LEVITATE Magazine Issue 6 by LevitateMag

ISSUE 6 L E VI TA T E THEMED DOSSIER: NOSTALGIA

LEVITATELEVITATELITERARYMAGAZINE © ISSUE 6

ii Copyright © 2022 by LEVITATE literary magazine All rights to the material in this journal revert back to individual con tributor after LEVITATE publication. LEVITATE Literary Magazine c/o Creative Writing Department The Chicago High School for the Arts 2714 W. Augusta Blvd Chicago, IL www.levitatemagazine.org60622 LEVITATE accepts electronic submissions and publishes annually. For submission guidelines, please consult our website.

iii 2022 STAFF Editors-in-Chief Caileigh Winslade Gael Granados Managing Editor Bessana Kendig Lead Fiction Editors Gwendolyn Henson-Myers Melanie Abarca Lead Creative Nonfiction Editors Priscila Rodriguez Sasha Gonzalez Lead Poetry Editors Nico JeanineCrabtreeRabadi Lead Themed Dossier Editor Gwendolyn Henson-Myers Lead Art Editor Nico Crabtree Design Geoff Gaspord Contributing Fiction Editors Inti MeleenaTimothySaulaNaviaChromyRichieMonarrez Contributing Creative Nonfiction Editors Caileigh Winslade Fontina Battaglia Kendal Amos Gael Granados Contributing Poetry Editors Akenya Batie Cynthia Hedemark Elena JaneseRiveraNguyen Contributing Themed Dossier Editors Cynthia Hedemark Elena Rivera Sasha Gonzalez Contributing Art Editors Janese PriscilaMeleenaNguyenMonarrezRodriguez Social Media Ambassador Saula Chromy

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Trigger Warnings Levitate Editorial Team p.6 Art Cover Art: True North Rose Wambsganss p.7 Letters Ana Jovanovska p.8 Fiction My Terms J.Z. Pitts p.10 Diminished Mathilde Frieh p.19 Art Matthew Katherine Karban p.28 Understanding Hands Reid Cooper p.29 Creative Nonfiction That Beautiful Meat James Morena p.30 Not My Mom Brina Patel p.33 Broxon Sound Domîno Cadieux p.41 From A Year in Paradise Johanna Mitchell p.46 Playing House Danielle Shorr p.54 How The Black Woman Loves Kyra Richardson p.59 Kissing Boys and Girls in Oklahoma Kourtney Johnson p.60 Shot and Killed Natalie Hampton p.70 Art The Illusion of Choice Robin Gillespie p.74 Knives Vanessa Merritt p.75 Poetry Emancipation Nidhi Agrawal p.76 Tasteless Shines and Aguish Crimsons David M. Alper p.77 The weight of the world and how a walk in the woods can calm me Nicole Farmer p.78 Misunderstandings Lauren Wilkin p.80 Distorted Requiem Charlotte Gutzmer p.81

v The Increase Between Two Distances James Croal Jackson p.82 How to Part from Sadness Eden Copeland p.83 Sanctuary Brian Builta p.84 We-ness Brian Builta p.86 Art Postcards Home Bi Pickard p.88 Themed Dossier: Nostalgia p.90 A Spell for Drowning Ghosts Hailey Spencer p.91 Residue Rex Ybañez p.92 Sounds of the Air from a Lighthouse Chris Vallejo Villegas p.93 To Remember the Future, After Bernadette Mayer BEE LB p.94 The Emotional Weight of Space: Symmetry in Chaos Leslie Lindsay p.96 [almost] healed Jillian Thomas p.105 Art Water, Water Cleanse Your Daughter Karyna Aslanova p.106 Metamorphosis Htet San p.107 Contributor’s Notes p.108

6 TRIGGER WARNINGS trig·ger warn·ing noun A trigger warning is a particular action, process, or situation that causes emotional distress and typically as a result causing traumatic feelings and memories to arise. Poetry Tasteless Shines and Anguish Crimsons Gore p. 77 Misunderstandings Suicide p. 80 Sanctuary Suicide p. 84 We-ness Suicide p. 86 Creative Nonfiction From A Year In Paradise Health Issues p.46 Kissing Boys and Girls in Oklahoma Homophobia p.60 Shot & Killed Gun Violence p.70 Fiction My Terms Suicide p.10 Diminished Pills p.19 Themed Dossier A Spell for Drowning Ghosts Daggers p.91 Trigger warnings originated in psychiatric literature, notably about those who experienced post traumatic reactions, for example “re-experiencing symp toms” such as intrusive thoughts and flashbacks due to sexual or physical trauma. Over time, the term has expanded to include potentially offensive or disturbing material. We do not want our readers to feel uncomfortable without warning while reading. This page is to alert readers beforehand of triggering content and where in our publication it is found. Healing begins with understanding. Thank you for reading. - LEVITATE Editorial Team

Rose was raised in a highly creative home putting arts at the forefront of her education and influence. She continued her studies through college graduating with multiple degrees that led her into a successful graphic design career. Rose has since retired from the corporate world in order to pursue her career, full time, in art.

True North Rose Wambsganss Rose’s first Best of Show award was at the age of 12 in Colorado. She started her art path using watercolors but throughout her life has used a plethora of varying paints, inks, glass, and even metals. Rose’s current medium of choice is simply ink and fine art paper.

8 Letters Ana Jovanovska

My mother grew up with every odd and statistic against her; life of the dias pora, teen pregnancy and blatant poverty. Through my early years I grew a resentment towards her for things I now better understand and feel guilty for. Her absence and fits of irritability which now I see were a reflection of countless hours spent working to keep food in our mouths. I swore to myself back then to never allow myself in that position. So I worked young, I saved every cent and I ran. I spent years exploring every inch of the United States, in all of it’s grit, glory, and handsomeness. In the moments sinking into landscapes and shrinking under trees, I was seeing the life my mom left for us. The freedom I carried in a tiny blue jeep and pocket change was the difference between us. Her survival was my freedom. So I began to photograph with a purpose. I have created a lens into these experiences so she can share them with me. These are my Postcards Home, of all the things I hope she gets to see with her own eyes some day.

The whole family sat around the dining room table, utensils clanging against plates, my children attempting to talk over each other. “You’re going upstairs?” My wife asked, leaning forward she tapped her ear to indicate if she’d heard me correctly. I nodded, cocking an eyebrow at my kids. Chloe, the oldest of my three daughters at 12, was generally quiet, but even she participated in the noisy chatter of her younger siblings.

My wife cast a doleful glance at the girls. “You’re gonna leave me alone and defenseless?”

“Manny said if we hurry up and film the video, we could go viral,” Chloe explained to my next oldest daughter, Sarah, who looked unimpressed.“Whocares?”

four-year-old Riley said, doing her best to mimic Sarah’s unimpressed attitude. Chloe sighed and rolled her eyes. My wife looked down at my unfinished meal. “You ok?”

10 FICTION

My Terms J.Z. Pitts “Honey, I’m gonna run upstairs and work on my painting for a bit.”

I pat her on the shoulder as I walk past, forcing cheerfulness to my voice. “You got this mama bear.” She snorted, but offered no further objection. Stomping upstairs, a familiar twinge of guilt twisted in my chest. My wife is a wonderful mom, and an excellent homemaker; how I conned her into loving and marrying me, I’ll never know. “Stop it,” she would say, whenever I voiced such thoughts to

I nodded again and pushed my chair back. “Upset stomach. I’ll finish it later.”

Sarah replied. At 9, Sarah was less concerned with social media, and more interested in finishing another house or some thing in“Yeah,Minecraft.whocares?”

The twinge in my chest turned sharp. I grimaced, and adjusted myself in the chair, pressing a hand to my chest. A moment later, I let out a small belch, somewhat relieving the discomfort.

Downstairs, the clanging of dishes and the combined whines in my daughter’s voices told me they were helping my wife clear the table. I dipped my brush in some green paint, the smooth wooden handle of the paintbrush light and familiar between my fingers. Then I set to working on one of the many blades of long marsh grass; it felt like there were a million more of those to paint. My wife never complained when I went upstairs to work on my artistic hobbies, but sometimes I sense a change in her body language,

FICTION

And yet, as I settled into the hard wooden chair in the spare bedroom, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d let her down. When dating, I was full of energy and enthusiasm. I had taken an online course in real estate investing, excited by the prospect of making more money than I’d at one time thought possible. The infectious excitement of the course instructor, plus a ton of testimonials regarding the success of his course, made me feel like I was on my way up. I’m sure if I’d had the extra money, I would’ve bought the mentoring package as well. Blinking hard, I return to the present. I hadn’t thought about real estate investing in a long time. The spare bedroom is where I go to paint. It’s also a storage room, and smells like it. Bookcases stuffed to the brim, boxes overflowing with stuff we didn’t want to throw out, yet never use…it isn’t much, but it’s the only spot where I can paint in peace.Ifocused on the canvas in front of me, internally straining to drum up the motivation to work on the painting. Motivation has been hard to come by lately. The project, still weeks away from being fin ished, became less and less interesting to me as I progressed. It wasn’t the difficulty or anything. I was attempting to paint a crane stalking along a marsh. I wanted to give it to my wife for her birthday; she holds a strange fascination with cranes.

11 her. “You make me sound like a hapless little girl, pining for her Prince Charming, waiting to jump on the first offer of marriage to save me from my miserable life.”

She would then give me a deadpan glare, “It was a mutual deci sion; one I do not regret in the least.”

FICTION

Another sigh slips out. I set the brush down and rub my eyes. I’d worked 65 hours this week at the grocery store, receiving pallets, unloading, restocking and doing just about everything other than cus tomer service. Short staffed as we were, my manager knew enough not to push me in that direction. There’s a reason why I work in the back of a grocery store.

Nope, no motivation today. I stood and walked to the bedroom window to watch the last orange rays of the sun disappear. What happened to me?

It wasn’t the first time I’d asked this question. I often wondered how I became this middle-aged, balding man with a gut that hung over his belt, with an anxiety riddled emotional life, and an inability to break through to the middle-class. Sure, the job paid the bills, and I had a wife and kids that loved me—good things, all of which I was truly thankful to have. So why did it feel like it wasn’t enough? We didn’t live extrava gant lifestyles; we only ate out when we had a gift card. Whatever tax returns we got back we saved to use for Christmas and birthday gifts. Yet it was ever only just enough. It took all my strength and energy just to provide just enough. The last ray of sunshine vanished from sight. I turned on a lamp, sat back down and studied the painting. The picture looked vacant and meaningless.Anoise drifted up the stairs; it sounded like the TV. I wonder what they’re watching? At that moment, I would’ve loved nothing more than to be laying back in my recliner with a couple of beers and vegging to a sitcom or something. Not because I have a particular love of sitcoms, but because I wait until the girls go to bed before I watch the stuff I enjoy. Lately though, I’ve barely had the brain-power to even choose a movie to watch. I even fell asleep during the last couple of movie nights my wife and I attempted. I turned my gaze to my other artwork hanging on the walls. All the paintings are basic, nothing especially eye-catching. I’ve always had a knack for drawing, coloring and painting. I’d only recently begun to seriously devote time to improve and grow in my art. Growing up, my

12 a tension not there before. I know it can be hard on her; she’s home all day with the girls, and when I’m up here, she doesn’t get a break.

I should go downstairs. I should be spending time with my daughters or helping my wife, not wasting my time up here. Yet my feet remain glued to the floor. My arms hang heavy, limp, as I stare, unfocused at my wall of art. My stomach grumbles, still unsettled. Whether it’s unsettled from some unacknowledged source of anxiety, or something else, I don’t know. Anyways, I have all these weird aches and pains, some

FICTION

“Look at me now,” I mutter aloud. “I’m nothing but a statistic.”

For a while I toyed with the idea of making a living as an artist. I’d submitted some of my drawings to newspapers and online magazines, in the hopes they’d run them as a comic. No bites. Then I’d tried a run at comic books and graphic novels, even going so far as attending a con and paying to submit my work for critique.

parents always told me the vast majority of artists were starving, and if I didn’t want to be a statistic, I should get a degree or enter a trade.

Turned out, I wasn’t very good at academics. I attempted further education, but after flunking a couple of remedial classes, I decided to stop wasting my time and money. And after the real estate thing didn’t work out, I took a job at the local grocery store.

Now, I could practically be a manager at the store. But I didn’t want to be a manager. As hard as I worked, and as many hours as I put in, I didn’t want all that, plus all the headaches of management for a mere four dollars more an hour.

“Not trying to be mean,” he continued when I’d let my dejection seep into my expression. “You are talented and if you can develop a voice and a style all your own, I think you will break in.”

Jim Rawlings, a well-known artist in the industry, reviewed my work.

“I see a lot of potential,” Jim had said, “But I gotta be honest, I’m not getting much of a voice in these drawings. The poses are dynamic, your lines are clean, but I’m not seeing anything that separates you from everyone else trying to break in.

I still don’t know what he meant by “voice.” Obviously, I hav en’t developed one in the years since that critique, because I haven’t “broken in” yet.

“It’s temporary,” I’d tell folks for years. “Until I decide what I want to be when I grow up.”

14 severe, some merely annoying, and I have absolutely no idea if it’s anything serious or not.

Guess I’ll know if I die soon. And again, a single thought swam around in my head. What are you doing? The question felt like an echo, bouncing and reverberating through every fiber of my being.

Why am I so unhappy? Yes, I work a job I hate, with hours that destroy my mental and physical energy, and yes there doesn’t seem to be much hope of that changing soon. But I have a wife and children I love, and they love me. We don’t live it up, but we manage. Shouldn’t that be enough? Would a better job and more money change anything?

I press my hand to my chest again, trying to relieve the annoying pressureAmthere.Ifeeling anxious? Or is it something else? Yet another set of questions I seem to ask myself over and over again. Very rarely did a week go by without some oppressive form of anxiety looming over me. I can’t remember the last time I could just sit and relax without some health concern to mull over, some upcoming expense to worry about, or just generally trying to contemplate how to get ahead in life. I felt doomed. Doomed to work the same low-wage job for the rest of my life, doomed to live the same paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle, doomed to feel constant anxiety and fear about my health, my future, and my family. And worse yet, I felt helpless. It seemed, despite my attempts, I couldn’t change my situation. I was nothing more than a buoy in a Howhurricane.Iendedup in my closet, I still don’t know. How I ended up holding my like-new Smith & Wesson 637—I don’t remember either.

The cold gun lay heavy in my hand. An almost complete silence seemed to encase me in that small space. I glanced into the cylinder and saw it was loaded. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d handled the thing, let alone shot it. It probably needed maintenance, but I have no idea how to disassemble and clean a gun. I pull one of the bullets from the cylinder and stare at it. It seems unusually large for such a small gun; could probably do some real damage with it. What am I doing? Disgusted with myself, I replace the bullet and snap the cylinder

FICTION

How—theoretically—could I even do it? Knowing me, I’d screw it up and be permanently disabled and have chronic pain the rest of my life. If I put the barrel in my mouth…maybe try angling upwards to ensure my brain is destroyed…

15 back into place. Of course, I would never do that to my family. I was just having one hell of a pity party, that’s all. I love my family too much to—

A growl rumbles from my throat, and my arms drop to my side as I feel every muscle in my body lock up. Self-preservation is a bitch. Attempting to move my arms, slick streams of perspiration slide down my back and sides, pasting my shirt to my skin. It was all too much. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t decide. All I could do was stand there and tremble, drenched in a cold sweat. I can’t seem to live my life according to my terms. Perhaps the appeal of suicide is at least your death is according to your own terms. I winced at the thought, shutting my eyes as if to shut off that thoughtTheprocess.painin my chest radiates to my shoulder. I needed to relax. Practice some breathing exercises. Lately, those hadn’t helped, but it was better than—

Think of the relief. I’m not sure where, in some shadowy corner of my brain, the thought drifted up from, but it stuck. It started as an echoing whisper, but the echo seemed to bounce off the walls of my mind, growing louder, stronger. “No,” I said in a low, fierce tone. “Absolutely not. It would tear my family apart.”

You have nothing better to give. You tried, and you failed…again. Pressing my hands to my temple, a cold shock hits my head. I’m still holding the gun. I turn the weapon over in my hand, sweat from where I’d pressed it to my head marring its silvery surface.

A stabbing pain in my chest cut off all other thoughts. I vaguely felt the gun slip through my fingers as I reflexively opened my palms and leaned over to catch my breath. Except I can’t seem to catch my breath. I can’t seem to breathe properly.No, not another panic attack, please not another…not now!

FICTION

Someone“John.” called to me. I tried to answer, but I couldn’t.

I attempted to regain control. I closed my mouth to take a deep breath through my nose. A pain so sharp it seemed to drive all the air out of my lungs cut out my inhale.

The“John.”voice sounded familiar. I took comfort in the familiarity, even as I wracked my brain, trying to remember who the voice belonged too.

FICTION

The“John.”room slowly began to take shape and come into focus. A light brown wall, barren of any decoration or art, with only a small square window to let in some sunlight. On the other side rose a floor to ceiling glass wall, and glass door. An odd scent permeated in the air.

I’ve had some pretty bad panic attacks in the past, went to the ER a couple of times for them, only to look at the doctor sheepishly as he explained my results were negative for heart attack or stroke and I must’ve had a panic attack. But this…this felt different. Physically incapable of taking a full breath, I sank to my knees, grasping for shallow gasps of air as the entire left side of my chest seemed to twist and writhe with my every attempt to breathe. The carpet in my closet suddenly rose up and engulfed my vision. I didn’t even feel myself hit the floor. A growing weight in my chest began to spread through my torso. My wife…my kids… Would they come check on me if I didn’t go downstairs soon? Oh God, please don’t let one of the girls find me dead in my closet with a gun by my face. My vision blurred. Should I shove the gun further into the closet? Maybe no one would see it. The burning in my lungs shoved that split second thought from my mind as I tried to suck in oxygen like a vacuum. All I could manage were quick gasps. Then everything grew dark, and still. I don’t know how long I was unconscious. I heard voices, but couldn’t make sense of what they were saying. Beeping noises came in next. A sense of motion. I’m floating, slowly spinning and turning in nothing.

FICTION

17 I frowned in confusion. Why wasn’t I home? “He’s awake.”

“A myo-what?” I manage to ask. “You had a heart attack, hun,” the other nurse clarified. “You’re lucky your wife brought you here so quickly. Got ya here in the nick of time.”Julie looked at me out of the corner of her eye, the rest of her as still as a display mannequin. I could only see one side of her face. She blinked, and another tear rolled down her cheek. When she opened her eyes again, she refused to make eye contact. That’s when I knew she’d seen the gun.

A figure moved into my vision. The figure belonged to a beautiful middle-aged woman whose hair showed light touches of grey. Her face was open and soft, her light blue eyes, usually piercing and sharp, now dulled and muted with worry. Red encircled the whites of her eyes, and her cheeks were tear stained. My chest fluttered as I finally remembered. “Julie,” I said. Or, at least, tried to say. I managed to croak out some sound, before a couple of nurses swooped in, asking me a million questions.“Sir, can you hear me?” “Sir, can you tell me your name and date of birth?” “Sir, do you know where you are? Do you know why you’re here?”The questions kept coming, and I answered as best I could, all the while trying to look around the nurses at my wife. Julie half-turned away from me, pressing a wadded-up tissue to her nose as the nurses continued talking at me. “You had a myocardial infarction, John,” one nurse said, checking on one of the many tubes and wires hooked up to me. “But, you’re gonna be okay, we’re gonna take good care of you.”

The voice that had been calling me said these words with a mix ture of excitement and relief. I tried to move my head to get a better look at the speaker, and found myself unable to budge an inch. A wave of exhaustion and weakness swam over me; taking a nap sounded like a good idea.

The nurses continued to talk, checking my vitals, and explaining what treatments I would get, but I couldn’t concentrate. I had nothing in the tank, I just wanted to sleep, to apologize to Julie. How would I explain myself to her? I wasn’t going to kill myself, really. I don’t know what possessed me to grab the gun. I don’t even know where those random suicidal thoughts had come from. None of it made any sense. And if I couldn’t make sense of it, how could I talk to my wife about Ait?few minutes later, the nurses left, leaving my Julie and I alone. She still refused to look at me. Though I was drained of most of my capacity for emotion at the moment, every ounce of what remained made me want to get up and comfort my wife, to tell her it would be okay, it wasn’t what she thought. But just as soon as the emotional wave hit, it seeped out of me, leaving nothing but a desire to sleep for a very, very long time. So, I did. Apparently, I couldn’t live my life according to my terms, nor would I die according to my terms. But I could take this moment, shove aside all my fears, all thoughts of who I’d just hurt, all the guilt, the pain, and just sink into the comfort of the void for a little while.

FICTION

“Hey, Sally, do you really think it could work?” I can tell from her head tilt that she’s worried, but strangely enough I discern a twinge of hope in her eyes. I laugh it off.

“On the news today scientist Ringwald Barrer claims to have invented a medication destined to solve the growing issue of overpop ulation on planet Earth. Good morning to you Ringwald, thank you for coming onto Good Morning Sector V.” “Anything to spread the news, Rajesh.”

19 Diminished Mathilde Frieh

“Well, let’s start with the obvious question, the ‘how?’”

“Ah yes, it is quite simple. Very. I’ve invented a shortener. A pill that can shrink people. To answer your question, I’ve managed to render ten micrometer cells into five micrometers. You see, cells will shrink in hypotonic solutions with increased solute when there is net movement of water outside. I intervene to prevent them from going back to their original size.”

“All this with no consequence on the person’s health?”

“None. I’ve conducted a series of tests. First on monkeys, then many on humans, and results show close to no side effects. At least no relevant“Sally!ones.”Dinner’s ready!” My mum’s voice interrupts from downstairs.Iswitch off the tablet, I won’t be missing anything new, just another scientist rambling on about his projects that can single-hand edly solve a global issue. Walking down the staircase, I can already smell the heavenly aroma emanating from the kitchen. My mum pre pared scrambled eggs on toast, my favorite breakfast. I walk around the kitchen island and sit down across from her when I see her tablet set down by her side, she’d been watching the news too.

FICTION

“You’re so gullible, mum. Don’t you know by now that scientists are just seeking forgiveness? We’re basically on palliative care since the Point of No Return—at least the lower classes are. Right now,

20 they’re focusing on making Mars habitable for the rich, so they have no business helping us.” Usually, reminding her how invaluable we are to the world is enough to convince her out of her high hopes and inevitable disappointment, but this time that scientist really seems to have left a mark. She parts her lips momentarily before sighing and raising her eyebrows. It pains me to see my mum entrust her hope in scammer scientists, but that is what I love most about her. She has an endless supply of hope, in humanity, in the future. I clumsily attempt to reassure her, “You know, this Point of no Return, it’s only just started with my generation, I’ll be able to live a long and full life, don’t worry about me.” That ought to dedramatize the situation. Yet her voice rises, “What about your children? Huh? Imagine you have them at thirty-five years old, which is when you’ll probably have saved up enough money to afford one, they’d only be able to enjoy the Earth for thirty years before we have to dig in to supplies of food stored in the basement for the rest of our lives. And…and there’s no chance for their children, but they probably wouldn’t want them anyway, life wouldn’t be worth living in that state. Oh God, can you even imagine? We’d have timetables for when we can leave the building, because of the ridiculous overpopulation! All the endangered species, and humans are out here. Ridiculous!” A single tear runs down her face, but I could tell she was distraught, and right. Her gaze fixes on me, probably waiting for a response. I know there’s no use, humanity was doomed ever since people became self-aware and started fear ing death. After that, evolution in medicine prevented the rich from dying. We called the moment when medical advancement became a tad too effective the Point of No Return. Ever since, scientists have been blamed for “going too far” and no matter how much recycling we did, how much we picked reusable energy over fossil fuels, how much we cleaned the oceans, the end of humans on earth was imminent. Much like the ending of this conversation, given I should have left for work five minutes ago. “Mum, let’s just focus on the now. I’m off to work on a con struction site today. Very excited to see how it turns out. You know, the buildings keep getting taller and taller, the higher it goes, the higher I get to stand. I could even claim to work in the clouds.” I smile weakly, and my mum mirrors it, after all, the only valuable thing we have left

FICTION

I turn the radio on out of habit, forgetting today’s main news. The scientist Barrer rambles on and I almost instantly lose interest, sci entists have a gift to over-detail their stories. As I am on the brink of completely zoning out, a question catches my attention, one I had been foolish not to consider.

“Who are you planning on shrinking?”

I spotted my coworker in a heated discussion with the intern. Tough first week, “Oy Tom, what’s going on here?” “Sally, finally! Have you heard the news?” Tom’s face contorts to display a variety of emotions, despair, anger, hatred. Tom wasn’t usually the jolly type, but this was a whole new level of bad. “Yes, snippets of it, I think I got the gist. Is this what it’s all about? I don’t believe the government would implement that.” At least I didn’t earlier on. “I don’t know, Sal. Barrer makes a strong case, and no one seems to be responding negatively on tv.” He lowered his gaze in a motion of defeat. This was all happening so fast, it shouldn’t be until another few months before anyone makes such a drastic decision.

21 is each other. I drive to work in a Micro, cousin of the Mini, but smaller even, hence the name. These cars became popular ever since the government divided the lanes in two to fit more cars on the road. I need to sit on my knees since the leg room is so minimal, but on a positive note you barely have to know how to drive to navigate a Micro, it’s autonomous.

“But have you seen all this Tom?” I gesture towards the crowds of people around us. “Doesn’t that look like a negative response to you?”

“Anyone who cannot pay the fee.” The fee for what? To remain our normal size? That won’t be mandated by the government. Yet, my heart sinks and my hands begin to tremble. My mother might have been right to take this seriously, maybe I was the gullible one to think the higher classes had already done their worst. The car finally parks in front of the building site, and I can switch off the radio to start my day as usual. That mentality lasts about a minute before I hear the absolute chaos going on out side. People are yelling, gesturing all over the place, crowding together, crying. I take a deep breath before fully stepping out of the Micro to join the others.

FICTION

“I think I might have to go home, check on my mum. This should be a good time to take a day off, since no one’s in the right state of mind to get anything done,” I explained to Tom. He nods and we both get into our respective cars. I make the choice not to switch the radio on, I’d rather do some research of my own once I get home, read some reliable sources, form a proper opinion on the matter, that should calm my nerves. Under the impression this was something I could do, I begin to doze off and slightly release my grip on the steering wheel, when the radio blasts a booming voice.

“Sure does, but not from the people that matter, not from the ones on the billboards and TV” He holds himself differently today, his shoulders slouch and he drags his feet, a depressing image to see of your proud friend. I spun around to get a good look at the workers, the focus and long hours required for today’s job were looking unachievable, especially when the people are convinced they can be shrunk by a mad scientist at any given time.

“BREAKING NEWS PEOPLE! President Levy Richard Macintyre sets the foot tax at a thousand five hundred dollars, effective by the end of the week.” This is happening, and it’s happening now. “Foot tax is a monthly payment according to the size of your feet, set at five hundred dollars to remain your original size. Anyone who cannot afford this tax will obtain government issued medication to shrink. If not taken, the punishment will be six months in prison. Police checks will be conducted monthly to assure a proper diminution in size.”

I step on the emergency accelerator; I have to see my mum. The cars beside me begin to zigzag on the road as well, I’m clearly not the only one to have thought of rushing to their loved ones. The announcement had just been made, and the danger had already begun. I skillfully swivel between the cars as they tip sideways on roundabouts. I couldn’t count the accidents on my fingers, but I managed to get home safe. My mum must have heard me pull up; it was seconds before I saw her running down the alley to squeeze me in her arms. “You trying to shrink me before the government does?” The joke falls like a lead balloon but there’s no surprise there, my mum sniffles on my“Weshoulder.don’t have the money to pay for foot taxes, Sal.” When the news broke out, I couldn’t even think of it, and now it’s out there,

FICTION

23 hanging in the air, she said it. “How could this happen?” My voice, muffled in her hair.

“We should ask that doctor what the side effects are, don’t you

“Take these three times a day. We’ll be back next month to verify progress. Need I remind you of the consequences of not following the law?” Piss off. My mum grabs the plastic container and shakes her head slowly, her smile falls. The man checks his watch and waits a moment, his foot tapping impatiently on the noisy floorboards. I don’t know what I expected to come next, but not a purge-like alarm sounding through the whole city.

The neighbors aren’t as calm as we were, we hear thumps and yells coming from their house followed by complete silence. We knew there was no use in fighting them.

“The alarm you hear is a reminder to take your pills. It will go off at eight in the morning, two in the afternoon and nine at night. Good luck.” The police officer turns to leave and a woman steps forward.

* * *

“I can’t wrap my head around it either.” Her soft, warm hands stroke my back in circles. We have each other. “On the bright side, you can borrow my clothes now. And stop pretending you don’t! I only have three shirts that I like, I notice when they’re gone!” She looks down at me disapprovingly, and I let out a giggle. My mum was the ultimate finder of silver linings.

“If you have any questions, I’m a doctor. My clinic is down this street, come see me anytime.” She smiles sympathetically and follows the officer out the door.

For the next few days, no one went to work. People roamed the streets in a daze or stayed home flicking channels on the television in desperate attempts at distraction. When the weekend came, the police arrived at our house accompanied by medics. A tall, rounded man with a patchy beard and a croaky voice demanded our money. My mum—who can’t help her good manners- smiles at him as she hands over enough to cover one person. He counts it and looks up as he extends his arm and turns over his palm where the pills sit. The pills are relatively big, ironically.

“What do you think the side-effects will be?”

“We were just planning on showing up with whatever we have time to put together, signs are good I guess, and I think we group next to the Petrol Station on East Street, then, you know, start marching, make some noise, get attention from the media…Oh yeah and it’s at, if I recall correctly, around the time of the evening bell.”

“What protest?” I ask. One of my coworkers turns his back to the circle of anxious faces and answers me.

“Yep, yep, yep…well I’ll be there, maybe my mum too. Anyway,

“The one tonight.”

FICTION

“How long do you think it’ll take to see a proper difference?”

24 think?”“What’s the use? I have to take them in any case.” My mum’s voice sounds defeated with a twinge of snippy, and I’m already fed up with this insanity. My mum is going to shrink. My mum… “Wait, mum, when did we choose you to be the one to take them? Why did we make such an assumption?” “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no way in the world I will let you shrink. I did not practically force feed you vegetables for you to now reverse your growth. Absolutely not. No.” She quickly brings the pills up to her mouth and tilts her head to swallow them.

“I don’t know how I’ll be swallowing these once I’m small… Well, better get on with your day. Don’t you have work?”

I nod and pick up my bag containing my packed lunch, I suppose I’m in shock, or have already accepted this ridiculous joke of a reality. I’m anxious to find out how today will go. Back in my Micro, just like any normal day, except half—or even three quarters—of the popula tion will have taken their pills and are currently shrinking. Hence my coworkers’ unsurprisingly low morale. And instead of doing their job, they’re all asking the same questions. “Are you taking them?”

“Is your kid taking them?”

“You coming to the protest tonight?”

“What’s the limit to our shrinking?”

“Yeah, no, I got that. I mean, like I didn’t know about it…where would it take place? When? How many people are going to be there? Do we have to bring cardboard signs?”

FICTION

“Well, are you even taking the pills? Word around here says you aren’t. Are you?” Silence falls around us, the question seems to interest quite the bunch of people. They make me feel like I should be ashamed of myself, because I assumed I was a part of the movement, because I associated myself with what they were going through. “No…but I am affected…my mum…she has to take them.” This evidently does not do much to convince them. “The more the merrier though, right?” My smile is so feeble the movement in my lips is hardly distinguishable. I know I will be there; I would do anything that could help show resistance to this whole pill fiasco. “Right.” This ends the exchange, thank God. People stop staring and busy themselves elsewhere as I decide to get on with my daily tasks. I pick up a check-board and go round the construction site. I am more indulgent than usual, when I see them chat, or text, I let them; they deserve a break. Either that or I don’t feel like I have the right to order them around anymore. What does one wear to a protest? Am I meant to dress formally? Or are we going to burn cars and launch bins across roads? Probably not the latter, not so early on, although it all seems to be moving along with great speed. I scavenge through my wardrobe for clothes that aren’t work related when I notice the silence reigning in the household. My mum should be getting ready for the protest, there should be music resounding in the walls. There isn’t. Of course, there isn’t. I slip a boring beige t-shirt on thinking I could blend in with the crowd then go downstairs to join her. I head towards the living room where she usually sits in an armchair to sketch charcoal drawings of the wrinkly and elderly, it looks empty. Or so I thought, before the chair rotates painfully slowly to reveal my shrunken mum. She looks about four heads shorter, keeping in mind that her original stature wasn’t very

“What’s up? Is something wrong? What’s with the look?” I worry and attempt to play it off as if I’m not currently feeling like a complete outsider at my own workplace. I nervously fiddle with the skin around my nails, awaiting an answer, hopefully a reassuring one.

25 you can count on me, we’re all in this together.” The eyes of my coworker glare at me, I suddenly feel uncomfortable. A fraud.

FICTION

26 impressive.“Ican’t hold it.” Her hand struggles to grip her pencil, the draw ing laid below the tip consists of a few lonely scribbles. I approach her and remove the pencil from her reluctant fingers. “But I don’t want to let it go, Sally.” She looks down at her hands in confusion. I embrace her, but I don’t feel the same warmth. I used to sink in her arms. There are gaps in this hug, there are spaces that used to be filled. “I need to fight for us.” I rush out of the door in tears. The nine o’clock alarm pulsates, and the lightning strikes the streets simulta neously. Angry people stomp with me to the beat of the thunder. The crowd is merciless, it chants, it cries, and it marches through the city. We are many, my eyes travel over all the heads united to fight. They are the shrunken ones who have not lost their spirit. The media doesn’t take long to arrive, as was planned, the news coverage is crucial for us to be heard. An overdressed man holding a large microphone makes a beeline for me. I came here ready to scream, yet I recoiled at the sight of him approaching. I panic and run against the crowd. I shove people out of the way effortlessly and come to a sudden stop when I arrive at the edge of the group. “Why aren’t you with them?” As promised, she came. She looks up at me. My mum should not have to look up at me. “I don’t know what to say to the newsman,” my voice trembles. “You always know what to say Sal,” she answers in her comfort ing, calming voice. Someone taps my shoulder impatiently; I know it’s the man. I take a deep breath and turn around. I can do this. He begins. “Can I ask you a few questions madam?” He nods at a young boy next to him who covers me with an umbrella. “Yes.” I say in an attempted confident tone. “Clearly you do not take the pills. What brings you to this impromptu gathering? Are you an ally? Their spokesperson?” I pause, because people are listening, and I must think before I speak. I need to take my time, this is the reason we’re here. “No, they have definitely not appointed me spokesperson, they have voices too, you know, you could have interviewed one of them instead.” They’ve already become them. “Of course. Just don’t want to have to bend down.” He looks back at the camera and smirks, what a nasty man. I exaggeratedly roll

27 my eyes, in doing so I look up and glance at a billboard. A face of a woman, probably a makeup advert or something of the sort, it’s huge. She’s luminous, she can be seen from miles away. Then I look back at my mum. The interviewer’s wide eyes expect me to speak, so I do.

“You think this is a joke? You’re making us disappear. Maybe the world won’t end, but it’ll be cold, and empty, it will be a world of shadows, sadness, and despair. You are minimizing our voices and loudening your own, but you have nothing to say. My mum…her sole source of joy stems from handing over every piece of her strength, her hope, her happiness to me. All she has done is compromise, because only when fire burns in another chimney will she feel the heat. You are making her disappear. You are erasing her. And in saving humanity you will destroy the last glimpse of

FICTIONit.”

This image attached is made with acrylic paint. It is 12”x 12” and is a portrait of Matthew. I worked with the subjects to select both the fabrics and the quilt pattern so that they felt the sewn item represented them as individuals.

Matthew Katherine Karban

Understanding Hands Reid Cooper

My second piece was made with colored pencil and pen. I created it after noticing how often people, including myself, would release stress or anxiety by fid dling with their hands. Seeing it reminds me of the minutes before a big event, or awaiting a test result.

CREATIVE NON-FICTION That Beautiful Meat

James Morena Every weekend for some time I have cooked spam for breakfast. Broiled it. Baked it. Cubed it. Sliced it. I have added ketchup. I have doused it in Frank’s Redhot. Smothered it in hoisin. Marinated it in soy sauce. I have covered it in varieties of Yellowbird: serrano, jalapeno, habanero. I have wrapped it in rice paper, spooned it with sticky white rice, and munched it cold straight from the fridge. Ninety-nine percent of the time, though, I have accompanied spam with eggs—over easy, fried, scrambled, seven-minute boiled. Most weekends, I have con sumed my spam in the form of tacos—confited in its own gelatinized fat for two-to-three minutes on each side, four tortillas warmed in the oven, Chef Ramsey-style scrambled eggs, crushed red peppers, srira cha, salt and pepper, and finished with slices of lightly-salted avocado.

I have cooked spam every weekend as a form of atonement. As a child my Filipino mother sauteed spam for breakfast. She twisted open—using the classic turn key—two to three tins a morning. Whatever remained uneaten lingered on our kitchen table covered with nothing more than a paper towel. Mother also fried a half to a dozen eggs on Monday then cooked more as needed. Much more was often needed as my friends frequented our breakfast table. Our five-cup steam cooker worked overtime to ensure rice waited ready for every meal, especially for that meat that tastes similar to how uncooked-ba con smells.Asa mixed-race person, I have struggled with my identity. My white, military father forbade his brown children from learning to speak Tagalog. He hated it when we used our Filipino forks—our fin gers—or sat in our Filipino chairs—squatting cheeks against calves. He required Mother to cook American foods: hamburger, fried chicken, bologna and cheese sandwiches. He forced his children to play baseball and football, while preventing us from participating in a traditional

It was my sophomore year when I outright denied my Filipino culture to some friends. A couple of us football players—the fullback, strong-side cornerback, wide receiver and me—decided to take Home Economics. We learned to iron creases in shirt sleeves, learned the right detergent measurements for washing a single load of colored clothes, and I won the annual chili cooking contest with my mother’s spicy recipe. In the class we frequented cultural restaurants: Greek, French, Indian. We even performed a mock wedding in front of the entire school, where the shy, blushing-bride received her first kiss.

One early morning, I overheard the cornerback arguing with the wide receiver, “He likes spam.” “Nah, man. Only black people eat that,” the wide receiver said. “I seen him eat it.” “Hey. JP, you like spam?” I froze as all eyes beamed at me. I scanned the room, even the teacher who everyone crushed on, stared my way. I didn’t know what the correct response was at that moment. I took it as an affront. Like he was challenging me, challenging my coolness. So, I said, “Nah, man. I don’t like that shit.”

The fullback, who ate breakfast at (and stayed-nights-in-my house) said, “You eat it all the time.” “But that don’t mean I like it,” I said. Skepticism shrouded his face. He started to say something. I said, “I only eat it to make my mom happy.”

The fullback studied me. “Nah, bro. It tastes and smells like ass,” I said. Everyone stared at me. Everyone waited for more. The corner back glared at me. He too had eaten at Mother’s table. He had sat beside me as I forked half-inch slices onto my plate, as I ate it in fried rice and as I allowed runny egg yolk to dribble down the meat’s crispy edges. I often licked my fingers after sneakily using my Filipino fork. “Why you lying?” someone said. I ignored them. The wide receiver smiled, slapped his desk then said, “Told you. It’s black people’s food.”CREATIVE

31 Filipino folk dance, Tinikling, and playing with the yo-yo since it may have been invented, but definitely used as a weapon, in the Philippines.

NON-FICTION

CREATIVErefrigeration.NON-FICTION

As an adult I have recounted stories to people about my Filipino culture, as a means to connect with it since I no longer reside in my father’s roost. Spam has always been the staple food of my stories. I wanted everyone to know its Filipino history. I tell them that spam made its way to the Philippines during World War II. I explain that it was used as a way for soldiers to reward Filipinos for their hard work on their occupied islands, then it disrupted our native cuisine as it became a delicacy that made us pinoys seem, or want to feel, more American. Spam made its way into Filipino restaurants and has been served in many formats. It became Christmas and birthday gifts. Spam symbolized prestige and the bigger a pinoys belly became from it, the richer that Filipino appeared. But since that sophomore day, my denial of spam has left a salty aftertaste in my mind. My dismissal of it is one of my biggest regrets. Whenever I visit my little sister, she cooks that blend of pork shoulder, potato starch, water, sugar, salt, and sodium nitrate for me without me having to ask. We send pictures of our spam creations to each other. I have posted odes to it on social media. I love spam. I have always loved the taste of it. But I have struggled to love being Filipino. Spam reminds me of my Filipino mother and her kitchen. It reminds me of my brown self and I never feel more Filipino then when I stand at my stove, with wooden cooking spoon in hand, flinching from the sizzle and pop of fat and when I have to clean the entire stovetop and backsplash because of the splattering that exploded from that beautiful meat, even though it requires neither cooking or

Not My Mom Brina Patel When monsoon season takes her final bow, she leaves a merciless chill in her wake. Decembers in Gujarat are pleasant during the day, when foreigners flock to sari shops and sip on sugarcane juice from roadside vendors. But as dusk descends, shivers seize the unassuming bystander. A stark reminder that the night often ends with folded arms and clenched teeth. The final month of the year marks the start of wedding season.

CREATIVE NON-FICTION

Sampura village transforms from a sleepy afterthought to a matrimo nial hotspot. Couples are paired up like business deals, middle-aged matchmakers reveling in the reputational returns these unions provide. And desperate mothers and fathers walk away knowing their sons and daughters aren’t hopeless, after all. Laborers buzz to and from the Town Square, setting up tents and preparing batches of rice and dal in vats large enough to fit a full-grown man. All the while wedding goers rifle through their almirahs, planning attire for each day of celebration. These festivities are not the primary reason I’ve come to Sampura. Rather, I’ve arrived by train from Mysore for a rendezvous with Dad. Sampura is his ancestral village, the place where we trace our bloodline before the time of British rule. Dad’s flown in from California, bringing with him a new lover. A bold step in these parts, even for a man. “I can’t wait to see you, beta,” he says when we chat on the phone in the days preceding our reunion. Beta. Homesick and hungry for familiarity, I cling to the term of endearment. Yearn for my father’s presence, the safety with which, for the past twenty-two years, it’s been my protective cloak. Yet, when we convene, I don’t recognize this man. His appear ance remains unchanged, save for an expanded midsection. It’s the energy with which he carries himself. Our embrace is charged with an unfamiliar airiness. He’s close, yet distant. Warm, yet icy. I feel as if he remains on the other side of the earth. I track his every movement, watch as he leans into his fiancé at

Ill prepared, having spent the last five months living out of a backpack, I turn to Dad for help in securing clothing and accessories for the festivities. A childish part of me revels in the feeling of helplessness. “Begam,” he says to his woman, whose given name is Sandhya. “Do you have any jewelry my beta can borrow?” Sandhya rummages through her suitcase, shuffling around bags of saris and spices acquired for loved ones back home. She extends silver bangles and earrings to me. The corners of her mouth are upturned slightly, as if she’s offering an olive branch. I take them, aware of the cool feeling of the accessories against my skin.

CREATIVE NON-FICTION

She’s young, Dad’s new lady. Her temples haven’t begun to grey, and her forehead possesses a firmness, devoid of the lines that hold the stories of a woman’s existence. She and my dad have been together a year and a half. Before the divorce was finalized between my parents, she’d already settled into our three-bedroom apartment. Moved her son into my childhood bedroom. Cozied up with the family Maltese. Cleared the kitchen of most of its belongings, filling every empty space with her cookbooks and cutlery. This is hardly our first acquaintance. But it’s the first time we’ll be spending an extended amount of time in one another’s presence.

34 the breakfast table, gazing into her kohl-lined eyes while they exchange pleasantries over chai each morning. They sit inside our three-story home, at a wooden dining table covered by frilly white cloth. Village women and domestic workers serve them like royalty, piling their plates high with fafda and magaj. I remain off to the side, refusing the buttery, sugary sustenance. Instead, I resign myself to a bowl of plain oatmeal, aware of the stares that penetrate my core. Let them take offense.

“Begam,” Dad calls her. Queen. “Enjoying the food, begam? Need me to massage the kink out of your neck, begam? Looking lovely, begam.” Begam this, begam that. “I beg you to stop,” I want to spit at him.

The first of three days of the main family wedding arrives. My cousin Paresh, whom I’m meeting for the first time, is the reason for this father-daughter-soon-to-be-stepmother reunion. His parents have linked him up with a Sampura bachelorette in her mid-twenties, and a college graduate at that. Though this seldom exempts a woman from the deluge of daily domestic duties.

The second day of the ceremonies feels as if it’s the tenth. I run through the motions: clap along as the women sing in front of the groom’s home, pretend to remember the aunties who claim they last saw me in toddlerhood, paint my lips a bold red in hopes that it will serve as a cautionary sign for those who dare venture too close. We attendees take our places on the floor of the sitting room. The marble tiles have been covered in bedspreads, capturing the dyes and dried grains of rice that will be strewn about as the day progresses. I watch while my aunt calls Sandhya to her side. They carry out rituals on my cousin, using banana leaves to paint his plump cheeks with tur meric, then dot his forehead with vermillion as a priest recites chants in Sanskrit. The ease with which Sandhya has assimilated feels uncanny to me. Surely, I thought, there would be resistance. There would be visible unease, palpable discomfort on behalf of the relatives. But grins and gaiety surround me. The women’s near-perfect teeth sparkle in the natural lighting that pours through the opened windows. They throw their heads back in laughter as they readjust their sari blouses or tighten clips in their hair. The men’s crimson smiles, from decades of nursing a betel nut habit, carry an air of false malice.

An elderly fellow makes a political joke, and they roar and slap their knees in Sandhyadelight.and I sit together at lunch that day. Almost as if we are students with assigned seating, we are instructed to take a place at the long rectangular table for female family members.

CREATIVE NON-FICTION

* * *

“She’s not my mom!” I want to yell. With magnanimous effort, I muster a smile. “I’m sure they are,” I say, with a shrug. Returning to my oily pigeon peas, I notice the heaviness they leave in my stomach.

“You’ll soon have another wedding to attend,” a village woman says over lunch that afternoon, nodding towards my father and his fiancé. They stand and chat with God-knows-who as if they’re all best friends. “Your father and new mother must be planning it already.”

Another wedding. New mother. The words sting.

Lanky preteen boys rush by, using steel ladles to plop the day’s offerings onto our Styrofoam plates. Yum, greasy bataka again.

Coke.” She giggles. I offer a smirk and a small laugh. Nod my head, widening my eyes as if this is the most bewildering piece of information I’ve ever received. “I had no idea!” I reply, plastering my stiff lips into a grin. A few more beats pass. I mix dal and curry into my rice, aim to cover each grain of Basmati with the thick, creamy liquid. Sandhya bites into a fried piece of dough, picks at smaller ones in her compartmented plate. Her eyes are frosted over, as if she’s ended up in an unpleasant memory somewhere. And for a quick second, I see a glimmer—a brief lapse into buried sorrow perhaps. Or a weighty vulnerability. A door she wishes would remain barred.

CREATIVE NON-FICTION

An auntie to the other side of Sandhya catches her attention, rousing her into a conversation about the evening’s outfits. Sandhya’s face resumes a placid demeanor, burying what had surfaced. I devote what little attention remains to finishing my papadum, allowing the crunch to wholly drown the sound of the room. Sandhya’s trying, that much I discern. We both reach into our inner well, summoning the will to fill roles into which neither of us thought we’d fall. Sandhya, a stepmother, me a stepdaughter. Labels I’d only encountered on TV or in books, not in the breathing, beating day-to-day of life. But the reality remains that we are united by a common thread, like points on an invisible line. Dad is the midpoint, and his two women are the endpoints that are oriented in each direction, reaching, reach ing, reaching towards infinity. There’s a wall between Sandhya and me, though. A wall that’s sturdier than a point on a line. A wall at which, no matter how hard each of us throws our bodies, won’t so much as

“I love these potatoes,” Sandhya says, using a piece of puri to plop a scoopful into her mouth. She closes her eyes as she chews slowly. “Aren’t they great?” “Yeah, I guess they are,” I reply. “I’ve had a bit of a headache all morning,” she says after a couple of minutes. The buzz of chatter in the dining hall envelops us, pro vides a steady background hum. A protectant against awkward silence. Sandhya then pauses and turns to me. “You know what always helps me get over a “A“What?”headache?”nicecoldcanof

37 crack. So, we surrender. Back away. Later in the day, I resign myself to my third-story bedroom.

I turn and see my uncle, a sturdy large-nosed man. He walks past the clothesline that hangs behind me, ducking beneath a billowing cotton kurta. “What are you doing here?” he asks me, incredulous. His voice is raspy, as if it had been hung to dry as well. “The women are getting ready for tonight! Go join your mom!”

I step onto the terrace, gazing beyond the confines of Sampura to the verdant fields below. Sorghum, okra, and sugarcane grow in abundance. Men wearing loose white garments steer bullock carts loaded with crops. The sun gives off an orange glow as it begins its descent into the horizon. In these happenings, I look for an answer, an omen, a sign from the universe. Why? Why? Why? The sky gives off its final rays of light. Goosebumps erupt on my exposed arms. Yet I remain rooted in the solitude of dusk.

“Leave me the hell alone!” I want to shout, and then crawl into my cot with a novel and my secret stash of peanut butter, burying myself in the comfort and familiarity I thought I’d find in Dad. But I smile and oblige. The silence of the rooftop gives way to the cacophony below. I drag one foot in front of the other, following my uncle back to the action.

I hear footsteps coming up to the rooftop, a steady clunk. My heart races, realizing that I’ve been away for longer than I’d anticipated.

On the third and final night of the wedding, the attendees of the groom’s side partake in a procession around the perimeter of Sampura. We are to begin in the evening, around eight or nine, and dance and sing and revel in merriment for four hours. The bride will arrive sometime before midnight, after which she and Paresh will enter the mandap—an

* * *

CREATIVE NON-FICTION

My role in the wedding is minimal, yet I’m exhausted, each cell of my body depleted of its charge. The room connects directly to the roof of the house. I take the concrete steps that lead to the top of this half-acentury-old dwelling, noting creaky panels of wood and chipping paint as I hoist my legs along.

38 ornate tent-like stage—and become husband and wife. Before the procession begins, I stand on the veranda of my fam ily’s home. Dozens of guests, many of whom I’m seeing for the first time, cluster together and discuss the dramas of village life, bounce around small talk as if engaged in a game of badminton. Women wear embellished saris—emerald greens and maroons and magentas—while most men don Western suits. The bright fluorescent lights are blinding. Mosquitoes buzz within their diameter of illumination, and for the first time, I wish I could be one of the blood-sucking pests. Fluttering. Extracting. Inflicting. Sandhya wants photos with everyone—employs Dad as her per sonal paparazzi as she makes her rounds with each auntie. “Say cheese!” Dad says, pivoting his Nikon towards me while Sandhya helps a woman fasten her pallu to her blouse. The shutter whirrs as I lift my hands to my face. “Stop!” I protest. “Come on! You get this dressed up and I can’t even get one picture of you?” he says. “Here, I’ll take it,” Sandhya offers, grabbing the camera from his hands.“Seriously, it’s okay—” I say. “Yes, get one of me and my baby,” Dad says, overriding my objec tions as he adjusts his glasses. He assumes a position to my left, allowing me my good side— this much he’s remembered. I stand stick straight. Dad’s stubby fingers hold me into place, latching onto my shoulder as if I could flee at any moment.“Go, go! Join them!” the wedding photographer, a thin 6-foot-something man with a mustache pauses in front of us. He waves a long arm towards Dad and me, motioning for Sandhya to join. He clicks what feels like dozens of images, playing around with angles. “Lovely,” the man says, nodding his head side-to-side like a bob blehead, as he stares at the screen and sifts through each shot. “Nice family.”Sandhya recruits Dad to take several photos with her while the cameraman is still in their grip. “So, when you return home...” a younger cousin, who lives in a

CREATIVE NON-FICTION

39 nearby city, comes and whispers to me as we watch. “Will you still see your other“Whatmom?”doyou mean?” I ask, feigning cluelessness, though I per ceive the precise nature of her inquiry. “You know, you’ll be living with your dad and new mom and all...”

My jaw instinctively pulls shut and my fists ball up. “Yes,” I say. Then in a haste, I dart into the house to fetch a glass of water. Not realizing how much air I’d been holding in, I exhale, allow trapped hot breath to escape my body. My vision blurs as the dammed-up grief inside of me begins to push its way out. Not here, not now, I tell myself. I close my eyes tight, run my fingers along the side of my face, smooth my frizzy hair with clammy palms. My feet shift from side-to-side, succumbing to the dizziness that’s descended. I grab the countertop to steady myself, a temporary respite from an unsteadiness that extends far beyond the material realm. Staring into the half-empty steel glass, I will myself into composure, pour what remains down the drain, stoke the inferno that rages within as I return to the crowds and calamity that begin to give way.The procession commences in front of my family’s home. My cousin Paresh wears an off-white sherwani and a matching bedazzled turban. He’s flanked at both sides by young girls from the village, each wearing a tikka down her parted hair and accessorized with an armful of bangles. A horse-drawn carriage, adorned with Christmas-type lights and jewels, pulls him and his companions around the village while the rest of us lead the way. In the background, musicians erupt in percussion beats and a man’s voice bellows Bollywood classics from a loudspeaker. Reverberations of the dhols pulse through me, momentarily rousing me from my inner monologue of melancholy. A crowd of men grabs Paresh, hoists him onto their shoulders, and urges him to dance with them for a few moments before returning him to his throne. Despite the grandeur surrounding the groom, my attention flut ters. Groups of women form as they sway their hips and fling their arms in tune to the rhythm that escapes from various instruments. Sandhya finds a place with four women around her age. She exhibits no signs of timidity as she joins them. I observe the spaces she fills,

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40 the jubilance that emanates from her being as she weaves in and out of the flurry of fellow dancers. The circular jewels in her skirt catch in the cameraman’s light. And her straightened caramel tresses manage to stay in place despite the humidity that continues to linger in the air.

My insides feel as if they’ve been pinched by a clothespin. I stand, arms crossed at my chest, itching from both the material of my sari garments and the mosquitos that are the uninvited guests. A biting cold has descended upon the night. Though the dancers have broken it— evidenced by the beads of sweat above their lips and eyebrows—I’m unwilling to do the same. Accept the numbing temperatures as a pen ance. Though there’s nothing than I’d want more than to howl and hoot as I flail my limbs to and fro. Meddling aunties elbow and shove me, nudge me in Sandhya’s direction. They nod their heads at me in disdain when I refuse to budge, as if my lack of dancing is a personal assault. The procession carries on, and time fades away like the heat of the day. We make our way through the rest of the pastel-colored dwellings of the village, pass the temple, pop through the Town Square, then back again. With each revolution, the hullabaloo heightens. Chants erupt from the men—sober, save for the ones who manage to sneak chewing tobacco into the ruckus. The music quickens in pace. My eyes flutter about, wanting nothing more than to succumb to the slumber that tugs at my hem. I wait for Sandhya to surrender her space in the circle of women. Will her to pull away, defeated and dreary. But she only seems to attract more revelers into her orbit. Dad and some of the men break tradition and mix with the women. I watch him and Sandhya—smirking and blushing, as if it had really been their wedding all along. I stand at the outskirts of this new organism. Watching, waiting, wondering. The resentment leaves a metallic taste in my mouth. I almost want to spit it out, yet I gulp it down, allow it to coat my insides and pulse through every blood vessel. My nervous system is flooded with the influx of stimuli—fire and screeching and bodies bumping. I look down, close my eyes, embrace the darkness of the night. And in the gaping shadows within me, I face the truth. There’s only one searing revelation that hits. Nothing will ever be the same.

Broxon Sound Domîno Cadieux I

My mother is seated at the black lacquer piano with the elemental grace of a waterfall. She sways, long and purposeful, a sunflower in slow wind. And her hair, even blacker than the lacquer, falls weightless over her shoulders and onto the hardwood floors like a bottle of spilled ink. She sings with the bright clarity of clean glass. Her voice pours through the narrow hallway, rolls off the floors, and fills our small home with something intangible, warm, impossibly beautiful.

A metallic cry, sharp as a car crash, breaks the music in two. My less lazy eye opens with all the half-asleep grace of a loosely hinged door. I see a blurred image of Marco screaming, his shaking hands in fleshy whirs. I’m half awake, one foot still in a dream. I close my eyes tight and try to fall back into it: seeing my mother’s cumulus black hair draped over her lithe shoulders, her voice like spider silk, and for a moment, I feel like a champagne glass full of molten gold. II I spend most of my days alone. Walking. Listening to every ounce of music the river makes. The Snake River cuts through town for miles and miles, and I follow. Allowing myself to believe in the endlessness of aimless moments. It helps me survive. The lush arms of river music circle me, wandering—spending as much time away from home as possible.

My mom and I had a ritual: she would sit at the piano. Poised as proper as a crane hunting snakes, dexterous fingers gliding along the dichromatic teeth. I liked when she practiced Moonlight Sonata best. I stood to the left of her, framed by two enormous front facing win dows that sat like two large eyes on the front of our brick house, and

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III

but not limited to: Emotional volatility. Unpredictability. Prone to violence. Heart defects. Thymic hypoplasia. Regression. Difficulty expressing empathy. Retardation of growth and development. Hearing loss. Hypocalcemia. Lack of impulse control. Otitis media… the symptoms gathered like snow. My mother unflinchingly set to work ensuring that my brothers, her sons, would have everything they needed to thrive beyond their diag noses. She didn’t have anything but her tenacity guiding her through the briar of Medicaid. If you need help in America, and you are poor, they make you beg for it. The hours she used to spend at the piano were replaced wringing her fingers in the coil of the landline—yelling, waiting, apologizing, beg ging, then yelling again at one state official after another who promised to hang up on her if she didn’t calm down, but never promised to return our calls for help. The hollow disconnected dial tone echoed out of the phone as my mom tried to hide her exhausted, tear swollen face. I’d imagine a piano accompanying the abrasive tone, and it made everything a little softer.

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42 improvised lyrics, singing as loud as my petite lungs would allow, until my father’s paintings rattled in their frames. We developed a language. She sang me to sleep, and hummed me out of nightmares. I would sing to her while she cooked, when she was crying. We held each other with songs, sometimes not even with words. Just melodies. IV

My brothers were often perceived as though they were nothing but theirMarco:diagnoses.Autism.

“Lowest functioning end of the spectrum.” Henri: Velo-cardio-facial syndrome. “Adaptability toward inde pendence,OtherBoth:unlikely.”Non-verbal.conditionsincluded

43 V I don’t know how to read music. But I can write it. I sing. I can’t stop. I don’t remember when I started—it feels as though it’s always been a method of being, of understanding the world I’m in. Some people sing words on top of sounds, but I sing with them. You have to listen— press your ear up to the heartbeat of the notes rolling toward you and really listen. Find the silence in between their color—the blue sound fading black. That is where the voice fills the song with gold.

VIII My dad had to pick up extra jobs to try and pay for the therapy that Medicaid wouldn’t cover. I think he topped off at 5. He hardly slept, and smiled even less. My mother shouldered everything else. The house became a thick cacophony of noise—screaming, fighting, arguing, TV blasting- everything but song. It was no one’s fault.

All the words my father has never said come to life in his paintings. This is how he sings. And as I watch his paintings take shape, I know that he listens best in color. It’s 3am and dad is asleep in the badly dented folding metal chair by the studious lamplight at his easel. His paintbrush still balanced in his limp hand. He’s so tired. Every day he comes home, a new wrinkle of discontent has carved its way through his increasingly work worn face. I’m in the hallway, framing the moment with the same ferocious curiosity my dad’s face carries when he’s painting. If no one interrupted him, he would never stop. I think he would be much happier then.

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VII There was not a lot of room to be celebrated. The boys needed so much more than I did. It felt as though my words, no matter the tone, were more burdensome than my silence. So, I got quiet.

It was painful, watching my mother struggle to know whether or not her son was aware of how much she loved him, and whether or not he loved her. His eyes could not meet hers. I saw her heart floundering in desperation daily. But she loved fiercely, unapologetically. And she never gave up. To her, her sons were nothing if not brimming with potential.

XII There was so much external focus on how language needed to be put into them, like dirt in a wheelbarrow. But what about what their silence and differences gave us? How much of what was coded as “non verbal” was still language to those willing to listen?

IX How do you give language to a speechless child? How do you give language as a gift when it is so cumbersome a thing to carry for the person receiving it? And what of the silence in between screams—is that not language? The way the eyes flash and expand when curious? The softness of a hand that needs holding—is none of this worth listening to?

Marco doesn’t remember this, but he used to use the piano to communicate. Middle C meant water please. E-flat meant, time to wash my hands. Which he would do for hours on end if we didn’t force him to stop. Henri adapted similarly, humming or vocalizing different notes to communicate his mood. Eventually, my mom and I could hum to them in key to figure out what they needed. We must’ve looked insane, humming scales to them in the bulk foods aisle trying to figure out if they wanted the generic fruity pebbles or cocoa puffs, but it worked. We learned their language, with patience and practice, and eventu ally, they learned ours. To an outsider, it appeared to be an act of maniac magic. But it was really just love.

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Those who were patient enough to truly listen received an incred ible gift: the angular entrapment of language burst open like a fresh fruit and became far larger, nuanced, gorgeous, and alive than previously imaginable. Language and listening were not two disparate, mathematical functions, but something musical, magical, and omnipresent. For me, my brothers took a slate gray day and filled it with bluebells bright enough to pity the sun.

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XIII In music, if you want to succeed you have to listen. Not just to words, but to the colors, transitions, moods, and silences between the notes. When you find yourself in competition with the music instead of one color among many in its illustrious canvas—that is when ego kills a beautiful thing.

I sit upright, like my mother at the black lacquer piano, in the interview with an LA music mogul, discussing the newest release, pend ing tours, the process of music making, when he asks me, “So, where did you learn to write lyrics like you do? Who taught you to sing?”

I smile, feeling like a champagne glass full of molten gold, and say, “My brothers.”CREATIVE

From A Year In Paradise

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Johanna Mitchell I’ve been thinking about leaving again, and I mean it this time.

This isn’t like the first time when she got in my face with her fists shaking in the air. My little grandmother, Mema, not even 5 feet tall, somehow towering over my 5 foot, 9 inch frame like a giant raging fire saying, “I want to hurt you.” No, that time anger drove me to pack my suitcases. It isn’t like any of the other times either. It’s not like when I fantasized about leaving in the night. I pictured myself walking the 5 miles to the train with my large suitcases dragging behind me (because the car is hers, after all, and the airport is 60 miles away) to take the Amtrak back to Boston. Back to what? Where would I even go? As Mema says, I don’t have “a pot to piss in.” This isn’t like any of the countless other times either. This time is different. I’m tired of her moods that swing in too many directions to follow. One moment I am the source of all her problems, her pain, and her suffering. The next moment, I am the greatest thing that has ever come into her life—her joy, her pride, her “blackest crow” and she would just die if I left her now. Talk about guilt trips. And these mood swings are weekly, some times daily. I suspect she may have a mental illness, and she is ninety-six years old, after all, but I can’t ride these tumultuous waves any longer. I’ve put my life on hold for too long, and at this rate, she may be right, I may die before her and need one of the plots she has available next to her own in Bowdon, GA. My commitment to myself was to remain here for one year. I have done that and more, so I have no reason to feel guilty. In the back of my mind, of course, I wonder how I will handle it if she passes away just days after I move out. But I must ignore those thoughts because they are what have trapped me here for so long in the first place. Since I am only moving an hour and a half away, which is better than 4,000 miles, I will be able to visit Mema every weekend, or more, if needed. The way it’s looking now, she won’t need much from me. She seems more energetic and independent than she has since I arrived. Maybe, she really doesn’t need

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This is her passive-aggressive way of asking me if I will be here when she returns. I make a point to say nothing. Not that she can hear me anyway, but she is a master lip reader. She turns and leaves the condo. Knowing I am planning to move has made it safe for me to plan a trip to Boston. It will be my first time going home since leaving the city with all its oppressive concrete and steel. My deep longing to see my family and friends supersedes my apprehension about the frigid air, overcrowded subways, and all the memories of the limerent love which drove me to move in the first place. Although the stress of working three jobs just to pay for a closet-sized apartment was not a good memory, I do miss a lot of things about Boston. I miss staying out all night, meeting new, interesting people, and dancing. I miss how the simple act of traversing the city’s streets could lead to so many wondrous adventures—I never knew what the day would bring. A part of me yearns for my lost city, while another part of me never wants to see it again. My flight leaves tomorrow, and I am bringing Jason, the man I’ve been dating for four months, to be my buffer and to ensure my return. I’ve been reminding Mema for the past couple of weeks about my trip

“I’m goin’ down ta do my exercise,” Mema says one morning. She places her delicate hand daintily on the corner of the wall, lifts her knee up high like a Rockette, kicking her foot out before placing it back down on the floor. A moment later, she is standing beside me in the kitchen where I am washing my coffee mug. She is so quiet on her feet; I never hear her coming. Magnetically, she pulls my eyes to hers and continues, “Thanks ta somebody I get ta listen ta some good music.” The word “good” hovers like a song in the farm-grown, southern accent she has carried all the way from early 1900’s Waco, GA. Her voice is so loud it sounds like she is yelling, and this time she has her headphones on her ears with the music already at full volume. I can hear it clearly—Chopin. She stretches her neck out farther than I imagine possible, like a giraffe reaching for an apple. Her face seems closer to mine than it probably is, and she playfully squeezes her tiny eyelids shut several times. Her bright blue eyes peer out intermittently and mischievously through her sagging, pastel skin. “I’ll be back in a little while. If you’re here I’ll see ya, but maybe my little bird will fly off somewhere, who knows. Or maybe I will go off on my own adventure.”

Allen is just one of the three men Mema is currently dating. After a restless night of sleep, it is finally Friday morning and I get the call I’ve been eagerly waiting for. Jason is waiting for me downstairs. I remind Mema that we are going to Boston for a trip, that I will be back on Monday evening, and I’m not moving, yet. Her eyes are full of tears and they turn the brightest pink I’ve ever seen on a human face. It is the same way her face looked when I first arrived. I feel the pang in my heart, a small fraction of the guilt I will know when I do finally move. “I know baby, you have a good time and I’ll be just fine. There’s lots of good food in the fridge and Allen’s gonna come get me, we gonna go ta the Senior Center. So, don’t you worry ‘bout me ok? I’ll see ya when I see ya.” She is being her sweet self today—all of yesterday’s choler melted away in slumber. I give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and the minute we pull out of the parking lot, I give my stress, anxiety, and anger to the wind. I do my best to put her out of my mind for just one short weekend. * *

48 and made sure to write the information on her calendar, as well as on a separate note that I placed by the microwave. With nearly a century of experience, she has taught me about the hardships of remembering the details of her own life, let alone someone else’s.

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There is a long layover in Pittsburgh on our way back to Florida and we stand outside enjoying the large white puffs that drift idly down from the sky. I already miss the snow greatly. While the cold wet flakes land on my face, melting instantaneously, I receive a call from my

In the evening, as Mema heads to bed, she says, “I guess this is it. Don’t worry ‘bout me, you and Janice run off ta New York or what eva’.” Her lipstick is a shade of hot pink that matches her bedsheets and the muumuu she is wearing; everything else is beige. And it is obvious she can no longer find the outline of her lips. “I have Allen, he’s gonna come live with me, you’ll see. I’m gonna buy that 509 and give it ta him and then he’ll come stay up here with me. There will be no money left for anyone afta’ I’m gone. You can be sure of that.” Her voice trembles like her body as she walks slowly down the hall reaching out for the walls to steady herself—her balance always get worse when she is upset.

49 mother. Mema has been in the hospital since Friday night. She asked my mother not to tell me because she didn’t want to ruin my trip. My mother for once, happily obliged her mother’s request (mainly in the name of guilt for pawning her daughterly duties off on her baby in the first place). Instantly, I feel anxious to get to Florida quickly and to help Mema. Yet, I also wonder if this is just another ploy for attention. After unloading my luggage at the condo, I make my way straight over to the Walkinghospital.through the glass sliding doors at the entrance of the hospital, I am greeted by a cool air perfumed with disinfectant and rubbing alcohol. With the fluorescent lights bouncing off the pristine white which abounds in the long corridors, stinging my eyes, I wonder how it can still seem so dark. I make my way up to the third floor in the elevator, grabbing a handful of sanitizer on my way out. I walk up to the nurse’s station. “I’m here to see Margaret Lynch.”

“The nurse tried to do x-rays on her hip, but she refused. She is bruised up pretty badly. She puts up a good fight, I tell ya. She just keeps saying you’re coming to take her home, but the doctor says she has to remain here until tomorrow. You sure have your hands full with that one. Her room is just down that hall, fifth door on the left. She’ll be very happy to see you”. As I walk down the hall, I peer into a couple of the rooms and notice the names on the doors. Most of the rooms are occupied and quiet. All I can see is the shape of feet poking up beneath the identical blue hospital blankets. It reminds me of the hospice where I have been working, and the first time I saw a man’s lifeless body. I come to the door with the sign that reads, LYNCH, and I notice there is an extra sign taped to the wall next to it that reads, FALL RISK. I walk into the room to find my poor little Mema lying there in the hospital bed looking so helpless. Barely weighing 100 pounds, she looks so fragile, and I can’t help but love her with all my heart. It is hard to believe this delicate old lady is that same invincible, strong-willed woman I have been getting to know over the past year and a half.

“How is she doing? Did she break anything?”

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“Oh, you must be her granddaughter. Margaret has been singing your praises ever since she got here. She’s a firecracker.”

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50 I was mad as a child that my siblings and I grew up so far from her and rarely got to see her (my siblings did not share those same feelings). But on the occasion that we got to visit, she and I bonded enough to know that we both felt ripped off. I always stayed in touch through phone calls and letters, and I visited her almost every year as an adult. A few years ago, for her birthday, I made her a card using an old photo she had given me once long ago. In the picture, we are in a backyard in Florida and I am about eighteen months old. She is sitting in a chair with a fancy sun hat adorned with a large flower and I am stark naked reaching up to the top of my tippy toes to give her a kiss. Now, seeing the multiple wires stretching from various machines to her body, and the paper-thin skin on her bare arms which are cov ered in bruises that will take nearly half a year to fade, my inner child is unsettled. This is a version of Mema I have never seen before. In good spirits, she is happy to see me, in part, because I am her ticket back home.“Hey baby, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened. Did you and Jan…uh, Jason have a good time?” Her voice almost sounds like laughter the way it trembles. “Yes, Mema. What happened? Are you ok?” “Well honey, I don’t know. I fell in the bathroom and Kurt came and found me, bless his heart. He helped me up and called the ambu lance. I told’em not too, but he insisted. I was so wobbly on my feet. I… I don’t know what happened. Did you have a nice time in Boston? I bet yo’ mother was so glad to see you.” “Yes, it was great. Do you need anything? Are you in pain?” “No, honey. They say I can go home tommorra. It’s so nice to see you. I ate all the chicken you made. I tell ya, I did not go hungry. Somebody did a lot of cookin’ before they left.” She laughs at herself and I want to laugh with her. Her charm is hypnotizing. I understand, at last, why someone once said that Mema has the world wrapped around her finger, and she can make it do her bidding. “You know what honey; I need ta go ta the bathroom.” “OK. But, you can’t get up, so…” My trepidation churns inside me as she points to a pink, plastic, oddly-shaped bowl. I cannot fathom how in the world someone who can’t move from their bed is supposed to pee in that. “Are you sure you don’t want me to get the nurse or

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I ask knowing in her old-fashioned mind what her answer will be.“No honey.” She begins to pull her gown up over her thighs and then her hips. “Just put that under my bottom.”

51 something?”

I place my hand on the small of her back instinctively, fearful she may fall over the side of the narrow hospital bed believing she is stronger than she really is. I have seen her walk around the condo in her bra and underwear, but I don’t want to see the barely-there, tired, grey strands between her legs and the way her shriveled, old skin hangs from the bones of her pelvis. I want to remain ignorant of my fate for as long as possible. If only I could close my eyes and transport myself somewhere far away. In my mind, I curse my mother for not being here to do this.When I moved here at twenty-nine years of age, I was expecting to drink frozen margaritas by the pool, to enjoy year-round hot summer romances, and to go gallivanting through Ybor City and Orlando in the warm night air beneath a star-filled sky. I envisioned myself strolling across hot white sands listening to the echoing crash of the ocean’s waves and the squawking of seagulls in search of food. The same expe riences most New Englanders seek and expect from Florida. I was looking for a vacation from the rat race of competing for survival in a fast-paced, expensive city. My stay with Mema was to be a haven for my exhausted spirit drained by divorce, a failing career, and the conse quences of heedless choices. Instead, I am in a hospital entrenched by the smell of urine and chemical sterilizers. Somehow, I manage to place the plastic tub beneath Mema’s naked bottom. When she finishes relieving herself, I guide her body back down to the bed. It is one of those moments where I just do what is in front of me to do for someone in need, because really, what else is there?When I return to the condo that night, I take a long shower in an unfruitful attempt to cleanse my mind. The following morning, I bring Mema home and she is very calm and kind to me—the Mema I love. I make her an early dinner in the evening and bring it out to her gliding chair in the living room on a tray. She hasn’t eaten well all weekend and deserves a home-cooked meal. Oprah’s voice is blasting from every direction when I walk into the living room. The TV in her

52 back bedroom is also on at full volume even though nobody is watching it. I can barely hear myself think. But then, she smiles up at me, a great big smile full of gratitude. She is so happy to be home and I am filled with pride for being able to help her. I understand how much it means to her to not have to spend her last days in a hospital or nursing home, and we don’t know when those days will come. While she is eating and watching TV, I go outside across the street to my hiding place behind a wall where I sit and smoke a cigarette. Like so many nights before, I sit beneath the stars shining in the dark night sky. Although the ominous ringing of cicadas will not return for several months, I allow the echo of gentle chirping crickets, the indescribable croaking of toads, and the squeaking of hungry bats, to lull my tattered nerves. Life’s wondrous adventures now come in tiny packages, and they appear without any traversing, at all. The next day after breakfast, Mema is back at her piano again with a broken collarbone and a sling on her arm. She is supposed to be resting it. Her small fingers effortlessly dance across the ivory and ebony keys while songs from the 1920’s to the 1950’s reverberate against the condo walls. She played for soldiers in two wars and now for anyone who will listen, including her friends at the senior citizen center—it is her raison d’être. I take the opportunity to call my mother quickly and give her an update. She mentions that every time anyone has left Mema in the past, she has had some sort of accident even when she was younger. She also tells me that Mema knows I love her, and this is a big deal because she claims to have never felt loved by my mother. In the afternoon, I decide to go down to the pool while Mema takes her midday nap. Laying on the hard, white chair as the sun burns my skin, I watch the Montgomery Palms wave their fronds in the subtle breeze beneath a sweeping cerulean sky. Slender damselflies, bulbous Blue Skimmer dragonflies, Monarchs, and Palamedes swallowtails whiz about the lush green landscape adorned with coral hibiscus’, fuchsia bougainvillea, and white African Iris’. A ringing cacophony of pro thonotary warblers, migrated blue-jays, and massive sandhill cranes glides to my ears beneath large, fluffy, white clouds which carry a faint promise of the torrential downpours imminent in the coming weeks. The ocean and beaches I once longed for have been replaced by a small peaty lake that sits just a few yards from the pool. Across the dark water,

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mounds of Spanish moss hang down from the limbs of hearty Oaks like the mangled hair of a witch in a fairytale; Cypress trees plunge their sturdy trunks like strong arms with swollen biceps deep into the lake’s bed while eerie scutes protruding from an alligator’s back float inconspicuously on the water’s surface.

Breathing in the provocative essences of jasmine flowers and orange blossoms that pillage in on sultry breezes, I am awed by a pro found beauty and magic in this tropical place, unlike anything I have ever known. Yet, amid this quiet piece of paradise found, there is a sickness that lingers in my gut reminding me of all that is wrong with this situation. Sitting up to take a sip of wine, which has become as hot as the coffee I’m pretending to be drinking, I want to do something young and crazy. I want to do something in direct contrast to the world of caregiving that is presently consuming me. I need an escape that is farther away than the poolside. My deep love for Mema has become so overshadowed by the strain of overwhelming uncertainty. I haven’t slept well in a year and a half, I am anxious about waking up on time for her, about pleasing her, and not knowing what version of her I will wake up to. At the same time, she really does need me. I can enable her to pass away in her own home. I keep her eating and am her companion. And, of course, I am her punching bag.

Looking up at the all-white 7-story building that is blinding in the sunlight, across the 240 or so windows, and seeing the silhouettes of the same old men who always watch me lie in my bathing suit, I wonder how in the world I will ever get out of this place.

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54 Playing House

Danielle Shorr I’m certain just about every person born in the 90s played House when they were young. Perhaps it was our country’s continued indoc trination of the nuclear family that inspired us, or maybe it was and still is something that kids just do. We got the ideas from somewhere, whether it be books, television, or our own families, of what makes a household. In tiny pretend structures at daycare or school, with scrap cardboard boxes or acrylic child-size replicas of the real thing, we played house as though we’d been instructed to. Kids play grown up roles for fun. This is a fact that has been true and as far as I’m con cerned, will remain true. The psychology behind that is debatable, and also extends far beyond my own knowledge. What I do know is that the role you played in these games of House as a kid, says a lot about who you are as an adult. Depending on the size of the participating group, the roles dif fered, but were often repeated by the same actors, occasionally fought over. Some people played Mom. The people who played Mom are arguably those who were most likely to become Mom. I was not Mom. I am currently not her either. I don’t plan to become her. Mom is the one who takes care. Perhaps Mom, in college, was the one in charge of corralling drunk friends after a night out. Mom is the one who makes sure everyone is fed, hydrated, and accounted for. I knew from a young age that this could not be me. Now, as my phone reminds me daily to drink the bare minimum amount of water necessary for human survival, I can confirm that my child self was more or less predictive of my Bigfuture.Sister was the coveted role to play. Everyone wanted to fake a dramatic phone call, have a pretend boyfriend, or pantomime shutting a bedroom door to be left alone. Big Sister was cool, and smart, and always busy. Even those who didn’t have a big sister knew the power that Big Sister held. Big Sister today is likely a force to be reckoned with, bold as she (or he) is confident, and most likely has a job that involves micromanagement to some extent. This is not a bad thing;

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55 this is just another example of the role that I did not, and would not come to play in a future version of myself. I didn’t have a big sister, but I wanted one. I imagined her yelling at me for borrowing her clothes without permission, only to later apologize in the form of doing my makeup. I would tag along to her plans, at my mother’s request, and pester her with questions about boys and pop culture. Big Sister would be what I wanted to be, only better. But I had a brother, still have a brother, so instead I settled for arguments over the remote control and joining in on the occasional video game. I am not Big Sister because I could never be her. If you were the baby, you likely were and still are the center of attention. You liked the comfort of Mom, and Dad, and whatever other characters were cast in your rendition of House. You had the best fake cry, likely still do, and your cuteness can be used as a weapon. Although my ability to cry on command is strong, it is a skill I do not utilize often. While I often react to things in the way that a baby might, I don’t think I was ever excited by the helplessness of the role. Babies have no agency. Even as a child, I knew this. And although the use of my voice back then was rare, I knew the power of having one. Plus, I valued my ability to eat solid food far too greatly to even pretend. It just wasn’t in my Ifrepertoire.youwere a dad, you were likely late to the game, an unpopular participant, unknowingly but certainly queer, or the only boy in a play group of girls. Dad’s role was just important as any other. It involved grilling, fixing, and piggy-back rides. For some interpretations of this role, it meant little to no action, perhaps flipping channels on an invis ible television, or calling out to ask when dinner would be ready. In an ensemble cast, Dad was not the most desired part, but more or less instrumental to the production. Whenever I played house, with friends or other kid strangers, I was always the dog. It was a role I volunteered and took on with pride. I felt that the human roles couldn’t allot me the creative freedom necessary to be able to perform to the best of my abilities. I could pant identical to my family’s golden retriever and my bark could turn the heads of any animal within a three-mile radius, although the tone hinted more toward Chihuahua than anything else. I was the dog because the dog was a figure of comfort, of love, always inviting hands on her head.

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Even as a child I valued the importance of touch, knew that the right hand had the power to turn stone into softness. Now I pick up my Fiancé’s hand as we sit on the couch and beg it to run over my lower back, or through my scalp. I sit with a dog, my own dog, on my lap and echo to him how just lucky he is to be just that. No responsibilities or stresses. No concept of mortality, or capital. Just belly rubs, coffee table scraps, and a warm bed always. I tell my fiancé, I wish I was a dog, and he laughs and agrees, although I am not convinced that he understands the extent to which I mean this sentiment. Did you ever play house as a kid? I ask him, and he replies. Yes, I think so. What role did you play? I ask. I’m not sure, he tells me. The dad, maybe? Brother? I don’t know, he says. Probably the brother, I say. All of that annoying energy would fit the role perfectly, I say, winking. I walk through my home, now an adult, and note the parts of my childhood I have reclaimed. A collection of Barbie dolls, pristine in their boxes, sits next to bookshelves in my library. My closet, small but stuffed, is full of princess-like dresses. You’re so funny, my mom says in response to me showing her my latest thrifted finds, all frilly and pastel, lined at the bottom with bows or floral appliqués. I don’t disagree with her: it is funny. I’m an adult who has, in many ways, sought out the things of my childhood that I loved. Not long after I stopped playing house and moved on to more mature games, my mental illness would come into view, stealing nearly every kind of joy that was placed in front of me. At my request, my mom signed me up for community soccer, but I couldn’t bring myself to go to the games. Although I looked forward to school, once I arrived each morning, it became a battle to pull me out of my parents’ arms. I was scared of everything and everyone. I saw things I couldn’t explain and had thoughts that neither children nor adults seemed to understand. I missed out on slumber parties because I knew if I went to them and let down my guard, someone I loved would die, or I would die, or worse, if worse was even a possibility. I deprived myself of things that made me happy because I was convinced that happiness meant that something terribly wrong was going to happen, and not an adult in the world could tell me otherwise, not even my own parents, and certainly not the therapists and specialists my mom dragged me to in order to find answers. I rejected comfort, and play, and excitement of all types, and when I finally got a grip on my mental

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57 health and was able to disguise it enough to function, I was too old to openly enjoy the things I had missed out on. I wanted to play with dolls, but there were cooler, more age appropriate things to do. There was makeup, and boys, and gossip. I wanted to play dress up, and pretend, and house, but the door had already closed on that. I was a pre-teen, and then a teenager, and then far, far away from the games and fun that kids allow themselves to revel in.

Now I’m an adult who collects things I didn’t appreciate, and quite frankly couldn’t appreciate because I was too young to comprehend the grip of a brain wired wrong, specifically my brain wired wrong. Now I run my hands over the pink boxes in my possession. I look up Barbie Dream Houses online and admire the tiniest details. I play house, except it isn’t play but real, actual house, with a partner, and pets, and a kitchen I’m responsible for cleaning. I have a life that as a child I imagined, but then forgot about, a future swallowed by obsessions and compulsions and anxieties. Although the life I have now is one I would have dreamt about if given the head space to dream, I still feel sad for the girl who temporarily lost sight of it.

I ask myself what role I play today and which roles I might take on in the years to come. I often find myself comparing my current role to the ones I’m expected to have. Am I supposed to become a mother? What if I don’t want to? Little me was never maternal. Adult me isn’t either. I enjoy being in classrooms full of kids. I enjoy working with them, but I’m not sure I would enjoy having them at home. Should I wait out my life’s choices, on the off chance that this decision changes? I am selfish in the way that I do not want pregnancy to change me. I don’t want to stop taking my antidepressants out of precaution. I don’t want to potentially lose my mind to create another. I don’t want to know hormones I can’t control or a body that isn’t just mine.

What does it mean for me to be a wife? Will the title change the dynamic of my relationship? Will I be expected, not by my partner, but subconsciously by myself, to perform in ways different from those I do currently? What if I just want to crawl around on all fours and sniff shoes? What if I want to bark loudly and roll on my back, and make friends laugh with my canine antics? What if I just want the responsi bilities of my small dachshund and nothing else? I was a child who played House, and now I am an adult who

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58 lives it, who contemplates what things will look like in the future or if it will ever stop feeling like I am playing a youthful game of pretend. What makes a home? I look around me and know that it is the love I have built inside it, and all that in between, which perhaps is not always love, but the shit it takes to make it flourish: arguments, mess, too many things to fix and not enough time in the days. This is a performance I am committed to. I want an infinite run. I wake up in the morning and mother the younger self who lives inside me. I take my dog on a walk. Occasionally, I feed my partner a home cooked meal. I have used the grill in the backyard once, not well, but successfully. On days when there is too much to do, I become as helpless as a baby. I stay in bed, curl up in my sheets, and take a nap with my dog.

How The Black Woman Loves Kyra Richardson I rate chocolate a five on a scale of one to ten. The white kid behind me says, “Well, as we know from my taste in women, I don’t like chocolate, either.” When I get ready to challenge him, he stops me and continues, “And from history, we know not to anger the white man.” The boy says he’s joking and laughs. He can do this because he’s at the peak of privilege: built on the lean side of body types, complete with hair like sunlight, and eyes blue like foreign waters. Everyone else laughs, too, because of the same reasons.

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The only other boy who doesn’t laugh has brown hair. It curls like dried leaves in the fall. I like this boy more than a teenage girl should like a teenage boy. He likes me, too, I think since he listens and laughs and responds like he wants to, like I’m not annoying him. When I ask him out one evening, in a text message too long, sent earlier than I originally planned, I wait for him to respond. My heart is shuddering in the pits of my stomach for too many moments, waiting for him to respond or sud denly wondering if he likes women—but does he even like Black girls? It’s the question of whether or not the blond-haired boy was actu ally joking. Sometimes I suppose it’s better to be completely disliked by the white man (as the blond one puts it) than to be fetishized and picked upon like a little, walking and breathing thing—my nightmare, his dream. Other times, I think the opposite. Of course, being fetishized ensures wealth and luxury, considering blond-haired and curly brownhaired boys are at the top of the class system. If we married, I’d be rich. Easy. Not loved for who I am or what I think or what I do, but simply because my skin is brown, and I love him because I am greedy. Sometimes I think this is best.The brown-haired boy responds in hours. He explains that he likes me too, and I am instantly lost. God, what would my family say? My fingers between a white man’s and his between mine? What would his family say? Is he the token member of his family, generously skipped by generations of racism and biases? Could we walk alone together? Would he or I be overwhelmed with guilt if I am targeted outside? I want to eat with him, walk with him, be out and open and happy with him. Am I allowed

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Behind you, laughter erupts from the showers, and you watch the high schoolers stride towards the pool, taller and tanner and sexier than you’ve ever pictured yourself. You pull non-existent breasts high, pressing your shoulders together for any peak of cleavage on your young chest. Next to you, Destiny, a friend of a friend, pulls her sun-soaked blonde hair into a loose ponytail and catches your eyes in the cracked bathroom mirror. She’s beautiful, and she smiles at you.

“Last one in the deep end has to splash Bryan/Jeremy,” one of your cohort yells, and the mob of elementary girls fast-walk across the damp concrete and out the door; except you and Destiny. “I’ll be done in a sec,” you say, realizing she’s still there. “Just kinda hot for me right now.” You’re nervous, the heat is not alone in making you sweat. “It’s cool. Boys are stupid anyways,” she replies, turning fully towards you and pulling a piece of Doublemint from her fanny pack.

60 Kissing Boys and Girls in Oklahoma Kourtney Johnson Age:

Location:EightCommunity

Pool Skin burning from hours in the sun, you escape the Oklahoma heat and loiter in the cool air conditioning of the women’s bathroom. The nylon of your rainbow one piece from last summer slices pink stripes along your shoulders. At the sinks, your friends squeal about Bryan or Jeremy or whatever lanky boy from school just got dropped off by his mom. On Sunday afternoons, the pool population swells with children, admission price halved for those under 15. Mom gives you the choice every time: catch the church bus for all-day youth services or be dropped at the public pool with enough cash for a few microwave concession pizzas. Rarely do you choose church.

“WantYourone?”pulse is rising, and you accept the gum, if only to distract yourself from the way her hair falls against her sweat-sheened neck. “Yeah,” you say, folding the silver wrapper over and over in your hands. “Super

“Have you kissed a boy yet?” The ease at which she asks surprises you because no, you have not kissed a boy yet, but you haven’t really wanted to. You like boys, in theory, sometimes get butterflies when they pass you a pencil or chase you at recess; the butterflies flap, too, when girls compliment your glasses or offer you a piece of gum at the pool.

You wonder if this is normal. “Not yet,” you say, washing your hands for no reason. “Have you?”

A few of your friends have been kissed for real, quickly under the playground equipment or in the dried-up creek bed before the streetlights turned on. Along with training bras and menstrual cycles, first kisses engulfed most lunchtime conversations these days, and every story featured the lip lock of a boy and a girl. You sat silently during these talks, braless, period-less, unkissed. You’ve never wanted a real kiss- until“Cannow.Ikiss you?” she asks with full sincerity. This isn’t like when Blake Anderson asked to be your valentine and then laughed with his friends after you agreed. It’s just you and her and the echoing drip of a leaky pool shower. Destiny looks in your eyes and you trust her with it: your first kiss. Your lips are chapped and hers are cold, two closed mouths hastily pressed together. It won’t be your best kiss, but you’ll remember it vividly. You smell chlorine and Doublemint as Destiny laces her fingers between yours and pulls you giggling back to the pool. When Mom’s white Honda creaks through the pick-up lane hours later and

“I don’t like boys,” Destiny replies coolly, pulling sticky hair from her neck. Such a simple statement should process easily, but you turn it over and over in your mind. You have heard the words: gay, lesbian. You’ve heard worse words, spat in school hallways, sometimes at you; but you do not understand them, have never met an out queer person before. Your mother never told you about riding around in cars with other girls.“Like, at all?” you ask, now looking at Destiny completely. She is smiling, her bright yellow two-piece appears to glow. “Nope, just girls,” her body feels closer than a moment ago. She asks, “Have you ever kissed a girl?” “Just like, my mom and stuff,” you reply, fully knowing that’s not what she means and clarifying, “but not, like, for real.”

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Age: Location:ThirteenHighland

West Middle School

Benjamin P. caught you and your best friend, Sarah, holding hands under the desks in Biology and won’t stop calling you both dykes. For over a week, every pass in the cafeteria or raising of a hand in class is met with a “cough cough DYKE cough cough” followed by the snickering of mean middle schoolers and silence of apathetic teachers. You take it on the cheek until he pelts a plastic pencil sharpener at the back of Sarah’s head, and she cries. After class, you take her hand and lead the way to the guidance counselor. Sarah is your first girlfriend. You pass complexly folded love notes after band rehearsal and bump knees waiting for the bus to deliver you home from school. The sleeves on her hoodies are always too long, and her braces pinch your lips when you kiss. You say, “I love you,” and believe you mean it. In the school hallways, your first boyfriend sneers at the hand you now hold, mostly because it belongs to a woman. On Wednesday nights, Sarah’s mom drives you both to Pinecrest Church of Christ for youth group, oblivious to your habit of ditch ing services to wander through the creek-beds to Dollar General for Yoohoos. One summer, you attend a massive Christian youth conference in Texas together, sneaking kisses after worship. On the final night, you glance at Sarah during “Our God,” her hands and head lifted high, eyes shut as she sings along, and you whisper that you’re ready to repent, ready for baptism. In the hotel pool, the youth pastor recites the miracle of salvation, but you only see Sarah, her smile wide as you accept Jesus as your lord and savior. You aren’t sure if you believe it, in Heaven, in the cleansing ability of an over-chlorinated Ramada Inn pool. But for her, you try. Outside the counselor’s office, Sarah picks at the skin of her lips, a nervous habit, and you lightly push her hand away. She smiles at you, and she’s beautiful. The office door opens and you plop into the ugly

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62 she asks, “How was your swim, Munchkin?” you keep quiet, hold the kiss in your chest, and wonder if she’d be mad you kissed a girl.

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“Alright, girls,” she sounds bored, tired already from whatever you plan to say. Sarah’s icy eyes look to you, and you mutter, “Ben P. won’t stop calling us inappropriate names,” and hope the older woman will leave it at that. She “Whatdoesn’t.kind of names?” she asks, clearly doubtful. You pause, not sure if you’ll get lunch detention for cursing in front of a faculty member and attempt to formulate another diplomatic answer.“He’s calling us ‘dykes’.’’ Sarah’s voice is soft but strong.

A few beats pass, both you and Sarah processing the woman’s response. Sarah starts to pick at her lips. “Are we what?” you ask, the rage building in the pit of your stomach. Often, tears follow your anger, and you steel your face, refuse to break. In college, you will cry at the sight of your advisor’s “Safe Zone LGBTQIA” placard, and you will remember today.

The counselor squints her eyes a bit, taps her well-used pencil against the desk, and leans back, responding, “Well, are you?”

63 brown chair in front of the guidance counselor’s desk.

The counselor squints at you now, and you see the slur flash behind her eyes, almost spill from her mouth before she clears her throat, claps her hands together, and says, “He’ll probably leave you alone if you stop giving him a reason. I’ll remind you of our ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy.” You wonder if she’s referring to the bully or the two dykes in her office. As you leave, Sarah shuffles silently beside you. She doesn’t hold your hand. On the bus ride home, she passes the seat you’ve saved for her, sitting by Zac C. instead. The love notes stop entirely. You’re convinced this is your fault.

Age: Location:FifteenReese Residence Melody’s house is always quiet, her parents retiring to their room shortly after dinner ends. You sit on the kitchen counter, a quart of

“Do you think I’m going to hell?” you ask. In your town, churches

64 cookie dough ice cream in your lap. Melody pulls a Diet Dr. Pepper from the fridge and pushes her body up to sit beside you, bumping your shoulder and asking, “Gimme a bite?” She never reaches for the spoon. You guide a spoonful to her lips, and the maroon lipstick she always wears leaves an imprint on the metal. You’ve liked her for a while and believe she feels the same. The notes you pass in Drama move from platonic to potentially romantic. After a victorious speech and debate tournament the day before, she pulled your face to hers, and kissed you in the bathroom of a random high school. Something’s shifted, and now she’s holding your hand. “I wanted to tell you something,” you say, eyes transfixed on the melting carton in your lap. “I just don’t want to ruin anything.” She squeezes your hand and says, “You won’t ruin anything. What’sYou’reup?” sure she can feel your heartbeat through the countertop, and when you look at her, she smiles, encouraging you to keep going. “I like you,” you say. Your words feel stupid, juvenile for how you really feel. You try to clarify, “Like, like-like you. I wanna walk you to class and go on dates and kiss you not in a bathroom.” You laugh here, body feeling lighter. Melody says nothing, and you see her bottom lip disappear between her teeth as she nervously chews. She looks scared, like you’ve broken an unspoken rule. “Kourtney…” she starts, and you feel it crash against you: shame, fear, rejection. The room suddenly feels too quiet and too loud all at once. She drops your hand. “Don’t,” you interrupt, sit the ice cream down, and move, off the counter, away from her. “I get it,” you say, the memory of every I just don’t see you that way flooding your mind. “It’s not that I don’t like you,” she replies, and you listen, hoping to make the lead ball in your stomach a little lighter. “I just… Being gay is a sin. Gay people go to Hell.” You’re surprised how quickly the anger blooms in your chest, rips across your face. Ire replaces hurt. “You kissed me. You hold my hand. What the fuck do you mean?” you spit, the rage in your words turning her head away, an invisible slap to her sensibilities. “It wasn’t like that,” she replies. You don’t believe her.

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65 outnumber doctor’s offices, libraries, and schools combined. Some preachers openly damn homosexuals to the eternal pits of hell, spin whole services around the sins of the gays and the destruction wrought to Traditional Family Values™. Your family’s chosen church takes the “Love the sinner, hate the sin,” approach, though still ban same sex unions within the actual congregations. Your family keeps their own opinions close to the chest, maybe sensing your own anti-religiousness/ likely queerness. There have been slips, though: your mother, stating your shortened haircut might “give the wrong impression;” your aunt, lamenting the Unitarian allowance of openly gay preachers; your great grandmother, on hearing the legalization of gay marriage by the US Supreme Court, asking, “Have you heard? The fags can marry now.” You’ll never come out to your family. But Melody knows, has always known, and has never minded. She’s asked why you’re attracted to the same sex; how did you know; have you kissed a girl; would you again. You remember Destiny and your own questions. You’re happy to answer them all. In her kitchen, Melody damns you, quotes Leviticus, smites you with God’s Will. “It’s just what I believe. Being gay…It’s not right,” she never looks at you. You feel sick. To leave, your mom needs to pick you up; your driver’s exam isn’t until Monday. You decide to walk the fastest way out of the house, grabbing your backpack on the way out the door. Melody follows you into the yard. “K… I’m sorry,” she says as you hit the end of her driveway. The streetlights are on, and your pet name on her lips turns your stomach. You look at her, shivering without her shoes on the cold front porch. She’s beautiful, and you swallow your shitty response and just leave.

Age: Location:SixteenBrothers

Pub The faded wood table tops at Brothers are scarred from years of lovers’ initials and “wuz here” reminders, and your fingers trace a mis shapen heart as you wait, nervously eyeing the dark doorway every few seconds. On the stage, a small area of elevation against the frosted glass

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66 of the front windows, your band mates stack amplifiers and arrange the drum kit, three teenage boys all sporting the same shaggy swoop hair of mid-2000s pop punk. You’re the only chick in the band, a bassist, and convinced you’ll be the next Kim Deal. When you load your car for practice, backseat barely fitting a full bass case, Mom warns you, “I know those boys are your friends, but be careful. Boys only care about one thing.” You just nod, pretend to hear her advice. On your drives, you wonder if she’ll like Sage.

Your relationship with Sage started much like with Sarah: lingering looks in AP English, a brush of the hand by the vending machines, a clumsy first kiss behind the field house. But on a group trip to the mall, her arm loops around your shoulder, fingers encircling yours in full view of your friends, strangers, and God, and you realize you love her. Before she takes your virginity, she kisses your nose and promises she’ll never “Whenleave.will your friend be here?” Mom asks, joining you in the cramped bar booth. Her question holds weight, the word friend feels thick, like she knows it’s a lie you’re both pretending to believe. Sage has yet to meet your family, as friend or other. You visit her place constantly, Sage’s mother almost an exact copy of her daughter, both with blinding white hair and cold blue eyes. When Sage asks about your family, you bristle, “You wouldn’t like them,” you offer and hope to avoid the truth: that you’ve never come out, that you’re hiding her, that you’re hiding yourself. But when Sage pouts her bottom lip, blinks down at you and begs to come watch one show, you’re powerless to say no. “Should be any minute,” you reply, flipping your phone open quickly for signs of a text. Briefly, you wonder if she bailed and realize you wouldn’t blame her. But the door dings and Sage is there, tall and beautiful in the dingy bar lights. You rise to meet her, hug her hard and fast before turning back to Mom, whose eyes flick between you both before she scoops Sage into a hug. Sage eyes you, questioning, and you can only“It’sshrug.great to meet you, Sage,” Mom says, voice full of truth. “Kourtney’s friends have never seen her play.” Again, friend is heavy, misplaced. Mom nods at both of you, says, “Well, I better get another beer before the show starts,” and leaves the booth to the two of you.

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67 CREATIVE NON-FICTION

boy’s.Age:

YourCollegeTwenty-ThreeTownBreweryboyfriend,Brandon,

Underneath the table, Sage’s converse bumps against your leg, a sneaky smile on her face as she mouths a silent, I love you. When your set for the night ends, you linger, wait for family and the band to clear out and lean against your old Mustang in the dark parking lot, slide the set list into Sage’s back pocket, and promise you’ll save her a seat at your nextWhenshow.she dumps you a week later, the two of you huddled in separate corners of her bedroom, she promises it’s not your fault. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she says. “ It’s just not working.” Days later, you spot her at the ice cream shop by the movie theater. You’re with Kaylee, your best friend. Seated on the same side of the booth as Sage is Troy, a senior, his fingers laced between hers on the tabletop. When they see you, you leave without ordering, cry in Kaylee’s passenger seat, and lament being left for a guy. “She probably faked it the whole time,” you bitch, throwing everything you know about your own sexuality away when judging another’s. Kaylee says nothing, a queer woman herself, and lets you vent. Driven by bitterness, you text Sage: “did we mean anything 2 u; with a dude srsly; liar liar liar.”

parks his tiny car at the back of your new job after offering to drive you to the first day of work. Not yet six-months together, and you adore him: his penchant for drawing diagrams on bar napkins, the way his elbow extends when you walk next to one another, ready for your grip. When you nervously invite him into your queer spaces, the pride parade, the drag bar, his easy acceptance make you love him more. A year from now, you’ll pack up the rent

You know Sage is your first love, and you force yourself to hate her. At school, your shoulder turns to ice, and you avoid her, ask teachers to change the seating chart to move you along the other wall, abandon your lunch spot in fear of seeing her hair, her eyes, her hand in a

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thanks,” he replies, jangles the jewelry a little and says, “I got it at Pride.” You latch onto the chance at connection, mention your own time at the parade, ask which bars he likes in the Gayborhood, the unofficial term for the mass of gay haunts off 39th Street in Oklahoma City. He squints at you now, eyes narrowing, scanning your frame.

“You’re gonna be great, babe,” he promises, and leans across the console to kiss you goodbye. “Call me when you’re finishing up, and we’ll grab some dinner. You look beautiful.”

“I thought you had a boyfriend,” he finally says. You feel the shift in his tone, the skepticism in his eyes. “I do,” you reply, shrink slightly under his gaze before offering the clarification, “I’m bisexual.”

You never imagined settling down with a cisgender, heterosexual man named Brandon. But it isn’t gender itself that attracts you to him, or anyone, something you’ve realized in 20-odd years of contemplating your sexuality. “I see people, not their junk,” is your automated reply when someone inquires to the extent of your queerness. The world around you has morphed, the word “gay” as slang for anything lame or eccentric falling away. You haven’t heard, “Smear the Queer,” in years. Sometimes, you ache for your younger self, wish to teleport back in time and promise her it will, in fact, get better. Inside the brewery, you follow closely behind the manager as she gives you the tour, introduces your coworkers. On meeting Michael, you notice the rainbow bracelet dangling from his wrist, and you com pliment“Ohit.

“But you’re with a guy,” he repeats, crossing his arms and cock ing his head slightly. You’re uncomfortable but feel the need to defend yourself and stutter, “Uh, yeah. I’ve dated mostly women until now.” You can tell he doesn’t believe you or just doesn’t care. “So, you’re basically straight,” he concludes, gaze accusatory. “Not really gay if you’re with a dude, ya know?” He looks away, back to work, and you realize the conversation is over. Your manager says nothing, only plays with her rings nervously before beckoning you to

68 house you share and follow him away from Oklahoma into the New Mexican desert; he understands your desire to evacuate the Bible Belt.

This is not the first time you’ve questioned your own queerness, felt your connection to the community slipping away, worried you no longer belong. Once at the bar, you overheard loud protests of the “rise of straights in queer spaces,” and turned to find a group of eyes focused on you. Guilt and shame drove you from your seat and out of the building. At Pride, you dropped Brandon’s hand, feared the hetero implication might out you as an impostor. In the bowels of the brewery, you worry Michael is right. When Brandon picks you up hours later, he notices your defla tion. “Did something happen?” he asks, worry lacing his voice. You hesitate to tell him, wonder if he, too, thinks you’re a fraud. “You know I like women too, right?” You ask abruptly, the ques tion spilling from your mouth. Brandon looks at you now, confused. “Of course, babe,” he responds, recognizing your need for a response.“Like, I’ve been in love with women. A few actually, but I still love you. You know that?” You’re home now, parked in the driveway, the crisp Oklahoma wind surging through the car’s open windows. Brandon’s hair waves, sun beaming off his light locks. “Kourtney, of course I know that. It’s not that difficult a concept to grasp,” he responds, voice serious and practical. He takes your hand, slightly squeezing, before finishing, “I’m fully aware of my girlfriend’s gayness.” You laugh now, loud and full, smile at him before releasing his hand and opening the car door. You look to Brandon, waiting for you in the front yard, and the affection burns heavy in your chest, hot and real, like that for Sage or Sarah but wiser now, stronger. On the porch, you take Brandon’s extended elbow, pull him close to your side and walk into your

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69 follow her as she finishes the tour. You’re quiet now, nodding politely as you pay half-attention.

At the end of sophomore year of high school, a man was shot and killed across the street from my soccer practice. We heard the eight sharp pops, but they didn’t sound like gunshots, they sounded like fireworks, or a blown-out tire. They sounded like what someone who has never heard real gunshots would mistake for one. We thought the worst-case scenario was a misfired BB gun. My coach blew his whistle, and we got back to practice until police sirens dripped down the street, red and blue flashing lights peeking through the mesh fence. The coaches called a water break and checked their phones. I heard them speak of two holes, one in the leg and one in the back. One coach thought the victim would live; the other said he was already too far gone.Practice ran from 8 to 9:30 at night. Even with summer stretch ing the hours of a suspended sun, the city darkened. Stadium lights illuminated the field but not the streets beyond, and across the street, a man was shot, and we didn’t know if he would live, and the lights flickered off five minutes before practice ended, and a man was killed, and I couldn’t see two feet in front of me, and two bullets entered a man, and if a third was headed my direction, I wouldn’t see it until it already shattered my skull. Later, leaked on the news: the victim was a senior in high school meant to graduate in a week. Printed programs for the graduation ceremony already bore his name. I wondered: Did they reprint the thousands of programs they handed out to friends and families of the class of 2021, or did the principal slash the victim’s name out but stumble over it when calling students up to receive their diplomas?

* * *

Part of public school is knowing how to huddle against the wall in fetal position, lock the doors, flick the lights off, and wonder if it was a drill or not. In seventh grade, the loudspeaker crackled on and said

CREATIVE NON-FICTION

70 Shot and Killed Natalie Hampton

That night, I dreamed I was a bullet shot and lodged into flesh.

Later that year, a sixth grader brought a gun to school, and no one ever figured out why. Rumors said she didn’t feel safe. Others said she wanted someone else not to feel safe. That night, I dreamed I was the gun and fired my intestines away in the midst of a shooter drill, to avoid the killer that the admin clearly anticipated one of us becoming. Half of school shootings are committed by current or former students.

Every time I turn on the news, I hear about another shooting. I read about them on my phone through texts and social media. My friend goes to a local high school five miles away, and she texted me after class that someone was killed in the building, and I thought there was a typo, but when I opened Snapchat, her private story documented a body being carried away, the blood flowing from his ribcage—the only part of him moving.

Students panicked and joked—made Tik Toks but couldn’t hide the tension digging knots into their shoulders. My history teacher grabbed a baseball bat and stood to the side of the door like he was King Arthur and the bat was Excalibur. The police detained the shooter with no injuries, and we went back to our classes.

71 there was an active shooter in the area and we had to shelter in place.

At a school four miles in the opposite direction ( this is not an isolated incident), a fourth of the grade missed 2020’s first week of classes because someone threatened to shoot the whole school up. No one went through with it, but I wonder how many considered it. How many packed guns in their backpacks? Maybe some needed them to feel safe at school, to feel safe on their walk home, to feel safe in their neighborhood. But how many brought them just to reach down and feel the metal and know they had the power to shatter bodies with the press of a finger? At school, I fear dying in ways beyond a bullet to the brain. In fifth grade, the morning before a graduation rehearsal, bomb threats were sent to schools across my district. In 2016, killer clowns appeared around the country, and classrooms with windows facing out to the east side of my middle school said they saw a balloon gripped in the hand of a man with white paint smeared across his face, dressed in red and yellow and blue. No one raised hell about these killer clowns besides the occasional article in small publications, and I never understood why.

CREATIVE NON-FICTION

* *

Here’s the base version: I’m at school when the intruder alarm sounds. The building collapses into lockdown, and everyone is shaking. Someone is in the corner crying. The lights are off, voices are silenced, and the door is locked. Except… we hear it rattle, and the teacher cannot remember if she heard the click when locking it. The knob

CREATIVE NON-FICTION

I’m sure the people who died would have liked more than an obscure obituary in a local press.

Now, I go to school downtown, and when I park a block away, I fear my surroundings the entire walk to the building. I try to avoid leaving the car until there aren’t any adult men loitering, but when I’m running late, I have no choice but to pay at the meter and hope I won’t be a news story: teenage girl murdered, teenage girl kidnapped, teenage girl raped. Once when I was leaving my car, a man with an aging beard and dark eyes approached and told me the meter was broken and I could pay by giving him my credit card. He stepped closer, and I saw his fingers twitching. My hands fisted at my side, anxious nails trying to dig holes through my palms until they were windows. Behind him, others were using the meter to pay without problem, but he was twice my size, and if I called him out on the lie, I risked his anger and I risked what that anger could do to me. I said I would pay from the app on my phone—I knew in theory that was possible—and the entire time as I sat in my car and Googled WikiHow tutorials, he lingered in the parking lot, and I wondered what would happen if he decided he wanted to see my credit card again–or me. * When I fall asleep, I make up scenarios in my head, and these conscious ideas seep into my dreams. Normally, I’m the protagonist of a dramatic coming-of-age movie. I have to convince myself the scenarios are realistic, even when they’re far from it. So, never any magic, never any movie star moments, but I can assist Rose Lavelle’s Olympic winning soccer goal, because I can trick myself into thinking that’s a realistic possibility. It’s a game of fooling the mind. There’s one sce nario, though, that keeps popping back up in my head, and I certainly didn’t wish to put it there.

73 turns and footsteps enter. The rest of the class is following protocol and huddled in the corner, but I’m not. I’m to the side of the door so no one can see me through the hallway window until they enter. The intruder steps in and points his gun up, preparing to bury bullets in the dip between our eyebrows, the bump over our heart, and here the versionInsplinters.one,Itackle the intruder to the ground and the gun clatters out of his hand with the impact, and we are all safe. My only damage is a keepsake bruise to remember. Police come and handcuff him; national news headlines are dedicated to me. I am a hero. But in another version, I’m too late. The man shoots me and moves on to the rest of the class to spray them with metal implants. And when I see them fall to the ground, I think of that high school senior killed by my soccer practice. Like him, in my dream, I will die young and never walk across my high school graduation stage. But at least I can wake up from this

CREATIVEdream. NON-FICTION

This piece is inspired by tarot card artworks and a painterly looking portrait style as seen in popular culture. I drew this piece to embody the feel ing on missing someone who is locked in your past. I believe this piece would fit your literary journal because nostalgia is an emotion hard to describe, sometimes it takes the form of a person’s euphoric past and sometimes it comes as the ghosts of one’s past begging you to move on

The Illusion of Choice Robin Gillespie

Knives Vanessa Merritt Knives is a mixed media photographic piece by Vanessa Merritt that explores relationship dynamics during the ending of a romantic relationship. The artwork expresses the enduring affection and care that still lingers between ex-partners despite mutual feelings of heartbreak and betrayal.

76 POETRY Emancipation

The Mother Goddess is coming together With the God of Mountains, Consuming my form and liberating me From prison.

Nidhi Agrawal My eyes brim with the weight of dusk, Emotions conflagrate in my heart Burning the corpse without fuel. This dawn, I am returning to my house To constellate my belongings. The entrance is clouded by the Scattered scars of my childhood, Every drawer is sealed with the secrets of My Today,disappointments.Iletgoofmyfailures and rise From the floor, As soot rises from the throat. With every effort to clean the house My spine travels to the nucleus of my brain Showing me the way to the bedroom. At the bedroom’s door, I stand startled by the view.

77 POETRY

Tasteless Shines and Anguish Crimson

David M. Alper That the eye pulls in the realization of what the soul senses with horror and denial. Only I wasn’t born yet. I was a bolt out of the brain, thinking and living and improvising on instinct. I would dream that to be touched by someone would literally kill me, that I would feel my throat tear open, my heart flutter in my chest, organs fall like bricks, to be staggered by so much measurement. It would take a while for me to feel safe in my own skin, alone and with my self.

The weight of the world and how a walk in the woods can calm me

- News off, still my mind regurgitates: Washington infighting, and partisan stalemates continue, continue, continue

Yellow leaves spin around me in a spiraling dance of death and rebirth

A red-tail hawk soars above my head and dives south toward the line of pine trees

- Haitians living under a bridge in Texas, are being sent back to t heir native island. My mind reels and I decide to leave early in the pitch black to walk around the lake to watch the sun rise

- Equity: One blond-haired, white woman goes missing and the media devotes hours of news coverage while endless amounts of brown-skinned women around the world suffer and die in droves and get none POETRY

- News continues in the car: women in Afghanistan fighting for their lives under the Taliban. Women across the country are still fighting for reproductive freedom.

- Fire, Flooding, Famine: Every new day brings reports of weather catastrophes and the evidence of global warming, like a bomb that ticks louder before the explosion

Nicole Farmer Cup of tea in hand I am listening to NPR this morning before I dash off to work

It’s the first day of Fall and as if on cue, cool winds blow into the mountains and the temperature drops twenty degrees

Towering ancient oak, sycamore, and maple trees loom above me offering a canopy of comfort and shelter

How can I, one small person on Earth, absorb all this chaos and how can I help? I ask the trees

- Inequality: Civil war in Ethiopia creates the world’s worst food shortage. A pink sky bleeds across the horizon and I take in long deep breaths and slow my pace

POETRY

- Greed: Third world nations suffer because first world govern ments refuse to share their Covid-19 vaccinations

I will do the best I can, starting with showing myself and everyone I encounter love and compassion One foot in front of the other I have arrived at my car and continue to work.

- Let go, let go, let go……………. Standing perfectly still, I stop and listen to the sound of the wind in the trees, raise my eyes up to the tops and watch the limbs bob and bounce-Today

80 Misunderstandings

Lauren Wilkin The interplay between cognition and culture: A study of micro interactions. The sentiment of a fire— I have never been a fire, I have never been on fire, I do not understand it on a cellular level. But I can tell you how it feels. This is fire for me. Do you see it? The type of cold that goes into your bones— I have never been in my bones, I have never seen in my bones, I don’t understand it on an osteological level. But I can tell you how it feels. This is freezing for me. Can you feel it? The state or quality of permanence— I have never been permanent, I have never felt permanent, I don’t understand it on a horological level. But I can tell you how it feels. It goes on forever. Did you know that? Things that must be taken seriously— I have never been serious, I have never felt serious, I don’t understand it on a psychological level. But I can tell you how it feels. This feels serious. ISeriously.wantto dissolve in a bathtub.POETRY

Distorted Requiem Charlotte Gutzmer And the neon lights flicker. And I’m tying strings to your wrists, lifting the swollen joints in a symphony of frenzy and sickness. And we dance again, this time to the silence of sky, an empty promise of stars and God. Has your shadow given up yet, stalking me across dreamscapes and galaxies?

I was never beside you. Only tied down, only rotting, only trapped in lucid fantasies. I rip my roots from matted soil, mottled graves that have known my name for centuries. You can continue to pray. I don’t mind. Beg me for forgiveness, beg me to look away again. I take a bite of my heart and burn like I never have before.

POETRY

The Increase Between Two Distances James Croal Jackson I’d like to think there’s order to the universe (says every astrophysicist) so I drink at Brillobox, then expand out into the river region, & into the river itself with broken bottle among dead husks of beetles. I float fast, staring at the cloudless sky of stars thinking what a waste right now it’d be to pray to Jesus with all this dirty beauty in the air. You’ve read my diary, you know my secrets, you see where my thoughts wander when left unattended (black crows drowning, strawberry lips & gin & everyone you have ever known). My clothes waft that cigarette scent, but in the water, I launder myself in the cycle of time & thus, I am a pendulum, swinging in the dark.

POETRY

Don’t worry when the clouds slink in. Most days, you will not peel your oranges in one smooth, clean cleave of skin. It won’t always feel like getting better.

83 POETRY How to Part from Sadness Eden Copeland At times, you will not be able to remember why you started, or when. The world will shift over your life like tectonic plates, inevitable, necessary –and you will remain standing under its body, fish-mouthed, unable to move.

But I will tell you that there is joy in spite of its absence. Maybe it has hidden itself, for a little while. Open a window. Let the copper-bellied trees And the softening wind teaches your limbs to walk again. It will come back for you.

I’ve survived entire days three feet at a time, sometimes two feet, just me and an orange pillow clutched to my chest, nerves gnawed by something jangling in my brain. Sometimes one, me in my pulled-over blanket kingdom of darkness.

POETRY

84 Sanctuary Brian Builta I’ve grown to love the three feet in front of me, all that space I’m about to inherit, dust bunny, blue cup, candlelight with crackling at the edges.

Then, driving to work, I see a yellow butterfly drunk on breeze, bumbling into traffic and that makes me feel less doomed, less likely to be caught in a meteor shower. Then, lying in bed, I hear the distant night train whistle and am comforted, the engineer not wanting to butterfly a Toyota or a stray rabid poodle as he powers through town. When it’s too quiet, my wheat goes galloping through a brain field and I end up back at the ER, where the staff was silent when we went back to see him–worst day of our lives, for them just another Thursday in June. Now I can’t sleep. There’s lurching in my head. We’ve lost the sensitivity that keeps us from avalanching each other. Not a bird is singing and now my mood is soggy crackers. I close my eyes. There are zero feet in front of me. I’m inside myself in the dark. I stick my fingers in my ears

85 POETRY hear the low hum of him, who doesn’t say a word. All he does is hum a sound that’s always been there, a sound that has never abandoned me so far.

Brian Builta In the counselor’s office, my umpteenth session, and he’s talking about his marriage, which just death-do-we-parted four months earlier. He misses his wife and is talking about the life they built together, something separate from their individual lives, which he calls their we-ness–the state of being a we rather than two me’s. The we-ness takes me off guard. My son and daughter used to love saying the word weenus, which they claimed is the fiddle of skin under the elbow but in reality, is a made-up word that sounds like penis. The counselor won’t stop using the word weenus so now I’m not listen ing, all my energy devoted to not laughing, not making light of this man and his embers, but it feels good to hear a grown man, a doctor of philosophy, saying weenus again and again, both of us on the verge of tears. I think how my son would enjoy this moment, his junior high mentality validated by a doctor in a session about his suicide, so much deathtalk culminating in we-ness. fly feet patter across expanse of epidermis–I scratch my

POETRYweenus

86 We-ness

87 POETRY

88 Postcards Home Bi Pickard

My series, Postcards Home, is a set of photographs taken over the course of the last seven years and will continue to be worked on indefinitely. The two photos you’re seeing are from my indefinite project, a series dedicated to my mother, Postcards Home; a set of photographs I’ve taken traveling every corner of the United States to show my mom the life she never got to have. I’ve spent years exploring and these two places are in Southern California, which is probably my favorite place to revisit. It’s gritty and weird but also so beautiful. It’s oddity and mystery brings a charming aspect to this project that really inspired the whole thing. You never know if you’re going to be seeing a beautiful beach or if you’ll stumble upon abandoned appliances in the middle of the desert.

THEMED DOSSIER: NOSTALGIA

Themed Dossier Anounthemed dossier is a collection of artistic pieces, written or visual, connected by a central idea. Our themed dossier, Nostalgia, focuses on the moments and times in our lives that have shaped our identities. It is an opportunity to reflect on various forms of childhood memories, moments from adult hood, and everything in between. A genuine adoration for the people, places, and instances where we felt content allows us to embrace our authentic selves and inspire us to create more experiences worth remembering. Nostalgia is not meant to glorify the past or disregard the present, but rather to foster tenderness in circumstances where it may otherwise be absent.

4. Ramble through the hills of your ill-favored images, until the ambiguity of the past no longer intimidates you. Step into the shad ows trusting that there is an exit. You are the background noise of wistful bliss. You are your own compass and lantern-holder.

A Spell for Drowning Ghosts

91 THEMED DOSSIER: NOSTALGIA

2. Fill up the bathtub and wash your sheets, dipping them until the invisible lover unfurls her fingers and lets go. Invest in a new pillow. In the afternoons, sleep will dance across your heavy lids. It will not last until evening.

3. Place a candle in the lopsided clay mug you made in sixth grade. Strike a match, and allow it to burn out. Strike a second match and blow it out yourself.

5. In the landscape of your being is a gash. Sketch its outline into the sand, tracing the sound of its echo bouncing back.

6. List your fears, first silent, then aloud.

Hailey Spencer

1. Slip the dagger from your hand and rest it against your diminished hip bones. Your body maps an undiscovered landscape, vast and full of dragons. Ragged nails dig in against the skin.

warm.THEMED DOSSIER: NOSTALGIA

Residue Rex Ybañez I have walked through many lives, transmuted my soul into new outfits and bodies, and have pressed myself into this existence— every year has taken a piece, whether I have left some trace of self onto the stones I’ve gripped on mountains, dropped from my pockets into the darkness I had once kissed, or slipped away from myself, a leaf in the wind. Everything I do is like a handprint, some thread woven into the patchwork of time and space, residue left over from the times chalk has outlined where I have walked through thresholds and climbed out of shells. Now the people I have come upon in this world, they have been stained by my colors passing through me, seeing what I harbor inside the house of my heart, and I wait to see how they build theirs and watch what hearths keep them

93 THEMED DOSSIER: NOSTALGIA Sounds of the Air from a Lighthouse Chris Vallejo Villegas

94 to remember the future, after Bernadette Mayer BEE LB first, hope. we skip the wings, the leap, the stretch. get right into the meat of it. dig in. dig up. these hands dirtied by the flesh of the earth. we spindle and fall as life reaches through us. pushing us along towards this great big anything. wait. sit silent and listen as the sound of life rushes through. this// future unfolds second by second fall into it. a tumble of excitement. remember your heart, the rush of blood permitting you forward. the heart takes in, the heart lets go, grotesque in its inevitability a second unfolds into a lifetime, each heartstring unwound from the hand it was tied to; each barb of emotion detached from the tongue of sound then,// touch. this remembrance tasting best. lips against lips against love against need. the body knows, it does, it reaches for want, it holds tight. THEMED DOSSIER: NOSTALGIA

95 the body knows and the mind follows behind, small questions slip through, answers unfold from tongues. yes, we are here. yes, we are held. yes, this future remembered has hands enough to hold it all. THEMED DOSSIER: NOSTALGIA

The Emotional Weight of Space: Symmetry in Chaos

I dreamed of someday moving into a home where I could create custom playsets like the ones in the Sunset book for children’s rooms and play yards, where I could realize just one of those possibilities for myself, for my future children. At the time, my mother and I shared a vision for houses and homes. Hers was focused on interiors, soft furnishings like bedspreads and canopies. Mine was turned toward the structure, the framework of the house. We lived in a mass-produced home built on a pile of dirt providing an illusion of sitting atop a hill, it was indistinct, maybe a little flimsily constructed.

96 THEMED DOSSIER: NOSTALGIA

Leslie Lindsay The wallpaper books and Architectural Digests belonged to my mother. They were splayed out in her basement workroom, where a giant homemade wood and canvas table allowed her to measure and cut fabric. I liked to peruse their pages on my own, legs tucked to my chin as she snipped at fabric. As a 10-year-old kid with a vivid imagination and an aptitude for the visual arts, I’d long paid attention to space and aesthetics. I enjoyed color and pattern and how things fit together. I often located everyday objects—the bottom of a glass, a coil from a telephone cord—and placed them over something else—a braided drapery tassel or a circle on the cover of a book, just because they seemed the right size and shape. But seeing others’ visions opened my eyes to a world of possibilities. Home didn’t have to compromise the suburbs; it didn’t have to resemble the smoke-filled basement with rickety steps where my mother labored over Jabots and dust ruffles for rich people. It could be intentional, a place built on love and nurturing, which, despite the appearances where I lived with my interior decora tor mother, businessman father, and baby sister, was not.

The two upstairs windows, although side by side, were slightly different sizes. The front door was not in the middle of the house as my childhood drawings depicted, but to the left. The lack of symmetry bothered me.

I presented ideas of in-ground pools, a loft above my bedroom. I suggested a room constructed over the garage. My mother took a puff of her cigarette and let the ash sully the material she was coaxing into draperies. “No,” she said. The pitch of the roof wouldn’t sustain that. Windows were costly. “And a pool?! Do you think we’re made of money?”

The precise moment of her downfall, her descent into madness, continues to elude me. Was it when my baby sister was born, two years prior, and my mother was wildly disappointed she wasn’t a boy, and refused to hold, or even name her? Was it undiagnosed and untreated postpartum depression that morphed into something more terrifyingly indistinguishable, or the so-called forced hysterectomy at twenty-nine? Speculation swirled that the marriage was rocky and troubled with rumors of indiscretion, that trysts had been ongoing for years. There were more sordid notions of sex clubs and swinging, cocaine, mari juana, the worry that AIDS was infiltrating her veins.

The words all ran together—your mom is manic-depressive—it was one of those nonsensical statements adults said, akin to utility bills and furnace filters. What I noticed was the use of the phrase, your mom, as if she were now solely my responsibility. I rolled the words around on my tongue. Manic-depressive. It didn’t mean much to me. Except she was often there and not there.

I asked questions, “Could we get new windows so they are the same size? Could we replace the picture window with a bay window?”

The Sunset book stared up at me, mothers on their knees, adoring their cherubic children in gorgeous play spaces, a desk perched on a carpeted pedestal, puppet theaters and fire poles.

The space between my mother’s eyes puckered. She assessed her measurements and pulled pins from her mouth, piercing the fabric. “Keep dreaming,” she said. Would it be imprudent to say that my mother worked in a fin ished basement, below, whereas I dreamed of airy spaces, not bogged down by heaviness or detritus?

97 THEMED DOSSIER: NOSTALGIA

At the time, my mother was struggling. As a child, I knew some thing was off but not enough to know what to call it.

98 * * *

THEMED DOSSIER: NOSTALGIA

At the height of her interior decorating business, my mother was hired by a major home developer to beautify their model homes. She had a handful of private clients, too, whose homes were tucked on winding lanes complete with spires and circle drives, breeze ways, maid’s quarters, and swimming pools. They had custom playsets for their children, indoor basketball courts, slides descending to lower-level rec rooms, things beyond even the Sunset book, wildly out-of-grasp, unable to become anyone else’s reality, and certainly not ours.

Could it be that my mother saw all that was possible in the world of home interiors and compared it to what she had: a basic three-bed room two-story, that she—and the house—crumbled?

Once, as a nine-year old, I was forced to break into the base ment window after school, scaling bolts of fabric and toppling piles of decorating books. The front door was locked and my mother was nowhere to be found. Why wasn’t she home coaxing luxury interiors into existence? Years later, I discovered that she drove two hours away to have an Maybeaffair.that’s when I began questioning the structure and framework of our home, the symmetrical tidiness of two parents, two children, one house? Perhaps that’s when I surmised everything she did was a façade.

* * *

Another alternative was to blame my mother’s family of origin was to blame. It was a combination of factors: the affairs, the drugs, her friends—if any remained—along with her genetics; her chemical make-up. Psychology tells us that family of origin accounts for some degree of downfall. My mother’s parents remained married, but the union was never happy. Physical altercations erupted frequently. There are stories that my mother and her siblings were locked in closets for hours on end. Allegedly, my grandmother backed the car onto my young uncle, shattering his arm. Additional broken bones, mysterious illnesses and surgeries for naught crept into the family narrative. My mother recalled excruciating headaches treated with what was then referred

Troubling, still was the fact that my mother’s sister had an abor tion at fourteen, a child at sixteen, and another at eighteen, married the father, lived in a trailer home in the family’s backyard, and them was divorced less than two years later. All along, my mother was charming and delightful, rivaling Hollywood starlets. At her height, she was seductive, perhaps fatal; both men and women fell under her spell. Again, I question what triggered her descent into psychosis. What tipped the scales that summer of my tenth year, when she believed she was an angel of mercy and refused clothing? What led her to believe my father’s watch was a time bomb, or that the sun was God?

99 to as pulverization and complete darkness. She had the measles and mumps at the same time, keeping her out of school for weeks. A bike incident has my young mother blacking out and crashing into a parked car. She claimed she tried killing herself by jumping from her first-floor bedroom window at the age of seven, only to be humiliated by her family that it wasn’t far enough to create any lasting effects. Others referred to my child-mother as defiantly a contrarian. There was one account disemboweling a cat. Another alleges she set an empty home on fire, “just to see what would happen.” And that neighbor’s cat? She said Something about the owner sexually abusing my mother and her response, “Well, someone had to die.”

THEMED DOSSIER: NOSTALGIA

The Sunset book taunted. Rage burbled within. Yet the joy of creating somehow sustained me. I slipped the book from the stack and retreated to my bedroom. I studied the spaces and faces, sun rooms and sand pits; it all seemed tangible, within reach. I pressed pencil graph paper and began to draw. I heard my mother’s voice, “You get your art skills from me, you know.” She always took credit for any aptitude I possessed that she perceived reflected well onWithher.my mother tucked away at the psychiatric hospital, a place she detested and spoke about having barbaric treatments, straight-jackets,

My mother was hospitalized. Clients were notified. The work room fell into disarray. Invoices went unpaid. Suppliers never received payment. Bolts of fabric resembled cadavers wrapped in plastic. As a child, the teetering pile of decorating books beckoned. I crept into the basement.

I shifted my efforts to designing houses, drafting floorplans of modern suburban monstrosities containing all the elements I found enduring: corner sinks, atriums, bay windows. The origin of each floor plan began with the solid and distinct outline of a three-or-four car garage. They were stable, designed to last generations. For years, I labored over my floor plans and imaginary devel opments, complete with maps and roads, cul-de-sacs, plots and plats. Each model had a name: The Oakwood, The Savannah, and so forth. I created wooded spaces and community centers, walking trails, even sales brochures. How could anyone be unhappy—ill—in an ideal com munity like Oakwood Farms? I shifted my gaze to my mother’s childhood home, how it was constructed, what the interior spaces consisted of. Did the walls curve and bow? What insubstantial, faulty construction contributed to my

I would be wrong not to say I wished my mother would have created a space like this for me. In reality, she was unable to see beyond her ownMypain.mother was not just manic-depressive, she was ill. Those words, at least in this context, were somehow worse than manic-de pressive. Your mother is ill. It surpassed anything temporary, as a child might be sick with the flu; it was now chronic. My mother’s situation was lingering, long-standing, ringed with darkness. * * *

wrong to say these play spaces are temporary? That the children who crawl through these tunnels and tuck into the corners with books or blocks or puppet shows will move on to something else? Was I creating something that would undeniably be replaced with something more…substantial?

The bedrooms and play structures in the Sunset book were bright, bold, vibrant; And yet my mother was lit by dread, obscurity, mysteriousness.Woulditbe

100 and rubber rooms, I drew my own sanctuaries. Imagination was my vice, a coping mechanism that was not only an escape, but also func tional. I needed a nurturing place. Falling into the color photographs of vaulted rooms painted with giant trees and portholes to oceanic voyages, were exactly what I craved.

THEMED DOSSIER: NOSTALGIA

101 mother’s worldview, her downfall? Did the home somehow incubate a toxicity? I knew my grandfather’s stained-glass windows, custom cabinets, and closets. Was this his way of compartmentalizing the worry and dysfunction permeating his family? Perhaps the cabinets and win dows were his version of the Sunset book, of escaping the realities of his marriage, his mal-adjusted children.***

The floorplans saw me through my parent’s divorce, the failed joint-custody arrangement, my mother’s myriad hospitalizations, our fall-out when I announced, at fourteen, that I could no longer live under her roof, even if only every-other-week. The floorplans provided a framework for my emotions, created space for my ideals, and allowed an examination for what I perceived as normalcy.

I became a child/adolescent psychiatric R.N. Were the similar ities striking to my childhood aspirations? Influenced by my mother? I didn’t think so. * * *

At the child/adolescent psych unit, there were captain beds like in the Sunset book, yellow play yards and blue mats for tumbling and frolicking. Fish swam languidly in a thick-walled, unbreakable tank. If

THEMED DOSSIER: NOSTALGIA

A house. A home. Four walls. Stability. When did the floorplans no longer serve me? It might have been junior year in high school, when my chemistry teacher suggested a career in architecture, because I drew floorplans in his class. Mr. Morrison met with me before school in the library to assist with the intricate balance of chemical equations I couldn’t seem to grasp, the moving of molecules and digits, letters and arrows. The process was mind-boggling, the irony not lost. Frustration ensued, for us both.

“Who said you were no good at this?” he’d demand. “No one,” I shook my head. “Someone did,” he said. I could not stabilize my mother’s chemical imbalance. Numbers terrified me. A career in architecture was off-the-table. It was too sim ilar to interior design, the career my mother held.

102 you happened to be a mother, you were also a nurse. Nurses are competent. On the unit I worked within the parameters of hospital notes, assessments, diagnoses, and treatment plans. For a while, this sated me. And then I married. We purchased our first home. Two-stories, Four bedrooms, a center staircase. The front door was in the middle. It looked like a house was supposed to look; it was symmetrical. I marveled at the potential of space and light, the walls as inviting as a blank canvas.Istarted sketching again. I made lists of where to hang art, what pieces of furniture to purchase, the flow of drapes. I painted walls and doors and ordered rugs and drove to and from work. I worked nights and slept in the daytime, dreaming of children to fill those bedrooms. While pregnant with my first baby, I rendered ideas on blank sheets of paper, filling the emptiness of an upstairs bedroom with built-in bookshelves, a window seat, and placing objects on this eras able pencil shelf: dolls and blocks, books, and dollhouses. We imagined a green and gold landscape mural if the baby were a boy, complete with model airplanes traversing the ceiling, which, of course, we’d paint blue. Could the memory of my childhood home be demolished? I thought that by moving away, it would. Still, a brick remained lodged in my throat. In Minnesota, I had no roots, just the brick, and brittle beams of scaffolding. The brick became silence. The beams, a tenuous framework, a narrative I must uphold. The decorating book of my childhood was long-gone, and so was my mentally ill mother. But somehow, I still wanted the book. Here, I played on the fuzzy outlines of marginalia, where at once I was immersed in my art, but also raging against the unjust circumstances of my mother’s madness. I longed for the innocence of childhood while forging forward. Was it possible to extricate the brick, bury it in order to speak? Could I split the beams into fragments to lighten the load?

I told my husband about the Sunset book. We searched in vain for one like it at the local bookstore, but no luck. I found something similar, a newer edition for the aughts. The rooms were too frilly, too pastely. It lacked the whimsy and wonderment of the book of my youth, which was no doubt captured in the seventies. Where were the arched

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Mirrored: the other side. It’s been over six years since my mother’s death. Our daughters

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And still, that duplex, a place I never lived, was never symmetri cal, barring the fact that it mirrored the unit on the other side.

The baby was perfect. A girl, and then, two years later, another perfect baby girl. We had two nurseries, four bedrooms, two-stories. AndSymmetry.thestories, they couldn’t have been more different.

I carried the not-quite Sunset book with me like a talisman, to the coffee shop, to my night shifts. I held out hope that it would be the charm that protected me from a similar breakdown.

* * * We never found the Sunset book. Not when my mother’s body was discovered, weeks later, on her bed, in her duplex. We didn’t actually sift through her belongings. The book could have been there, buried in the debris of her sewing room, among the books about the color of her parachute or the blue spelling dictionary.

103 doorways and inviting arcs? The carpeted walls? Where were the mothers on the floor, hands clasped in anticipation?“It’sprobably with your mom’s stuff,” my husband said. “If it still exists.”Ididn’t want the stuff of my mother to exist, but I wanted the book.

Those images and ideals, like my mother, became a remnant of what used to be. They would have to live in my mind, a construction of childhood awe, as my fantasy mother did. I was nearing the age my mother was when she had her break down. By design I chose to do things differently. Still, the worry that I’d experience her destiny plagued me. Was thirty the magic number? Was it childbirth? The postpartum period? We still didn’t know what exactly tipped the scales, devolving her into psychosis that ill-fated summer.

If the trigger for my mother’s devolve was childbirth, it wasn’t the same for me. As with all new mothers, I struggled to find footing, lacked sleep, felt weepy at times, but it was nothing compared to my mother’s florid psychosis.

104 are teenagers. They have outgrown their nurseries and spaces of their early childhood...book nooks, treehouses, easels, all dismantled, their remains forever entombed in the crawlspace of memory. And still, I think of that Sunset book. I insinuate myself into the pages, play at the corners of benches and ledges. While structured, they are also soft, pliable: a sanctuary. I’ve carried that book—those spaces, that house, my mother—my whole life. Sometimes I wonder: can you bury something with no body? * * *

One day, the book mysteriously arrived at our house. Did I order this? It’s dog-eared. A faded price tag peeled at the edges. The spine is dinged. The copyright is 1980. I page through, seeking a note, a receipt, something. I see the smiling mother and find her too idealistic, too young.Iglance at the children with sock puppets behind homemade theaters in paneled bedrooms; their imagination waiting to explode into pockets of hope. The mother, in a tweed blazer, knees tucked under her body, hands clasped on her lap, is anticipating the ending her children will devise. This mother, she will outlive us all, folded into that book, just waiting to clap.

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been born lies the desire to pioneer across the depleted liminal skies i have yet to discern from one another [but that is the very best part] there are astronauts&brothers&birds and i am endless and i am trapped in an instrumental version of my very darkest dreams [i have been strewn in ivy, i am almost medusa] and i do not even know what i am writing, for how can i be melodious if i cannot even recall the chords? but at least i do not want to die anymore— yes, my lust for the kind of love i wish i had shown myself is too strong [oh yes] it drowns out the too-tight corsets and bleeding newspapers i wrote of when i was reeking with the hurt of being the thing that i wish i’d never become i write my best when i am breast-deep in darkness—but all i ever wanted was to be pulled into the light

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[almost] healed Jillian Thomas buried underneath oflayers&layers&layersthewishingihadnever

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Water Water, Cleanse Your Daughter

A portrait is always a self-portrait in some way. There is never only the subject, but what the artist reflects upon the subject also. I wanted to disappear, dissolve, melt in the water. A dying Ophelia. A state of mind I allowed to seep into my portraiture. A blissful state after the agony of life. An insane desire for release, purification, and the return to the mother universe, the water, the unconscious. Because when you are in those dark places, doesn’t everything take on a paral lel meaning? And what is more dualistic than water? It is not only life, birth, newness, the beginning, but also endlessness, darkness, loss, death, the abyss. A mother, but an unforgivingUnitingmother.withthe women I photographed helped a lot. They felt me, I felt them. An exchange beyond time for print. There was always a mutual understanding, together bearing the load, and in that we were both in front of and behind the camera, on the shore and under the waves. And what better medium than photography to capture both this woman and the water around her? The power and grace of both, the ethereality and relentlessness of both, and their potential for both creation and destruction, instantly captured, impossibly still, with a flash of light, captured in their own reality, their own dimen sion, where time is stopped, along with the flowing of the river, the wind silenced, the petals falling from the flowers suspended, where there is no life, but there is no death either.

Karyna Aslanova

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Htet San Metamorphosis is a project inspired by a poem I wrote in 2005, 16 years ago. I wrote my poems in my teenage years on a black book with silver ink. Right now at this age, when I re-read my poems, I feel a sense of Reminiscence about who I was and who I have become. It’s somewhat a contemplative and meditative process of re-exploring myself and the thoughts I had 16 years ago to my mid-30s right now, analyzing the course of the journey I have walked… through space and time.

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Metamorphosis

CONTRIBUTOR’S

KARYNA ASLANOVA is a Kyiv-born Ukrainian multimedia artist, director, and photographer. Karyna studied Theatre Directing at The National Academy of Government Managerial Staff of Culture and Arts, Kyiv, Ukraine. Although pho tography is her principle medium, Karyna also uses video, painting and illustration, and poetry to further her exploration into a multitude of subjects. Karyna’s art photography projects often use other-worldly imagery to reflect modern social issues, with a vague but familiar base note perceptible through a haze of the strange and incongruous. karynaaslanova@gmail.com, Instagram @azlanova, Model @lyoli_kei BRIAN BUILTA lives in Arlington, Texas, and works at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. He has recently published poems in Jabberwock Review, Juke Joint Magazine, Rabid Oak, Triggerfish Critical Review and South Florida Poetry Journal, with poems forthcoming in New Ohio Review, DASH Literary Journal and Plainsongs.DOMÎNO

M. CADIEUX is a singer, multi-instrumentalist, queer freak, and activist based in Portland, OR. Their work is highly informed by music, memory, and the fluidity of identity and place. Over the past two years, their work has grown to reflect adaptive qualities of isolation, both beneficial and painful, as well as what at times feels like limitless stillness against a backdrop of relentless anxiety. Their poetry and/or creative non-fiction has been published in Coffin Bell, The Esthetic Apostle, & The Pointed Circle, among others. Their music has been featured, played, and performed internationally. Their most recent project can be found at nyxdivision.bandcamp.com

NOTES NIDHI AGRAWAL grew up in India. Her work has appeared in various pub lications including, North Dakota Quarterly, Xavier Review Press, California State Poetry Society, and Yale University, University of Tennessee, Chronogram Media, and South Asian Today

. Nidhi’s work stems from the distinct theories illustrated in the religious texts such as Vedas and Puranas. She has worked on the concept of Ardhanareeswara, psy chological disorders and her pieces are coordinated amicably with different subjects such as natural disasters, agony, complex realism and profound affairs of day to day life. Subsequently, she writes as she talks to God! Nidhi is a distal pancreatectomy survivor and is in the pink with an atrophic pancreas also diagnosed with diabetes & mild scoliosis.DAVID M. ALPER’s forthcoming poetry collection is Hush. His work appears in Invisible City, Unbound Brooklyn, Mortal Mag, and elsewhere. He teaches in New York City.

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REID COOPER is an artist based in Chicago, IL and current student at Lane Tech.

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ROBIN GILLESPIE is a 16 year old, Filipino artist, based in Chicago. She has been doing art since she could hold a pen. Besides art, she enjoys coxing for their school’s rowing team and listening to music.

NATALIE HAMPTON is a junior at the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in the Creative Writing Department. She is a 2022 YoungArts Finalist in Creative Nonfiction and a Scholastic Gold Medalist. Beyond writing, she enjoys playing soccer, working in activism, and volunteering with individuals with disabilities. Her work is heavily inspired by her brother with a disability and his passing in 2019. She is also the founder of Special Siblings Connect, a nonprofit designed to support siblings of those with

NICOLE FARMER is a reading tutor living in Asheville, NC. Her poems have been published in The Closed Eye Open , The Amistad , Quillkeepers Press, Capsule Stories, Haunted Waters Press, Sheepshead Review, Roadrunner Review, Wild Roof Journal , Bacopa Literary Review, Great Smokies Review, Kakalak Review, 86 Logic, Wingless Dreamer, Inlandia Review, In Parentheses, and others. Nicole was awarded the First Prize in Prose Poetry from the Bacopa Literary Review in 2020 and has just finished her first chap book entitled ‘Wet Underbelly Wind’. Way back in the 90’s she graduated from The Juilliard School of Drama. You can find her dancing barefoot in her driveway on the full moon at MATHILDEmidnight.FRIEH

disabilities.CONTRIBUTOR’S NOTES

CHARLOTTE GUTZMER is a nonbinary, undergraduate writer at UW-Eau Claire fascinated with all things magical and bizarre. In their craft, they explore themes of fantasy, identity, environment, and myths—they especially adore creating uncanny worlds that explore obscurity and realms just beyond reach. You can find them on Instagram @ghostpoetica or daydreaming between dimensions.

EDEN COPELAND is a junior in high school who lives in New Jersey and spends too much of her time reading and writing poetry. She enjoys taking walks in nature, drinking tea with unhealthy amounts of sugar, and listening to Joni Mitchell. Eden has previously been published in Kalopsia Literary Journal

is a 17-year-old high school student currently living in Strasbourg, France. She is an Italian, French and English emerging writer who was published once before in Short Stories of Strasbourg at 14-years-old. In her free time, she reads sci-fi comics and novels, watches adult animation, or draws cartoon versions of her loved ones. She’d like to thank her English teacher Ms. Kalasin, her very (sometimes overly) supportive mother, father, nonno, sister Amelie, and boyfriend Arthur who gave her the confidence to submit her story.

JAMES CROAL JACKSON (he/him) is a Filipino-American poet who works in film production. He has two chapbooks (Our Past Leaves, Kelsay Books, 2021 and The Frayed Edge of Memory, Writing Knights, 2017) with one forthcoming: Count Seeds With Me (Ethel, 2022). He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, PA. (jamescroaljackson.com)

ANA JOVANOVSKA was born in 1991 in Macedonia. She holds an MFA in the Graphic Art Field. Her practice is rooted in deep observation and reaction to the current times and spaces, affected by the moralizing of traditions and a sense of urgency in the discourse of contemporaneity. She is interested in research based on rethinking, re-imagining, and re-telling narratives, debating that the structure of society is in many ways conditioned by the structure of language itself. She has had many awards and recognitions, published several books, zines and publications, has 12 independent, and has more than 200 group exhibitions around the world. Instagram: @AnajovanovskaKATIEKARBAN

is an artist based in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She is a 2020 Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate of Winthrop University with dual concentrations in painting and printmaking. She graduated magna cum laude with Honors Program distinction in May 2020. She is interested in fiber arts, too, especially the history of textiles, patterns, and fabric-based items dealing with how individuals may relate to these items. The exploration of fabrics and patterns are used in her work to explore how a person may be represented in addition to rendered figure. In 2018, she studied abroad for six months full-time at the Dunedin School of Art, Otago Polytechnic in Dunedin, New Zealand. She received funding to attend a workshop at the Arrowmont School of Craft in 2019. Katie was accepted into the ArtFields Juried Competition in 2020. In 2021, she was one of six artists selected to create art for the United Way of the Piedmont’s Annual Celebration publication. When Katie is not being hypnotized by patterns or obsessing over her mountain of scrap fabrics, she spends her time being a chair for her cats.

KOURTNEY JOHNSON holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Oklahoma State University. She currently writes in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she lives with a grouchy schnauzer-mix, an orange tabby with an attitude problem, and her partner, whom she definitely loves as much as the animals. Her essays have previously appeared in Waccamaw, Switchback, and Burnt Pines Magazine.

BEE LB is an array of letters, bound to impulse; they are a writer creating delicate connections. they have called any number of places home; currently, a single yellow wall in Michigan. they have been published in Crooked Arrow Press, Badlung Press, opia mag, Revolute Lit, Red Weather, and half empty mag, among others..

CONTRIBUTOR’S NOTES

JAMES MORENA earned his MFA in Fiction at Mountain View Grand in Southern New Hampshire. His stories have been published in Orca, Forge Journal, Pithead Chapel, Rio Grande Review and others. He also has published essays and poems. James teaches English at university and high school levels. You can interact with him on Instagram:

JOHANNA@vanessamerritt_MITCHELLis

a writer from Cambridge, MA, now residing in Portland, ME. She has recently completed a memoir and is the founder of Mad Scribes, a writing group in Central Florida. She writes nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and songs. Her work has appeared in The News Chief, on Scott Tarulli’s September in Boston: Live album, in Months to Years, The Scriblerus, and at www.wakewalkwonder.wordpress.com.

@james_morena.CONTRIBUTOR’S NOTES

Her memoir, MODEL HOME, is currently on submission with Catalyst Literary Management. She was recently accepted to the Kenyon Writer’s Workshop and has participated in Kathy’s Fish’s The Art of Flash. She is the author of “Speaking of Apraxia,” now in audio from Penguin Random House. Leslie can be found on Instagram and Twitter @leslielilndsay1. She resides in the Greater Chicago suburbs with her family.

Johanna holds a degree in psychology and works with children with special needs. In her free time, she enjoys drinking coffee and good company.

VANESSA MERRITT is an Indian-American 35mm film and digital pho tographer and performer living in Michigan. By adopting a variety of art making approaches, Merritt works through lens based technologies, as well as mixed media and movement arts, to explore the intersections of the political and the personal. They create powerful contemporary fine art projects and photograph everything from minority communities to self portraiture to acrobats and performers, including documenting queer relationships throughout the United and body manipulation in indoor and natural spaces. A largely self-taught photographer, the framework of their practice crystallizes through the disciplines of feminism, queer theory, and environ mentalism. A recent graduate from the University of Michigan, Merritt hopes to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Photography and teach photography courses at the undergraduate level. Their website is vanessamerritt.com and their work can be found on instagram at

LESLIE LINDSAY’s writing, author interviews, and photography have been featured in ANMLY, The Rumpus, Hippocampus, Psychology Today, Mutha Magazine, Ruminate’s The Waking, Manifest-Station, Literary Mama, Pithead Chapel, Cleaver Magazine, Motherwell, Flash Frog Literary, Agapanthus Literary, A Door = Jar, Visual Verse , The Tiny Journal, with forthcoming pieces in The Millions, The Florida Review, and Essay Daily

BI PICKARD is a New York native photographer currently working out of Cleveland, Ohio but most works are travel based. Bi specializes in 35mm analog works ranging from album artwork, to photojournalism, and editorial fashion.

BRINA PATEL writes creative nonfiction and poetry that explore interna tional adventures and cultural nuances. Her works have been published in Brown Girl Magainel, Better Humans, The Mighty , and LA Family Travel , among others. She is a member of the California Writers Club – Sacramento branch and volunteers with 916 Ink, a local literacy-based nonprofit. When she isn’t writing or globetrotting, she enjoys hiking near her Northern California home, curling up with a tear-jerking memoir, and spoiling her sassy Maltese. You can find her on Instagram @brinapatel writer and Twitter @brina_patel.

DANIELLE SHORR (she/her) is an MFA alumni and professor of disability rhetoric and creative writing at Chapman University. She has a fear of commitment in regard to novel writing and an affinity for wiener dogs. Her work has been published by Lunch Ticket, Vassar Review, Hobart, Split Lip, The Florida Review, among others and is forthcoming in The New Orleans Review.

CONTRIBUTOR’S NOTES

J.Z. PITTS’ love of reading and writing began at the age of 12. Inspired by the stories he read, Pitts began writing stories of his own. A brief stint working for a high school newspaper continued to hone his writing skills by writing everything from news copy, opinion pieces, book and movie reviews. Pitts has written numerous short stories, including In the Pale Blue Light, and Two Graves KYRA RICHARDSON “I believe my writing serves as a voice for those afraid to speak up. It is a vessel for defying societal guidelines and spreading the ideas and truths of various marginalized groups. Previously, I’ve placed 3rd in the Carson McCullers Literary Arts Awards”.

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HTET SAN is a Myanmar-born artist based in New York City. Htet works with mixed media art, photography, and installation. Her work explores ideas of identity, existence, memories, nostalgia, societal problems and human experience in a meditative and contemplative manner. Recently, she has been combining the mixed media concepts of installation, video projections, and sculptural/material mediums with traditional darkroom and digital imaging techniques.

HAILEY SPENCER is the author of “Stories for When the Wolves Arrive,” which will be available through First Matter Press in September 2022. She lives in Seattle with her wife, Elizabeth. She is obsessed with fairy tales and has a tattoo of Baba Yaga’s house on her calf. For more on Hailey and her work, visit haileyspencerwrites.com

www.htettsan.com

LAUREN WILKIN is a 27 year old Special Ed. English Teacher in Somerville, Massachusetts. Lauren is from Brooklyn, spent a while living on a marsh in Vermont, and is now somewhere between. She loves to write stories and poems, paint, take photos, etc. Her work has been published by Allegory Ridge, The Borfski Press, Wingless Dreamer, The Ice Colony, High Shelf Press, Vagabonds Journal, and Much Smarter Than You Think ACT & SAT Review Materials. You can follow her on Instagram:REX@waurenlilkinYBAÑEZisa

Filipino American freelance copywriter and editor from Missouri. A former Pushcart Prize nominee, 2020 Moon City Press Poetry Award finalist, and 2021 Steel Toe Books Poetry Contest finalist (longlist), he has judged and worked as a master of ceremonies for regional Poetry Outloud competitions. He hosted literary events locally at bookstores, lounges, and bars before the COVID-19 pandemic. He has been published in Half Mystic, Noctua Review, Prism Review, Doubly Mad, Interim, AAWW’s The Margins, and more. He currently lives with his girlfriend Sariah in Springfield, MO. You may follow him @theliteraryalchemist on Instagram.

CHRIS ARIANNE VALLEJO VILLEGAS was born under the delightful sun shine on the coast of Barcelona. Her muse is Mother Nature and the little details that fill with pleasure the beauty of the unexpected. Her art has been published in Montana Mouthful, Azahares Spanish Language Literary Magazine and Hispanic Culture Review from the George Mason University. She is currently enjoying the melodious sounds of her favorite Chinese music group, SNH48, looking forward to admiring the cherry blossoms in spring and, of course, eating those juicy cherries.

JILLIAN THOMAS is a 15-year-old writer from the East Coast. They have been reading and writing since the age of three. During the pandemic, they began reading and writing poetry about mental health and friendship, and now write about identity and outer space, among other things. Throughout 2021, they have written almost 200 poems and continue to write about pretty much everything. When they are not writing they are either doing speech and debate or listening to Taylor Swift. They have been published in The Weight, Ice Lolly Review and Footprints on Jupiter.

CONTRIBUTOR’S NOTES

ROSE WAMBSGANSS, Award-winning artist creates intense but playful black and white drawings utilizing the ancient creative-meditative process of Zentangle. Rose is a CSU-P graduate who continues her education through local classes. Her fine-line artwork can take 10-80 hours to complete. Her current mediums include fine inks, alcohol inks, stained glass and silversmithing.

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