanilla cake slides down the drain.

I watch as Kev rolls onto his side. His eyes peel open, and he quickly surveys the room. His sights land on the card. A pained expression crosses his face.

“Hey Kev, how are you feeling?” I ask.

“I want to cut my head off,” he mumbles.

I bring him a glass of water and an Advil; he accepts the water but waves the Advil away. He sits up and finishes the glass.

“No need for that,” he says, looking at the pill in my hand.

I put the Advil back into the container, then move to stand across the room.

“So,” I begin, “What happened to you last night?”

36

Calista Lam | For Her

“I acted pretty stupid, huh. Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine Kev. It isn’t a huge deal.” I take a breath, my residual anger from yesterday subsiding. “I know yesterday wasn’t easy for you. But it scares me when you act like this. I want you to be okay, I really do. Alright?”

Kev nods.

“Talk to me, Kev. Tell me how you’re feeling.”

He stares out the window. A cluster of oak trees sway gently in the distance. A drizzle so faint I can hardly see it falls like a blanket over the streets below. I close the window.

“I’m feeling a bit lost,” he replies.

“What do you mean?”

“I know you’re gonna give me shit for sounding like some angsty teenager,” he said, chuckling humorlessly to himself. “But it feels like everything I’m doing is really fucking pointless.” He pauses, his hands fidgeting nervously in his lap. “Everything I’ve done in life up to this moment is just trash. Things keep moving forward, but I stay in place. I have no friends. My own parents hate me. My only child will never know who I am. She’s the one thing that’s actually mine.” Becoming aggravated, Kev continues, “My daughter has been alive for four years and I have no idea what she looks like now. Four fucking years, and what has her dad done this whole time? Carry bags of chicken shit, that’s what. Is this all I’ll ever amount to? I don’t want that, not for her.”

Rain starts to pound against my window. I look outside. The sewers swell with rainwater.

“What do you think you should do then?” I ask.

Kev presses his thumbs into his temples. “I want my daughter back.”

“You know that isn’t possible.”

“I know, I know. I just...miss her. More than I ever thought I would.” Kev sighs and picks up the birthday card. “I never even said goodbye.”

37

Calista Lam | For Her

Blood I’ve started working remotely because I’m afraid of leaving Kev alone. Two weeks ago he quit his job at the plant nursery, and he’s pretty much been passed out on the sofa ever since. He doesn’t eat anything except for Sunshine Pills. While he’s out cold, I go through his belongings to confiscate his drugs. And to be safe, I throw them in a trash can eight blocks away. I’ve done this three times in the past week, and I still don’t know how he keeps getting more. I haven’t had a chance to talk sense into him since he’s never conscious when I’m around. I leave a new glass of water out on the table for him every day. He never touches it.

History The cops have been at my parents’ house all day. Mom’s a trembling mess as she describes the last thing the girl was seen wearing. Blue pants, white shoes, yellow sweater. The officer takes notes. Dark hair, brown eyes, twenty-eight pounds, three feet and four inches. She’s had some developmental issues, so she doesn’t really speak yet, at least not full sentences. Yes, she knows our phone number.

No, she doesn’t normally follow strangers.

It’s like it was seven years ago. Kev has once again disappeared.

But this time, he’s taken his daughter with him.

Waiting Somehow, Kev has managed to evade the police for almost a full week. I decide to change the lock on my door in case Kev tries to come in when I’m not home.

I start spending nights at my parents’ house. The three of us sit gathered around the phone, nervously waiting for news to come.

We used to do this when Kev had initially gone missing all those years ago. To make the time go by faster, we’d share stories about Kev. We’d talk about when I used Kev as my dress-up doll when Mom and Dad refused to buy me one, or when we used to fight 38

Calista Lam | For Her

over sharing snacks after school, or the time Kev broke his nose when I accidentally smashed it with a soccer ball. But now, seated around the same telephone, we don’t talk about Kev. We talk about Clara.

Clara doesn’t really talk, but she can understand what people are saying to her. She enjoys picture books about kangaroos and the color blue. Her favorite kind of ice cream is strawberry—her dad’s least favorite flavor. She jumps into puddles. She cries when it rains.

Her favorite movie is Toy Story. She has her father’s old smile.

It’s 2:39 a.m. when the phone rings. They found Clara huddled on the front steps of the police station. Kev wasn’t with her.

She couldn’t tell us where he went.

Home He’s discovered a couple hours later. Some joggers out for a morning run spotted him floating down in the canal and called the police. They believe he suffered a seizure and fell in. He drowned.

Moving On Before I packed up and moved out of my parents’ house many years ago, I walked through the rooms of my childhood home and stared at the same framed photos I had passed by every day of my life. I had never taken the time to thoroughly examine them, but I knew what every photo was, and every frame that held it. For example, I remember a photo of me at the beach when I was a toddler, running along the sand in a pink-and-red one-piece bathing suit patterned with cherries, displayed in a matte black standing frame in the living room. I remember a picture of my brother in his t-ball uniform. He stood with a bat over his shoulder and a cap two sizes too large sunk over his eyes. It had once hung proudly in a thin gold frame in the hallway. I remember our one large family picture that was kept in my parents’ bedroom in a wooden frame.

It now lives under a sheet of dust in the garage. I sometimes wonder 39

Calista Lam | For Her

if Kev went through the same motions I did. I wonder if he’d cared enough to commit our childhood home to memory before he’d decided to leave us. Perhaps he didn’t care.

Note It’s been a month and a half since Kev last stayed at my place.

I’m taking time off of work because I wasn’t being very productive anyway. Instead, I stay with my parents to help take care of Clara.

I haven’t been to my apartment since Kev disappeared, so I’m sure everything looks exactly as it did before, just dustier. But I’ve come to the realization that things need to return to normal. I dedicate the entire afternoon to purging my apartment of everything that reminds me of Kev. I donate my sofa, along with a small pile of clothing he’d left behind. Then I order a new sofa online, paying premium to have it delivered here by tomorrow. I purchase new paint to cover the ink stain on the wall. I throw away the shot glass he had used and pour the remnants of his Smirnoff down the drain.

I disinfect every visible surface in the bathroom.

I want this empty feeling to go away. I feel angry. I feel cheated.

I hate my brother. I’ve always hated him. He’s been nothing but a pain in the ass who never cared for anyone but himself. Even in death he’s a loser. I hate him.

The bleach fumes in the apartment are suffocating me, so I take a walk down to the mailroom. I’ve neglected to check my mailbox, and the landlord has been leaving me some nasty voicemails. I unlock the box and peer inside. It’s a chaotic tornado of bills and junk mail. I reach my hand in and pull the huge wad of paper out of the box and bring it upstairs. Dumping it on the dining room table, I sort through my mail. Trash. Bill. Trash. Trash. Trash. Condolence postcard. Trash. Bill. Trash. Envelope. I hold the envelope in my hands. It’s white, crumpled and filthy, and whatever’s inside is oddly thick. There’s nothing written on it. Curious, I tear the paper open and slide out the contents.

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Calista Lam | For Her

It’s the singing birthday card.

It looks a little different now. There are dents and bends in several places and the layers of cardstock have begun to tear away from one another. Gingerly, I open the card. “Happy Birthday” starts to play, and I begin to read.

“Dear Clara—”

41

Ethan Hundertmark | I Am What I Eat

I Am What I Eat Ethan Hundertmark my body is a Taco TempleTM my queerness is an orange my sexuality is boysenberry pie (baked from scratch) my gender is the first bite (with whip, please) my love is an ocean of tomato soup my language is the grilled cheese dipped in it my heart belongs to an artichoke my hope is tonight’s leftovers my baggage is yesterday’s leftovers my god is tomorrow’s leftovers my sex is dessert my hurt is a side dish my whole is mashed potatoes everything else is the Nature ValleyTM bar crumbs that get fucking everywhere the next time you take a bite will you think of me? do you dare eat a peach? because yesterday is tomorrow and tomorrow is always and forever and if there’s anything I won’t eat it’s collard greens cause that shit’s gross

42

Doug Caylor | Bill

Bill Doug Caylor He’s a grill master His meats grill faster He learned back in the day as a youth pastor His meats are so fresh His feet are so clean The whitest New Balances you’ve ever seen Hawaiian collar open And a caterpillar lip No running ’round the pool so the kids don’t slip Duke of the Dads God of the Grill But if you need his toolbox Just ask for Bill

43

Caroline Roberts | Isabel and the Oak Tree

Isabel and the Oak Tree Caroline Roberts Michael walked the barren ground, dodging scattered rocks and loose leaves. His granddaughter scampered ahead of him, checking every so often that she hadn’t gotten too far ahead. They had rules for when they hiked together: she could never leave eyesight, and she had to stop at every trail junction. Michael always enforced the rules. He would do anything to keep the both of them safe. Isabel’s father was out of the picture, and Michael couldn’t let his daughter or granddaughter suffer another loss.

Michael couldn’t believe that she had just turned eight. She was a quiet child who seldom spoke to those she didn’t know, and often she avoided eye contact with her elders.

Isabel stopped dutifully at the next sign, standing at attention.

“Saddleback Mountain trail, a quarter mile ahead,” she read aloud. “Beware of ticks, falling rocks, mountain lions—” she started to read the fine print, even though similar signs were posted at the beginning of every hike the two did together.

“Don’t worry. The loose rocks are only at the top, mountain lions don’t come out till dark, and we won’t get ticks if we stay out of the tall grass. Are we ready?”

She nodded, fears assuaged.

“Let’s go then, soldier. Lead the way. But remember, not too fast. These bones are old.”

They climbed in silence for a while, with just the rhythm of heavy breathing to mark their steps—his steady, hers curious. The three-o’clock sun burned hot on their necks through a cloudless sky; there had been an unexpected delay with the payment gate to get into the park. Starting the hike had taken longer than Michael had planned, but they were making good progress.

The trail rose gradually, and the town dropped away behind 44

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their backs. It was steeper than any trail they’d ever travelled before.

Isabel’s steps slowed, and her grandfather caught up to her.

“Baba, will you hold my hand?” She asked. He took her small fingers in a tight grasp. Her hand was swallowed by his palm.

“Always,” he said.

It was an unseasonably warm day for November. When he had first picked Isabel up from her mother’s house, they had been planning on spending the day inside at the Museum of Art in the next town over. But Isabel had been staring at the peak stretching past her bedroom window for days on end and had begged and begged for him to take her to the top. He was unfamiliar with the hike, and the two struck a deal that they would go no further than a sprawling oak tree they could spy from the window. It was about halfway up. Michael and her mother had watched as Isabel gathered her “expedition things,” as she had called them—a tattered bandanna to be worn like a ninja, a steel canteen for water, and two acorns whose use was unclear. Isabel always brought them along when the two ventured into nature, but their usual trips were short walks around the local parks.

Michael had seen her briefly consider bringing her Girl Scout sash, but she’d tossed it aside. He’d smiled; she had a rule about not wearing it around boys, and he guessed he counted as one.

Isabel had chattered away while getting ready.

“Mom, this would be so fun to do with Dad later,” she had said. Her mother and grandfather had exchanged weary looks over her head. Isabel hadn’t seen her father in over a year and a half, but she stayed optimistic that he would one day come back.

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Caroline Roberts | Isabel and the Oak Tree

Finally, the two turned a sharp corner on the trail, and the full oak tree came into view. Michael craned his head back to take in the top branches. He looked back down at Isabel, whose eyes were full of awe. She was staring up at the spindly branches reaching far into the sky, and the tree was so tall that she almost fell over. In the barren landscape, it had somehow managed to thrive, with full green leaves and sturdy roots grounded in the earth. The water was sparse and the sun unrelenting, but it had grown and grown until nothing could stop it.

The two sat down at the base, resting in the shade. Michael checked his watch. The oak tree had ended up being a bit further along the trail than he had thought. But, if they didn’t have any mishaps on the way back down, they would make it off the mountain with plenty of time to spare. He could’ve turned around earlier and saved the oak tree for another day, but he didn’t want to break his promise to the child.

Isabel reached into a pocket and pulled out the acorns she had taken from her room.

“Did that really come from one of these?” She asked, pointing at the branches dominating the skyline. “The acorns are so... small.”

She covered a cap of the seed with her thumb. When she closed her fist, she couldn’t even see them.

“Yup. I know, it’s hard to believe,” Michael said, gazing out at the desert suburb stretched below them. The smattering of the town they lived in was all he could see, and bare flatlands swallowed the ground around it. They had only driven for ten miles out of the main strip of town, but the space between them and civilization felt endless.

Michael reached down to crunch the dry grass. A squirrel skittering across the ground caught the corner of his eye, and he watched it run across the exposed hillside. The mountain was covered in golden grass, and only a few sprawling oak trees dotted the slopes. There wasn’t a flower in sight, but Michael didn’t mind. The landscape had been forged by harsh conditions,and he found the 46

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adaptation beautiful in itself.

“Squirrel!” Michael shouted, pointing at the animal dramatically. Isabel burst into giggles. The two had seen Up together and were obsessed with Dug the dog.

They sat for a few moments longer before Michael decided it was time to leave.

“We should get started,” he said, standing up and brushing dirt off of his pants. She followed his lead, and he saw her stare one last time at the acorns and oak tree, wonder on her face. She crammed the seeds back into her pocket, and the two started walking back down the mountain, Isabel in front.

“How far do you think we have left?” Isabel asked after they made a modicum of progress.

“Oh, I don’t know. A mile?”

She turned to ask another question, neglecting the path in front of her, and tripped. She lay on the ground for a moment, and he ran towards her. She rolled over and looked up at him, eyes wide.

“Isabel, are you okay?”

“My—my ankle,” she whimpered.

He looked down. It was twisted at an unnatural angle.

“Am I going to die? Will I see my other Gramma?” she asked.

“No, sweetie, you’re fine.” He put on his best impression of a doctorly voice. “It looks like it’s just a sprained ankle, so you won’t want to walk on it for a few days. We might want to get someone else up here to help you make it back down, but I’m confident you’ll make a full recovery. I’m going to call your mother to check in, see if she’s around to come help.” He pulled a cell phone out of his backpack and flipped it open. No service. He raised it up above his head, moving the phone around in sweeping motions. Still no luck.

“Baba? It really hurts,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Isabel. Do you want to play monkey? I think my phone can catch a signal a little further down the trail.” She nodded, 47

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and he went over to collect her. He spun his backpack around to hang it on the front of his body, and he crouched down as she clambered onto his back. Her ankle had already started to swell.

His knees twanged with the weight of the small child, and he was reminded for the thousandth time that he wasn’t getting any younger.

“Ouch!” She shrieked once he started moving.

“Just that one step hurt?” He asked.

“Owww,” she said again, whining, as Michael tried to take the next step softly. He paused and set her back down.

“Do you remember learning about first aid at Girl Scouts?” he asked.

“Ye-yes,” she said. Tears were starting to drip down her face.

“Did they teach you about the special splints you make while you’re camping?”

“That’s—that’s why I brought my bandana. It can be used for— for eight different things,” she said through sobs. He stifled a smile, reminding himself to be serious.

“Great. I’m going to make a splint for you using a stick.” He unwrapped the cloth from around her forehead and didn’t have to walk far before finding a suitable branch, freshly fallen from a nearby oak.

“Will it hurt?” She asked.

“It might for a bit, but I promise it’ll feel better after.” He reached out for her ankle.

“Stop! Stop touching it!” She screamed when he jostled it and yelped again as he took his hands away.

“I wish my dad was here. He would know how to fix it,” she said, crossing her arms.

“Isabel—” Michael said, then sighed. What could he tell her?

That her dad was a deadbeat who was never good enough for her mother? That she would forever yearn for a steady father figure in her life, but that Michael was doing the best he could?

“I’m sorry Isabel, I know you miss him,” Michael said through 48

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gritted teeth. She glared at him, but he knew the anger was only to mask a hurt deep inside. There was nothing he could do to make it okay. He just had to trust that she would one day regain her confidence and feel wanted, and that she would survive once he was gone. He tentatively put his hands back on her ankle, and she didn’t object as he finished the splint. Michael noticed his shadow growing longer as the sun sank in the sky. They couldn’t afford to waste any more time.

“Okay, I’m done. Hopefully it’ll feel better soon. Hop back on my shoulders?” She obliged, and the two began the slow and steady march in silence. Twenty minutes passed by, and she grew heavier on his back every moment. Michael could feel her anger radiating into his bones, but he figured she just needed some space to process.

The downhill hurt his knees, and he retreated into his own mind for a while. The monotonous motion of the hike was interrupted by his granddaughter’s tiny voice.

“Why did my daddy leave?” She asked. He didn’t know what to say. He never did when she brought up the subject. He kicked a rock on his next step, and they watched it go careening down the hillside.

“You know I’ll always be here,” he said, but his voice cracked.

He cleared his throat.

“I know, but—” Isabel paused. Michael didn’t want to say the unspoken words, to explain fully what she was already starting to grasp. Nature’s cruel curse, the ever-quickening hourglass running out. He wouldn’t be there forever.

“Mommy says it’s not my fault, but I don’t know. The day before he left, I did something really bad.”

“There’s nothing you could have done to make him leave, Isabel.” He tried to twist around to make eye contact, but she buried her face in his shirt. Her shoulders curled in on themselves like the tip of an acorn. The child on his back had shrunk in size, appearing to take up less space in the world than ever.

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Caroline Roberts | Isabel and the Oak Tree

“I drew on the walls,” she said in a voice muffled by damp cotton. “He came in and yelled at me, and I didn’t say sorry.”

“I promise you—” he faltered. He didn’t know what to say. “All I know is that you had nothing to do with why he decided to run away. He’s crazy.” Her arms tightened around his neck, and they dropped the subject in unspoken agreement. He kept his eyes on the ground.

“Baba...” She said in a strangled voice filled with fear.

“Does it hurt too bad?”

“No, Baba...” The words were stuck in her throat, so she pulled on his short silver hair. His head jerked up and he followed the pointer finger reaching over his shoulder to see a hulking beast partially hidden by a tree. The animal was so still, Michael almost confused it with a statue, but when its whiskers twitched with their scent, Michael’s heart jumped into his throat. He remembered the sign he had so carelessly dismissed at the foot of the trail. WARNING! BEWARE OF MOUNTAIN LIONS. That sign was posted at the entrance to every open space in the state, but he had never seen one of the animals before now.

The mountain lion stood just a few yards away, his majestic coat gleaming in the setting sun. Predators of this size were only something to be seen on television, an inanimate portrayal watched from the comfort of one’s own home.

“What do we do?” Isabel whispered.

Michael tried to think back to the cautionary tales he had heard as a young man. Was he supposed to run and climb a tree?

Was this the creature that ran off, scared, if you made noise? Should he rush at it, or avoid eye contact and slink away? He felt the weight of his granddaughter on his back, and the creak in his knees.

They couldn’t run. Michael decided they had to stand their ground.

“Hey! Scram!” He shouted. “Isabel, yell with me.”

“Get away from us!” She screamed.

“Don’t mess with us! Leave!”

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The mountain lion twitched. Michael watched his thought process play out. An assessment of the situation, a weighing of risk versus reward.

“Hey! Please!” He yelled. “Go away!” The mountain lion put his head the other way, as if carefully considering the opposing reasoning presented. Then, he put a paw forward, testing the waters.

The two watched with dread as he took one step forward, then another.

“Please!” Michael shouted. “Isabel, wave your hands around.”

They moved their arms about in a crazed frenzy, and the mountain lion faltered. After a moment he skittered away, melting back into the shadows.

Michael crumpled to his knees, his strength seeping back into the ground. Isabel fell loosely off of his back and stared at him. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing heavily.

“Baba?” She asked. He didn’t look up. “Baba?” She repeated.

Michael slowly lifted his head to meet her eyes.

“Are you okay? That gave me quite a fright,” he said. He didn’t have the energy to speak loudly anymore.

“I’m okay,” she said. Their voices were weak. Michael knew somewhere in the back of his mind that he should watch their surroundings, but holding his body somewhat upright was all he could manage. They cowered into the ground, bodies melting into the dust. The scent of their fear filled the air, broadcasting a message to anyone nearby: they were weak, vulnerable, and slow to move. Any pair of eyes finding the two would sense their feeble nature.

If Michael had looked up, he would’ve seen sleek fur flashing in the shadows. But he didn’t. He kept his head down. The mountain lion slinked closer, hiding behind a thick trunk of a nearby tree.

If Michael had locked eyes with the animal, he would have seen patience, calculation, and hunger. Instead, he kept his eyes trained on his granddaughter, and he missed the oncoming threat.

“Baba!”

The muscled animal came racing out of the lengthening shad51

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ows. The mountain lion was back. Michael turned, but only had time to twist his neck away from the animal’s bite before he was yanked by the collar of his shirt. His feet started sliding helplessly on the ground, and he tried to grab onto anything he could to anchor himself. But he was lost, swimming in a sea of dirt with no rescue boat in sight. He screamed as the mountain lion readjusted his grip, locking into Michael’s shoulder. The cat paused for a moment, situating himself to dig into his meal. Michael locked eyes with his predator and saw the hunger in his snarling bite.

Michael noticed a figure rising out of the corner of his eye, and he strained to see what his granddaughter was doing. The mountain lion’s mouth was slowly, slowly descending towards his jugular, but Michael wrenched his neck once more to watch Isabel reach down without taking her eyes off of the animal. A sharp rock lay just at her feet, and she picked it up with unwavering hands.

Michael saw the stone fit perfectly in her grasp, almost as if it had been made for her. Isabel straightened. The splint had mobilized her ankle, and she seemed immune to any pain as she sprinted towards the animal holding her grandfather in his clutches. The mountain lion’s jaw started to engage in a powerful snap as Isabel rooted her feet into the ground, summoning the strength of an oak tree, and threw the stone as hard as she could.

Isabel and Michael locked eyes as the rock turned over once, then twice, in the air. Her face was tilted downwards with the follow through, and a mix of fear and anger curled her lips into a snarl. She was David, facing Goliath with the strength that only nature could forge. The strict staircase of time started to uncurl, and Michael finally saw that his granddaughter had already weathered the storm. She was scratched, beaten, and bruised, but she would make it to land, with or without him as a lighthouse to guide her path. The second crumpled, and a moment later, the rock struck the mountain lion in his open maw with remarkable precision.

The mountain lion yelped and turned on his haunches. His 52

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tendons rippled in the last remains of the sunlight, and Isabel stood at attention with another rock laying at her feet, watching him sprint away. The mountain lion crashed through the branches, but after a few moments the forest returned to silence. Isabel dropped the rock and ran towards Michael, still high on adrenaline.

“Isabel, you—” “Baba! Are you okay?” She asked.

He clearly wasn’t. Blood was starting to stain his shirt, ever widening in a perfect crimson circle.

“You saved my life,” he said. She looked at the ground, self-conscious. “Okay, we need to get going out of here,” he continued. The overwhelming pain had made him go numb to the blood loss and the damage to his shoulder muscles.

“Can you walk?” he asked. Isabel nodded, scurrying around to collect the things that he had dropped.

“Hand me my phone. Let’s leave the rest of the pack,” he said.

She obliged, and pushed his back to help him stand up, grunting.

He swallowed a scream as she moved his arm, but the adrenaline coursing in his veins let him bury the pain in a locked box deep inside of his mind.

The two set off on a quick walk down the hill. They were only half a mile away from the car, where Michael knew he’d have cell service. He watched Isabel hobble in front of him, but she didn’t make a peep. Tears brimmed in his eyes in spite of himself. Even with an impaired gait, she stood three inches taller.

The last quarter mile was a haze of pain and fear, but the two made it in one piece to the safety of the parking lot. As if on cue, the shock started to wear off and both of them collapsed onto the ground. The moon was starting to rise in the sky, and Isabel could barely make out the first few stars while laying on her back. Michael fumbled his phone out of his pocket, yelping with the pain of moving his arm, and called 911.

“Will you hold my hand?” Isabel asked once more as they 53

Caroline Roberts | Isabel and the Oak Tree

heard the sirens approaching from afar. She sat on the side of his good arm, and he reached out a few inches to grasp her hand. Her once-clean fingers were cracked and covered in dirt, stained with blood from when she’d helped him stand up. It wasn’t the same hand he had held hours ago. He could no longer cover all of her fingers with his palm. Her thumb stuck out; it was strong, sturdy, the stem of an acorn that had started to uncurl itself, and he knew it was simply a matter of time before it had the might of an oak tree. Michael saw this, stopped fighting the exhaustion, and let his eyes slide shut, realizing that she would forever thrive.

54

Ryan Bausch | Far From Eden

Far From Eden Ryan Bausch On the eve of the morning when dew would be fresh on the fruit and the fragrance would swallow the flavorful garden, I lie on this limestone floor and suckle droplets that drip from stalactites and feast on the dust that slips from these cavern walls. I peer through a crack in the cave and see the garden I’ve been led to leave. The deep green trees, bathed in golden beams that gently kiss the leaves and softly dance in the breeze, still encompass the landscape as far as these hollow eyes can see. Atop the tallest and most central tree sits a fruit that shines and reflects the shimmering sun, watering my mouth and shriveled tongue. I pray to once again pluck this fruit from atop the tree and grace these sulking lips with the slightest taste of the sweet sensation of forbidden skin as saliva surrounds the sampled flesh, and the aromas of citrus and sweat swim through the air and shake me 55

Ryan Bausch | Far From Eden

down to my core and suture what’s left of this shattered soul. Still in the dead of night, after the sun has long since closed its eyes on me and the world, I sit in the same dark cave where I have started every day since the hands of God plucked me from the garden and I pray, as I lie on this limestone floor, that I might taste my sin again someday

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Isabelle Watson | Search for Earth

Search for Earth Isabelle Watson The ruined city loomed across the empty wasteland. I watched the snow swirling between the remains of the faraway buildings. Most of the structures were torn apart by whatever had destroyed the civilization that had lived here before. Some still stood, giant pillars that ruled pridefully without purpose, ruins of an ancient society of people who had lived above ground. Aarden was an inhospitable, bitter, and cold planet that harbored no life on its surface, only ghosts from an unknown past. The Council told us that a war destroyed the planet hundreds of years ago, that we came and founded our underground city to make the best out of a dying world.

At school, I used to ask about Aarden’s history. I wanted to know more than the simple explanation given. My teachers would always evade my questions with automatic answers: “The history of Aarden is unknown. The history of our people is what you should be focused on.”

“The people destroyed themselves. That’s all we need to know.”

“A people who cannot care for their planet don’t deserve to be remembered.”

Their responses may have been different, but I knew what they each meant: “We don’t know, nor do we want to.”

It was even worse when I asked about Earth. The class would grow silent and the teacher’s expression would darken.

“We don’t talk about Earth.”

But my dad never shied away from the questions I asked. I used to sit in his lap, and he would try his best to answer every question curious twelve-year-old me could think of.

“Dad?” “Yes, Mayflower?” His playful nickname for me always made me smile.

“Can you tell me about Earth again?”

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Isabelle Watson | Search for Earth

“Earth is a beautiful planet,” he said. “With all different types of natural environments. Some places are cold, like Aarden, but some places are so hot that you can only stay outside for a couple of hours.

Some places are right in the middle, with green trees and rolling hills as far as the eye can see. It provides its people with everything they need and more.”

“What are trees?” I asked.

He seemed to consider my question for a moment before replying, “You know, I’m not entirely sure, I’ve never actually seen one myself. But I think they’re like if...like if—you’ve seen the Agriculture Division, right?” I nodded.

“Well, trees are like if the leaves from the plants were gathered on the top of a streetlamp,” he said.

“Woah. That tall?” I asked.

He nodded, “Some even taller.”

“Tell me about the sky, Dad. It’s always the best part of your story.”

He granted me his bright smile, and we both leaned back on my bed. “The sky is blue, like the color of your eyes, with big, white, fluffy clouds floating across it. And at night, the sky gets dark and you can see the stars, bright lights scattered as far as you can see,” he said. He put his arm up and gently waved it above him, painting the imaginary stars across the ceiling.

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine Earth.

Rolling hills. Green trees. Warm air. Big blue sky.

When I opened my eyes again, Dad still had his arm up towards the ceiling. He looked like he wanted to touch the imaginary stars he had painted for me. On Aarden, heavy clouds always blocked the sky, throwing a gray hue over everything aboveground. Along with the cold, it made the surface of the planet dreary and lifeless.

“Dad, if Earth is so great, why did we leave?” I asked.

Dad dropped his arm to his stomach and sighed, “Earth is beautiful, but it is also dangerous. The people there are always in conflict.

Our people decided to flee the danger and settle here, where, although 58

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we must live underground, we are safe. We hope that maybe, one day when the fighting is over, we will be able to return to that paradise.”

“Oh. When will that be?”

“I don’t know, May. One day, the Council will receive word from one of our envoys to Earth that the fighting has stopped and it is safe to go back. Until then, I, your friendly neighborhood historian, will keep trying to find answers about this planet. I hope to find out what happened to the people who lived here before us,” he said.

I sat up, “But Dad, I thought the History Division was only supposed to look at the history of our city. Isn’t the history of Aarden’s surface forbidden?”

He lowered his voice and gestured for me to lean in. “It is. But I think I’m onto something. One day I will take you down to the Archives myself and show you everything I’ve collected.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Really.”

The Archives was one of the few places that was forbidden in our city. At least to everyone except the Council and historians. What little information I could glean from Dad was that it was a place filled with information, something there never seemed to be enough of for me.

“But,” Dad said. “In case I don’t get the chance, I need to tell you something. Mayflower, you’re the key.” Before I had a chance to ask him what he meant, he continued: “I want you to keep this to yourself, okay?”

“I can’t even tell Mom?” He turned and looked back at the closed door. “For now, let’s keep it our little secret.”

“Our secret,” I said. “Just us?”

“Just us. Oh, and one other person,” he said.

“Who?” “Mr. Tickle!”

He started tickling me all over and I shrieked. His playful roar filled the room and I laughed until my sides hurt. Mom pushed the door open with a somber expression on her face. The sides of her mouth 59

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pulled up in a small smile for just a moment when she saw us, before seeming to remember why she came in and she returned to her previous state of solemnness.

“Mason,” she said.

“Yes, my love? What can we do for you?”

“Please put May to bed. We need to talk,” she said.

I noticed her tone as the “this is something serious” tone. So did Dad. He gave her a short nod. She nodded in return before turning her attention to me.

“Good night, May. I’ll see you in the morning,” she said.

“Good night, Mom.” She slipped out the door. Dad stood and started tucking me in.

“Why does Mom always look so serious? She’s never as happy as you and she doesn’t even listen to your stories with us anymore. You guys are so different,” I said.

Dad sighed, “Your mom used to be different. A lot like you, actually. She was always serious, she was just... She was warm. A whole side of her that you’ve never really seen. She found trouble everywhere, thought rules were meant to be broken. Then she got hired to work for the Council and everything changed. She changed. But that’s why she needs us so much. We help remind her about the good. So don’t give up on her. Because I never will.”

“I won’t,” I said.

“Okay, Mayflower. I’m going to go talk to Mom. I want you to think about the stars and go to sleep. Can you do that for me?”

I nodded.

“Good girl. I’ll see you tomorrow after work, okay?”

“Okay, Dad” “I love you to Earth and back,” “I love you too, Dad” “Oh, and remember, Mayflower: you’re the key.”

I tensed as a chill ran through me and interrupted the memory.

That was five years ago. I never saw my father again after that night.

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“Your father was chosen to be sent to Earth,” Mom had told me. “He is to remain in isolation to prepare for the journey until the ship leaves during the Yearly Celebration.”

About an hour after she’d told me, the official Selection Announcement informed the rest of the city. The scratchy, automated voice of the speaker reverberated through the tunnels: “NEW SELECTION FOR VOYAGE TO EARTH, YEAR 228: MAGORO, MASON, HISTORY DIVISION.” They ended up sending 16 people that year, two more than in the previous crew. It seemed to grow with each year. I knew selection to go to Earth was something that happened at random and was necessary, but it didn’t make it any easier to not know why Dad had to be chosen, or to know that I would probably never see him again. Every other year the Council sent a new group of people to see if Earth had recovered from the war. No one had ever come back. But the Council had to continue sending people if we were ever to know if Earth was safe again.

That’s when I had started coming out to the surface, to be alone. Well, almost alone, as the shuffling of feet I heard behind me reminded me. Mom had insisted that one of the Council guards follow me whenever I was to make the trip up to the surface, to make sure I didn’t wander too far. I tried to ignore him.

You’re the key.

Dad’s last words ran through my mind again like they often did. I still couldn’t understand what he meant. I glanced at the timepiece on my wrist and sighed. I would have to start heading back if I was going to try to make it to school on time. I stood and got one last glimpse at the broken skyline. I could never help but think that the buildings standing there looked not so different from ours underground. I made my way back to the hatch where the guard stood, waiting to go back underground. The snow soaked through my pants, and I shivered again. I would have to change before I could go to school. I’d be late. Again.

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“Magoro, May.” “Magoro, May.” “Magoro—” I tore into the classroom. “I’m here! I’m here!”

I skimmed past Mr. Akono, flashing an apologetic smile and sliding into my desk.

“He called your name four times today,” Michaela Rollins, my best friend who sat in the desk next to me, whispered out of the corner of her mouth.

“Four?” I said, cringing.

“Yep. New record.”

“Damn. I was trying to keep it under three this year.”

Michaela scoffed, “Yeah, right. Not as long as you keep going up to the surface.”

“I wasn’t on the surface.”

“Yes, you were. I can see it written all over your face.”

“No, you can’t,” I sat back, confident that I could convince her.

“May, you look like you brought half the tunnel with you,” she said.

I turned and looked at my reflection in the window. Brown smudges from the narrow dirt tunnel leading to the surface marred my face. I tried to wipe some of it off, but my efforts seemed to only make it worse.

“Whoops.”

“Didn’t your mom say that she didn’t want you going up to the surface anymore?”

“Yeah, but today’s the Yearly Celebration. She’ll be too busy to—” “Magoro! Rollins!” Mr. Akono’s sharp voice cut me off. “Anything you’d like to share with the class?”

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We both straightened in our seats, hoping that he wouldn’t assign us detention today of all days.

“No, sir. We were just talking about...about underground soil requirements, sir,” Michaela said. She was smarter than me and always quick to think on her feet. Class mostly bored her, so she spent most of our class time picking up some hobby or another, but she was always ready to answer any questions Mr. Akono threw her way.

“Ah. What a coincidence, so was I. Which you would know if you were paying attention. It is a short day; I expect to have your attention for all of it. You’ll have plenty of time to talk after class,” Mr. Akono said.

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir,” I said.

“Hmph. As I was saying, the proper mixture of soil is crucial to a successful crop yield underground...”

The rest of the class dragged on until Mr. Akono finally excused us. Michaela and I ran out of the classroom as soon as the news of dismissal was off his tongue. The tunnels were more full than usual; it made the claustrophobic size of them even more oppressive. People wearing different colored uniforms from every division of labor—Agriculture, History, Education, Engineering, just to name a few—people who would normally be working were all headed towards the central plaza, one of the few places in the city that could hold almost everyone at once.

“Come on, May! If we hurry, we’ll make it in time for your mom’s speech.” Michaela pulled me by the hand through the throngs of people, all chattering excitedly.

In the five years since Dad had left, Mom had become increasingly more successful in the Council. She had worked her way up from Council assistant to Councilor, and then to the highest position in our government, Chancellor. She was very popular among the people in the city, and she knew it. However, with her success, she had become even more withdrawn than before. Her long dark 63

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hair—which I had inherited and which had once gently framed her face—was now constantly pulled back, and every time she spoke I could hardly find the empathy in her words. It felt like she had lost any of the warmth that might have once existed within her.

When we made it to the plaza, thousands of people were already there, all of them looking towards the balcony of the Council building. Michaela and I found a spot to stand as we waited for the balcony doors to open.

“Do you think that we’ll hear good news from Earth this year?”

I said.

Michaela turned towards me. “I don’t know, May. Maybe this year will be the year.” She gave my arm an encouraging squeeze and turned back to the balcony as thunderous applause broke out around us.

The doors to the balcony opened, and Mom, the esteemed Valda Magoro, walked out flanked by the rest of the eight Council members. Her hair was in its usual place, wrapped tightly at the back of her head, and she was wearing an expertly cut red dress. I couldn’t help but recognize how different we two were, despite what Dad had said all those years before. I might have her hair, but the rest of me came from Dad. The boisterous personality, the messy style, the love of the unknown. She waved to the crowd with a smile that she only used for the public. At home, I hardly ever saw anything other than seriousness on her face. The applause continued for several minutes, until she motioned for everyone to quiet. A microphone was placed in front of her, and she began her speech.

“People of Aarden! First, I’d like to thank you all for making Year 232 our best yet!” She paused as more applause came and went.

“I come to you today, the day of our Yearly Celebration, to bring you news. We have received word from our last envoy that Earth has not achieved the peace that we have so patiently waited for.” A murmur ran through the crowd, and I felt my chest fall. “I know many of you may be disappointed, but I am here to tell you that 64

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you shouldn’t be. Aarden is our home. Earth is but a distant memory remembered by no one here today. And while I know the surface of Aarden is bleak, I want you to think about what we’ve built here. Our city, our great city, shines under its own light. Your family, your home, your jobs, your lives exist here. Don’t let the news about Earth discourage you. Come the next Selection Year, we will choose a new brave group of voyagers who will make the long journey to Earth to bring us more news. In the meantime, I promise to continue serving faithfully as your Chancellor and doing everything I can to preserve our city in all its greatness. It’s my vow to put my duty to this city above everything else. Now, celebrate with us, your fellow Aardens, and let us usher in a fantastic Year 233!”

More applause followed as music rang out over the plaza, but it didn’t seem to hold the same enthusiasm as before. The disappointment in the air was palpable, and I could hear the general conversations of frustration passing around me. One exchange a few meters away, between what looked like one of the Lead Agriculture Managers and an engineer, stood out: “This is not ideal, but we’ll keep working,” the engineer said.

“I don’t think you understand, Clyde. We can’t keep doing this,” the manager said. He looked around at the bustling plaza and indicated with his head that he wanted to move their conversation to where there were less people. The urgency in both of their tones and their suspicious behavior piqued my interest.

Michaela must have caught my expression and mistaken it for disappointment rather than confusion because she put her hand on my arm again.

“I’m sorry, May. I know you were hoping for a different outcome. Will you at least stay for the celebration?” she asked. I tried to give her a smile, but I was focused on watching where the two men were walking. It looked like they were headed towards the south tunnel.

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walk away.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Michaela called after me, but I was already too far gone to give her a response.

I pushed my way through the masses of people milling around the plaza towards the south tunnel. When I got to the opening, I slowed, careful to not make too much noise with each step. As the clamor of the plaza faded behind me, I started to hear the men’s voices echoing around the corner of the cramped passage. I slowly peeked my head around the bend, just enough to barely see who stood there. A woman had joined the two other men, and from her blue jumpsuit, I could tell she was from the Electric Division.

“There will be a time when we will return to Earth. Until then, we must continue to follow the Chancellor’s directive. Keep the city running. I know I can keep the power going how it is for another ten years, and I can probably stretch it another five with some adjustments,” she said.

The man from agriculture, in brown pants and shirt, threw his hands up in frustration. “You two don’t understand what I am saying. Clyde, you keep going off about ‘minor nutritional developments,’ and Myra you about the power, but neither of those things will matter if we all starve to death! The crop yield each year is lower. Even on a rotating schedule, the soil simply doesn’t hold the nutrients necessary anymore. We need to leave for Earth, and soon,” he said.

The other two shifted uncomfortably.

“Ian, I think you’re blowing this out of proportion,” the woman, Myra, said.

“Yeah, I agree. The Chancellor will take care of us. She always has,” the engineer in green said. He lowered his voice and I strained to hear what he said, “You shouldn’t ask questions, Ian. It won’t lead anywhere good.”

The man in brown, Ian, as the others had addressed him, shook his head.

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“I can’t believe neither of you believe me. You’re blinded by the Chancellor’s false promises. Fine, I’ll take my findings and go to your revered Chancellor. See what she has to say about it.” With that he pushed by the other two and stalked off. The engineer and the electrician shook their heads and started walking back towards the plaza, towards me. I pushed myself into the corner and held my breath. They passed. Once they were gone, I peeled myself off the wall and scurried back home.

Once I made it back, I laid on my bed and let what they had talked about sink in. I’d missed what the engineer said, but from what I heard from Ian and Myra, Agriculture and Electric Divisions were having issues. Those two divisions were arguably the foundation of our city. Without light, we couldn’t continue to live underground. We relied on agriculture to provide us with a stable flow of food; if it was failing...

After some time, I heard the front door open.

“May?” Mom’s voice rang out.

“Yeah, Mom?” She pushed the door to my room open. She still looked as put-together as if she had just left the house, not as if she had been entertaining the city for hours on end. She crossed her arms and gave me a stern look.

“Where were you today?” she asked.

“Everywhere I was supposed to be.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she said. “First, I find out that you were late to class—again, might I add—and then I can’t find you throughout the entire Yearly Celebration!”

“I was at the celebration. I heard your speech. I left.”

She sighed. “Do you know how much more difficult you made the whole thing for me? How many people I had to explain away your absence to? We’ve discussed this before. You know, as Chancellor’s daughter, you are expected to be at major public events with me. You agreed to that commitment, and I’m disap67

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pointed that you couldn’t hold to it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You don’t seem like it.” She put her hands on her hips. “May, I don’t know what to do with you.”

“Look, I’m sorry, Mom. I was just...disappointed. That’s why I didn’t stay at the Celebration. Every year, Earth feels like it’s getting farther and farther away,” I said, giving her part of the real reason for my absence.

“I can assure you that it is no farther away this year than it was last year or the year before that. We will keep sending people to see if Earth has recovered from its war-torn ways, but, personally, I believe that Earth is a dream that you would do well to forget about. Move on. Embrace this city as your home. Earth is not that important,” she said.

It took me a few moments before I could answer. “It was important to Dad,” I said. “Every year since his leaving, I’ve felt like I am getting farther and farther away from Earth and farther and farther away from Dad.” I barely choked out the rest of my sentence.

Mom came and sat down next to me on the bed. “I know you miss him, May. I do too. But this...fixation with Earth is not good for you.” I rolled over and put my back to her.

“You don’t understand,” I said.

She stood. “Fine. Maybe I don’t. But what I do understand is that I need you to be focused on being where you are supposed to be. I am taking away your privilege to go to the surface.”

I rolled back over and sat up. “What?”

“Until you can fulfill your responsibilities as Chancellor’s daughter, you are not allowed to go back up to the surface,” she said.

“Wait, no, I’m sorry. Please let me go to the surface! It’s the only place where I can go to be alone and think!” I said.

Mom moved towards the door. “I hope you find another place to think then, because my decision is final.”

“Please...” Pain flashed across Mom’s face for a moment, but 68

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just as quickly as it had appeared it was gone, and she returned to her previous state of impassiveness. “I’m doing this for your own good.” She shut the door behind her.

Over the next few days I saw more of the tunnels of the city than I ever had before. I already knew the layouts like the back of my hand—the main tunnels that lead to the plaza, the domestic tunnels that branched off that, leading people to their homes, the labor tunnels, which branched off based off of labor division, and various other branches that lead to miscellaneous places in the city. There was only so much space to move around in the city, but I continued walking, looking for something new in the walls I had looked at a million times. Michaela walked with me today, but I wasn’t entirely focused on her. I kept thinking about what I had overheard between Ian from Agriculture and the other two. Michaela’s red curls bounced around her, matching the enthusiasm with which she spoke, “May, my newest hobby...wait for it...wait for it...pottery! And before you say anything, it is actually a lot more fun than it sounds.

I just love how the clay goes from one thing to something constructive. My dad says that farming is kind of like pottery. You take one thing and turn it into another. Into something useful,” Michaela said.

I stopped walking. I had forgotten that Michaela’s dad worked in the Agriculture Division. I hadn’t told her about the conversation yet; I wasn’t sure I should. But this seemed like the perfect in with Agriculture for me to find some answers. Maybe Michaela’s dad knew Ian, or at least what Ian had been talking about. Michaela stopped walking a few feet ahead of me and turned back.

“May?” I put my plan into action.

“Michaela let’s go visit your dad,” I said.

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“My dad? Why?” I scrambled for an explanation, “Uhh... Well, we don’t have anything else to do and we’re pretty close to the Agriculture Division...so why not?”

She shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”

We started off and turned down several branches before finally arriving at the Agriculture Division. When we entered, the humidity and warm air hit me like a wall. I had been to this Division a few times before, but I’d never gotten used to the sensation. Lines upon lines of crops filled the entire room, and people in the standard brown Agriculture garb tended to the plants across the fields. Michaela scanned the large group for her dad. One of the Agriculture managers approached us.

“What are you two doing here?” he said.

I tensed, but Michaela replied before I had to. “We were just walking around, and I thought I would come say hi to my dad.

Have you seen him?”

He squinted at her for a second. “You’re Byron’s kid, right?”

She nodded.

He squinted at her again but gave a lazy motion to the left.

“He’s over in the bean fields. You can go say hello but be quick.”

Michaela smiled and ran off in the direction he had indicated.

“Don’t step on my crops!” He called after her. He turned his attention to me. “And what are you doing here?”

“Oh, I’m just waiting for her,” I said.

“Hmph. Well I don’t want to leave you unsupervised, so I guess we’ll both wait.” He crossed his arms over his chest and looked out at the fields.

We stood in silence for a few moments. I decided to take my chance to ask about Ian. “Do you know an Ian? I think he works here.” I tried to picture him in my mind. “Short brown hair, kind of tall?” I said.

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days though. He got excused from work by the Council the day after the Yearly Celebration. Couldn’t tell ya why. How do you know him?” he said.

“Uh...we...talked the other day. I was just wondering if you knew him,” He gave me a polite nod and motioned to Michaela who was carefully picking her way back toward us. “Here’s your friend.

Have a good day. Goodbye.” He walked away, clearly relieved to be finished with the conversation.

Michaela and I made our way back through the tunnels. Michaela supplied the majority of the conversation, per usual, telling me about how nice it was to surprise her dad and telling me more about her codebreaking, but instead of listening intently like I normally did, my mind was trapped in the questions that came from my conversation with the man in Agriculture. We almost made it back home when the short ringing of the bells sounded, indicating another Selection Announcement. We stopped walking and listened as the speaker crackled to life: “NEW SELECTION FOR VOYAGE TO EARTH, YEAR 234. GREYSON, IAN, AGRICULTURE DIVISION.” The speaker shut back off. Michaela started walking again, but I remained fixed where I was.

“May, aren’t you coming?” she asked.

I stood in silence for another few moments, trying to decide what to do. Finally, I reached a decision. “Michaela, I have something to tell you.”

We eventually made it back to my room, but we didn’t know what to do beyond that. There were too many pieces falling into place for this latest selection to be worth nothing.

“Okay, lets recap here. Your dad looks into Aarden’s history 71

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and into Earth. He gets selected. You overhear this Agriculture guy—Ian?—talking about false promises made by the Council. He goes to talk to your mom. He gets selected,” Michaela recounted.

“Uh-huh.”

“And remember that guy last year? The one yelling in the plaza about the end of the world? He got selected too.”

“For a supposedly random system, it seems to do a pretty good job of getting rid of people causing trouble,” I said.

A silence lapsed between us.

“There’s more to this. I know it. We need more information,” I said.

“How are we going to get that?” Michaela asked.

“The Archives.” I stood and made my way to the door.

“May, we can’t get into the Archives. Only Council members and the History Division are allowed in, remember?”

“Come on! You’re my best friend and the only person I’ve told this to. I’ll need your help to break in,” I said.

She gave me an uneasy look but stood. “I just want to say that I think this might end poorly,” she said.

We made our way out of my house and into the tunnels. The artificial lights cast our shadows on the walls as we slipped through the mostly empty halls. After some time, we made it to the History Division. By this time, the day was coming to a close, and the large room lined with desks was mostly empty. A few historians remained, their gray clothing fading them into the background of the room.

None of them looked up from their work at our entrance. The History Division was more allowing of guests than Agriculture, and students came in frequently. I guess they didn’t think we could cause much trouble reading about dirt composition and daily labor logs. We made our way to the back of the room and down another hallway, the walls covered in records of daily labor activities. At the end was a sole door. It was made of what looked like a heavy silver metal, which gave off an unwelcoming disposition. A keypad was 72

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built into the wall next to it. The entrance to the Archives. We approached the door.

“Can you get us in?” I asked Michaela.

“Yeah I just happen to know the code,” she said.

“Really?”

“No, May. Of course I don’t just know the code. It is one of the most unknown aspects of our city.” She inspected the keypad.

“It looks like it only requires a PIN code.”

“Great. That shouldn’t be too hard. We just need to watch someone go in and use their code.”

We heard someone coming down the hall and we stepped away from the door, pretending to be very interested in the books lining the walls. The historian who passed by gave us a curt nod and went to enter the Archives. Michaela and I both discreetly turned and tried to watch her punch in the numbers. I couldn’t see anything from my angle, but I hoped that Michaela maybe had a better view. The keypad beeped and the heavy door slid open. The historian slipped in and pushed the door closed behind her, unaware of the two spies watching her.

“I couldn’t see anything. You?” I said.

“I saw the numbers—” “That’s great!”

“But I also saw her use a keycard,” Michaela said.

“I thought you said it only required a code?”

“I said I thought it only required a code. I’m no expert here either,” she said. “What I do know is that this complicates things a bit. We don’t know if it’s one code that works for all key cards, or if each card comes with its own. We also don’t know how often the code changes.”

“Even if we figure it out, now we’ll need to find a keycard too.

Who knows where we’ll find that,” I said.

“Your mom must have one, right?” Michaela asked.

“I guess so. She always has it on her though. I don’t know how 73

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I would get it,” I said.

Michaela considered what I said for a moment before speaking again, “Okay, so here’s the plan: My job will be to watch people going in. Hopefully, they all use the same code. You go home and try to find a way to get that card from your mom. We’ll meet back here after school tomorrow.”

I nodded at her plan. She grabbed one of the books off the shelves and settled herself on the floor to wait for the next person to walk towards the Archives. I turned and started walking back home, trying to think of ways that I could get my hands on Mom’s key card.

That night, dinner was a fairly quiet affair. Everything that had happened over the past few days ran through my mind.

“May?” Mom’s voice pulled me from my thoughts.

“Huh? Did you ask me something?” I asked.

She held her fork at the end of the stem and pushed around a tomato on her plate before stabbing it, making it bleed juice onto the lettuce leaves below it. “I asked where you’ve been going after school? You’ve stayed out later than usual,” she said.

I couldn’t tell her about the Archives. “I can’t go to the surface, so I am finding other places to go, like you asked me to.”

“Oh? And how is that going?”

I gave her the truth to that question. “I’m finding things I never expected.”

The pleasantries of conversation continued for a while, but I wasn’t feeling very talkative. The Council seemed to be up to something, so, by extension, she was up to something. I excused myself, and I spent a long portion of the evening after that in my room, trying to think of how to get that key card. I concluded that I’d have to get it tonight, while she slept. That also meant that Michae74

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la and I would have to move up our timeline to the morning. Mom would notice immediately when she woke up that it was gone. I punched in Michaela’s comm code to the console on my desk and waited. Her face appeared on the screen a few seconds later.

“Did you get the card?” she asked, skipping “hello” or any other unnecessary conversation.

“I think I can get it,” I said. “But it would have to be tonight.

We’d have to move up our plan to the morning. Once she notices it’s gone, she’ll know I took it. What did you find out about the PIN code?”

A smile broke out on her face. “We’re in luck. From what I can tell, each person uses the same code: 1701–74656. The key card is the additional security step. Are we really going to do this?”

Excitement creeped into Michaela’s voice.

“Yeah, we are. I need to know what the Council is hiding, and the Archives is the most likely place for us to find answers from,” I said.

“Alright. Let’s do it.”

After sorting out the details of where and when we’d meet, Michaela signed off. At this point, it was late enough that Mom was sure to be asleep. I quietly made my way down the hall to her room and gently pushed her door open. I could hear her even breathing and knew she was asleep. I slipped into her room and approached her bed. I could just barely make out the white key card sitting on her bedside table. I gingerly reached out and slid it off the table. Mom shifted and I froze. She rolled over and her even breathing resumed. I tip-toed out of her room and pulled the door closed behind me. I let out the breath that I had been holding in and made it back to my room, key in hand.

Early the next morning, I slipped out of the house towards the History Division. The tunnels were empty, but I felt like the walls 75

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were even closer than normal, pressing me to let the whole thing drop and just go back home. I kept walking. When I finally made it to the back of the History Division, Michaela was already there.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Ready.”

We approached the keypad. I swiped the card.

VALDA MAGORO. PLEASE ENTER PIN. “Here goes nothing,” Michaela muttered. She punched in the number she had told me earlier. Nothing happened.

“Maybe we should try—Ah!” Michaela and I jumped back as the door unlocked and gently swung open. We shared a grin and walked into the Archives, pulling the door closed behind us.

What we saw when we went in was more than I could have ever imagined. The rows of books outside were nothing compared to the maze of towering shelves that completely filled the room. It felt like every book in existence was in this room. As we roamed through the rows in awe, I noticed that, among the books, there were also what looked like lockers lining the walls. I got closer to one of them and brushed away some of the dust on the label.

K. ANDERS. “Hey, Michaela will you come look at this?” She walked over.

“Why do I know this name?” I asked.

Her brow furrowed in concentration. “Anders... Wasn’t he the historian who died a few years ago?”

The old man’s face flashed through my mind. Yes, it was. Mom made me go his funeral.

Michaela continued walking down the line of lockers. “May, I think these are all historian lockers. I’ve heard about these. Every historian gets one. No one can get into them. Not even the Council.”

My eyes widened. Who knew what these lockers held? And if every historian had one...

“Michaela, go down the line. See if you can find my Dad’s locker.”

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We both started walking down the rows of lockers.

DAVIS, R. JUAREZ, J. LINDSEY, S. MAGORO, M. “Michaela! I found it.”

We both looked at the locker. On its face was a combination lock. It had to be nearly ten numbers long. There was no way anyone could just guess it.

“Any ideas on what the combination is?” Michaela asked, looking in defeat at the long series of numbers.

“No. Dad never mentioned any combination,” I said.

“Figures. We come all the way down here to be stopped at the end of the puzzle. Is there a fake rock or a welcome mat nearby where he might have left a key?” she scoffed.

Mayflower, you’re the key.

I quickly counted the number of dials on the lock. Nine. The same as the number of letters in Mayflower.

“He did! Michaela, you’re a genius!”

“I am?”

“Yeah! Before Dad left, he told me, ‘Mayflower you’re the key.’

There are exactly the right number of dials here for each letter of my name.” I had already started turning the dials as I explained it to Michaela. “If I substitute each letter for its number in the alphabet...”

I pushed each number into place. M, 13. A, 1. Y, 25. When I spun the last number into place, the locker clicked open, and I opened the door. The first connection to my father in over five years.

A single note sat neatly on the shelf. I picked it up, hands shaking.

May, If you are reading this, then I am gone, and I am sorry about that. I am sorry that I will never get to see you grow up and find your own way in life. But if you’re reading this, then I am sorry twice over, 77

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because it means I was right. May, I think the city is failing. The Agriculture Division produces less and less each year. We will not be able to continue living this way for much longer. The push to go to Earth is greater than it has ever been, but the Council is taking no action.

What’s more, as I’ve looked into the history of this planet, I have found nothing. It is like anything that was ever known about those who lived here before us was wiped clean from every book and every database.

And I don’t know why. I have been having almost the opposite issue in researching Earth. Down every road I turn, I am flooded with the same account of Earth’s history. But only of the war. Nothing about its people or what they are like now. There is more here than meets the eye, and I hope that you never read this and that I am able to tell you everything in person, but, if I can’t, I ask one last thing of you Mayflower: tell the people of the city. They deserve to know that their home is dying. If one man cannot get the Council to go back to Earth, perhaps the entire city can. Good luck.

— Dad I read the letter twice more before I handed it over to Michaela. Ian was right, we are in trouble. Michaela finished reading and let out a breath.

“What do we do?” she asked.

The echoing clicks of heels on the hard floor interrupted me before I could respond, and Mom came around the corner, Council guards on either side. Anger came off of her in waves.

“Nothing. You will do nothing.”

“Mom... Is this true?” She grabbed the letter out of my hand and skimmed through it. “Is our city dying?” I asked.

She put down the letter. “Yes.” “And you’re letting it,” I said.

“No. I’m trying to save it,” she said.

“It sure doesn’t seem like it! Why force us to stay here when going to Earth is a good solution?” I said.

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Isabelle Watson | Search for Earth

“Earth is not a viable option,” she said.

I ignored her. “Why keep sending envoys to Earth? We should all go there! Who cares if they’re still at war, at least we won’t starve!”

I said.

“Earth is gone!” she snapped at me. “You don’t understand, May. We can’t go back to Earth because we are already on Earth.”

What she said hit me like a brick.

We are already on Earth.

“What? No, that’s not true. Earth is far away. Earth is at war still…”

“That was true. Earth was at war, a long time ago. People destroyed each other and, in the process, destroyed the only home they ever had. A few hundred of us survived underground, and decided that, in order to maintain the peace, we needed to forget about Earth. Make it a distant dream of a past fantasy,” Mom said.

“But...the Selection. The envoys to Earth—” “Population control. In more than one sense. A convenient reason to get rid of people. Less mouths to feed. Less people who wish to disturb the peace,” she gave the explanation like it was a solution to weeds, not a massacre. My breathing became heavier as I felt uncontrolled emotion running through me. Anger, disgust, sadness...betrayal.

Mom’s tone darkened. “If you think this is easy for me, you’re mistaken. Every Earth envoy I order pains me,” she said.

“Did you order Dad’s selection?”

The drop of her head and her downcast eyes spoke for her.

“How could you do this?” I groaned out. “You betrayed Dad. He held you on a pedestal. Did you know that? He would have never given up on you like you gave up on him. And I believed him. I believed that under your hard exterior was the warm and loving person he’d told me about. I was wrong.”

Valda leveled her gaze with mine. “I took an oath as Chancellor to put my duty to this city above all else. It is a burden I must 79

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bear to protect my people—” “Protect? How is lying to them about their doomed future in this city protecting them? Why not tell them the truth? Let them work towards ways to live above ground again?”

“And tell them what? That if they fail, they die? Am I also supposed to tell them that their friends and families have been executed and not sent on some envoy to Earth? I have considered the options, May. At least this way we keep the peace for our last good years.” She sent the guards away with a wave of her hand. “I must do this alone.” The guard to her left bowed his head and unholstered his sidearm handing it to her.

Michaela spoke up for the first time. “Chancellor, I know what we found might be...concerning, but I don’t think May and I will have any trouble keeping it to ourselves,” she said.

“I know you won’t.”

Before I knew what was happening, Valda raised the gun and there was a bang. Michaela dropped to the floor.

“No!” I dropped to Michaela’s side. Her face was frozen in surprise, and her red hair, which I always thought was as bright as fire, seemed dull against the scarlet halo that formed underneath her. “No, no, no, no.” I pleaded, but Michaela was gone.

“I’m sorry. It is a necessary evil. Our secret cannot get out.”

The softness of Valda’s voice was in polarity to the action behind it.

I looked at her through the tears in my eyes. “You are a monster.”

“No. I am the leader of this city. It is my duty to protect them.”

“And what about your duty to protect me?” At that, pain flickered across Valda’s face. As if it were for the first time, she realized that her role as my mother and her role as Chancellor were incompatible. She shook her head and raised the gun, pointing it at my chest.

I looked over at Michaela. First Dad, then her. I had lost the two people I cared about most. I closed my eyes for just a moment, before standing and straightening my back, looking my mother in the eye.

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“Do it, then.”

A tear ran down her cheek and her inner war was plain on her face.

“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t look at me.”

With my bottom lip shaking and my cheeks wet, I stepped towards her. Forcing the barrel of the gun to press into my chest, our faces inches away, my eyes locked onto hers. Looking into her eyes, I could see how, at one point, maybe when she was getting coffee with Dad on one of their first dates, those brown eyes might have looked warm.

“Do it.”

More tears came pouring down Valda’s cheeks before finally she brought the gun up and swung it across my face, throwing me into darkness.

When I woke up who-knows-how-long later, I found myself no longer in the Archives, but in a dark and barren cell. A few other cells lined the walls, but all of them looked empty.

She couldn’t do it.

The thought brought me some comfort, although I couldn’t really say why it did. I had no idea as to where in the city I was, or if I was even in the city at all. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t think I was going to get to leave this place any time soon. Destined to never see or be seen again. I looked up at the ceiling and imagined I was looking up at the stars.

“I tried, Dad. I’m sorry,” I said at the ceiling.

A faint shuffling from the cell across from mine startled me. Apparently, I wasn’t alone. From the darkness emerged a faint, raspy voice.

“Mayflower?”

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Sarah Rabbon | Farmers’ Market Benediction

Farmers’ Market Benediction Sarah Rabbon God bless this cooing congregation oh, bless the pregnant woman’s pigeon-walk— you know, the turntoed waddle— bless that full-moon belly oh, baby baby baby! bless sun-baked, dirt-caked, dry, cracked fingers of farmworkers, tying sidling spiced smell of dried corn husks, guajillo chilies into bouquet bunches and bless the way my body feels as the harvest moon reaches for the earth God bless this haughty earth-savior: her canvas bags, clinky reusable metal straws, refusing receipts

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bless the secret lemon rind and bay leaf (no longer mysteries) of my matzo ball soup bless the sidewalk-wheelchair-evangelist’s bagpipe bellow, bless his 3:16 sign, his receding hairline— hallelujah! oh, the apple of my eye!

God bless this compassionate gobbling of braeburn, and honey crisp, granny smith, and red gold that makes me want to know the strangers plucking apples around me bless drunken liturgies of crickets, bless honey to spoon into tea or your mouth with little plastic spoons (forgive me) bless firsts, and first Thursday nights bless this hymnal of a humming chorus of bicycles whirring down Marsh

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Sarah Rabbon | Farmers’ Market Benediction

oh artichoke, amaranth, arugula, heirlooms to sample from the bowl, baby carrots (baby baby baby!), fennel, and fig, parsnip, and pomegranate, and, yes, the persimmon full and ripe; crinkled leaves, in a paper bag—amen.

God, bless the elote vendor’s silent language of nods, and smiles, and counting (blessings?) on our fingers. like sacred verse, like psalms. bless you, and you, and you. amen.

Third Place, Kevin Clark Poetry Writing Contest

Judge’s Citation This poem is a joyous and big-hearted catalogue of blessings for all of humanity and the animals and plants as well. It’s both serious and playful, but most of all wonderfully observant in its precise descriptions and appealing music.

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—Ellen Bass

Lucas Dodd | Guadalupe Dunes & Solomon Creek

Guadalupe Dunes & Solomon Creek Lucas Dodd Searching for a library, He found the ocean.

Morning light like a mother’s smile Welcomed him up onto her pillow-lap, She let him roll beyond her knee: The beach was mystic crystal, And in his ear she whispered softly: Sand, sand, do you seek the love In the sand?

There the blue universality enveloped him, Where the sky and cloud and sand Enclose the letter of the sea: You have to get beyond books, my dear, And jump into the sea.

Even Solomon’s creek flows down this way, Depositing his farmland silt far out into the open Ocean, the horizon’s very heart.

Look beyond the sun.

Forget, therefore, the philosophy of stone— Be sand! Know its art.

Watch the waves Sift through you, revolute you, Revolving you, return.

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He looks down Flinching, fleeing at the touch Of the water ankle-high becoming Water shin-high becoming Knee-high water, Then foam: You have to be sand, my love.

The smoky silt-spirals return, Writing arrow-feather etchings.

Untraceable, Then again.

The waves overlap, The waves overlap everything: Be sand.

Shells turn and turn in the turquoise; They’re pearline castles set in gold That flow from stone by water into sand: Stone by flow becomes flow.

La Sagráda Família opens To the world without end: Be sand.

He looks down His eyes are turned, backwards Forgotten the glory.

He washes his face in the clean Sweet and salty ageless Atmosphere, that mirror for ever Of timeless time he turns, turns, ever Turns, turns with water, with water: 86

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Waves, waves, the world of waves, The world of waves overlaps, The world of waves overlaps, every Ten-trillionth grain in every Nine-thousandth set.

He sees himself in the waves, He drinks the clean embrace.

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Abby Edgecumbe | Sea Sick

Sea Sick Abby Edgecumbe A couple of months ago, Roger learned about something called “seasickness.” It was, apparently, when some people would be overcome with nausea and dizziness when out on the sea. How strange.

Now, he looked down at the magazine in his lap, at the words “sea legs.”

Hands on his thighs, he could practically feel saltwater flowing through his veins. To have legs is to have “sea legs.” The worn plastic lawn chair he was sitting in squeaked. Roger shut his eyes and focused on the lapping of the waves against the hull of his boat. He put down his magazine, the last printed copy of The National Geographic, titled an ironic question: Will the Sea Levels Ever Stop Rising? Heh. The waves, shoulder-checking him with increasing vigor, seemed to answer, “No. No, I won’t.” Fucking smug. Without opening his eyes, he heard the distinct sound of a boarding plank thudding on his desk.

“Hey, Roger.”

Nancy was a woman who occasionally floated through Roger’s vicinity. They liked to call each other neighbors. She was short and round, with just-been-slapped red cheeks and pores you could bury a body in. Her hair was blonde and rigid, the strands always coated in salt. Once upon a time, the atmosphere had been 78% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and negligible amounts of other stuff, but these days, salt hangs so heavy in the air humans might as well grow gills. She walked shakily over the plank connecting their boats, stopping at the base to secure a rope from her boat to his railing.

“Hey, Nancy.”

She looked around his boat.

“Jesus, Roger,” she said. The planks of his deck were sun-bleached and dehydrated, splintering and cracking as she took her steps. Magazines with waterlogged pages were sloshed carelessly on every surface.

“Where’d you even find these damn things?” She held a copy of The 88

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New Yorker sideways, by the spine. The pages fluttered in the wind.

The words were dried out and faded. She flicked her eyes over to Roger, still seated in his faded chair. His scraggly blond hair fell in uncombed ringlets over his eyes. His mouth was set in a wiry beard. His linen button-up shirt had had a colorful design but was now just a faded splatter of pastel. The fabric billowed like a sail against his thin torso. He was tossing little bits of plastic over the rail and into the sea.

The blue scraps made a satisfying plip as they broke the surface of the water and left ripples emblazoned on the gelatin surface of the sea.

“People don’t give a shit about ’em,” he replied. “Like they don’t even care. Like they’re pretending the world they came from never even existed. Like we never even had land. The bastards.” If cigarettes had still existed, he would’ve taken a long drag. “I, for one, won’t sit around and watch our history bleed into the water.”

“It’s an impressive collection, I’ll give you that.” Nancy flipped through the magazine she was holding. Seeing the publication date, she sputtered. “Man, this is fucking ancient! What else have you got holed up in here, a Netflex subscription?”

“It’s Netflix, and it’s not a tangible thing, Nance. It was online.”

He paused. “My parents had a subscription. They used to tell me that I even had my own profile, even though I don’t remember,” he added proudly. “I was five when the last skyscraper drowned, but I had Netflix.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” she replied disinterestedly, tossing the magazine aside.

“You know,” he said, changing the topic. “There was some land when this magazine came out,” he said, standing up and brandishing his copy of The National Geographic. Nancy was leaning over the rail and looking down into the depths. “Not very much, granted.

But still. Land...” he trailed off. He joined her at the rail, he himself imagining the Statue of Liberty draped with the reflection of ripples, fish swimming in and out of the prongs of her crown. Nancy was just zoning out. He threw another piece of blue plastic over the edge.

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“What the hell are you doing to your lures?” Nancy asked, grabbing them. What used to be shiny plastic fish were nothing but picked-at lumps of plastic.

“Nothing! Just passing the time, I guess.” He thrusted his hand out, and Nancy begrudgingly handed them back. He shoved them in his pocket, an angry blush smoldering under the hairs of his beard.

“Anyway.” He turned to face her, leaning against the edge of the boat. “You have news or something? Why’re you here?”

“I have a few pieces of news,” she said. “Firstly, desecrating your lures and hoarding magazines are decidedly not normal behaviors.”

She turned to face his as well, cheeks round and red. “Secondly, I just wanted to invite you in person.” She grinned. He sighed.

“Oh, what now?”

“Well Marco... You know Marco. The guy from that tropical current about, uh, 30 nautical miles downstream? Anyways. He just fished with his gang last week. He always dries us out, but it’s been a few days, so that population’s back up.” Roger was having a hard time seeing how any of this related to him, and his face showed it.

“So,” Nancy continued. “I’m inviting some people in our, uh—” She struggled to find the word to describe the fragile circle of boats that bobbed in a relatively small cluster in the wide expanse of blue.

“Some people in our neighborhood to come over to my boat and fish later today. You’re invited.”

Roger looked unimpressed. He sighed once more.

“Geez, you got something stuck in your throat? Just cough it up and be done with it.”

“Well, just, don’t you ever wish you could eat something that’s not fish? Like, chicken or, uh, what’s the other one? With the spots and the weird nipples? Whatever. I’m just sick of fish and, and, and all of it! And before you say it, no. Our vitamin supplements don’t fucking count.”

“Roger, this is our life, man. You’ve literally never known another life.”

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“But I have! I told you about the Netflix subscription, didn’t I?” “That’s not real! Nitflix doesn’t mean shit.” She sighed. “Hon. Your body’d probably shut down if you ate a cow.” She put a hand on his shoulder that he immediately shrugged off. A few feet below them, waves knocked on his boat and then quickly subsided, an annoying game of ding-dong ditch.

“Cow! That’s it.” He turned away from her and rolled up his magazine absentmindedly. “Obviously I’ll come. But you should know, I don’t respect it.”

“I never expected you to. And you know,” she added. “You lived five years on land and thirty years on water. Thirty years, man. See you in a few.” And with that, Nancy left, taking the boarding plank with her and drifting away. The sky burned a brilliant blue and the sea headbutted the horizon with its own shades. Blue pressed on Roger from above and below, from left and right, and as he watched Nancy float away, he had the most peculiar feeling that he was a deserted island that not even birds visited to shit on. They used to say that no man is an island, but when all the islands are underwater, the only ones left to do the job are men.

He stood, alone, in the center of his boat. His bare feet sent angry nerve messages to his brain about being poked and prodded by the splintery wood. His brain analyzed these messages and succinctly decided that it did not care. He gazed out at the ocean. The selfrighteous interjection of the waves made Roger scoff. The furthest thing from beautiful. Roger didn’t know much about science, much about space or the universe, but he had read in one of his magazines that the universe was constantly expanding. Looking around at the community of boats in the endless sea around him, forever drifting into a horizon that was unreachable, he didn’t know about the universe, but he knew about his: it was definitely expanding, spreading away from him like ripples from a focus. But unlike the scientists in the essay he’d read from 2015, the reason why wasn’t a mystery to him. It was a current.

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Looking around at all the people, sardines in both proximity and smell, Roger was struck with a thought. Was this how it was, back when there was land? He imagined himself on a lawn with his neighbors, where walking from his door to the lawn didn’t involve a boarding plank and the constant lull of the waves was replaced by the chirping of songbirds. Nancy said some words to him, their meaning negligible, and the grass transformed back to splintered wood.

“Hey, Roge’, come over here and mingle,” Nancy repeated, determined not to be written off as negligible. “If this guy,” she continued, linking her arms through Roger’s and pulling him to face a man he’d never seen before. “If he asks you to borrow some lures, make sure to ask him what happened to his.”

Roger shrugged with his lips, a wry but polite smile.

“Well now I have to know, what the hell did you do to your lures, man?” said the stranger. He dropped the words from his lips like bricks and they fell with a dull, coolly disinterested thud. Like his words, his face was heavy and substantial, a wide, rectangular jaw and small eyes balconied by his brow. His lip was curled up at the side, and it remained there as they talked like it was stapled there.

Roger gargled his words for a moment, sifting through them, trying to find the right ones to describe the vindictiveness behind his massacred lures.

Roger looked at this stranger’s face, studying it, and said, “It was just an absentminded thing, honestly. Didn’t even mean to, then before I knew it, I was watching ’em float away.”

“Funny how making things float is the closest we get to land these days, huh. An island for a flea and we’re the kings. Whoop-deedoo. I’m David.”

“Roger,” Roger replied. “And any land is better than no land. I don’t care much for a kingdom of fleas, though.”

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The boat swayed with the rhythm of the waves. Snippets of other conversations hung in the air like Christmas ornaments, a cute façade, but underneath, the overwhelming silence of a world without cities pulsed like a tell-tale heart.

Nancy looked between them. “David’s been experimenting around with land, Roger. He’s pretty interested in the flooding. He’s been telling us he’s onto something, aye Davy?” She chuckled and elbowed him playfully in the side. Eyerolls cascaded like a chain reaction through the other ten or so people peppered around the deck of Nancy’s boat. David pursed his lips.

Looking directly at Roger, he said, “I’ve been looking into it.

Land, I mean.” He leaned forward imperceptibly, rising above Roger like a dark storm cloud until all Roger could see with David’s face.

“It could still exist, don’t you think, Roger? People write it off so fast, before they even look at the facts.”

Across the boat, a woman, looming taller than six feet, hollered.

“The facts are right in front of your damn eyes!” She laughed and gestured at the endless ocean.

David smiled tightly. The tall woman, whose name Roger later learned was Jasmine, continued her previous conversation in a loud, booming voice.

“—and he went on and on about cows, and I told him, pal, there isn’t any way you could ever eat a cow, and even if you did, it’d prolly kill ya!” Nancy said. The corners of her smile cut sharply into her chubby cheeks. She turned towards him. “What’d ya call ’em?

‘The ones with spots and...’”

“Weird nipples,” Roger finished distractedly. The tall woman said something loud from the other side of the boat, and by the time it hit Roger it was just a cacophony of guffaws.

“Okay, Jasmine!” Nancy called. “Looks like my pole caught somethin’,” she said to the two men. She turned on a swollen heel and waddled away into the crowd.

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David and Roger in a vacuum. David, set on pumping the silence with awkwardness, grabbed Roger suddenly by the forearm. Roger sensed a shift in the atmosphere, subtle but unmistakable. David’s grip was strong and urgent, but his face was impassive. “You ever seen land?” The words ran at full speed towards Roger, forcing their way right through him. He laughed awkwardly, a few puffs of air lightly airbrushed with humor and confusion.

“Yeah, an island for fleas, right? I guess it’s time to redefine what land even means. Past time to do so, probably. Unfortunately.”

David shook his head. The whites of his eyes shone wide and white, gleaming under the shadow of his brow like eyes of monsters in the dark in old cartoons. His pupils darted rapidly between Roger’s eyes. His grip on Roger’s forearm tightened. “That’s not what I mean,” he replied. His breathing was shaky with excitement. “Real land.

Real fucking land, Roger. I’ve seen it! I know it’s there!” He suddenly pulled back, as if remembering where he was, but his body language remained stiff and on edge.

Roger took a stumbling step away, pulling his arm free.

“What the fuck?” His heart held its breath.

David licked his lips. “Roger, I’ve really seen it. C’mon, you seem like a man who’d, who’d understand. A man who’d want to know the truth.”

Roger turned his back on David and braced his hands on the rail of the deck. Water sloshed below him, and he felt sick. Sick of the sea.

David continued. “We can finally get off these damn boats, man. I get why you threw the lures. The sea, Roger. She’s a bitch.

She’s our mistress, dirty and uncivilized, trying to drag us from our homes, our families. Land, though? Land is the rich man’s whore, and you and me? We’re goddamn millionaires.” His voice moved closer behind Roger’s back. “I can make you a millionaire.”

“You’re...” Roger’s mind was racing. Thoughts were rising to the surface like bubbles in a soda, ready to burst. He took some deep 94

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breaths and spun back around to face David. “You’re so full of bullshit!” The idea of land existing, answering his prayers, was so absurd, so impossible, that in the face of his dream come true, he could do nothing but laugh. Wishing for something is different than having it.

Isn’t it?

David’s mouth was moving; he was saying something. His heavy brow moved up and down in unison, scrunching up and flattening out.

“No, stop. What the hell, David,” Roger said.

“Just hear me out! Land, it exists—” “No. Seriously. What the hell! We just met, and now you’re telling me that you’ve seen fucking land. Our families didn’t watch the sea rise threateningly all those years, they didn’t watch the people they loved, watch themselves die when the floods began in earnest, to have you come around, granting wishes like a fucking genie.” Roger felt himself regurgitating what Nancy had drilled into him countless times. “There’s miles of ocean below us. Miles on miles on miles.

Nothing’s breaching that surface except the fish we’re trying to hook for dinner.” His mouth tasted like bile. “Nothing.”

David smiled and crossed his arms. “Isn’t that what everyone’d like you to think. They’re all scared of change! They’re scared of the truth!” He sighed. “I understand it’s hard to believe. But I can tell, deep down, you believe me. I know it. I can tell.”

“I don’t believe shit,” Roger replied. “And you can’t tell shit.

You’re talking like some prophet! Well, let me be the first to clue you in: there’s no Jesus here, pal, so take your ‘walk on water, water into wine’ crap elsewhere.” He looked at the ocean, seeing it suddenly as a religious messiah, an endless supply of wine, and he felt even angrier that, instead of wine, it was nothing but poison water.

The murmurings of the rest of the boat dampened. A raspy voice was heard: “I’ve heard this before. This your only party anecdote? Give it a damn rest, Davy.” The words came out like they had to scrape between boulders just to be heard. The man who spoke 95

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had gnarled skin so tan his race was ambiguous. David said nothing.

Roger, who was looking around at anything but David’s face, happened to spot his clenched fists. His jaw was bulging; it was clenched as well. This distracted Roger, and he began imagining that David might shatter his teeth. Hundreds of white pieces of tooth tumbling into the sea. Ripples upon ripples.

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Craig! Not this shit again. You’d do anything to avoid change,” David said at last, teeth still intact. “And what I’m proposing, what I know, it threatens to change everything.

Everything!”

The man, Craig, rolled his eyes. Roger marveled that the act of rolling his eyes didn’t cause them to disintegrate. Everything about him looked excessively dried out, the sun and salt having turned him into jerky.

“It’s been the same broken record for years,” Craig said. Nods and grunts of affirmation came from the rest of the crowd. He looked right at Roger and added, “Careful who you associate yerself with, kid.” He shot a glance at David. “I was around before the flooding,” Craig continued, his jaw creaking with the effort. “There ain’t nothin’ left. Nothin’.”

Jasmine piped in, saying, “I, for one, don’t like thinkin’ about that. The floodin’. God’s responsible for a damn massacre of humanity as far as I’m concerned. Not that I’m very concerned in the first place.”

Craig nodded. “The water came and it filled the bodies of our families and flooded the cells of every damn thing. The grass, the mountains, the trees, the buildings—saturated and soggy until everything dissipated like paper in the bathtub. And that’s that.”

Craig shut his mouth with a rusty screech, marking the ubiquitous end of discussion.

“Don’t listen to them,” David said, stepping in front of Roger so he couldn’t see anyone else on the boat, or their disapproving glances.

All he could see was David’s fist, eager and damp with sweat. “If I’d listened to them, I never would’ve found the land.”

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Roger looked at David. He looked at his flushed cheeks, noting that they were closely shaven and clear of razor bumps. He looked at his mouth, not moving anymore, but still stapled. Roger rolled his eyes back until he saw darkness. He thought of the little pieces of lure he’d chucked into the sea. His dirty mistress, as it were. In his mind, he watched them float, get eaten by a bluefish, get passed, and float again. He watched them get tossed around like a pigskin by father-and-son waves during a storm. Held under the water, catapulted into the air. Beaten and pummeled, their sharp, jagged edges now smooth and sanded, their color faded and sun-bleached. He thought about how the sea treated them with no mercy. Then, he saw those decrepit bits of plastic wash up on a sandy beach, beaten to a pulp, resting on the forgiving sand, warmed by the sun. He opened his eyes.

“So, what? I’m just meant to believe you? Change my entire world view?”

“Just let me explain. I can explain everything. I can show you!

Soon.”

Seeing that Nancy’s boat had completed its loop and was bobbing close to his boat once again, Roger said, “Fine. Fine! Maybe.” He thought about what Craig had said. “You can explain.” He began to walk away.

David ran around Roger and blocked his path. He grabbed him stiffly by the shoulders and said, “Millionaires.” The rich man’s whore, Roger thought.

“Millionaires,” Roger replied, mostly to himself. He smiled.

“Goddamn millionaires!”

Roger crossed the boarding plank onto his boat. A magazine caught his eye, slung over the edge of the deck. The 14 Most Beautiful Islands: Where and When to Visit. He thought about how that title would soon need to be revised, he lifted his leg, and he nudged the magazine into the ocean with his toe. “I’ll see you soon, washed up on a sandy shore.”

He was watching the magazine sink slowly into the depth, 97

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the pages fluttering in a liquid wind, the colors contorted by the blue and the words rendered to gibberish, when his radio crackled.

Kchhhk. “Roger? This is David. Over.” Roger ran into his cabin and grabbed his transceiver. “Roger here,” he said. “Over.”

“Send your coordinates, I’m coming over to tell you everything.

Over.” Roger braced himself on the rim of his sink. He took a few deep breaths. He took a few deeper breaths. “You okay, Roger? Over.”

Roger flinched, realizing he had been pressing down on the transmit button, and that David had heard his hyperventilating.

“35.299877, -120.659275. Over and out.”

Jesus, Roger thought. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. He put a hand to his chin, fingering the rough hair that grew there. This was all he’d ever wanted. “I had a Netflix subscription,” he whispered to himself. It didn’t make him feel any less nervous. “I had a Netflix subscription,” he said again, with determination, looking out at the waves. He felt a little bit better. He felt a little bit excited.

He sat down in his weathered plastic lawn chair. He picked up a magazine, tried to read it, but couldn’t. He sighed. He tilted his head back, shut his eyes, and listened to the quiet grumble of the sea.

He heard a boarding plank land on his deck. But instead of Nancy’s heavy footing and quiet, breathless huffs, he heard a deep voice say, “Let’s do this!” Please, God, let this be real.

“So, what you’re saying is, you’ve done a lot of math to do with the rate and size of the waves and...” Roger trailed off. He was still not quite following.

“And there’s no way these wave patterns could exist without having first been deflected by a large mass.” David looked at Roger expectantly. “A large mass!”

Roger shrugged sheepishly, embarrassed. “Uh, land?” he said tentatively.

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“Land!” David echoed, if echoes could be louder and more self-assured than their source.

“I don’t know, man,” Roger said, looking at the wave maps.

“This just looks like random lines.” Roger knew little to nothing, closer to nothing than to little, about reading wave maps, but he figured he’d be able to see a pattern. Or at least a general direction. Something, anything, like what David was saying. But he just couldn’t.

The lines looked completely random.

“Just trust me,” David replied. “No offense, but I’ve been doing this a while. The patterns are there, and from what I can tell, the closest thing that could generate waves like this has to be an island around the size of what I believe used to be called Hawaii.” David spoke feverishly, his lips bared above his teeth like they couldn’t keep up with the rate at which David was talking. “And! It must be close.

Take another look at the map.” David spread his hands out, fingers splayed between the red tacks stuck in the map. Roger watched as David poked, pointed, and prodded his way along the map, talking all the while, until he finished with a decisive slam of his fist on the table. “Right under our damn noses! It’s the only explanation.”

“Okay...” Roger said. He couldn’t help but think that there could be other explanations. Roger may not have been a man of science, but that didn’t rationalize the difficulty he was having following David’s logic. No. No, he thought. He wasn’t going to ruin this for himself. He was tired of the dripping hatred that waterboarded him every night. He pushed blind faith like spackle into the cracks that were beginning to spiderweb.

“You’ve got faith, right?” David asked, noting Roger’s silence.

Roger’s life was built on faith. He had nothing but word-ofmouth and drowned magazines to fuel him. Netflix, he thought.

Sand, he thought. “I have faith,” he said.

David and Roger shared a smile, triumphant and melancholic.

Reminiscent, though neither of them knew why. They looked down at the map. Specifically, at a thumbtack that seemed to gleam. “And 99

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that’s where it is,” David said. “Right. Fucking. There.”

A droning beep drew their attention away from the map.

“So, what exactly is that?” Roger asked, looking at the big, hulking piece of metal David had lugged aboard Roger’s boat. The object in question was a large metal box, covered in blinking lights and buttons. It had two cracked, salt-crusted screens displaying various coordinates in green pixelated characters. It was plugged into a generator that was rumbling and screeching loudly. Sheets of dehydrated paper crunched underneath its weight. Pages of Roger’s magazines stuck out at odd angles between the pale floorboards and the machine.

“It’s a radar,” David said, dropping a heavy hand on the machine in a fatherly way. “This is it! This is how I found the island. Right there,” he said, pointing at one of the screens. “I saw it. Painted in the most beautiful green.”

“Where’d you even get this?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Got it a while ago. Long story. I’ve just, I’ve been at this a long time.”

Roger wondered how long. He looked at David again, while approaching the machine. He didn’t look much older than Roger himself. Roger clocked him in at around early forties. He thought back to Craig, the sunburn of a man, and Jasmine, the loud, hulking woman. How long had they been watching David run around with his machine heavy enough to sink a boat and his crazy theories?

No. No, Roger thought. I have faith. I had Netflix. He grabbed one of the machine’s screens with both hands and pulled it towards him.

As Roger ran a hand over one of the monitors, he saw David recoil momentarily in what looked like fright, then stamp frantically on the ground next to the radar.

“Everything okay over there?” Roger asked.

“Yep! Yeah, for sure. All good.” David responded quickly. “You looking at the radar screen?”

Roger looked at the screen before him. It was all black except 100

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for a bright green circle that pulsed out from a central dot.

“That dot is, I assume, us?”

“You got it.

Roger looked more closely. He read the coordinated in the bottom corner.

“Those aren’t our coordinates, David.”

“What?”

Roger pointed at the numbers. He was right; the coordinates were wrong. Roger looked at David, his finger still pressed against the dirty glass, forgotten.

“I can explain that! I mean, don’t worry about that!”

“The coordinates track to somewhere across the world from us... are you sure this thing works?”

“The coordinates don’t fucking matter!” David interrupted.

“Nothing fucking matters! Nothing except the land! The island! That’s all that matters! You know, Roger. You know that’s all that matters.

Nothing else here, not our boats, not our lives! Wouldn’t you sacrifice it all? I’d give it all up. For land. Land’s all that matters.” David’s voice, normally so confident, cracked and squeaked. His lip was no longer stapled.

The air seemed to smell smoky, but Roger ignored it. He spoke slowly. “David, why do we need this thing? Haven’t you seen the island? You told me you’d seen it.” An unfamiliar feeling seeped into Roger’s organs. His insides felt icy.

“I have seen it! The math is indubitable! I’ve seen the island right here,” he answered, pulling a wad of crumpled paper and napkins from his pocket. As Roger looked at them, David said, “You believe me, don’t you? You have to believe me, Roger. You know you believe me!”

On the scraps were scribbles of numbers and letters. Land was written several times in heavy-set letters. Punctures where David had pressed the pencil down too hard were scattered in lettering reading, LAND. ISLAND. SAND. EARTH. LAND LAND LAND. The words were underlined and repeated all over the papers. They were traced 101

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over until some of the words just looked like angry storm clouds of scribbles. Roger handed the papers back to David. He couldn’t see his thoughts through the smoke and smog in his mind. His efforts were interrupted by David rushing past him. Roger closed his eyes.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. Maybe Nancy was right. He was too old for this shit.

“I’m not sure that math checks out, David,” he began. He wasn’t sure David checked out, but he didn’t say that.

“Fuck!” David said.

Roger opened his eyes, looking over to David, who was hovering nervously around the radar.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” David said again.

“What’s wrong?”

“Ah, shit!” David reached out to press some buttons on the radar but recoiled in pain the second he touched it. The machine was whirring loudly and seemed to be smoking.

“Jesus Christ! It’s on fucking fire!” Roger yelled.

“Don’t worry, I-I’ve got it under control!” He stomped and slapped at the growing embers. “They won’t stamp out like last time!”

David reached for a thick woolen blanket slung over a chair, but before he could do anything, the deck went up in flames. Roger watched, paralyzed, as the flames slithered over his splintered wood and hungrily consumed his magazines. The heat of the fire was tangible, and Roger squeezed his fists as if he could crumple the heat like it was a piece of paper and toss it into the sea to join his lures on the shore of an island of dreams. The universe moved in unison, angrily.

The sea showed no mercy, knocking the boat around. Roger felt the dank, wet slap of sea spray on his face get almost instantly vaporized by the flames. The coordinates were wrong, the math was fake, the radar a piece of shit, and David? The flames were reflected in his eyes as he frantically ran around the deck, desperately grabbing at parts of the map and the radar in vain. Roger felt the soggy wood of his boat beneath his knees, with no time to wonder when he fell. The floor 102

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was hot. God, will it ever end? The waves shoulder-checked him with increasing vigor as if to say, “No. No, it won’t.”

“Ah! Fuck!” David yelled. He ran past Roger like he didn’t even see him, reaching up into the sky trying to grasp the floating embers of the map. He flung his upper body off the side of the deck, violently shoving his hands into the sea, grabbing fistfuls of water to throw on the flames. The fire just slurped the water up with a sizzle, however, unperturbed.

Roger lifted his head, feeling the heat all around his body. From miles away, he heard David shouting. He opened his eyes. Embers floated up into the night sky. Pages from his collection of magazines blazed majestically and fluttered in the air, rising higher and higher until they intermingled with the stars. The waves crashed with unimaginable strength, the water sloshing over the sides of the boat.

A wistful tss began, soft and benign, as the water began to put out some of the flames. The ocean threw itself onto Roger’s ship like a breaching whale, and the tss grew louder until it was all Roger could hear. He let the sound support his body and breathed in the salty spray. The cool mist was welcome on his smoldering, charred skin.

Dark plumes of smoke rose into the sky, snuffing out both the stars and the magazines alike. Thank god for the sea.

Suddenly, he felt hands grab his shoulders and yank him to his feet. Over the roar of the fire that was still burning, David shouted, “Help me!”

David’s hand gripped Roger’s arm and he tried to drag him into the heart of the flames.

“What the fuck are you doing!” Roger yelled, trying to pull himself free of David’s grip.

“We have to save the fucking radar! It’s all that matters!”

“Fuck the radar! Let go of me!” Roger pulled free from David and finally took a clear look at his boat—his home. He looked down at one of the remaining magazines and watched the headline Will the Sea Levels Ever Stop Rising? get eaten by a thin, shrinking border of 103

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glowing red ember. The center of his deck was black, and a huge fire roared on top of it. His cabin was collapsed in on itself. He heard a deep creak, like the gate of hell inching open below him.

“David! We have to get off this boat right now!” Roger yelled, pulling David roughly. With a last look at the blazing fire, David finally stopped resisting, and together they ran across the boarding plank connected their boats. They hadn’t taken two steps on David’s boat before Roger heard the creak again, louder this time, and his entire deck collapsed in a flurry of embers and flames, completely demolished. Roger stepped away from David, grasping the rail of the unfamiliar boat. He watched his home burn and collapse. The waves were working to put the fire out, but it still blazed brightly on the surface of the water. Roger imagined his burning boat to be the top of the flames that lit the Statue of Liberty’s torch. She was rising from depths, leaving the fish that swam amongst her prongs homeless and hopeless. In reality, the fish were swimming with contented dullness, and Lady Liberty’s crown was misshapen and bulbous with coral and barnacles.

His boat sunk and took the pieces of his life with it. His squeaky plastic lawn chair, his magazines. His physical life eaten by what plagued his spiritual life: the sea. Watching everything he owned reflect that shade of blue and wiggle up at him teasingly through the water, Roger felt his life being handed back to him, purged and saturated with salt. He screamed.

“Roger? Roger! It’s okay! I know, I’m upset about the radar, too, but it’s not hopeless! The island is still out there. The island is all that matters.”

Roger breathed deeply. All that was anchoring his soul to his body was the lapping of the waves. “My fucking boat, David...” he said quietly. He looked at the ground. In the pale moonlight, the deck of David’s boat looked strange. It was covered in dark, circular marks. Scorch marks.

“Your boat? You didn’t even need it anymore; you and I will be 104

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living on solid land soon!”

“Oh, come on, David!” Roger yelled. David blanched. “You really think there’s a fucking island?”

“No, stop this. You believe me! Don’t let all them get in your head now!”

“There’s miles of ocean below us! There is no goddamn island!

There never could’ve been!”

David backed up. “Where’s your faith? You had Netflix! You just have to believe me!”

“Netflix doesn’t mean shit!” Roger advanced on David, looming above him. “The past is the fucking past, David. And thanks to you, my home is the past now, too. Rich man’s whore, huh? Well look at me now!” He gestured to the dark shadow of his boat beneath the lapping waves. “I’m a fucking millionaire.”

“I-I-I-” Roger shook his head. “Get me off this fucking boat.”

When Roger boarded her boat, wet, scorched, and smelling of smoke, Nancy didn’t say anything. Roger offered no explanation. He walked across the boarding plank, turned around, undid the rope connecting the two boats, grabbed the plank, and pulled it to him.

David stood on the deck of his ship and slowly bobbed away into the night. The ocean filled the space between Roger and David, pulling them apart with slippery fingers. Roger nodded his thanks.

A couple of months ago, Roger thought up a new meaning for “seasickness.” It was, according to him, when people who spend too much time on the sea begin to feel bored of it. Sick of it. He was sick of being seasick. He looked out at the blue, amorphous beast and understood that it was not to be trifled with. That it wasn’t his mistress; he was its servant and it was a capricious master, not susceptible to bias or bribe. One day it may kill him, and he was fine with that; it 105

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had already spared him once.

His boat, a tiny rowboat stocked with food, a map of the currents, and a short-range radio, bobbed on the ocean. His hair was crunchy with salt and pulled back into a bun. He leaned over the edge of his boat and dipped his hand in water, feeling it slide sleekly through the grooves in his palm and between his fingers. He looked up from his hand over the surface of the water. The sun was rising.

The waves were golden-crested, the sky still dark and dappled with stars. All this time, he had cursed the sea and its unforgiving blueness, yet before him now was a concerto of color. He sighed and glanced at his map. He was on track to enter Caribbean Sea jurisdiction by sundown. Boats were anchored all around him, tiny dots of light reflecting over the ripples, and he heard the distinct squeak of someone sitting down in a plastic lawn chair. He smiled to himself, letting the current carry him through the ever-expanding universe.

Second Place, Alfred Landwehr Fiction Writing Contest

Judge’s Citation This unsettling, post-apocalyptic story uses its nautical setting to put the reader in an existential quandary. We understand how the rising oceans have wiped away the ground on which we once stood. We understand how salt water corrodes. We feel the sea beneath us, its depths uncharted. And we’re left floating on a small and inadequate boat, navigating with only our insufficient access to the water’s surface, trying to find our way.

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—Silas Dent Zobal

Clarke Andros | These Days

These Days Clarke Andros “these days” by Nico played on the 269 passing through Huron the straw-hat avenue old men sitting and watching trucks painted in mud a parade of the working class not one sign in English she’s at home self-harm on her mind these days that seems common as I lazily pass along life slow life tiresome for both of us “These Days I seem to think a lot about the things I forgot to do and all the times I had a chance to”

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Luke Bartell | Los Campos

Los Campos Luke Bartell Fertile soil fell through my fingers And became a part of my sunburnt hand The smell of sweat and dirt filling the air Reminded me that I was home, A student during the fall And during the summer only a campesino Sandias every summer Since I was born My father to my right and my mother somewhere down the road selling what she could making money, but never a living Working for food Even though it was all around us I promise my father That someday things will be better Water hits the earth as he breathes Esto es la vida que nos toco Another summer when my hands Are the color of my skin With a clean shirt, no hat

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My father cries while holding a piece of paper That means he is now worth more Than the three dollars he is paid an hour Quisieron enterarnos, pero se les olivdo que somos semillas They tried to bury us, But they did not know we were seeds

Second Place, Kevin Clark Poetry Writing Contest

Judge’s Citation

This poem conveys the terrible contradictions and inequities of our society in language that is simple, but deft. There’s musicality from the opening line, “Fertile soil fell through my fingers,” all the way through to the end. And it’s the end that really gripped me and continues to resonate. This powerful metaphor: “They tried to bury us,/ But they did not know we were seeds.”

—Ellen Bass

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Mia Daniele | The Sister’s Coat

The Sister’s Coat Mia Daniele The only calendar they shared now was the moon and her many faces. Clodagh would confess under oath that she studied the shifting expressions rigorously, watching each night as the new moon became a crescent, grew to a half, and reached three-quarters further on. When the silver of the full moon melted into the dark ocean, igniting the depths and gleaming on Clodagh’s pale coat, she knew that it was time to visit her stolen sister.

The old land had forgotten about them—the selkies—and all the kindness they wer owed. Their kind had once been as revered as the hallowed chapels crowning the grassy hills and the children whose eyes shone in strange colors. They were wicked creatures one only feigned to understand. Clodagh and her sister, Muireann, never experienced a world like that, not even as wains. Their mother had told them stories of a sea that had been smaller and the sailors who had been kinder, but Clodagh knew the currents had dragged that dream far away. Still, she would swear she knew what they looked like. Muireann couldn’t do the same, not since she lost her coat.

On the nights of the full moon, Clodagh swam to shore. Even as a seal, she was too small. Her mother had once called her a rock that had been thrown into the waves—sinking instead of swimming, coat dirty with the muddy patches of brown. Muireann had always been the surer one. She had once taken a harpoon to the side and still swam her way back to freedom, a victorious trail of blood left in her wake. Clodagh was a runt weaned on thin milk, and that only became more apparent when she shed her coat and became human.

As a human, she was too short for her age, and with skin too pale to be healthy. Clad in nothing but the fur coat encasing her shoulders, she shook on knobby legs as she struggled to rise from the sand.

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She scanned the beach, then the wood staircase leading to a fenced area marked by rusty signs. Muireann hadn’t been walking well, not since her pregnancy started showing. Clodagh wondered briefly if this was the night her sister’s stomach was going to pop a seal wain from her human womb, when the twin beams of a truck glared on the horizon. They turned off again before they could blind her. A door slammed, and her sister came down the stairs.

Even with her coat stolen, Muireann wasn’t quite human.

There were hints of a seal’s bulbous face in the human architecture of her nose and mouth. Like her sister, her skin was adorned in spots of brown. Unlike Clodagh’s, they were the precise flecks of a painter’s brush.

Moonlight highlighted the heavy weight in Muireann’s stomach. It curved far beyond her bounds, so heavy that she had to wrap her arms around it when she lumbered down the rickety stairs. She was still a few yards away when Clodagh snorted, “Liam let you out?”

Muireann glared. “Really, Clodagh?” she said.

“Don’t blame me for being worried—you’re always early.”

Muireann turned a shade of pink that made her jerk her nose up and away. “I’d forgotten the day.”

Clodagh frowned. Liam’s silhouette made a shadow on the ridge, staring down at his wife from the safety of the car. Clodagh had first seen that silhouette years ago, when it had thrown the harpoon that pierced Muireann’s side. If anything, it had only gotten larger with age.

Muireann slipped the bag off her shoulder and tossed it to her sister. “Get dressed now.”

“He’s watching you now?” Clodagh asked.

Muireann paused. Her hair had fought out of her braid until it was nothing more than a few strands clumped together. “Well, I suppose I’ve got to tell you that it’s getting a tad hard to go trotting around the beach,” she said, somehow resting her hand more firmly on her stomach. Clodagh could see a whole storm brewing 111

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in her eyes, and Muireann gasped as though she was drowning in its downfall. “Honestly! Why do you always have to presume the worst of him? He’s never hurt you.”

Clodagh gave her a tight smile. “Yet.” “Hon-est-ly!” She chopped it apart so that each syllable was like a boat horn.

The waves crashed on the sand. On the horizon, a fog inched into existence, just coalescing into a distant, gray wall—God smearing the horizon in pencil lead. The air chilled. Clodagh pulled her coat closer to her shoulders, the hairs on her arms and legs sparking to life.

Clodagh nudged the bag with her toe. “What’s this for?”

Muireann relented. “Clothes. I said it, didn’t I? Get dressed.

We’re having dinner.”

The same frustration that made Clodagh a bad hunter flared through her now. “I get one night with you a cycle and you’re going to let him decide how we’re going to spend it? Are you serious right now?”

“Lord, you are thick! Can’t you at least try to like him? For me?”

“One night, Muireann! He gets you the rest of the time!”

Muireann waved her hands about, grasping for words. When she found them, she kicked the bag deeper into the sand. “You have two options—get dressed and join us for dinner, or you can waddle back into the water and I’ll see you again when you stop thinking like an arse.”

Clodagh crossed her arms.

Muireann waited a moment longer, then stalked off. “See you next month.”

A pang went through Clodagh’s chest. Uncoiling, she turned to see how the darkness threatened to swallow her sister whole. The car beams turned on. Liam was still at the door, but the lights drew an outline around her sister. They burned Clodagh’s eyes, and she had to look down.

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pooled loosely around her elbows, lest she be transformed back. It couldn’t shield her. Squinting, she tried to look up again, but the beams were blinding. She couldn’t see Muireann or Liam. It was so unlike the shades of the waters where sunlight couldn’t puncture.

There was safety in that dark blanket, and she yearned to grab her stolen sister’s flipper and drag her back in.

Clodagh swore. “You win. Give me a moment.”

She dressed under Muireann’s peeved silence. Inside the bag was an old pair of sweatpants and an even larger Trinners t-shirt— Liam’s clothes. Clodagh did a complicated dance with her coat, keeping it tucked under her arm or clamped in her mouth as she pulled the shirt over her head. She wasn’t inept at wearing clothes— she had, after all, worn a dress to Muireann’s wedding—but she was raised in the water.

Growing up, being on land and with humans was a monthly treat. A friend—Seamus, it was Seamus—would lend them the clothes, and their mother would cart them through the small town with both her hands imprisoning theirs.

Then Seamus stole their mother’s coat. Afterward, Clodagh and Muireann would swim to shore to visit their sallow-faced mother. Always, she had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

Always, she stared at the ocean and everything beyond it. She died, and Clodagh avoided the shore. Liam drove a harpoon into Muireann’s side, and Muireann took refuge on the sand, and he took her coat.

Liam watched their sullen walk from the top of the stairs. He was more occupied-space than man, as wide as he was tall. His scalp was balding, but his beard was thick with dark coarse hair that could scrub a pot clean.

Halfway up the stairs, Muireann grimaced in pain. Liam came trotting, reaching for her. He balanced a hand on the small of Muireann’s back with such delicacy that Clodagh had to pause. His touch was light, only the mere suggestion of support. Yet Muireann leaned her weight back into it. “Hey, hey—take it easy now,” he said.

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“I’m not going to die,” Muireann grumbled.

He smiled tightly and looked over his shoulder. “Clodagh,” he said. “Good to see you again.”

Clodagh tugged her coat as close to her body as she could.

“Liam.”

He made as if to say something, only to close his mouth and nod. “Figured as much.”

His car was smaller than Clodagh thought it would be. There was room in the front for Muireann to sit with her husband, but she squeezed into the backseat with Clodagh. Muireann was warm like sunlight, and Clodagh soaked it all up. Their knees knocked together and the fur of her coat tickled both their shoulders. The drive was quiet. The dark swoops of the hills turned into the uneven streets of the town. Buildings older than stone paraded outside the windows, all crammed together as if there were hundreds more than there were. Streetlamps framed each side, flooding the night in iridescent orange. Clodagh didn’t press her face to the window to see. She only leaned closer into Muireann and watched the traces of orange tango with the shadows.

The house looked like every other one on the street. It had a little garden out front with rusting wire chairs and empty terracotta pots. Curtains obscured the windows, muting the electric light. When the car pulled up to its little spot, the porch light flickered on. The inside looked as though it had been dismantled and rearranged in preparation for the baby. Every wall corner had a plastic buffer, and a box for a build-your-own cradle was shoved behind the green sofa. Clodagh lingered behind Muireann and Liam, watching at the front door as Liam escorted her to the chair right by the fireplace. He fiddled with a metal switch, and the blue flames at the base of the logs stretched into a bright fire.

“Clodagh,” Muireann said, nodding to the empty coach.

Liam pointed to the coat rack. “Let me just take...” He froze.

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his mouth, ready to say more, before muttering an apology and going into the kitchen.

Clodagh met her sister’s eyes, gesturing at where he had been.

Muireann sighed. “You’re not even being fair.”

“He has a history,” Clodagh said.

Without her smile, the lines on Muireann’s face seemed misplaced. Clodagh wanted to take two fingers and push it back into existence. Without it, her blue eyes seemed shallow. “Clodagh, please sit.”

Clodagh leaned against the wall, crossing her arms.

“The fire is nice. Warms you right up.” Muireann rubbed her hands together, pointedly looking between the fireplace and Clodagh.

When nothing happened, she tensed. “Wain’s due in six weeks.”

“Is that normal?”

“Good, in fact.” Muireann pointed to the couch again but was ignored once more. She strained to place a smile on her face, but it never felt real. “You know, I’d like for you to be there. We could use your support.”

Clodagh shook her head. “I don’t know if I’d be back—” “To hell with the full moon. I need you here for me, Clodagh.

Can’t we just stop doing what we’re doing?”

Clodagh swallowed, but nothing she did could crush the lump taking shape in her throat.

She stared at her sister, eyes so wide her pupils seemed to drown the whites. “What’s wrong with what we’re doing?”

“Seriously? I spend thirty days a month living as if you don’t exist, just waiting for that one night where I get to see you for— what? An hour or so? Until you get sick of tolerating me and go swimming away again.”

“I don’t ‘tolerate’ you.”

“When was the last time you were happy for me?”

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ly see Muireann—she was right there, at the chair, reaching out for her. And Clodagh could reach back if she could only spit out that weight in her throat. She swallowed a few more times, but it refused to disappear.

So she said it: “What do you have for me to be happy about?”

“Are you serious?” Muireann snapped to her feet, or at least as best as she could. She wobbled on her way up, and she had to brace her hand on the chair before she fell into the fire. “What the hell is wrong with you? Can’t you just be happy for me?”

“This isn’t you,” Clodagh said, tugging her coat closer. Her spit tasted like acid, and it laced the words from her mouth. “You didn’t just swim and haunt the seas—you were the ocean. You could scare sailors better than I could. You could take a harpoon to the side and still swim for miles afterwards.”

Muireann leaned against the chair. The side of her body sporting the long, jagged scar was turned towards Clodagh, trailing across her shoulder before disappearing under the cotton of her shirt. “I was terrified,” Muireann said after a long pause.

“That’s still you,” Clodagh said.

“Says who?”

“Your sister.” She gestured towards the kitchen, pretending not to notice how Liam had moved to the doorway, owlish, forcing himself to give them space. “Stop defending him already. He stole your coat.”

Muireann made a noise that started throaty before it went so high it got stuck in her nose. “Get with it, Clodagh. I gave it to him.”

Muireann held her belly tight, glaring like she knew the brutality of her words. Like she could hear the wind punched out of Clodagh’s lungs, leaving her bracing against the wall. “I like what I have here.

I like my house and husband and my life. Can’t you see that? I like gardening and I like people and I like being people. You can keep living like it’s the old days, like there’s still something out there in the waters for us. But don’t hate me for living the life I want to live.

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You’re living yours.” Muireann’s face softened. “And can’t that be enough for you?” she said. “That you’re living the life I can’t?”

Clodagh waited. She stared and waited for the moment when she could see their mother in her sister’s eyes—maybe not the love of the ocean, but the forlorn stare at the turn of the tides, of the twig fingers that grasped a wool shawl around her shoulders as a crude replacement for what was lost. She waited for Muireann to say that she is their mother, that Seamus had stolen her coat and forced her to abandon her wains in the sea.

Muireann was Muireann. Her shoulders were bare.

“Where’s your coat?” Clodagh asked.

Muireann took a deep breath. “And what are you going to do with it?”

“What do you think?”

“Clodagh,” Liam said, placating. He made sure to stay in the kitchen. “If she wanted her coat back right now, I’d take a shovel right away and dig it up myself. And if she said she wanted to be in the ocean and I’d have to wait until every full moon to see her, I’d be there waiting every time. But that isn’t what she wants.”

“I’m not listening to you,” Clodagh said.

“You should,” he said. He took up the whole doorway, but something about the floral wallpaper and the hunch in his shoulders made him seem smaller. “I’m thinking about her.”

“You don’t get to say that to me,” Clodagh snapped.

“What are you doing after this?” Muireann demanded. She didn’t wait for a response, only hulling herself closer to her sister.

“You’re going to go back into the ocean and do what? Keep trying not to die? You’re not living a life—you’re just practicing some principle no one remembers anymore.” She squared her shoulders.

“I know Mum gave us a choice between the two, but I can’t do that.

I refuse to put my wain through the same shit I went through.”

Clodagh tried to imagine taking the coat off your own child, of watching the little pup turning into something they’re not and 117

Mia Daniele | The Sister’s Coat

being happy about it. “You’re going to be damning your wain to having nothing,” she said. “She’s going to be dreaming of the ocean and the tides, and you’re going to have denied her all that because you hate yourself that much—” “Fine! Take my coat then! It’s right there in the garden, buried dead center. Dig it up and do what you want with it.” She snapped at Liam. “Get the shovel.”

He hesitated, a gale building at the gate of his mouth. It never came. He fetched the shovel.

The fog from the ocean had finally conquered the old land and obscured its fields and horizons from eyes too young to know its age. The porch light glowed yellow and diffused into the gray.

Clodagh bore her weight into the blade of the shovel, cutting into the grass and the damp soil beneath. She huffed, then heaved the first chunk up and out of the way. The edges of her coat caught any wayward speck. It blackened. And she did it repeatedly. Again, and again.

Muireann and Liam stood at the front door for a while, watching. They said nothing, only leaning into each other as they watched her groan through labor. Liam had the sleeves of his sweater rolled to his elbows, and Muireann fingered the folded fabric absently. He traced the pad of his thumb over her scar. The fog grew thicker, solidifying. When Clodagh had dug a foot deep, they left the light on and went inside.

A blister bubbled and popped on her hand. Clodagh swore and stuck the shovel into the ground. She couldn’t see in either direction—not the sparkles of the town, nor the grassy knolls, nor the flat mural of the ocean. Even above, there was no moon with which to tell time.

With every breath, her limbs grew heavier until she had no choice but to collapse into the mud. She barely felt it. Knees pressed to chest, she reached a dirty hand to grab the edges of her own coat, pulling it closer.

She was one of the forgotten, a relic of a time no one could 118

Mia Daniele | The Sister’s Coat

remember. But behind her eyelids were the squeals of her sister and mother as they bounded between the crags, chasing fish and each other. Neither existed anywhere else. Not anymore.

After this, where will she go?

There was the broken woman who turned into someone else when her coat was stolen. There was the vivid one that turned into someone else when it was given away.

What did she do while the moon changed her face?

There was a woman and her name was Clodagh. She breathed out, and her breath turned white and joined the fog all-encompassing.

All she had to do was remember—she could feel the old stories inscribed on her bones, recorded with the pulse of her veins. All she ever did was remember. All she knew was how to hold onto her coat and never let go.

Clodagh took it off, her coat. She couldn’t see the white. “No,” she muttered, spitting on the fur before scrubbing it with the heel of her palm. After a while, she held it up to the porch light. The stain had only grown. She dropped it onto her lap. Now she only held up her hands, fingers splayed to count each one. They were black against the light. No matter how many times she flexed, they never seemed to settle into themselves.

She gathered her coat back into her hands. It was heavy. For a long time, she did nothing more than trace over the clumps of mud and fur. She buried her face into it, breathing in the memory of salt and blood. She hummed the songs her mother had taught her while the fog entwined its body with hers.

Taking her coat in her hands, she went back inside.

Muireann was at the fireplace as though she had never moved.

Hunched into herself, she buried her face in her palms and refused to look up even when Liam’s hand paused on her back. He made a face Clodagh couldn’t read, but she knew what he was pointing at.

“Is that it?” he asked.

Muireann finally looked up, face blotchy and red. “Clodagh?”

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Mia Daniele | The Sister’s Coat

Beneath the dirt, she wore a smile bitter and sweet. She held her coat close to her chest, feeling younger than she had ever felt before in her life. Liam realized it before his wife did—he stepped back and gave her space. Clodagh didn’t acknowledge him. She only tossed her coat into the fire, watching with watering eyes as it turned into blacken ash.

First Place, Alfred Landwehr Fiction Writing Contest

Judge’s Citation The lyricism in “The Sister’s Coat” feels like an old story inscribed in my bones. This beautiful, haunting retelling of a folktale whispers secrets about what binds us together, and what holds us in place, and what lets us go. Bravo!

—Silas Dent Zobal

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Contributors Clarke Andros | These Days

Clarke Andros is a poet from Santa Margarita, California, and a single-subject credential student within Cal Poly’s School of Education.

Luke Bartell | Los Campos

Luke Bartell is a third-year English major at Cal Poly. If he isn’t hiking or hanging out at the Rec Center, he is probably reading.

Luke has a particular affinity for Spanish literature, and he is frequently reading Pablo Neruda while spending time with his beloved Chinchilla named Chancho.

Ryan Bausch | Far From Eden

Ryan Bausch is a third-year English major from Moreno Valley, California. Contrary to what his poem may have you believe, he is not a fruit fanatic. Instead, he has an unhealthy obsession with movies, which is where he pulls a great deal of his inspiration from.

Doug Caylor | Bill

Doug is a third-year business major who sets himself apart from his peers by being the only college student who stays up way too late for no discernible reason. While he’s tired the next day, he enjoys playing basketball, reading, writing, and falling asleep in strange places.

Mia Daniele | The Sister’s Coat

Legally, Mia Daniele is required to disclose her major (English). She doesn’t know who she is, what she is, or where she’s going, but she’s here and that might have been a mistake. “The Sister’s Coat” is her first short story, and four out of five of dentists recommend it.

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Ellie Desmond | The Liar & His Lyre

Ellie Desmond is a second-year Interdisciplinary Studies major with an emphasis in Arts and the Human Experience. That’s all you get to know about her. Have a nice day!

Lucas Dodd | Guadalupe Dunes & Solomon Creek

Lucas Dodd is an Aerospace Engineering graduate student (class of 2020) from San Diego. He was a writer and editor for Aletheia, and he is currently starting a small journal called Estuary for his friends and acquaintances. After graduation, he will move to Boulder, Colorado.

Abby Edgecumbe | Sea Sick

Abby Edgecumbe is an English major pursuing a fiction-writing emphasis. On an average day, she can be found reading Kundera or Murakami, practicing her mediocre French, or walking around aimlessly to reach her daily step goal. She aspires to be a writer.

“Sea Sick” is her first short story.

Ethan Hundertmark | I Am What I Eat

Ethan Hundertmark is a queer reader, writer, and poet who’s inspired by the foods he eats, the places he eats them in, and the people he eats them with.

Calista Lam | For Her

Calista is a graphic design student from Oakland, California. She’s passionate about packaging design, nice paper, and sarcastic humor.

She’s an advocate for starting homework at midnight, D.I.Y. haircuts, and making pasta from scratch. Someday, Calista hopes people will realize that salad is rabbit food, not human food.

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Marisa McAdams | Ghosting

Marisa McAdams is currently a senior at Cal Poly, pursuing a degree in English with a concentration in creative writing. Her work has previously appeared in the 2019 issue of Byzantium.

Sarah Rabbon | Farmers’ Market Benediction

Sarah is a fourth-year English major and San Luis Obispo local.

When she is not reading for school, she is usually reading for fun.

She enjoys camping and hiking with friends, learning new things, and drinking tea. Lisel Mueller, Jimmy Santiago Baca, and Ross Gay are among her all-time favorite poets.

Caroline Roberts | Isabel and the Oak Tree

Caroline Roberts is a third-year student at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, studying English and Philosophy. When she’s not writing or reading bad spy novels, Caroline enjoys hiking, cycling, and spending time outside. She once spent a month backpacking through Alaska, where she never saw nightfall or a shower.

Farah Sallam | Daytime Drinking

Farah is a fourth-year English major minoring in Theatre and pursuing a technical and professional writing certificate. Farah is also the current president of The Writers’ Collective, a creative writing club on campus, which she has had an active role in since her freshman year. After graduation, she hopes to write stories that have a lasting impact and act as a voice for fellow minorities.

Alexandra Sara | Merry Christmas. Also, Where is Bora Bora?

Alexandra Sara is an exchange student from Australia studying at Cal Poly. In Australia, she studies Social Justice Law and hopes to go into public policy as a career, but she maintains a strong passion for the arts.

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Nathan Shipley | Tinder Date #5

Nathan Shipley is a second-year English major who hopes to one day teach high school English. In his free time, he enjoys climbing, sitting criss-cross-applesauce on Dexter Lawn, and going to house shows with friends. Nathan is currently reading a collection of poems by Sally Wen Mao and East of Eden, by John Steinbeck.

He most values literature that affirms the baffling wonder of the human experience and the importance of vigorous empathy and compassion in our lives.

Cole Tretheway | Tongue-Trippin

Cole Tretheway is a fourth-year English student and low-key editor.

In his poetry and fiction, he writes accessible content to entice and delight readers. He believes good writing is meant to be shared.

Occasionally, his writing stumbles into publication, for which he is eternally grateful.

Isabelle Watson | Search for Earth

Isabelle is a third-year English major. When she isn’t reading, you can find her either training with the Triathlon Team or arguing with the Debate Team. Isabelle loves dogs, chocolate, and Star Trek.

She is excited to begin pursuing a career as a high school English teacher in the fall.

Julia Zumalt | Underground Grief

Julia Zumalt is a second-year English major in the Blended Program, pursuing her bachelor’s and master’s. When she is not writing, Julia adores singing, cultivating her potted plant collection (22 and counting), and gushing facts about rocks and fossils. She hopes to eventually publish her own book of poetry.

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The Byzantium Team Katherine Flitsch (she/her) | Managing Editor

Katherine is a graduating senior at Cal Poly, an English major with a psychology minor and the technical and professional communication certificate. She helped out with the journal last year in an Editorial Assistant capacity, and she has fully enjoyed holding the position of Managing Editor this year. When she’s not reading, writing, or editing, Katherine enjoys hiking, hammocking, biking, beaching, or otherwise being outside. With plans to pursue a career in the publishing industry as an editor, Katherine looks forward to attending graduate school for book publishing in the fall.

Samantha Mackenzie (she/her) | Poetry Editor

Sam is a graduating senior earning her bachelor’s degree in English.

While originally interested in pursuing a career as a writer, Sam has since discovered a passion for editing and publishing. She loved being a part of Byzantium’s editorial team and looks forward to a career in the publishing industry. When not hunched over her computer reading poetry, Sam works as a tutor at the Writing and Rhetoric Center and an editor for Sprinkle, Cal Poly’s queer and feminist journal. In her free time, Sam writes her own poetry and short stories, draws traditional and digital art, plays a variety of tabletop games, and reads novels too quickly for her budget to keep up with.

Jay Bergquist (he/him) | Fiction Editor

Jay is a senior English major with a linguistics minor and a TESOL teaching certificate graduating this Spring. As this has been Jay’s first major publication, he has worked tirelessly to make Byzantium the best it can possibly be, and has loved every minute of it. When not working on Byzantium, Jay serves as the Alumni coordinator for Cal Poly’s Transgender Queer Student Union (TQSU). In his 125

spare time, he enjoys reading, writing, embroidery, and playing Dungeons and Dragons. As an aspiring author, Jay plans to continue to work on his novel after college while working towards his teaching credentials.

Hope Golden (she/her) | Art Director

Hope Golden is a fourth-year graphic design student with passions for illustration, books, action figures, and history. When she is not busy meeting project deadlines, she is exploring libraries, making costumes for Comic Con, petting her cat, drawing fanart, gaming, and napping. She hopes to work in publication design.

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Acknowledgments Dr. Mira Rosenthal

Project Advisor, Department of English

Professor Mary LaPorte

Project Advisor, Department of Art and Design

Susan Bratcher, Jenni Hailer, and Gregg Parras Department of English

Ellen Bass

Judge for the 2020 Kevin Clark Poetry Writing Contest; A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Author of Indigo

Silas Dent Zobal

Judge for the 2020 Alfred Landwehr Fiction Writing Contest; Author of The People of the Broken Neck and The Inconvenience of the Wings

McNaughton & Gunn, Inc. Printer

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Special Thanks Dr. Kathryn Rummell English Department Chair

Dr. Philip J. Williams

Dean of the College of Liberal Arts

Dr. Kevin Clark Jocelyn Knowlton The English Department Executive Committee Robert E. Kennedy Library University Graphics Systems and

the generous faculty who donated toward our book sale

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iter r w od ing o h t g y ta an a d h l t o elf et s b y o t e m need v e i l e cheb A “I be ’t really at it.” a u Chin n p s e doe t to ke p exce

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Featuring the work of: Clarke Andros Luke Bartell Ryan Bausch Doug Caylor Mia Daniele Ellie Desmond Lucas Dodd Abby Edgecumbe Ethan Hundertmark Calista Lam

Marisa McAdams Sarah Rabbon Caroline Roberts Farah Sallam Alexandra Sara Nathan Shipley Cole Tretheway Isabelle Watson Julia Zumalt