Stillwater 2017 by Stillwater EIC

Stillwater Magazine 2016-2017

Untitled by Sophie Feuer

THE

EDIT O R S Charles Hess Co-Editor-in-Chief

Emma Sheinbaum Co-Editor-in-Chief

Jared Povanda Lead Nonfiction Editor

Grace Rychwalski Lead Fiction Editor Gabe Sylvester Lead Poetry Editor

Tyler Macri Art & Photography Editor Irene Yeh Nonfiction Editor

Samantha Brodsky Nonfiction Editor Courtney Ravelo Nonfiction Editor Marisa Wherry Fiction Editor Liam Whalen Fiction Editor

Brenna Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Donnell Fiction Editor Emily Honen Fiction Editor

Jasmine Gayle Fiction Editor

Derek Marinaro Poetry Editor Erika Walsh Poetry Editor

Brianna Pulver Poetry Editor Sophia Hebert Copyeditor

Christie Citranglo Copyeditor

Brenna Williams Layout Designer Jill Weisman Layout Designer

Alexis Powell Poster/Events Director

Alexis Farabaugh Poster/Events Contributor

Amanda Ramsey Social Media Director and Website Manager Jacob White Faculty Advisor

A N OT E FR O M T H E

EDITORS

Having a hand in the making of Stillwater is a formative experience, whether you are one of the writers, an editor, or layout designer. We are all artists, and this is the final product of a hard-earned, collaborative creative process. And now, as readers, we can all enjoy the innovative work of this year’s issue, from blueberries to married men and fairies to being a black female football kicker. Whether it’s a reflective personal essay or a set of photos, every piece explores what is to feel, to experience, to be who you are. It is always fascinating to watch the magazine come together from individual works to a collective whole that speaks to each other, that echoes between the pages. One of the joys of being on the staff is also finding new ways for the magazine to grow. One of the numerous ways Stillwater has expanded this year is with the Text-Image genre. Some of the most exciting work we have seen is the kind that experiments with form, bending the rules for what genre is and what writing can be. We have accepted video essays in the past, and we wanted something from this emerging genre to be able to be on the page, as well. We’ve seen a tremendous amount of growth over the past three years and it will be a shame to see so many of our staff members departing. While it lasted, watching the team take on new responsibilities with each new semester has been a joyous experience; further, listening to many of them read their poems and stories at our events will be sorely missed. Already, it’s clear that a number of reminiscent moments will return to us in days to come. As for those who have just joined with us this past year, we wish you the best of luck in maintaining this long tradition of literary art on our campus. We have no doubt you will carry Stillwater to new heights. Through your respective influences, perhaps this publication can become something yet unseen, something entirely different from the mainstream. The future of this magazine rests in your unerringly competent hands. Thank you to our advisor Jacob White and the Department of Writing of their support, as well as everyone on the staff whether you were in Ithaca or our dedicated layout designers (Brenna and Jill) in Los Angeles. And thank you to everyone who submitted your work. It is always difficult to pick such a limited number of creative works from a couple hundred of submissions that show us how visionary everyone can be. Keep writing, keep capturing, keep reading. Please enjoy this issue, visit icstillwater.com, and continue to do wonderful things as writers, editors, and humans. Dig in, Emma and Charles Editors in Chief

TABLE OF

CONTENTS instead, perhaps, a cluttered house by Noa Livernois Poetry.............................................................................................................................. The Tallest Building in Hell by Sarah Noell Fiction.............................................................................................................................. U-Pick Blueberries by Amanda Boyle Poetry............................................................................................................................... Lost in the Kink by K.C. Roberts Nonfiction........................................................................................................................ a ghazal for loneliness by hakeem anthony Poetry............................................................................................................................... Married Men by Erin Gunther Nonfiction........................................................................................................................ How to Steal Your Own Blood by Francesca Hodge Text-Image....................................................................................................................... A Childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Dream of Springtime in Post-World War II Italy by Cole Newman Poetry............................................................................................................................... Suspect by MacKenzie R. Snead Fiction.............................................................................................................................. Looking Glass by Damen MacDougall Poetry............................................................................................................................... Fairy Dance by Arianna Ashby Fiction.............................................................................................................................. How to Be a Black Female Football Kicker by Devon Morris Nonfiction........................................................................................................................ In Her Hands by Noa Livernois Nonfiction........................................................................................................................ In The Echoes by Monica Chen Fiction..............................................................................................................................

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i n s t e a d, p e r h a p s , a c lu t t e r e d h o u s e by Noa Livernois you spend years of your life this way, trying to make your body anything other than a body. instead, perhaps, a cluttered house. furniture cannot experience flashback, an armchair has never known breathing and so cannot misplace its breath. trauma can only exist inside mind or musculature; the parasite demands a living host. so you un-become, learn inanimate, you dissect and deconstruct until all of the human is gone from you. peel back your skin and find pink fiberglass, realize you are uninhabitable. look closer, note the beams exposed and rotting. even as a house no one could find a home in you. even now the trauma waltzes in, sits on the couch, puts its feet up in front of the fireplace you built with your own hands.

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All Fuzzed Out by Will Truslow 7

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The Tallest Building in Hell by Sarah Noell

Petey woke up with an etched sense of déjà vu furrowed on his forehead and a little bit of cocaine on his upper lip. He pulled at his face with a dry hand, thumb and forefinger rubbing down his eyes, a deep inhale through the nose to catch whatever coke was left to wake him up. He put his hands on his steering wheel, stretching his shoulders back. The desert was warming up. Shelly was splayed out on the passenger seat, pantsless and limp like someone had rung her out over a sink. The car was getting hot. Petey leaned over Shelly to roll down the crank window, extending his arm, neck stretched. She had the rest of the coke in a baggie in the waistband of her loose panties. A low growl let loose from Shelly’s sternum, and Petey was glad she was breathing. Her hair was brown and stringy, dirty from the desert, but Petey leaned down to touch his lips to it anyways. Gently. He leaned back in his seat, slightly reclined, as far as the cab of the truck would let him. He punched the button to reveal the time on the truck: 9:07. He closed his eyes and took in a breath of stuffy air, wondering if his Jack was still in the bed of the truck. It was about time to start work. He opened his eyes and rolled his head over to look at Shelly. “Shellaaaayyy,” he sang in monotone. Louder. “Shellfish.” He lifted his wide hand and rubbed hard on the top of her head, mussing her hair, jolting her awake. “Goddamn, Petey. I’m back from the dead.” Her eyes weren’t open, but she curled her legs up to her chest, stretching her large t-shirt over her knees. “Softshell, we gotta get out of this hot truck. I’ll get your folding chair.” Stillwater Magazine

“And my umbrella?” Her eyes were still stuck shut. “Righto, we can’t have a burnt Shell.” Petey unlatched the driver’s door and kicked it open with his boot. It creaked from desert dust. He stepped out and lunged into a stretch, cursing the sun whimsically. He took the thin tarp that covered the bed and pulled it off on to the ground. He donned his fisherman’s cap that he hit on the side of the truck a few times to clean. It was too small, but he liked it anyways. He grabbed Shelly’s sandy blue folding chair, his umbrella, and some duct tape. He stepped over the pickup’s hitch, anchored to the “Carlos Tacos” taco truck. He set Shelly’s chair in her usual spot, next to the taco truck’s back door. She couldn’t be scaring away passersby out front. Her bony knees and squinty eyes made her seem rabid at times, ready to pounce. He also wouldn’t subject her to the roadside manners most Texans found endearing. She had been hit by too many beer cans last week. Kneeling down he duct taped his umbrella to the side of her chair. He stood up, brushing his hands on his ripped khaki shorts that he bought at the Savers when he realized he had lost at least twenty pounds since he moved down to the desert outside of Del Rio. He took his keys from the loop of his shorts and stepped up onto the metal lip of the truck, hanging on to the handle, opening its tiny door. He swung it open and ducked inside. The grills had to be started, the lettuce and tomatoes prepped. The meat defrosted. The cheese heated up. 8

He slid open the front windows, removing the wooden plank that acted as a jimmied lock. Shelly was flopping her way from the passenger seat of the truck around back. Her shorts hanging from her pinky finger, her long legs stretching up to a high hip, her large T-shirt not long enough to cover her completely. “Hey Shell-o, put those shorts on before Carlos comes around. You know how he gets when you don’t wear pants around his food.” Without looking at him she swung her shorts around her pinky above her head, a loose attempt at a lasso quip. Her cut-off jean shorts were sandy, stiff from dry heat, and she didn’t like the way they felt between her thighs. She figured most people would rather see her ass anyways. Petey found his Jack Daniels in the freezer with the ground beef. He took a paper cup, filled it half with whiskey, half with ice, and popped the plastic top on, a little straw sticking out. He adjusted his hat and leaned against the cooler underneath the window, heels together, steel toes pointing out. Assuming his position, staring at the endless desert horizon, wondering who would pass by twenty miles out of Del Rio, thirty miles from Mexico, looking for a taco.

months, even if it meant bandaged hands and shorts that chafed. “Hey, smoke outside, Sheldon.” “I have to wait. I think I saw a Desert King,” Shelly exhaled out the door, but the cigarette was burning bright in the small truck. She rubbed at her thigh. “This is why you need steel toes.” Petey looked down at her flip-flops, her sandy feet. “So you can kill those snake kings that want our tacos.” Petey had had his fair share of snake run ins working out in the desert. He had a shotgun in his pickup for that reason. Kill the king. He had shot some snake heads clear off. Shelly psyched out on desert flower drugs, dancing in the bed of the pick up, terrified, up near El Paso. He and Shelly moved the taco truck up and down the Texas border, encountering more desert folk and drug trafficking than he thought he would when he applied to do take out at Carlos Tacos in San Antonio. But he liked shooting snakes. He also liked how cold the desert got at night. How it went from a furious yellow to a moody blue. He liked how he could sit on the bed of his truck with his guitar and sing to Shelly like the cowboys would have. Maybe light a fire, though that required effort. Plus, Shelly would probably have a heyday, dancing naked around it crying at the moon because of some new mushroom Carlos had brought her. Petey would probably just drink himself into thinking too much about tacos, how Carlos was probably running a drug ring, and his buddy Tiggs who shot himself that May.

Shelly popped up and ducked into the truck, shorts on, looking for her cigarettes. Petey pointed to the shelf with assorted knives and spatulas, where her Camels sat soggy from dishwasher steam. She reached, grabbing the box, tapping it twice, lifting a damp one up to her mouth and then searching for the stove lighter. Her search required a small squat and a point which Petey interpreted, reaching to the other side of the stove, handing the long gas lighter over. She struggled to light it. Her fingertips hurt, burnt by the sand, by the stove top. She winced. She wasn’t a very good cook, she was slow, usually stoned, but she knew Petey needed her out here. She didn’t mind rambling for a few

He was doing that already, drinking himself dry, before noon again. He couldn’t help himself. He’d been to rehab. At twenty-three he thought it was a joke. He sang to the nurses, sober, eyes shut, his curly brown hair pulled and pushed back by his anxious hands. They loved him up there. New York was so green. He had been caught with Shelly’s weed, drunk driving in the desert again. 9

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Shelly wasn’t there; she had left him with all of her paraphernalia when she went up to visit her other boyfriend in Austin. It was his third strike. He would sing off key about heartbreak and cowboys and how to make tacos and his best friend, the folk hero, Tiggs. The younger nurses would come in, ask him to sing the one about the airplane, Petey would feign nerves, big brown eyes cast down. He played and was sure he broke some hearts when he left. But he liked his solitary life with Shelly. Their amicable arrangement, their years of physical debt, long time loves who had mellowed out after years of furiously fucking at seventeen. He wouldn’t go back to New York. The people there were cold, assuming, very breakable. Now twentyseven, he had spent the last few years cooking, working at the Carlos Tacos Texas chain. It was only recently he decided to kick it curbside and manage his own truck. An indefinite escape from sympathetic eyes, from the apartment he had shared with his lost friend. He got Shelly this gig so they could ride around together. So he wouldn’t be alone. The two of them, too dirty, too thin, shared the taco truck like twins shared a womb. Feeding each other broken up burrito pieces, touching just to make contact, knowing blindly someone else was in there with them, keeping the other alive. They made enough cash for gas and Jack, free drugs thanks to Carlos who had a heart for white junkies. They squatted outside the cities, lonely lepers in a drier Jerusalem. Petey didn’t like the rush of city corners. It felt forced, driving him to quicker conclusions, a creeping anxiety that didn’t mix well with his substances. A fear he would spend the day doing double-takes for Tiggs. A worry Shelly would go out for more napkins, get caught up with an ex and not come back. The desert was slow and constant. If he could, Petey would stay in the desert forever. Not many people could find him, and he liked that. He didn’t like most people these days. Not many people got to him like Stillwater Magazine

the desert did. Got to him like Shelly did at sunset when she was getting stoned. The desert could always get to him. Carlos would come around on pay day, pass out their paychecks in cash, and let Petey and Shelly sample the new stuff he was carrying around. They had taken tabs of acid one evening last week after Carlos left. They were so excited they had the energy to start a small fire with the brush they collected in the bed of the pickup. Shelly had laughed loudly, into an echoing desert, jumping him like they were teens again. She put on her bikini, started up the taco truck at two a.m., and made the best burrito Petey had ever eaten in his life. The desert got quiet. Petey wandered. Shelly’s screams at the emptiness were dulled, turned slow. He saw someone far off. Tiggs had walked toward him, slowly, sauntering like only Tiggs would. “Hiya, Petey Petersen.” Tiggs was the only one who called him by his full and belabored name. “Tiggs, I, I missed you.” Petey cried, held his arms out to a shadow who looked and sounded like his friend. After he had finished crying, he laid down in the desert sand where he could see his pickup and see the colored lights of the Carlos Tacos. He felt like Tiggs was holding him. He then felt strange about Tiggs holding him. “How’s Hell, Tiggs?” Petey had asked the empty desert. “There are buildings everywhere, I live in the tallest one. It has a great view. I can almost see everyone I ever loved.” Petey looked toward the fire. Shelly looked like a giantess, illuminated by the small flames, dancing slow, twirling to a fall on the rocky desert surface. Her eyes closed, figuring out how the world worked, always moving. He hoped she would never tell him her secrets and stay with him always. A spirit in transit, she had been aware he was looking to her from a distance. His cheek on the sand, crumpled like he had seen a ghost. Shelly

had watched him mourn, driving too fast on route ninety, bandaging her burnt hands with careful affection, letting his own burns swell and pop. She laid next to the fire, flames illuminating Petey far off in small flickers. She watched someone get up and walk away. Long, shadow legs languidly crossing the blue desert. The moon hanging low, slung in a rocky jaw. They lay apart, exposed in the expanse. Shelly wanted to go to him, let him know she had seen it too. But it was a just a flash, lost to her by the time the sun rose and she awoke with her head propped on Petey’s soft knee. But the sun was hot on this particular morning, there were no shadows of lost friends who lost themselves in their own losing, and Carlos’s white Range Rover was kicking up dirt about a mile away. Petey had gotten lost in the horizon, sipping on his whiskey like a child with a grape soda. Shelly was outside now, lounging in her shaded chair, long legs sprawled in the sun. The Carlos Tacos hummed from the heaters, the stove top warming. “Shelluride, Carlos is coming, look cute,” Petey smiled at her from the door. One of those lifted chin smiles, lots of teeth, squinty eyes. Buzzed. Shelly found him so easily loveable. Since high school when he played guitar in his Modest Mouse cover band at a talent show where Jimmy L. gave her her first hit off an opioid joint. She was hooked. The far off desert was wavy with heat, Carlos still a dusty dot on the horizon. “What do’ya think his poison is today?” Shelly asked, squinting at Petey, who was hanging off the Carlos Tacos, arm and leg out like a starfish, swinging, ice in his cup shaking. “Couldn’t guess, bombshell. Maybe some true desert extract. Something to make this desert flood and cool us the hell down,” Petey mused, thinking about New York rivers. Shelly sighed and curled her legs up so they were under the shade of the umbrella. She had felt shifty since the acid. Picking at the blister on her hand in a fidgety way

she wasn’t used to, she looked to Petey attempting to see past his buzzed sweetness, his silly fisherman’s hat. She squinted at him. “Either way, I’m burnt out this morning. The desert has told me too much, and it does not lie.” Petey cleared his throat in agreement, swinging himself into the truck to refill his cup. He wouldn’t tell her, but he also felt burnt. He also had heard truths in the quiet that maybe some time in the city could drown out. Carlos was getting closer. Petey leaned on the cooler, sipping, trying not to space out, looking out the two-by-eight window at the road and the desert beyond. He had found brief respite in desert scenes, in close kept quarters with Shelly, but Tiggs had come to him regardless. The Range Rover kicked up a dust cloud that grew bigger to look like a small hill, and for the first time Petey wanted to climb something to find any kind of perspective. Maybe he could see to bustling Del Rio, scan his eyes over the mountains of Mexico, peek far enough and wide enough to catch another glimpse of Tiggs wandering. That would do him no good. The lonely flat desert had always worked to deceive him for the better. Allowed him to disguise his despair long enough for him to make a life out of tacos and his truck, long enough for him to feel something shaped like love, long enough for him to avoid the descent and instead remain a smiling silhouette drunk in the desert dust.

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U - Pic k Blueb er r ie s by Amanda Boyle

In late-July sun my mother and I kneel in the dry, sandy earth staining our knees with crushed blueberries as we drop plump fruit in our bucket and I shove fistfuls in my mouth. The sun bakes my neck and the voices of my aunts two rows over drift on the heavy air. Another sister has become trapped with a man who doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t love her and two young children inadvertently hold her hostage. My motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s silence noticed only by me as I pluck the berries from the bottom of the bush my hands stained purple as her bruised heart that wants to believe it is still loved.

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L o s t in t he K ink by K.C. Roberts

“But you’re black, right?” “Is my skin the color of my converse?” I pointed down. A rhetorical question, but of course it was challenged. This wasn’t exactly playground chatter for 9-year-olds, but nothing, not even the kids playing around us, could stop the conversation. Before then, I had never thought about it. But as I’ve continuously been asked this question, I can assure you that unlike wine and cheese, it does not get better with age. “No, but like, you’re black.” I still don’t get it. They still don’t get it. I think we’re all a little lost. *** I attended an elementary school with a privileged group of children from Greenwich Village. The only difference I saw between my friends and me was my height — I had tree trunks for legs — and the products we used: them, a simple ponytail holder and maybe a fun hairband; me, four different braids and smoothed back edges with cream and multicolored clips. But I wasn’t “different.” Everyone seemed to treat me like I was just like them. Like I was “white” — the same as everyone else. I had exactly one black friend (the only black girlfriend you could have at my school), and she was the minority due to her dark-chocolate skin. Mine, a mere caramel.

lion times over. So I recited the origins of my four grandparents because the answer, “America,” was never enough. My grandfather on my dad’s side was from Maine (Irish, apparently), and my grandmother was from Panama. My mother’s father was from Turkey, and her mother was from Algeria. “So you’re African? Algeria’s in Africa,” he laughed a high-pitched, brace-face, privilegedwhite-boy snicker. He found it funny that I had relatives from the second-largest continent. As if my family was currently skipping naked around a fire, yelling in tongues. I’m African? I had to think about it for a second. I mean, I wasn’t from Africa — I was born in the NYU hospital in Manhattan, not far from the school we both attended. “Yeah I guess,” I scoffed with an embarrassed tone (an embarrassed tone). I was quiet for the rest of the bus ride and from then on reluctantly told people that my grandmother was from Algeria when they asked. I was, admittedly, more ignorant than this “friend” I had. There was enough about myself to be analyzed. I knew I was tall, I knew I had a large forehead, and I knew that pajamas, which I wore to school more often than not, were strictly for my bed to see. My heritage was the last thing I wanted to talk about because it was the one thing in my life I was unsure of.

*** “Where are you from?” a friend asked one morning on the bus we took to our middle school. At this point I’d gotten asked this question a mil-

*** On November 25, 2014, I arrived at my high school well before anyone had come for classes, only a few days before Thanksgiving break. I set 13

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up two white posters, each blank, one for people to sign and the other titled “Share Your Thoughts.” The night before, my Facebook newsfeed was a united uproar of sadness and anger. The grand jury decided not to indict Officer Ben Wilson in the deadly shooting of Michael Brown. I only had two classes that day, so I camped out by the signs and filmed the crowds, dressed in all black. They looked at the posters and signed their names, wrote inspiring comments and quotes, or talked to me about why they cared. I knew that no one has a good reason for being shot, and I knew for sure that no one should be shot for being black. I was disturbed and confused, and I wanted to know how many of my peers felt the same. But I still thought: This couldn’t have just been a black thing, right? “It can’t die down!” one kid who sat next to me on the floor of the narrow hallway said into the crowd. The students of color who came to observe talked to me about their personal experiences with police oppression. But there were only a few of them, otherwise they were all white. The kids I chose to sit with — who I always chose to sit with — were white. The signs stayed up, but less people paid attention to them on November 26. Then Thanksgiving break came and went, and people stopped recognizing them at all. The posters were gone when I returned to school after Christmas break. Is it possible to be a national tragedy at the wrong time? Or did these people simply not care? *** The summer after my senior year, I started thinking about braiding my hair. It was a way to quicken my morning routine, which usually consisted of five minutes figuring out what I’d do, then finally deciding on the usual: slicked-back bun that made me look like a bald potato. The constant molding I forced upon my hair — to be straight Stillwater Magazine

against its tight, natural curls — stunted the growth and volume I wished to have. I started researching photos to see if I could even sport the look: Search: “Light skin girl with box braids” Results: Photos of Zoe Kravitz and random white girls with blonde and color-dyed fishtail braids. A hairstyle that I could never attempt with my short, thin afro-of-sorts. When I finally got the braids later that summer, I felt uneasy about my appearance. And the uneasiness was constant. Right after my cousin had spent 10 hours weaving in the synthetic hair, I wanted to rip it all out. I went to the bathroom and stared at my pale, uncovered scalp. I wore a hairstyle worn by so many beautiful people I did not identify with but needed in order to protect my hair. I was overwhelmed. Standing there with a staple piece of black culture connected to my head (a head full of uncertainty when it came to who exactly I should identify with), I didn’t know how to feel. My friends said I looked Great! Fab! Wow, you look so fierce. Rihanna? I like your … dreads? Wait no, not dreads. My brother said, Hey Whoopi Goldberg. By the end of my first semester of college, my hair was out of its intertwined state, and I got a new question. “Did you cut your hair?!” I still don’t get it. They still don’t get it. I think we’re all a little lost. *** When I came to Ithaca College, my friends were a mix of races. We were majorly students of color — we weren’t colorless — but most of us were surrounded by white kids all our lives. As college freshmen, we wanted to fit in, but it was hard.

One night we made our way to an offcampus party; I’d gotten the address from someone I knew in case nothing else worked out. Nothing else worked out. So, we walked up the steel stairs to the side door of the house. Fetty Wap’s voice ricocheted off the apartment walls, and once we opened the door, steam pushed its way toward us from the thrusting bodies inside. Caramels and chocolates and other colors you rarely saw on campus. “Well, I guess this is where Tommy Roch puts all the kids he doesn’t want to deal with,” my friend laughed. The 2015 school year brought up heated issues between the college’s administration and students of color invested in IC’s Black Lives Matter Movement. “Wow, it’s an ALANA party!” another one of my friends said as we still stood on the outskirts. And we laughed together, quickly turning the other way to go back down the stairs. Walking away from the idea of being involved with people who looked more like us than any others we usually hung out. I quickly roped up my hair into a ponytail before the humidity could affect it too much. At that point in the school year I had been flat ironing my poor strands every time they showed signs of curling. A second generation Indian boy, two half-white, half-black kids, one white girl, and one racially confused girl walked away to campus. Where we were safe — away from unfamiliarity. *** “I was never really affected by any of this because I have lighter skin,” I said hesitantly. “However, I have younger male cousins who are darker than me, so I get scared in that way.” I was writing a piece on how the Black Lives Matter Movement was affecting our campus. The student sitting across from me in Ithaca College’s pub whom I was interviewing had played a large role in the movement.

I was intimidated, and this comment was something I thought I needed to make. I wanted the meeting to be more conversational; I wanted to relate. But, in truth, this comment was the first I’d ever made aloud about how the movement affected me at all. From a half-white, half-black family, I thought she would be able to see where I was coming from. That she would feel the same halting disconnect I’d always felt. “If this situation affects those you love, it is directly affecting you,” she said abruptly, shutting me down. Hard. Then she turned to her phone. “‘Re-Claiming Blackness’ will be a showcase that redefines what it means to be black through art,” she read me the Facebook event description, urging me to go. It would educate me, show me the connection I’d been missing growing up. It’d show me that, despite being raised in a household where the color of my skin was not a dinner-table topic, I had deep roots in black culture — whether I could feel them or not. So, after unconsciously (but semi-consciously) ignoring the uproar of the past semester, I found myself in the front row of my first Black Lives Matter event. In high school, surrounded by a sea of white, I felt more comfortable, more willing to bring in those poster boards honoring Michael Brown. But here, at IC, surrounded by students so ingrained in their role as POC, I felt muted. “I’ve met God and she’s black,” a poet spoke, standing up from his Djembe drum and stool and moving to center stage, surrounded by students and faculty alike. The words sunk in more than they had before. I knew that quote. The first time I saw it was on a sticker posted on a city lamppost. It was funny to me — I grew up knowing God was an old white guy with a beard. I would think, He’s like Santa! But now, She was black. She made life, she was cherished, and she was beautiful the way she was. Black. 15

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I started to wear my hair naturally — all kinky curls — no heat required, just cream. Proud. The following summer I was an editorial intern at an alternative art and fashion outlet. It opened my eyes to gallery openings, free wine, and a larger group of creatives in New York City. I met so many young black artists, teenage models, photographers and writers, and I suddenly felt something. I liked them, and I knew that I wanted to be as confident as they were. “I love your hair!” I pointed to the long, blonde, loose-curled dreadlocks with pink highlights that lay against one girl’s toffee skin. I immediately texted my cousin asking when she was free to braid my hair. *** No matter how much I straighten my hair, dress to the norm, or deny a culture that my grandparents came from, it’s still a part of me. I may not be black in tone but I am, by culture, the culmination of my ancestors and their struggles. It does directly affect me. But I’m also me, and I’m from a different time and place and, well, it’s a process. I still don’t get it. They still don’t get it. I think — I know — we’re all still a little lost.

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Plucked by Zach Chapple

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a gha z al f or lone line s s by hakeem anthony

it would be after a group of us came together that i would walk toward loneliness. socializing is tiring and that desire for silence invited me to find more loneliness. imagination initially creates realities but when friends come that’s the end of the times that don’t require high wine. without them, we need now adore loneliness. there’s only one version of a campus and it’s for the perverted extroverts whose nightly exuberant excursions hinder an introvert’s ability to afford loneliness. allow me to lay on back in the void of a gray-light lit room with noise of a solipsistic producer in surround sound. isn’t solitude the cure, loneliness? the real dreams of humankind deciding to transcend isms & live privately of society finds those apocalyptic visions full of existential cries and pure loneliness. within retrospective dreams harmonized with melancholic characteristics comes the conclusive epiphany: i’ve never been able to ignore loneliness. find joy in regret, celebrate death, it’s easy to forget that the limit on living is a laudable human experience. i’ve never been afraid to board loneliness. hakeem. we both know from introspection, innovation, and stored loneliness, next to art, we only need to exist for one other reward: loneliness.

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M ar r ie d M en by Erin Gunther I was relieved when I got into the taxi. He picked me up in front of the Hilton at 2 a.m. to take me home. I opened the door of the purple van and told him the address again. I had originally dialed the pre-programmed number on my way down the elevator in the hotel. Secure walls and a warm bed seemed like a distant dream at this hour of the night. It was a strangely lonely time, especially after the bustling nightlife messily dissipated as the bars reached closing time. It was even lonelier standing on the street in front of the hotel, pacing up and down the sidewalk, no cars and only the streetlights for company. The plush seat of the van and the promise of an end to the night offered some comfort. A man that had been standing outside of the hotel talked to the taxi driver for a moment, but he was waiting for another taxi to Elmira. I wondered where he was going at this hour, if maybe he had to go to the airport for an early flight, but we didn’t speak to each other. He had a sense of urgency about him. The taxi driver was not fazed by the man’s agitation and closed the van door and took off. His face was not familiar. His eyes were frosted with that early-morning glaze. He asked me if I was going to pay in cash. I only have five dollars in my wallet, I said. I hope I can do credit. Otherwise it’s going to be an I-owe-you. I promise I’m good for it. I can see him smile in the driver’s seat. Some crazy white girl with five dollars making I-owe-you promises. It’s OK, he said. You can come up front if you want to. That’s another thing about the early-morning hours: the taxi drivers are less like strangers. We

had nothing else better to do than fill the silence by exchanging pieces of our lives. I took him up on the offer and tried to gracefully make my way to the passenger’s seat without bumping anything. He asked about what I do, where I am originally from. I go to Ithaca College, I responded. I’m originally from Owego, just half an hour away. I am a writing major. I would really like to go to grad school and teach. I wondered what he thought of me in my present condition, getting picked up in front of the Hilton in my tank top and harem pants at that hour of the night. Sure you’re going to do that, I imagine he thought. I don’t expect to be taken seriously, but there is no pressure to impress here. I imagine his Saturday night and Sunday morning had consisted of driving drunk college-aged kids back to their apartments and dorms. If the faces and names of the people who piled in and out of the taxi in a night meant anything to him, I wondered what strange stories he might tell. Instead he talked about himself. He said he was from Brooklyn, so I asked why he came to Ithaca. He said his parents took him here as a kid, that they didn’t want him to grow up in a rough neighborhood. I told him I wanted to go to grad school in the city. We hit common ground, so he talked a little more about his childhood in the city. He was the most interesting person I talked to all night. I didn’t tell him this. He suggested places to go and things to do in New York that I forgot by morning. He asked about my night, and I wondered how much to divulge. I was tired and still buzzing a little, but I enjoyed 19

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that I could be shamelessly honest with him. I probably wouldn’t see him again. I thought back to the bar and the man who bought me a drink. He was married, I said to the taxi driver. I went on to say something about what assholes the men in Ithaca could be, and he laughed. I told him it was not the first time a married guy had approached me in Ithaca. This guy was 35 and the other had been younger, a graduate student from Cornell. Supposedly this guy was from Boston, I said. Not that it mattered where he was from. But I wondered how many young women this guy had tried to seduce while on his travels. The thought made me ill, and I hoped that if there was any justice to be had, his wife was fucking some guy in their bed. I refrained from verbalizing these thoughts, staring out the window as we drove across the barren, partially lit Cornell campus. I told him nothing happened because nothing did. I didn’t expect the taxi man to believe me, but I still had to make the effort to save face. I knew the story reflected poorly on me, but it happened and for some reason I felt like telling it to him. It came across like a confession. I confessed as though the taxi man would offer some kind of consolation, or perhaps I did it just to tell someone. This was not a story I imagined telling people outside of the taxi cab. I didn’t explain to the taxi driver my inexplicable motivation to leave the bar with this man. I didn’t explain that I never had any intentions of going to his room with him. Had I planned on merely walking him to the hotel just to see him off there? Why had I not gotten a taxi straight from the bar? I think some part of me was waiting for the man to tell me to go home. Even after we had danced together, after we had kissed, after he had gotten me the drink. Out at the bar, there were no risks or consequences. Stillwater Magazine

It was just fun. But that was where it needed to end. And yet still I managed to go to the hotel with him, went up to his room, and sat on the edge of his bed as he laid back on the pillows like he scored some kind of prize. He looked like a young 35. It was clear that he was taken care of, in-shape, that life had been good to him. Perhaps too good, I thought. Maybe that had been the problem. I went into the bathroom to catch one good look at myself as though the reflection might be another person, perhaps someone more reasonable that might tell me how to leave. When I walked back out, I could see that he had pulled the curtains. His dress shirt was pulled out sloppily from his khakis and his shoes were at the bottom of the bed. I didn’t make a move closer, but he sat at the edge of the bed, sizing me up. He demanded that I go down to the lobby to get a condom. I had hoped he might pass out when he got to his room, but instead he confirmed disappointment. I knew he was drunk when we had left together. He had even forgotten what hotel he was staying at initially. I still wasn’t sure why I had come with him, but it wasn’t for the reason he wanted. I left the room, with him under the pretense that I would come back. Even in his drunken state, he managed to throw a room key at me. I would have tried to explain these details to the taxi man, but it wouldn’t have come out right. Maybe I did it because I was tired, tired of men, tired of being a young, stupid blonde college girl. Because I was tired of being good for nothing but a body and tired of men thinking that they could do whatever they wanted to that body. I realized that going out to the bars was a game for cheap thrills, but something about older married men getting their kicks off of significantly younger women soured my stomach. 20

Usually, a hookup was relatively harmless: just a college boy with no commitments. But this man cast a shadow on the innocence of our college town hookup culture. I had waved to the security man as I walked through the lobby of the hotel and threw the keycard into a potted plant outside of the main doors. But to the taxi man, I simply said, Nothing happened with the other married guy either. I shrugged my shoulders, with no sinful secrets to confess. Once again, I didn’t expect him to believe me. He was silent, listening to me bantering about my Ithaca nightlife experiences with married men. I thought perhaps he would tell me, Oh, that’s just all men sweetheart, or What exactly did you expect going out like that? But he didn’t. He just listened. At least the married ones buy you drinks, I said. He laughed, and I was glad that I provided someone with amusement for the night. His response to my disgust is relieving. A laugh, and at that point I was laughing about it as well. What could I do but cry if I didn’t laugh? Even if he didn’t believe me, I knew that it wouldn’t matter by morning anyway.

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little cups of creamer by Kai Nealis

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H ow To St e al Yo ur O w n B l o o d by Francesca Hodge

Stake your claim. You have arrived here and you’re the one in control. Rustle yourself and feel the ground beneath your feet. I’m here to help, you may say, but the next thing yoau know you are pushing the metal tap into the soft bark of a tree. You squat there and feel like you’re back in Acadia National Park, hiding on the edge of the sea cliff, feet sore from rock scrambling. I see you siphoning off as much as you can carry in those portable shower bags your mother bought at Target. I see you slipping back into memory, don’t do that to me. You’re hanging up blue tarps and filling air mattresses and making sure Matthew is being careful with the knives. You remember when he let it close on his finger by mistake. That was the first time you saw him beg for his life. Your father kicks an English Muffin. He walks home. 2. I can’t remember what I said on the phone. You follow this ritual because it feels so good to be domestic. You oblige to their need, and you are proud of it. It’s not a bad thing, though the blood bag dripping through the cart bars says otherwise. It’s just a bag of red peppers—of beets—the plastic package of potato chips. What’re you buying those for? You should get in the car and drive to the airport. You’re in the roped off section of a French nightclub with a stomach of coerced red wine. You waxed a Canadian girl’s legs on the train—she wiped off pinpricks of blood with a black scarf. Stillwater Magazine

3. This is something you will say often. You love the crooks of arms and the winding of legs. Stained as you are, you will love the souls of many.

4. Of course it did. You drank too much and now your head is against the shower wall. You stay there for months and there’s not much I can do but wait and watch. I’ve seen this happen with transfusion patients. Their skin will flush and itch, their breath comes short. The antibodies inside them are attacking the new blood and you reel from it. I’m sorry, but this will pass.

5. But I’ll Get Steal? More Again. Isolate yourself in that dent in the ground. The weeping willow protects you against prying eyes and you’re grateful. Silence in the heat feels nice. Stay there for as long as you can.

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AUTOMATIONSTAR by Charlie Gill Stillwater Magazine

Jellyfish by Amy Kruzan 27

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Between Lakes by Jacob Schaffel-Scherrer

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Untitled by Sophie Feuer Stillwater Magazine

A C h i l d ’s D r e a m o f S p r i n g t i m e i n Po s t-Wo r l d Wa r I I I t a l y by Cole Newman Some sweet, naïve child— God, perhaps— has frozen the sunrise against the horizon, so its thin, golden fingers may paint the whole world waltzing atop one lonely hill; one person leaning into the other, one person melting into the next, into the next, until we are a single, gently swaying shape, dark and lovely, a single pair of lips murmuring softly about how pretty the sun looks on this particular morning.

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Su s p e c t by MacKenzie R. Snead India was not Afghanistan. This was something I learned with every physical sense. The taste of sweat and body odor force-fed itself into my mouth. The smells of spices and raw meat struck my nostrils. Smells I could handle, though. The worst smells a man could make had tickled my nose hairs before. Putridity was nothing. I remembered the rooms that smelled of piss, shit, and blood. Mumbai was certainly not the desert. The city was hot enough, but the sea was too close. I missed the dry sands of the black sites, the isolating comfort of the Salt Pit. I wanted to return to a world where the sun was the greatest predator and the shelter of an isolated prison was the only way to escape. It had been peaceful there, a world in order. If the screaming ever became too irritating, all a man had to do was step out into the vast silence of the desert to let go of his claustrophobic feelings. This city was too crowded, its people too friendly. It was their smiles that made me uneasy. Their sweetness made me distrust them all the more. It was not what I had expected from a country on the other side of the world. In Afghanistan, I’d become accustomed to the people retreating into their houses when they saw me. Here the streets were packed with vendors and people on foot, people in cars, on scooters, and none of them minded me. I walked past all of them now. After two days in India, I was getting better at staying focused

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in the cacophony of her streets. I’d taken a rickshaw to the place I was now, but I soon realized I was lost. My feet slowed at an old man in a doorway. “Do you know where Homi Modi Street is?” I asked the man. After a series of head motions that could have meant yes or no, I figured he couldn’t understand me. A melodic voice sounded somewhere above my head. “It’s that way.” I looked up to see a young woman in a sari leaning out of a window and pointing down the street. “Where that way?” I asked impatiently. “Go to end of street and take left, you will see it, Uncle.” I nodded my head and moved on. Everyone here called one another friend, or aunt or uncle if you were older than them. I was no one’s friend here. When I finally came to Homi Modi I looked for house numbers, but there weren’t any, and the never-ending buildings could hardly be called houses. It was uncanny how every street in Mumbai could look exactly the same, and yet nothing was alike. There was a child sitting on a railing. “Do you know where Umar Ajam lives?” I asked him. The boy stared at me like a cat on a step. “Umar Nasim Ajam. Does he live here?” The boy turned and called something into the wide-open doorway. The only words I understood were “Mama” and Umar’s name. The boy’s 32

mother came out and spoke a few words with her son before turning to me. “You looking for Umar?” she said. “Yes.” She called something down the street. A few doors over another woman emerged from a home and spoke some confused sounding words with the first woman. I had a feeling I was being directed to this second woman, so I approached her. “What do you want with Umar?” she asked as I came closer. “I’m afraid that’s between me and him,” I said. The woman, whose face and tone had been questioning but pleasant enough before this remark, suddenly looked stern and suspicious. “It’s between me as well,” she said. “I’m his wife.” I stopped at the bottom step, looking up at the woman Umar had so desperately wanted to return home to. “You’re Shayma?” “Yes,” she said. She was not what I’d imagined from Umar’s descriptions. Her face was too round for my liking and her skin worn. She was dressed in the hijab and other traditional garb of Muslim women, making it impossible for me to visualize her shape. She had a foreign beauty to her, though. That was all these Easterners had going for them: exoticism. “It’s nice to meet you,” I said to her. “I’ve heard a lot of good things.” “How do you know my husband?” she said distrustfully. I didn’t say anything at first. I’d come all this way, found the home of the man I was seeking, and I still hadn’t thought up a good answer to that question. I’d imagined it being asked, it had been all I’d thought of during the plane rides here, but I still had no good reply.

“I’m … a friend from travels,” I said, hearing how bad it sounded as it slipped from my lips. “Here he is,” called the first woman down the street. I turned to see a familiar but different man making his way toward us. Umar was carrying packages of food and household supplies under his arms, walking with a hunch that must have developed in the past two years. Yet he walked with an ease and grace that I’d never witnessed in Afghanistan, a pace that belonged to a man living in comfort. I couldn’t see how anyone lived comfortably in this place. He was halfway up the street when his eyes found me. He stopped, his grip on the packages loosening, his face unreadable. It still spooked me that I could not tell what he was thinking. He’d been the only man in that prison capable of hiding his thoughts from me. “Hello, Umar,” I said, taking a step forward to help with the packages. Umar stepped back. “Umar, who is this man?” said Shayma. Two children had joined her on the steps. Their boy and girl. “I’ve only come to talk,” I said. “To catch up.” “Shayma, take the children inside,” said Umar, his voice just as unreadable as his face. “Who is he?” she asked again. “Do as I say.” His tone was calm and gentle, but the weight of his words was apparent. Shayma quickly ushered her son and daughter back inside. Umar approached me. “Go around to the back of the house. I’ll put my things inside and meet you there.” “We’re not going to shake hands?” I said it like I was joking, but inside I wasn’t. 33

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Umar walked past me, unsmiling, and disappeared into the house. There were no backyards to the buildings, only a narrow alley with balding patches of grass and fences timidly dividing the lots. Umar’s family at least had some outdoor furniture. I made myself as comfortable as I could in a chair and looked around at the scene. Umar came out the back of the house. “I’ve asked Shayma to make some tea. She’ll be out with it shortly.” “Don’t know if I should have any,” I said as Umar sat on the chair opposite me. “Was told not to drink any unfiltered water here.” Umar looked at me sharply. “You will not insult my wife’s hospitality. You’ll drink it.” The authority in his voice sent hot rage pulsing through me. I didn’t like him talking to me that way. I wanted to show him his place, beat him into submission. I looked at the scars on his arms, decided not to hurt him. Not here where he lived. “Why are you here?” he asked, gazing up at the sky, his eyes not seeming to focus on anything. “Like I said, I wanted to catch up.” Umar sighed. “We do not catch up, and you do not travel all the way from Afghanistan just to chat. How did you get away from — ” “I’m not working there,” I said, cutting him off. Umar let his gaze fall back to me. “You left?” “Yeah.” I shifted in my chair, looking down at my feet as I kicked up the loose earth. “As soon as I found out where you live. Then I came here … to find you.” “How did you find me?” asked Umar. “Connection of mine in the CIA got me a list of past suspects and their home addresses.” Umar was silent for a moment. Then, “I Stillwater Magazine

should have known they’d keep information like that, even after I was proven innocent.” “You’re never innocent once you’re suspected,” I said. He didn’t say anything to that. He simply sat there, staring at me until I began to feel uncomfortable with the silence. It was a feeling I was familiar with. After a while, I had to say something for the sake of filling the silence. “There was no point after you left.” For a moment I thought Umar was going to continue staring at me, but then he said, “What do you mean.” I leaned in, feeling the words begin to bubble out of me. “None of the others would talk to me like you did. I mean, none of the other suspects. You remember how we’d just talk for hours, half the time not even about what we were supposed to?” I paused. “Why the hell did we do that?” Umar finally looked away, up at the clouds. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it, though. I don’t want to talk about anything having to do with that place.” I almost laughed. “Then we’re going to have trouble finding anything to talk about.” “Then don’t talk at all.” I stiffened, hearing the authoritative tone in his voice. “Since when do you tell me what to do?” I said, but Umar said more. “Since I became a free man again. Since you came and walked onto my street, onto my property, were welcomed by my family.” “I’d hardly call it a welcome.” “Did you think you would be greeted warmly here?” scoffed Umar. “Met with wide smiles and open arms?” 34

“Look, I didn’t come here for anything. I just came to talk.” “Then talk!” he said, stretching out his arms. “Tell me what you came here to say.” I opened my mouth to answer, but stopped. I couldn’t find the words, only breath. Umar raised his eyebrows. “What is it you came to say?” I closed my mouth and swallowed. “What is it you want?” he asked. I looked at the ground and scratched the back of my head, wiping the sweat from my neck. “What do you — ” “I just wanted to see you!” I half shouted. “Like I said, I couldn’t talk to the others the same. It was boring.” Umar’s face turned to stone. “Oh, is that why you left? Because suddenly torturing people became dull?” I was about to answer when a shattering echoed through the alley. “You’re him?” said a horrified voice. We turned to see Shayma standing at the backdoor, a broken teapot scattered at her feet. She ignored it and stepped over it. “That’s who you are? You’re the man who’s done this to us?” “Shayma,” said Umar, getting to his feet and holding out a hand as his wife advanced. “No, I will not let you treat him like a guest, Umar,” she said, pushing the hand aside and standing over me. “Do you know what you did to him? To us? Do you realize what kind of a man you are?” “Hey, I’m not the one who took him to Afghanistan — ” Shayma leapt, pulling at my hair and anything else she could grab hold of, slapping me across

the head and face. “You monster!” she shouted. “You sent back a man I hardly recognized, a man I thought was gone forever, a father my children thought had abandoned them. I’ve heard his stories. You beat him, broke his bones, suffocated him, made him bleed. Now I make you bleed.” And she would have, if I didn’t push her off and Umar didn’t grab her and lock his arms around her waist. “That is enough, darling,” he half whispered. “He’s only come to talk.” Shayma wriggled herself free. It was a wild, desperate motion. She faced her husband. “Is that what you’re going to do, Umar? Talk to this animal?” “Yes, I am.” “Is that what the two of you did in Afghanistan, just talk away like some gossiping housewives in that place, while he,” she pointed a finger at me, “tormented you within an inch of your life? Did you just give up, Umar?” “No, he didn’t,” I said, not expecting the words. “He never gave up.” Shayma looked at me, her face unreadable, just like Umar’s. She stepped toward me, Umar reaching for her arm. “If you came here to talk, it better be to apologize.” I could see tears welling in her red eyes like puddles in the desert. “For God’s sake, apologize.” There was silence. I was still sitting in the chair, trying to speak. Movement in the house caused me to look and see the two children at the backdoor, their faces frightened. My gaze fell to Shayma’s feet. “I don’t feel good about what I did.” “Say it to him,” she said, stepping back. I looked up into Umar’s face, that face I’d come to know so well back in 2012. That face I’d cut and beaten. What did I want to say to him? Not 35

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sorry. It hadn’t been my job to peg Umar as a terrorist. That hadn’t mattered to me. My job had been simply to interrogate him after he’d been selected. I wasn’t going to apologize for doing my job. Umar looked down at me as I looked up at him. Neither of us said anything, and I felt that unspoken communication we’d shared since the beginning. I wondered if I’d come all this way only to feel that. “You’ve already forgiven him, haven’t you?” said Shayma. “I see it in your eyes.” She began to cry then in sudden gasps. It looked like Umar was about to as well as he pulled her into an embrace and shushed her softly. I looked around the alley. An audience of onlookers had congregated at the doors and windows of the neighboring homes. Shayma pulled away from her husband, seeming to notice her children. “I honestly don’t know whether to be mad at or proud of you, Umar.” She sniffed and wiped her tears, made her way to the boy and girl, taking them into the house, turning to give us one last look as they disappeared into the darkness of the doorway. Minutes went by as Umar stood looking up at the sky, not speaking a word. I watched, not sure if he was waiting for the neighbors to disperse, or if he simply didn’t know what to say. “I always noticed that about you,” I said, bringing his attention back to earth. “How you’d only look up.” “What do you mean?” I stood and joined this man I’d hurt so much. I looked up at the sky. It was dimming but colorful, with lined clouds running across like scars on skin. “Most of the guys we had in there, they’d only look down after a while. We’d have to Stillwater Magazine

pull their heads back just to look them in the face.” My eyes fell back to Umar. “Not you, though. We had your arms strung up and your legs knocked out, but still you managed to keep your head up. Didn’t think it was physically possible.” Umar looked at me, his lips twitching strangely. “I just kept my head back.” “But up,” I said. “You always looked up at the ceiling, and that’s how I knew we hadn’t broken you. The guys thought I was crazy for saying that. Suppose I got a little obsessed … but I always knew we’d never break you. I think I knew that the moment they brought you in.” I started to laugh a little. “Is this all funny to you?” said Umar. “No,” I said. “It’s just that every guy in that place eventually broke. I don’t mean they told us valid information or saw the error of their ways, but I talked to guys who were real threats, terrorists, and every one of them eventually pissed his pants and cried himself dry. They all shit like animals, they all hung their heads, except for you, and you were just some mistake. Some Muslim who wasn’t even from the Middle East, just there to visit your cousin or who the hell cares? Just a guy with almost the same name as a real suspect.” I shook my head. “Talk about wrong place at the wrong time.” The two of us were not looking at the sky anymore. I thought about Afghanistan, the orchestra of screams and weeping that Umar’s voice had never joined in on. I missed it less now. My mind replayed everything I did to him: every beating, every waterboarding, every rectal feeding. The nights I would keep him awake without a second of sleep — the other nights I’d only let him sleep in a metal box the size of a freezer. This man, who had never been trained to stand torture, who was a tailor by 36

profession, had endured all that and now stood on the property he owned himself. “I have to tell you that I knew you had nothing from the start, Umar,” I said. “I don’t know why I kept doing it all to you. Whether it was to just try and break you, or if I was … ” I almost said looking for something, but I couldn’t get the words out of my throat. The truth was I admired him. He had something I didn’t, something I maybe could never have, but I wanted it more than anything … Because every time I’d tormented him, interrogated him — every time he’d endured — the question of whether I could do the same had gone through my head … And I didn’t think I could have, but I wanted to know how. We didn’t say anything more until the stars rose in the sky and the moon lit the alleyway. “I’ve missed talking to you,” I said, shaking myself out of my thoughts. “But I think I should go.” “You came all this way just to talk and leave?” he said. “I’d stay if you let me, but I think your wife would murder me in my sleep.” Umar looked at the house. “I think you might be right.” I breathed deeply. “Well, I guess this is — ” “Just tell me one thing.” This time I didn’t feel hostile toward that tone of voice. “I’ve told you a lot.” I could see a light in the man’s eyes that was not on account of the stars. I’d always noticed it being there, even in the cell in Afghanistan. “What is your name?” For a moment, this was the hardest thing in the world to remember. “Miles Loeb,” I said. Umar nodded his head. “Thank you.”

I started to walk back the way I’d come around the house. “Miles,” said his voice. I turned back to face him, and in that instant I saw a man half naked in the moonlight, ropes tied around his wrists, the stars burning in the blood of his cuts and galaxies spiraling in his bruises. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the night sky. It would be the last time I saw him like that. “I’m glad you left,” was all he said.

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“Nightmare” Series by Sam Fuller Stillwater Magazine

L o ok ing Gla s s by Damen McDougall It will happen that I will be looking in the mirror and catch a glance of my aunt Judy in the set of my eyes, subtle flare of my nostril, the shape of my lips. I search then, at my neck, imagining that I feel the scarf tighten

I feel I am as stained through as I was at eight, walking the road behind her house, holding the hem of my shirt in front of me, pregnant with blackberries, bulging, the cotton of my shirt bled through with purple and red

I think of her often, see her reflected in the cast of my face when I am alone, in my vanity, its winged mirrors swinging, displaying my throat in triple, three views of the bruise circling my neck as if I am the one who’s died

It’s an irreverent kind of stain, not shying away from its permanency. Blithe like the pain of a tattoo, that sensation you could live in forever, the sweet ache grazing your skin reminding you of what feelings you are capable

How shrunken she seemed sitting in the trailer we used to share. Evicted, her home emptied of its possessions like some cancerous lung expelling what carcinogens it can in a last heave before it deflates entirely

She’d stopped taking her pills, the week before it happened. Deliberate. I feel her decisions manifest in my own fears, and in those things I should fear, but don’t. I think I understand her, though I wish that I didn’t

A material life that dematerialized. I catch myself clutching onto the physical as she did. Her hands in death are my own, atrophied in a grip on all things that time will wrench from me, fingers swollen, palms calloused But these digits are nimble enough when fidgeting over my features, when raking my face, dexterous when it comes time to flick the ash from my cigarette like she used to do. I think, not for the first time, that I am killing myself as she did 39

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Once upon a time, my head was in the ground... by Zach Chapple Stillwater Magazine

,...gold-in-til, until itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s found by Zach Chapple 41

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Fairy Dance by Arianna Ashby

I ran around the holly bush several times before stopping to catch my breath. Panting, I sat down and looked at it. There was something fascinating about the glistening leaves that looked as if they were made from hard wax. The bush also had shimmering red berries that I used to pretend were poisonous, even though I didn’t actually know whether they were or weren’t. Many times I would reach out to touch the leaves, wondering if they were really just leaves or if they were something more magical. I knew everything had magic in it, sometimes it was just hard to find because you weren’t looking right. I would hold the leaves in my hands and rip them in half, trying to figure out what was magical about them. Then I would pick another and repeat the process as if I somehow forgot that I had just tested them. It was too perfect to be real, yet there it sat in the front yard just next to the concrete driveway. I would often sit on the edge of the driveway where the cement ended with a sharp dip into the dirt below. Often, I found myself staring at the bugs that crawled around down there and sometimes, I would join them by sinking my feet into the rich, moist Mississippi soil. I would submerge my toes, wiggling them up and down, caking my feet into the earth. On days like those, my mom would make me wash my feet from the garden hose before coming inside. Stillwater Magazine

I liked the dirt. But more importantly, I liked the things that lived in the dirt. Back then, I didn’t see the bugs as just bugs, but as something more. A city. A home. Of tiny bugs and humans. A place where fairies lived among nature, just like the fairies that decorated my room. There were stickers of fairies in lilac flower petal dresses that flitted across the matching purple drawers of my desk. I also had a painting hung in my room that showed a small person in a green outfit made from leaves riding a snail. She had her legs up in the air and a scrunched up face from smiling. The snail had a harness on that connected to its mouth. I liked the idea of small people, like me, out there. They were more powerful and beautiful than anyone; even those who were bigger than them. I wanted to be a fairy more than anything, so that I too could ride snails and wear dresses made from different types of flowers. It was nearing dusk now and I knew that was the only time they would come out. In my mind, the fairies were always there, but for some reason I couldn’t see them during the day. Only when it became dark would their yellow glow alert me to their presence. I could hear them in whispered giggles that would float on the breeze. I was waiting for the dusk to take over and for the yellow streaks of light to appear when my friend Tyler ran up behind me. 42

the surrounding sky, and the streetlights in our neighborhood had already begun to turn on. Tyler looked down at me before sighing. “Well, can you hurry up and un-times so that we can get on with our game? Lad and Alex are waiting.” Lad and Alex were his older brother and sister who were also over and playing out back. “No,” I replied stubbornly. “Why?” His anger was returning. “I’m waiting for something.” “Like what?” I hesitated at his question. He might laugh at me if I told him. I knew most people didn’t believe but I did. I knew they were real. I sighed. “Fairies.” “What? Those aren’t real.” He giggled at me. “Are too! And I can prove it. Just wait.” “Wait for what?” he asked. “Them to come out.” Even as I spoke I saw the yellow glimmers begin around the holly bush. “See!” I pointed at the streaking yellow specks in front of me. Tyler looked to where I was pointing, and giggled again. “Those aren’t fairies! They’re fireflies!” “Nu-uh! They’re fairies! How else could they light up like that?” I knew he would try to do something like this; I knew he wouldn’t believe it. “Well … uh …” Tyler stammered, “I don’t know but somehow that’s what they do. That’s just how fireflies are.” I just shook my head at him. He didn’t get it. I didn’t understand how he could look right at them and still not believe. “Well clearly, they’re fairies,” I repeated again. “No, they’re fireflies.”

Tyler and I had been best friends since I could remember. We saw each other a lot because his mom worked for my parents. Usually we would play tag or have whispered conversations in the back seats of cars about how we were never going to grow up. Sometimes I would go over to play with his lizard and sometimes he would come over my house and play dress up. Sometimes I had to wrestle him into my costume dresses which he was never happy about, but I was. There were lots of times I told my parents that I was going to marry him and I believed I was going to even though I didn’t really understand what marriage was or meant. I couldn’t imagine life without him. He ran toward me. He had deep black hair and pale cheeks that were flushed red from running in the sticky air. He was pulling up his tan cargo shorts as he half jogged toward me. “Tag! You’re it!” he screamed in triumph while looking down at me and poking me in the shoulder obnoxiously with his finger. “Hey!” Irritated at him, I pushed the sweaty, fine, pale hair out of my face. “Not fair, I’m on time-out.” I folded my arms across my chest and looked up at him in a determined way, knowing he would argue back. I was smaller than him, like I was in comparison to most people, but I knew I could win any argument. “Who said there was times in this game?” He shifted his weight onto one hip. “I did. And you can’t make me be it anyways,” I turned my attention back to the holly bush. It was growing darker by the second in 43

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years older than us but to me, he seemed older than that. Tyler was tugging at his arm. “Tell her, tell her,” he said, jumping up and down in time with his tugging. He smiled down at me, but I knew what he was going to say. “Tyler’s right, Ari. They’re fireflies.” Tyler grinned from ear to ear and puffed up his chest behind him. I glared back at him, and crossed my arms. “Here, I’ll show you.” And with that, he went to go catch one of my precious fairies. “Don’t hurt them!” I cried out and ran over to make sure he wasn’t going to be mean. I watched as he gently cupped his hand around one of the glowing dots. “Now, look closely. It’ll probably fly away after I open my hands.” I peered over his cupped hands to try to see what he was holding. He slowly opened them, and there sat a little glowing speck. I swore I saw a little person sitting there, confused and waiting to continue her dance before she floated off. “You see?” Lad asked me. I nodded even though I didn’t. “Good.” He turned to leave. “I told you so.” Tyler continued to grin at me, and I noticed he had a gap in his teeth at the bottom. The tooth fairy probably even gave him money for that when he lost it. I thought and rolled my eyes. Big kids and adults were so weird. I shook my head and turned back to the bush. As I watched the lights continue to float in a methodical dance, I wondered if they really were just fireflies, or if some of the fireflies just joined the fairies in their dance. Or what if the fairies turned into fireflies to protect themselves. I smiled to myself. What I saw were small people with

“Fairies.” I was determined. “Fireflies.” “Fairies!” My voice rose in tone as my annoyance grew. “Fireflies!” he screamed back. I stood up this time and looked him right in the eyes. “Fairies!” “They’re not — ” but he never got to finish his sentence because then I punched him. Right in the stomach. I was stubborn and used to fighting with him to get my way. “Ow!” Tyler glared at me. I knew I hadn’t punched him hard enough for it to really hurt, but it did knock the breath out of him. “They’re fairies,” I said with defiance and waited to see if he would argue with me again. “Okay. Fine,” he said, rubbing his stomach and frowning slightly. “They’re fairies.” “I know.” I smirked and turned my attention back to the ever growing lights that were circling the holly bush. I watched as the glow illuminated the now darkened twilight. The shadows danced off and around the bush, making the coating on the leaves shimmer. I was mesmerized by the rhythm of the lights. As I watched the lights float up and down through the air, I could have sworn I saw little figures inside the glow, dancing with one another and laughing. I imagined myself with them, glowing and twirling into the night with a dress made out of flower petals. I was too busy imagining what life as a fairy would be like to notice Tyler had run off. By the time I did notice, though, I saw him coming back with his brother, Lad. He was about two Stillwater Magazine

crystal wings and glowing dust that trailed behind them. I continued to watch them that night until Mom called me to come inside from the front porch. In my warm bed, I watched my beloved creatures dancing just outside my window frame, their trails of sparkling dust lulling me to sleep.

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H ow t o b e a B l a c k Fe m a l e Fo o t b a ll K i c ke r by Devon Morris

Bet your football playing friend that you could play their sport better than them, because it’s not nearly as hard as your sport, soccer.

Once the season ends, receive a school-wide email from the Athletic Director that the head coach has been fired.

Demonstrate your kicking skills for the football kicking coach.

Jump for joy, but in a very classy and subtle manner as to not be rude. Don’t sink to his level.

Kick better than the current starting kicker.

Decide at that moment to try out for the next season.

Request a spot on the team from the head coach, as recommended by the kicking coach and other assistant coaches.

Cry from exhaustion after completing the first day of workouts.

Encounter rejection without reason.

Continue attending workouts; quietly suffer.

Realize the reason is that you’re female.

Recognize all your muscles strengthen substantially.

Know that your femininity does not diminish your value.

Be shunned by the majority of the boys on the team because you’re a female with a boyfriend, and you’re not interested in “being initiated.”

With the support of friends already on the team and the assistant coaches, attend every practice despite the head coach’s aversion to your presence through consistent disregard.

Try out for the kicking position and quickly humble your competition. Kick at your first game and almost shit your pants.

Spend at least 3 hours — daily — after school standing, watching, and feeling isolated from the team at football practice.

Remarkably flourish into a talented kicker, and hide your laugh after glancing over at your teammates’ pleased, stunned faces.

Occasionally, and casually, explain to family, friends, and teachers the reasoning behind your protests: sexism is unacceptable.

Earn the starting position. Listen to coach tell you to pick soccer or football, not both.

Don’t forget about soccer practice every night afterward. Stillwater Magazine

Tell your dad, then watch him write a very detailed email proposing a “both/and” alternative to the coach’s “either/or” declaration.

but don’t try to understand why, because he told you not to fuck up in the beginning. Be the best person and friend you can be through it all by avoiding drama with teammates and staying professional.

Listen to coach tell you that if you do both, you’re not allowed to fuck up. Tell him you won’t fuck up.

Watch your closest teammate pass out from heat exhaustion, and be his right-hand man as he recovers.

Attend 3-hour football practices, then 2-hour soccer practices every day.

Get into a fight with him about your significance on the team, resulting in him not speaking to you for 4 weeks.

Cry, again, from being so tired all the time. Finally start the season after 3 months of training.

Recognize you no longer have anyone on the team to go to for support, and experience alienation like never before.

Kick so well at your first home game that some parents applaud you while others frown in disappointment shortly after realizing you’re a girl.

After coach recruits another, stronger kicker, prove that accuracy is better than power and that you can be just as powerful anyways.

Miss 2 field goals in your first away game and have your confidence shattered. Don’t forget to embarrass yourself and show your vulnerability by breaking down in front of everybody.

Kick your max field goal of 42 yards. Remember, boys will always have an advantage over you because they’re boys and it’s a boy sport.

Receive a small bracelet from your biggest fan, a 6-year-old girl.

Talk to one of your black coaches and listen to him:

Remember why you’re doing this and how strong you can be.

“Just do you, and that’s all you can do.”

Don’t quit.

Realize that being on the team doesn’t mean the coaches and team aren’t sexist.

Listen to a teammate yell at someone for running like a “little-ass girl.”

In your last game, hear your coach tell you that the other kicker is out with a concussion and that he wants you to do an onside kick.

Continue to persist through sexist verbal abuse from your teammates and occasional slips from coaches.

Line up and take a deep breath.

Listen to coach yell at you for inevitable mistakes, 47

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Perform a perfect kick. Run after the ball. Look slightly up to your left and hear a pop against your helmet from the linebacker. Fly for what feels like 10 yards until you finally hit the ground. Tell yourself you’re okay. Attempt to get up and realize you can’t move. You’re not dead, just scared. So start to cry. Again. When you finally hear your coach come over, and he helps you up, ask him if your mascara is running. When he laughs and says no, stop crying. The last thing you need right now is makeup on your helmet.

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I n H er H and s by Noa Livernois She’s just standing there, refusing to meet your eyes, clutching your still beating heart in her hands. Or she might as well be, considering what’s written on the piece of paper she’s actually holding. Gripping it so hard that her fingernails have torn right through it. You’d rather it were a pulpy mass of muscle and blood scooped from your chest after all; it would be less frightening. She might even enjoy the opportunity to look at it up close. She has always been fascinated by your heart and its peculiarities. You have a heart murmur, a small defect that doesn’t really affect your life at all, just changes the sound of your heartbeat. She says it sounds like the ocean, has spent hours lying with her head on your chest, listening to the tide come in. You wonder what it would sound like in her hands. But it is, undeniably, just a single piece of paper that she’s holding, not a heart or a metaphor. Her bright green nail polish stands out so sharply against it, only a few days old but already chipped. You were the one to paint the nails on her left hand — she always has trouble holding the brush in her right, hates how sloppy it ends up looking. So you cupped her hand in yours, held it more gently than you held your baby brother the day he was born, and applied the nail polish with the precision of a surgeon.

You are in love with her. You wonder if

you will ever get to hold her hand again. And the

silence breaks. “What the hell is this?” she chokes out, barely more than a whisper. You flinch as though it was shouted, and you say nothing. You know exactly what it is, what her finding it means. It’s a poem, born from a class prompt to write a letter to your past self. You decided to write to yourself on the day you realized you were gay, the same day you realized no one could ever find out. The night you cried yourself to sleep, a lifetime of lying and hiding stretched out before you like an endless sea. You were ten years old. And now, eight years later, you are still a skeleton in the closet of your own making, gathering dust. It isn’t even a good poem, cliché and quickly written, but it’s the only one of them she has ever read. Your poems are the only place you can be honest, so you’ve kept them from her meticulously, written under a pen name to keep closed the closet door. You’ve been published in several different magazines, and she has no idea, this girl who has been given every other part of you. You were so careful, going as far as sleeping with your notebook under your mattress to keep her from seeing it. But you ripped out this one page and put it in your dorm room desk drawer, waiting to throw it out in the communal 49

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mer before you went away to college together you lived in her home, your own too much of a warzone. She made you breakfast every morning, knew exactly how you liked your coffee. Her parents called you their second daughter, and pictures of the two of you hung on every wall. Falling in love with her was not something you did on purpose, it just happened. Every time you slept in her bed you both started off on different sides with a wall of air between you, but you always woke up completely tangled up in each other. Falling in love with her felt just like that. “I’m gay.” “It’s not right, Hannah. You have to know that.” The floor slides slowly out from underneath you, the room turning on its side. Without meaning to you find yourself sitting in front of your bed, looking up at her. She’s not done. “People are going to think I’m gay now! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” She doesn’t give you any time to respond. “Oh god, I let you sleep in my bed. And you knew the whole time, and you didn’t tell me. How could you take advantage of me like that?” Something vital inside of you splinters. She stops, furrows her blonde brow, continues. “We can fix this. This isn’t you, Hannah, you’re just confused. What if we both pretend this never happened? You go back to being straight and everything will be fine and we can still be friends.” She pauses, looks to you for an answer. But you cannot remember how to speak, cannot even get off the floor.

bathroom trash where it could not be traced back to you. And she went looking for a pencil. And it all went to hell. “Hannah?” She looks up from the page for the first time, and betrayal is etched into every line of her face. Even the laugh lines you put there yourself, like Michelangelo slowly chipping away at the marble to reveal David, perfect and holy. In all the years you have known her, she has never once looked at you like this. “It’s … it’s not what it looks like. It was just a writing exercise for a class. We were supposed to write from someone else’s point of view instead of our own. It’s fake. Please, it’s fake.” But your voice is an earthquake, and it sounds false even to you. “No more lies,” she says through newly gritted teeth. “You owe me that, at least.” You are in love with her — your first. You have never been in love with anyone else. And most days you would be willing to bet your life on the fact that she is in love with you too. If there is an ocean in your chest like she says then she is a siren, drawing you in again and again, inescapable. Beautiful. She is always pulling you closer; grabbing your hand when you’re walking too slow, wrapping her arm around your shoulders and cradling you against her chest, lying your head in her lap and carding her fingers through your hair. Her laugh is intoxicating, her smile addictive; you would do anything to make it appear on her face, even at your own expense. She knows more about you than anyone else ever has, and she is kind to you. The sumStillwater Magazine

“I’ll give you some time to think about it. I need to go.” She drops the piece of paper on her way out the door, crumpled into a ball in the midst of her anger. Damaged irreparably. You stay on the floor for hours, not even noticing the sun setting outside your window. It feels like minutes. It feels like years. It feels like a wave breaking against the cliffside of your sternum again and again, until a bruise begins to blossom from the inside out. It was your heart in her hands after all.

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“Nightmare” Series by Sam Fuller Stillwater Magazine

I n t he Ec ho e s by Monica Chen

II. You’ll grow up on a Tuesday. You’ll knock softly on your baby brother’s bedroom door as your father tucks him into his cradle. Your father will look up at you with a smile and nod his head before gently patting the small tufts of hair on your brother’s head and adjusting the slightly tattered white blanket over his small body. You’ll return to your room and crawl to the edge of your bed, huddling under your blankets and pressing your small body against the white wall. You’ll clutch a small book against your chest, the bright red cover a stark contrast against the soft beige night shirt your mother made for you. Your father will walk into your room only a minute later and he’ll take his spot on the bed beside you, bending his knees to just below your feet so that he can fit on the small mattress. The metal springs will creak under his weight and you’ll wait a brief moment for him to get comfortable before you press your book into his hands. “Mrs. Meyers gave it to us,” you’ll say to him before you stick your thumb in your mouth and wait for him to start reading. He’ll silently pull your hand away from your mouth and you’ll pout, but you’ll know that you’re getting too old to still be sucking your thumb anyway.

I. You’ll be born on a Monday. The winter winds will make no sound outside the hospital walls as they cower in fear of your mother’s screams. The words will tumble from her mouth, like the frenzy of snow falling just a window away, in a language foreign to the doctors and nurses. The blizzard of white will stop as you let out your first cries and your mother will name you after the storm. The quiet power. The beautiful destruction. Your father won’t be present for your birth, though you will be the only thought on his mind as he prepares the new apartment for your arrival. A gently used crib will sit in the corner, soft white blankets entwining around the rough wooden bars. The cloth will still carry the slight smell of hunger, exhaustion, the inside of your father’s suitcase. “Welcome to your new home,” he’ll whisper to you as you and your mother step over the threshold, his fingers gently running through the small tufts of hair on top of your head. His English will be broken, accented in the wrong places, but you won’t be old enough to notice. And your mother will smile as she steps into the apartment, breathing in the smell of bread baking in the oven.

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Your father will flip through the book once very quickly before closing it and holding it out in front of you. “Daddy’s tired. Why don’t you read to me this time?” Your eyes will widen and you’ll break out in a smile. “Okay,” you’ll respond before grabbing the book. “You know, Mrs. Meyers says I’m real good at reading.” Your father will chuckle softly and close his eyes as you begin reading. You’ll make it through the first half of the page before stopping on a difficult word. Your father will sound it out with you, slowly, patiently. He’ll do that for each word that trips you up before his eyelids become too heavy. And as he begins to drift into sleep, your words will dance around his head, and he’ll dream of the time when you’ll be teaching him new words and helping him sound them out. And when that time comes, he’ll ask you to write down his life story. His culture’s history, his family’s past, his journey to a new world. And the words will be in English. III. Your plane will depart on a Wednesday. Your mother will cry and your father will hold her shoulders as if to hold her back from jumping on the plane with you. Tears will stream down your mother’s face as she zips up your backpack and reminds you to keep your passport and documents safe at all times. She’ll pretend to be mad, but the spite won’t make it to her eyes. “We gave up everything to come to this country and now you just want to leave?” she’ll ask in her native tongue.

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You’ll smile at her and give no response. You won’t expect her to understand. Your father will hold his lips together in a tight line, one you’ve come to learn over the years means that he is trying not to get emotional. He’ll gently brush his right hand against your hair as he presses you to his chest, your arms wrapping around him. Then, he’ll pick up your suitcase in his worn hands as he walks you to your gate. “I’m proud of you,” he’ll say. “Thanks, Dad,” you’ll respond, smiling back at him as you take the handle of your suitcase out of his firm grip. “Your brother should have come to say goodbye,” your mother will say, dabbing her eyes dramatically with a napkin. “It’s fine,” you’ll reply. “Tell him I hope his tests go well.” Your mother will nod and continue swiping at her eyes with the crumpled napkin. “Call us the moment you get there. And watch out for thieves and pickpockets. And don’t talk to strangers. And remember to eat.” You and your father will glance at each other and smile. And with one last wave, you’ll walk slowly down the hall to your flight. IV. Your daughter will arrive on a Thursday. She’ll be three weeks early, and even though you and your partner will have prepared for months ahead of time, you still won’t be completely ready for her. Rose-faced and blue-lipped, she won’t cry right away, and the doctors will take her into a back room to run some tests. You’ll hold your breath as you wait for the hospital staff to return, cheeks 54

The house will still smell like baked bread, as it did when you were growing up. You’ll cook stew for your father and your brother as they watch the television. And you’ll press a soft hand onto your father’s shoulder as you urge him to eat something. He’ll sit stoically in front of the couch, commenting on the news as it flashes by on the television, face pale with loss and hands sinking into the armrests. Then night will fall and you’ll walk into the living room after washing the dishes from supper and you’ll see him cry for the third time in your life. First when his mother passed. Second when his sister passed. And now for his wife. And you’ll softly push his left arm onto his lap and sit down on the armrest, your right arm wrapped around his shoulders, your head rested on his. His entire body will shake as he is wracked with sobs. You’ll sit with him until his eyelids begin to drop before ushering him upstairs into the bed he once shared with your mother. He’ll slip in on the left side and still only take up half the bed. That night, you’ll lie awake in your childhood bed, the wallpaper still peeling and the bed springs still creaking. And as you send a text message to your partner and your daughter, peacefully resting in the home you’ve made for yourself, you’ll wonder why humans bother to love. Sometimes I wonder that too.

pink with fear and lips blue with sorrow. Your partner will lay a hand on your left forearm. You’ll take it in your right and press it to your cheek. They’ll flash a small, exhausted smile at you and the unease won’t leave your chest, but you’ll still find yourself smiling back. And you’ll think back to the first time you met them, a year after moving to a new country, when you weren’t sure whether or not you would fly back home. And the first time you said “I love you” to each other, and how it sounded a lot like “stay.” And the day you married them, two years after you first started dating. And how they met your parents the day before the wedding and yet still wanted to join the family. And you’ll know that you’ve never wanted anything more in your life than to have a family with them. Your hands will shake against your partner’s until your daughter is returned, first into your partner’s arms and then into yours. Your baby girl will yawn and wriggle in your grasp. And then she will wail and cry and scream. And you will smile because, in that moment, it will be the most beautiful sound you have ever heard. And you will whisper in her ears your hopes and dreams for her future, as she grows and thrives in the land that you have chosen for her. V. The hospital will call on a Friday. And you’ll be on the first flight home that Sunday, running through the airport gates, into your brother’s arms. It’ll be the first hug you’ve shared since you were teenagers. Your brother will drive you to your family home, the bells striking twelve as you wind through the narrow roads.

VI. Your grandson will be born on a Saturday. You’ll be the third to hold him. First his mother. Stillwater Magazine

Second his father. And the guilt will wash over you as you play with his pudgy little fingers and coo softly into his ear. Because you never gave your mother or father the opportunity. Because your daughter stayed close by. Because you didn’t. VII. You’ll die on a Sunday. Slowly. Softly. Sleep will take you, as you had always wanted. As you drift more and more into a permanent rest, you’ll smile selfishly because you’ll leave before your partner. You won’t have to learn how to live without them. And they’ll know once they wake. They’ll know immediately as the life leaves your body, the warmth still lingering in your queen sized bed. Your daughter will cry at your funeral, tears mixing with mascara and running down her cheeks. Her husband will stand, arm wrapped around her waist, holding her gently but firmly. They’ll accept people’s condolences and shake hands and whisper their thank-yous. Once the funeral ends, your daughter will return to your family hvome with your partner. She’ll dote and she’ll comfort. She’ll turn off the lights in your master bedroom as your partner settles into the sheets. Then she’ll return to her childhood room and call her husband and son, saying her goodnights and breathing harshly into her pillow before sleep overtakes her. And in the following silence you’ll hear me whisper. I’m sorry.

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