The Blue Route Issue 29

THE BLUE ROUTE

Widener University

Letter from the Editor

Welcome to The Blue Route #29! This year’s issue was a joy to work on with submissions from across the United States and a number from across the world. The staff had a blast reading through the work, and making decisions was truly a difficult challenge for us. The overall strength of writing in the submissions was impressive, and for all those who submitted, we cannot thank you for enough for your passion and skill. The staff was going through a transitional period of during this issue’s creation, with many of our previous staff graduating and with myself transitioning into a new role as Editor-in-Chief. Yet I am confident that the many new staff members we’ve gained this year has lead to the creation of an issue that is as strong and compelling as previous issues.

Issue #29 carries a strong theme of the messiness of everyday life as well as honing in on a sense of nostalgia. The pieces will bring you to emotions and scenarios which may feel very close to home, aided by the extraordinary tools used by these terrific poets and prose writers. Throughout the issue, you will feel the warmth and homeliness of childhood as well as the sorrow of adolescence and adult life. There is plenty more for you to discover as you read through this issue.

We thank all of our readers, writers, artists, and more for allowing us to be able to create this issue. I am very thankful for all of our readers and editors we had throughout this year, especially our faculty advisor Dr. Michael Cocchiarale. It is without further ado I present the 29th issue of Widener University’s The Blue Route journal!

Sincerely,

Sean Creelman

Aportrait of a woman

Michel O’Hara

Antioch

University

LosAngeles

hangs in my dining room. An ex-girlfriend of the artist, a friend of a friend I never knew.

She’s centered at the bottom edge of frame.Agorgeous gesture of black curls, bare shoulders, lips a tightly strung bow.

I’ve always been curious about the rust-colored gash on the side of her head and why the blunt strokes of a bruise tinted sky emerge from it. Are they a reflection of how beauty obscures and eclipses the damage we inflict on one another,

or did it just happen to be how the light hit at that particular time of day when she sat for him?

Water Damage

Abigail Celoria

University of North Carolina at Wilmington

It had just turned 8:46 p.m. when Kathleen banged on my door for the first of three times. I’d been counting down the minutes until my dinner finished warming in the oven, silently cursing my landlord. For the past three weeks, it had taken double the time to cook anything, and yet she still wouldn’t send anyone over. When I first heard the knock, I thought maybe Nadia had finally called a handyman. But then it kept going, threatening to split the wood from its weathered frame.

I opened the door to my neighbor standing barefoot on my welcome mat. I almost didn’t recognize her ”despite living side by side for four years, we had never spoken, only crossing paths on our way to and from our duplex.

“Um, hi,” I said.

She grabbed my arm, her flushed face twisting in a waterfall of worry.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know it’s late. Can you please help me? My basement is flooding, and I can’t get ahold of Nadia.”

I strode into the night air on her heels, no time to ask questions. She closed the distance between our front doors in two bounds.A trickling sound grew nearer as we thundered down the basement stairs. She reached the landing first, entering water up to her ankles. I slipped my house shoes off, my eyes darting between taped-up boxes stacked around the spacious room, dress hems on clothing rails bobbing in the gray water, antique furniture pushed close to the walls.

“Have you figured out where it’s coming from?”

“I can’t think about that,” she said. “I just need to get this stuff out.”

It took us an hour and a half to clear out the basement. The three pieces of furniture were the hardest to get up the stairs ”particularly an antique walnut armoire. I stretched my throbbing back as my neighbor paced the length of her patio, phone held to her ear.After hanging up, she collapsed onto one of boxes in the backyard and hid her face in her hands.

Jattu Fahnbulleh

I

lingered beside her, hunger hitting me in waves now that the adrenaline had died down. But something made leaving feel wrong: the defeated hunch of her shoulders; the jungle of waterlogged junk around her; the abandoned concrete hole bordering it all, once a swimming pool until the duplex’s previous tenants fought over its use. I perched on one of the boxes next to hers.

“Oh, God, no,” she said. “Please go get some sleep. You’ve helped enough already. Nadia’s got emergency maintenance on the way now.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m not really tired, to be honest.”

“Don’t do all that.”

“I’m serious. Believe me, I know I’ve done enough.”

She released an amused exhale. Her blue eyes shone like twin stars in the twilight, refracting the light from our combined patios. She stuck her hand toward me. I shook it.

“I’m Kathleen.”

“Anthony.”

“Nice to finally meet you,Anthony.”

I gave her a smile, and she turned back toward our conjoined townhouses. Behind them, we could hear the occasional car rumble down HammondAvenue. I realized she was listening for the slow turn of tires, an idling engine, the opening of a repair van’s doors. Her leg bounced, shaking the contents of the box she sat on.

“So, how come you have all this stuff packed up still?” I said. “You’ve lived here longer than I have.”

Adeeper kind of weariness diffused into the lines of her face. She wiped her forehead.

“It’s all my mom’s stuff.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry, she’s still alive.”

“Thank God,” I said. “I thought I’d really intruded on something there.”

“Well, she does have cancer, and she probably won’t live much longer.”

“Oh,” I repeated, the heaviness in the word sticking this time.

Kathleen went on blinking into the darkness.

“I can’t say I’m really affected by it one way or the other,” she said. “My dad thinks I should be, but he divorced her, like, twenty/ twenty-five years ago, so I don’t know why he’s suddenly on her side.”

“So I’m guessing you aren’t very close with her.”

She smiled, the patio lights settling into its creases strangely.

“No. What about you?”

“You mean, with my mom?” I said. “We’re pretty close, actually. We’ve always been that way. She accepted me immediately when I came out to her in high school, which wasn’t as common a thing to do back in the nineties.”

“I’m glad you have that.”

“I’m sorry you don’t.”

“Yeah, well.”

Kathleen’s phone buzzed.As she rose to answer, my gaze fell on the water-smeared label of the box she had been sitting on: “Mom’s Junk.”

“I guess I can go check that out,” she told the caller. “When will you be here, though? I’m obviously a little stressed out about this. Okay, yes, see you soon.”

Kathleen and I parted when maintenance arrived, walking through our separate sliding doors into a welcome warmth. But as I entered, a burnt smell hit me. Dark smoke drifted toward the ceiling, filling the living room and kitchen with a strange haze.

I ran to the oven and threw open the door.Awave of heat and metallic stink billowed in my face as I grabbed my forgotten dinner with the oven mitts still lying out. I bounded back into the backyard, weaving around the contents of Kathleen’s basement, and flung my burnt shepherd’s pie into the empty swimming pool. For a still, disbelieving moment, I watched the smoke rise out of a solid blackness.

***

Two weeks later, the second knock came. Just like the first, it rattled my front door again and again, pulling me out of the first stages of sleep. I stumbled down the stairs and threw the door open. Kathleen stood on my threshold, her clothes and hair rumpled and her face a blotchy mess. Mascara ran from the corners of her eyes to her jawline, where it pooled in dark wells. Yet, her eyes glowed with something other than sadness”the blue stars rippled with fire.

“Not the basement again, I hope,” I said.

“Do you think Nadia would care if I burned stuff out in the pool?”

In the last few weeks, we had talked more in passing. I had even helped her weed her front yard one Saturday. She brought me potato soup (her own recipe) later as thanks. In all of those interactions, I hadn’t seen any hint of this strange behavior.As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, hers flared with warring emotions.

“You’re not going to answer?” she said. “Fine. I’ll just go do it anyway.”

She stormed off, and I followed her around the side of my townhouse. Kathleen stopped among the jungle of boxes and furniture we had moved out of the basement. I’d kept teasing her about when she would move it all back. Whenever the basement dried, she’d said. Kathleen put her back against the walnut armoire and shoved it from where it sat at the edge of the gaping pool into the blackness.A splintering crash ripped through the air.

I ran the remaining steps to her side.At the bottom of the pool, half of the armoire rose intact out of the other side’s ruined remains, like a candle that had resolidified after burning. I stood there, mesmerized, until Kathleen tossed a handful of old coats over it. I moved into her path as she lifted one of the boxes.

“What the hell?” I said.

“Just go back inside,Anthony.”

She tried to step past me, but I grabbed the opposite side of the box in her arms.

“This is my backyard, too,” I said. “What are you doing, Kathleen?”

“Let go!”

She shoved the box into me. I stumbled back, bare feet hitting the paved edge of the empty pool. The fire in Kathleen’s eyes blazed as we pushed and pulled the box, her stocky strength slowly overtaking mine. She adjusted her grip, yanking on one of the taped flaps on top. It ripped open, and Kathleen fell back as the contents of the box spilled over her.

I offered her my hand, but she pushed it away, sitting up on her own. Stacks of pictures surrounded her”old ones, too, the thick lower edge of Polaroids lining them all. Thick, blocky numbers dates ”occupied their edges. I picked one of them up. Its strip was waterwarped, the date smudged.

Kathleen snatched the picture out of my hand. She stared at it, but as the seconds ticked by, her gaze went past it. The light from our porches glittered in her pooling tears. I knelt next to her.

“Is that you?” I asked.

“I was six in this picture,” she said.

“And the woman holding you?”

“Monica”my mom.”

Kathleen let out a wry exhale.

“People always say I look just like her,” she said.

“Kathleen, what’s going on?”

She suddenly looked small against the piles of boxes, clothes, and furniture littered around us. The concrete hole pulsed with emptiness. Kathleen’s eyes did not stray from it.

“Mom died three days ago,” she said. “The cancer finally got her.”

I froze.All the options for comforting her”words, hugs, food”seemed insufficient against the look on her face. Her eyes still raged, but a few tears slipped out of them, following the path of her smeared makeup.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be,” she said. “I’m not. She was a horrible mother”a horrible person, really. She never wanted to be a mother. She told me that all the time. I’d get slapped around, blamed for everything. It got to where I was pulling chunks of hair out in high school because I was so stressed. She never apologized for any of it.”

“You do know none of that’s your fault, right?”

Kathleen scoffed.

“I’ve gotten that spiel from every therapist I’ve seen,” she said. “I know it’s not my fault on paper. But I never got an apology from her.”

I could see the picture in her hand ”a young girl in twin pigtails and cloth overalls, sitting in the arms of a woman with a frizzy blonde mane and a half-smile. Kathleen’s voice wavered as she went on.

“And I never got to tell her how angry I’ve been with her all these years,” she said. “My dad told me to let her pass peacefully, and I did, because I felt bad for her, but what now? She’s dead, and I still hate her, and I don’t know how to move on.” ***

The third time Kathleen knocked on my door was to tell me she was moving out.

On the day she left, I helped her load up her U-Haul. None of her mother’s things remained”I had watched her burn everything that night in the backyard. She had done it slowly, deliberately, stretching out the moment.

We shook hands, and she drove off, and that was the last I saw of her.

For weeks afterward, I found myself thinking back to that last moment”how I had stopped myself from asking if she regretted it, or better yet, how she had the strength. I’d told Kathleen about my mother, but not about my dad. He left when my mother became pregnant with me, only to return my junior year of high school, right when I’d decided I didn’t need a father. In a way, I still didn’t have one. We rarely talked about anything real— especially not my sexuality.

And more especially, why he abandoned me, or why he bothered coming back.

Afew nights after I’d watched Kathleen build her pyre, I walked to the edge of the empty pool. In my left hand, I held an old photo of my dad and me. In my right, a lighter. I looked at that photo for a long time. Astranger snapped it for us at the baseball game my father took me to soon after returning. Despite the graininess, the rigidity of my young body popped out at me. It came at me like a gut punch”how unfamiliar that arm around my shoulder had felt.

I flicked the lighter, and then the picture was burning, twirling into the pool’s darkness.

Before the next tenant moved in, I got a call from Nadia. She asked me about the ash in the pool. I told her I had no idea where it came from.

“Friends”

Sara Wilkins SUNY Geneseo

silver rings laid tangled together on my one nightstand. limbs interlocked as she gazed downward at my bruised neck, a painting in the medium of her hands and lips. my maybes bled into yeses, the weed and alcohol she gave me and the look in her eyes

made the word no an option i forgot i had. i said yes the second time sober, so it was ok. right?

but she was my friend, one that understood me and made me feel comfortable. or was she thinking of me underneath her the whole time? or did i tap her shoulder at the right moment? or was i easy to use?

you know you can't get a crush on me, right?

she wiped away a tear that was never there, consoling me like a child begging for validation, after hours of the blinds closed and lights off. like i was never a friend first and a fuck second.

How to Bury Regret Keegan Fobes

The Pennsylvania State University

You bury it in swing and gazing shoes of pattered drumheads, pedal locks, distortion; You bury it in maple’s ashy bark and rivers tucked in cherry blossom petals; You bury it in cornucopias you filled with pumpkins, ornamental corn; You bury it in Falstaff’s flaunting farts he shoos and waves and bares his ass to crowds; You bury it in little words and fingers long tresses, hair that waterfalls your face.

And when you’ve buried all you could, it’s time reclaim what’s yours. You break the drum against your bedroom wall, dry powder flies and falls. It’s okay, nobody can judge you. Ma-ples burn their red away and cherry blossoms replace with green. Distorting pumpkins mold, and ornamental corn returns to plains. Then Hal becomes the fifth, and Falstaff quivers, and you take matters into shaking hands, and tresses litter the floor. You are a babbling brook.

Just don’t be shocked when it comes home to you, a mess of dirt and muck, regret reclines.

peace of mind

Amber Jean Boykin

Palm BeachAtlantic University

Inhale.

Feel the breeze between the hairs that stand on the nape of your neck. Touch the water and feel the current take you where you need to be led. Taste the salt on your burning lips, with burning passion waiting to be exposed.

Exhale.

See the waves fold gloriously in front of you. Expose all built up tension while you feel pressure pass over you. Build momentum, take a moment. And breathe.

Amanda Tecco

Dandelions

Ella LaBarre Grinnell College

Last week I saw a group of kids in the field I pass by while driving through my neighborhood. They were no older than eleven, no younger than eight. Just a few boys wearing neon athleisure sprawled across the grass with Nerf guns lying beside them. The temperature was 96 degrees, the sky sunny and clear. Their shirts were soaked with sweat and their faces were a rosy pink. I was thankful for my car’sAC.

I looked away to focus on the road but then looked back. The boys were standing up now, grinning real big. They gathered around in the starting formation of a game we’ve all grown to hate as adults. It’s childish, it’s rowdy.After all, the rules say it’s only for ages 4-12.

At this point, I imagine they are counting down. 3.…21…1

Acacophony of boyish screams and mimicked explosion noises. They are happy sounds, loud and ugly, but happy. Foam bullets pellet off of their tiny bodies, the ones they have puffed outwards to make themselves look big and strong. One boy is shorter than the rest but he stands the tallest.Another pats his back. This is not war; this is love and it’s reckless.

It’s a film reel: an eyedropper of color and a saturated smile from the boy who got a cavity filled at his last dentist appointment. It’s a slow-motion shot: a single frame succeeded by another. Maybe one of them has a mother with a drinking problem and maybe another just had their dog put down at the vet but right now there is a soundtrack of laughter, the emblem of joy.

And I am driving through it. Not long enough to make out any of their faces, but just long enough to breathe in their moment. Sniff it in and exhale. There’s the scent of the wet grass that got stuck between our toes on humid summer days. There’s the mud-stained shorts that got their color from backyard soccer games.And there’s the dandelions, the ones everyone’s mother said were ugly ‘cause they’re weeds, but isn’t it the ubiquity, the viral spread that makes them so beautiful?

Jattu Fahnbulleh

I’m smiling now. It’s a toothy smile too. I think that joy is a lot like dandelions. Infectious. Pretty, but only if you let it be. We need to stop telling people to devalue joy when it's derived from childish naivete. It’s still joy. Let’s take what we can get.

It must be said that I am not ignorant. I know it is not easy to extract joy from the calamity that is life. I know for some it’s easier than others and that the power of privilege is daunting.All I’m saying is there is joy in the blips of our existence and that joy’s inevitability is a beautiful thing.

Their moment is over.At least that’s what they tell you because I’ve driven my car past the field now. What you must remember is that three blocks down there is a group of girls who are soaring down hills on bikes and their bodies have become lighter than the air that surrounds them. There is no nauseating, mirthful feeling like that. There is a mother whose only child just came back cancer-free and her glossy eyes drip sweet agave tears and there is a boy who can finally look himself in the mirror and own the body he lives in and there is another and another and another and”.

There is an infinite amount of joy, even if you try to count it, you can’t. You are soaking it in every day. This is the beginning of a sunburn but not the end. There’s no need to worry about peeling skin and aloe vera when all there is is warmth.

So, breathe it in. Forget you are on your way to work an underpaid retail job. Some of the customers smile. Forget that our planet’s collective sadness outnumbers its joy. The two don’t cancel each other out.And then remember there is joy. Even when you’re not feeling it, it’s there. You are living among it. Just take a second to look.

Dividen lenguas (They Separate Tongues)

Whitney Flores Christopher Newport University

I have been fighting for my nationalities for as long as I can remember. I’m Panamanian-American. I was reminded of it when I got looks for bringing arroz con frijoles for lunch every day. Kids would peer into my thermos with steaming food and ask, “What is that?” I’d answer and they’d go back to their cold lunches.

Mom was a high school teacher and her colleagues had comments, too. They could appreciate the food, but leaned down to tell me I was wrong about having two nationalities. They thought it was cute that I knew the word “citizenship” at six, but said, “You can’t have more than one.” But I knew, “I have two passports. I have dual citizenship.”

Dad grew up in Panama without running water or electricity in a village of maybe twenty-five houses. He’ll say he wasn’t poor because his parents made sure their kids always had something to eat even if they didn’t, and this wasn’t possible for everyone he knew. We have different definitions of things.

Mom grew up in the working-class section of a white-collared town in South Jersey. But she went to nice schools, so poverty meant something else to her, too.

They met when Mom was in the Peace Corps from 1994 to 1996 in La Pitaloza. She lived down the road from Dad while she did her work in soil conservation. Their love story is not mine to tell.

La Pitaloza has had three other Peace Corps volunteers since. It’s still the same town. They’ve installed electricity since she was there, but it goes out with the rain. They still wash their clothes by hand and have chickens running through their cinder block houses.

We are famous in La Pitaloza now. I am the only gringa aside from Peace Corps volunteers who ever comes around. Mom stayed in the States for most of the summer-long trips with Dad, but they still talked about her. Most of the stories I’ve heard about Mom’s time in the Peace Corps have been through “reliable” narrators of townspeople who may or may not believe either of us actually speaks Spanish.

I’m not famous in the States. I’m barely even Latine to most people (too white) and rice and beans are just strange.

Explanations have never been enough.

“I’ve been to Panama City. There was a mall right across the street from my hotel,” a ninth-grade classmate said with her hands on her hips, probably. “You’ll have WiFi.”

I had told our group I would do my part of the assignment, but I wouldn’t be able to get online until the end of the winter break. The other students couldn’t fathom not having access to the Internet. I didn’t expect the disbelief to be voiced by the only other Latine in the class.

I looked at her with both tongues glued to the roof of my shock. I thought about the drive out of Panamá (City) I had done every year of my life. We never stayed in the city for long.

After stepping off the plane, Dad and I would grab our bags and go through customs “or was it the other way around? I just know the thrill I felt every time I stepped into the shorter line behind Dad. I’m a citizen, too.

We would walk out of the freezing airport into the wall of tropical heat. I’d shed my jacket and tie it tight around a suitcase or shove it in a backpack if there was space. There was never space. We would be surrounded by two carry-ons, two backpacks, and five large suitcases and there was never enough space. There was definitely at least one pair of shoes destined for someone else, shoved in my carry-on by Dad at the last minute.

Horacio showed up late every time. “Voy llegando,” he’d text (I’m on my way). Dad and I still joke that he leaves the house when we land. Time gets lost at the airport, so maybe it really was three hours before he showed up. Maybe it really was three more before Dad got all the bags into the car, before he built a tower of gifts only he could take apart. It was a year of thrift shopping with everyone’s size and preference memorized, packed tight into suitcases exactly fifty pounds each. There was no hope of the driver being able to see out the back, the goal was to close the door.

Driving in the city makes Dad sweat (I’m “not allowed” to), but Horacio came into Panam¡ all of the time for work, so he navigated it with ease. We’d be on a road with no lines or signs or lights or stopping and he’d type away at his Blackberry with both hands and slowly push forward through the dense traffic.I still don’t know if he knew which way to go or if he made his own way.

It was only once we got in the car that Dad would take his first breath since leaving the house in Virginia hours before. The full breath wouldn’t come until we were out of the city at the little restaurant on the side of the road we always stopped at to fill up on food that was properly greased and sala’o (salted). ***

Panamanians eat steaming food. Steaming arroz con frijoles. Steaming rich coffee that scorches your tongue. Refreshing foods like mangos are not served at meals; rather, they are devoured, immediately after their fall from their towering treetops when they are caught by the calloused hands of someone who just risked getting killed by fruit for the chance to savor it.

It’s coolest allá atrâs (“back there” on the porch), so that is where you’d find us most of the day. When I was a kid, Dad would leave me at my Sara’s house and I’d alternate between the couch, the hammock, and the dining table covered in plastic stapled to the wooden sides.

I wasn’t much use around the house with hands half the size of the hard-bristled brush Sara used on the clothes. I had to stand on tiptoes to reach the bottom of the deep sink. The rim would dig into my armpits when my hands scraped the smooth bottom. Skin softened like butter under the cold water and harsh soap, and my hands turned red to match the flush on my face. Sara would be through three shirts by the time I had one ready for her to re-wash. It will kill your back, washing clothes by hand, especially the way Sara did it. By the end of the summer, previously dirt-stained socks would look whiter than me. Uselessness left me idle. There was no one to talk to as they were either working or in school and there were no screens to glue my eyes to. Once in a while, I would go to the neighbor’s house, Rosita’s, for gelatina (Jello-O).After running across the little dirt road and sneaking around her dog, I would come up to her back porch. She would serve me red gelatina in a white mug. ***

The summer before I went to third grade, I finished my school work and read all of thebooks I brought at least once by the end of June. Maybe Dad noticed. It was probably Sara who said something. He gave me a red spiral-bound notebook with a set of thin colored pencils.An apology, maybe, for leaving me with his older sister to visit yet another primo.

I had the notebook for several days before I dared make a mark. I needed at least a week before I could enjoy the books again. The blank pages were a finite resource. 250 sheets to be exact.

I started in the black netted hammock that left the back of legs looking like they had been pushed halfway through a garlic press, but nosy ants and mosquitoes chased me back to the porch. I tilted the chair with a cowhide seat back against the low cinderblock wall like the men always did.As I looked across the yard, over the chickens, and past the clothing line with all of our underwear blowing in the wind for all the world to see, I tapped a pen against the empty first page.

I filled that notebook that summer after deciding I would become a poet. Every page was crowded with a mix of hurried and careful script. I wrote about everything: the fruits like nances and guaba, Sara, and the phone I had to dial money onto from a red card. Poem after poem described the world around me. It was pages of attempts to make sense of the arroz con frijoles, the alla atrás, and the gelatina (the strange).

***

I spent most of my time in Panama at Sara’s house. The few days spent at Horacio’s in the city of Penenom at the beginning of every trip was our last chance to connect to the Internet.

I could have gone to McDonald's to get WiFi one of those days in Penenom that winter break in ninth grade, but I don’t think I did. I did the assigned work, but I wasn’t going to feel guilty for having a different life experience from my peers. There was nothing I could do to make them believe me.

When I said I was going to Panama for three months every summer, I meant the country, not the city. Llano de Piedras, where Sara lived, was a rural town with questionable roads and more horses than cars. Still, people always imagined me lying on a clean beach, getting a “nice tan.”

We did go to the beach once a summer, but there was no resort in sight. I had grown used to having beaches nearly to ourselves. We’d bring food and sometimes find cover from the sun from dried palm leaves strapped together to form a small roof. I never got far in the water, Dad never let me. Instead, he’d tell me the story of myAngie getting pulled out to sea by a riptide and having to get rescued by a boat. I have no idea if it’s true.

Time is something I learned in the States. School starts at 8:00 AM so I wake up ten minutes before the bus leaves at 6:40AM. I count down minutes on the bus in class, between classes, until breaks, and through breaks. To show up early is to show up on time and it matters. It matters that you show up on time and it’s not considered strange to get anxious to leave.

In Panama, the buses, with their floral, fabric seats and silent drivers, show up when they show up. Time had a whole new set of rules that I had to learn.

There are words for the way time moves in different cultures: monochronic versus polychronic. In the States, we see time as monochronic “a commodity we are wasting by having this conversation right now. In places that see time as polychronic, you go by feel. There is no reason to rush as long as you get things done. Why not say hello to your neighbors along the way? (Horacio was late even by Panamanian standards).

I have no idea how long it takes to get anywhere in Panama. Time has two tongues, like me.

***

Lengua means tongue as in language and body. Spanish speakers joke that bilinguals literally have two tongues in their mouths. Language isn’t like palm trees. It doesn’t grow in a straight line or even slightly curved. It forgets the sun and goes after the television screen. You remember how the song goes, but not what it means and what the story means, but not how it goes. Language gets lost in the wash.

You get around without something for long enough, you forget what you needed it for. Nine months without use and I’d lose a tongue.

I was ten the summer I played in front of my abuela’s house with a cousin named Diana. I wanted to tell her that I was almost named Diana. I knew it might be weird, but I wanted to tell her I was supposed to be named Diana, but then Dad’s ex named her kid Diana a few months before I was born and my parents didn’t think my brother should have two half-sisters named Diana. It doesn’t matter because I couldn’t say it. We played in the red dirt all day long.

***

To me, Panama means words. Reading the same stack of books five times over in a matter of weeks and writing poems until I had aching wrists and a dried out pen. Finding new words to describe an old world.And learning words I can’t bring home because they don’t translate.

To pasear means to go somewhere (somehow). The trip may be by foot or not, it may have a destination or not, and it may be long or short. In my memory, it means talking to people. Going to pasear doesn’t mean going to the store and coming straight back. It’s not like theAmerican habit of rushing through breakfast, forgetting to taste it, only to count the extra minutes of traffic. It’s stopping at every other house, leaning against concrete walls, and sitting in cowhide chairs. Paseando means accepting your fourth cup of coffee on a day so hot you wish you were an animal that panted. It’s open arms.

These two untouching worlds dividen lenguas, they separate tongues. I can never talk to one about the other in a way that does it justice. My abuela never believed it ever got colder than the fridge in the States. MyAmerican peers never quite believed me when I said it wasn’t a big deal that there was noA/C where I stayed in Panama. There is no way to explain pasear toAmericans who demand a destination. I can’t even prove that Spanish feels like home as I stumble over verb conjugations and speak with the vocabulary of a child.

“But what do you do if you don’t have Internet?”

Years of fighting and I never came up with an answer that satisfied them. I’m twenty-two and I still don’t have one, but I’ve sewn my tongues back together. I thought being in the middle meant being nowhere instead of being in both. I’ve realized that worrying about the answer separated my tongues and kept me from seeing how perfectly they both fit, side by side, in my mouth.

To properly peasear, one must be open to the world. Whenever the bus gets there, it gets there. Whatever happens, happens. Panama doesn’t explain and neither will I. Simply paseamos.

Rae Bynum, Encased in Glass

The Lantern

Chinedu Gospel

NnamdiAzikwe University

Let me start with the match. I am as quick as fire. But, my light is not the length of a stick. I'm the brown crown of the match & my eagerness is the matchbox. When we kiss, I ignite. & everything I touch beams. I do not touch things that are capable of turning into ashes. I touch anything that can absorb light, hold fire & still not burn. Like hope. Like faith. Like love. Like a miracle. Sometimes too, they exudesmoke & become yellow, likea withering. Like how my father & his Wife do not see eye to eye. Like how once, he was a lost sheep & could not recognize the voiceof his shepherd, he wandered a wanting. But, my father's hopeis yet green. He believes in seeds & seasons.So, he tills the cornfield with his teeth. & I believe that a wilderness can be tamed into an orchard, if there's togetherness. My hope is inflammable like gasoline. My ambitions are like glass, you can see the fire throughmy pupils.As the darkness crept into her night, mother would often say, sun son,you're my only eye. But, I'm not, literally. I hope someday, I am like a star, like a fire shoved into the lantern's white eye.

Jattu Fahnbulleh

Raccoons are Little Thieves

Dyl Sitterly

Duquesne University

There are no raccoons in Spain, but there is Miguel.And Miguel loves raccoons. He has a mug with a cartoon raccoon wearing sunglasses and the tagline “live fast, eat trash” in Impact font. He bought it from one of the raccoon Facebook groups he is a member of and paid international shipping fees to send it to his loft in Madrid. He has a matching sweater, too.

Miguel would like people to know that this isn't the entirety of his personality. He contains multitudes. He is a professional bank teller and an amateur cook; he is good at golf but untrustworthy at keeping score; he is well liked by his mother and two out of three ex-girlfriends. But raccoons are a part of him, the most earnest part.

Miguel has circled a date on his raccoon-themed calendar: July 21st, the day he will find a way to pet a raccoon or else perish in the untamed wetlands of Central Florida. Inside the circle, the phrase “Disney Vacation with Maria” is crossed out with some vengeance.

Miguel refreshes the comments on his Facebook post, which reads, “Hello, it has been my dream for a while to meet a Raccoon. I am traveling to Orlando and I would like to meet a raccoon for the first time (if I could pet one, I would be ecstatic). I have searched in Google, but can’t seem to find what I’m looking for, I mostly find news or things related to raccoon as pests. Do you maybe know of a place/site? I thank you in advance.”

There have been nice comments from manyAmerican raccoon lovers, but nothing that would help on July 21st in Orlando. With time running out, he had resigned himself to a day spent searching dumpsters in the greater Orlando metro area. But today, there is a new comment. Leon Hamilton, famous in the online group for the picture of his raccoon sitting comfortably atop a horse, invites Miguel to his ranch an hour outside the city.And Leon is willing to provide transportation there and back via his pickup truck.

Miguel replies, “Thank you, friend. I cannot wait to meet your raccoons (and horse)!”

Amoment passes and Miguel replies again, “I am excited to meet you, too. Did not mean to imply I am only using you for animal access.”

That night, Miguel, too excited to sleep, returns to his computer to see if Leon accepted his friend request (he had.)Aquick survey of Leon’s profile reveals that he owns a number of adorable raccoons, as well as at least one possum. It also reveals an equal fondness for guns of all kinds, beer of one particular kind, and President Donald Trump. Leon has also posted some unwholesome memes about Hillary Clinton and some nighttime activities of hers that frankly seem like none of Leon’s business.

Miguel realizes he will be going deep into the country with a genuine redneckAmerican stereotype. He mentally draws up a rough survival plan. Part one: do not comment on politics. Part two: do not reveal that you are Catholic.

He also sends a message to Maria, who will be going on her own separate Orlando vacation at the same time, informing her of his likely location and possible murderer so that she can inform the police.

She sends back, “please stop contacting me,” and in a separate message, “ok, I will tell the police but I hope the raccoon eats your corpse.”

Miguel does not see any raccoons at the airport in Orlando. He is not sure what the actual frequency of raccoon sightings is in America.

He checks the gift shop for raccoon stuff, to no avail. They mostly trade in items relating to oranges, sunshine, and Mickey Mouse. But Spain already has all of that.Still, he buys a Donald Duck magnet for his mom. She used to read the Pato Donald comics when she was a kid and was disappointed when he told her he was no longer going to Disney World to see her favorite duck. Maria did promise to send his mom Donald’s autograph though. Miguel thinks that is nice of her, considering the post-nuclear state of their relationship.

Miguel meets Leon at the pickup/drop-off area. Instead of getting out, he just shouts to Miguel through the passenger side window. The truck is well maintained and free of rust, but also coated in several layers of mud and sediment. Two flags fly from the tailgate: the American flag and some yellow one with a snake doodled on it. Miguel throws his bag in the back and climbs up into a seat that may never have been cleaned.

Leon smiles through the wad of tobacco in his cheek. He has a blonde scruffy chinstrap and a mullet leaking down from a John Deere hat. His left arm is resting horizontally on the wheel, and Miguel is staring down the barrel of a lit cigarette in his hand.Awater bottle repurposed as a spittoon sits in the cupholder between them.

Miguel thinks that Leon is careening towards oral cancer with unprecedented speed. “Thank you very much for this,” he says.

“Hey man, no problem,” Leon replies, reaching into his back pocket and offering an aluminum puck with the image of an Indian chief on it.

“No thanks, I don’t chew that.”

“Aw shit, my bad, I suppose you Europeans are more into cigs, huh?”

"I am not into either very much, if that is ok."

“Nah, that’s cool.”

As they drive out of the airport, Miguel looks out the window, trying to form his limited English vocabulary into a conversation starter that doesn’t sound completely stupid. Leon flicks on the radio and fiddles with the dial until a Spanish voice comes out of the speakers.

The song, a love ballad, duels with the hum of the engine and the wind sucked in by the open window.

“You like this shit?” Leon asks.

“I, uh”

“Shit, probably because it's Mexican and you got your own Spainish music that ain’t so mariachi. Sorry, man.” Leon wheels the dial to American rock music. “You probably don't like tacos either.”

“I like tacos,” Miguel says.

“Oh man, you have no idea what a relief it is to hear you say that. ‘Cuz I bought all the stuff for ‘em and everyone says I make ‘em better than a white boy has any right to, but all of a sudden, here I was, thinking I was exposing my ignorance or something. Like if I went to Barcelona or wherever and you offered me tea and crumpets.”

“Nah, man,” Miguel says, “everyone loves tacos.”

“Damn straight.”

They pull up and Leon swings the driver’s side door open and jumps down onto the muddy driveway. Miguel, bootless, delicately lowers himself to a dry patch of dirt.

“I remember the first time I saw a raccoon,” Leon says from the porch of his house, in front of a wall of chipped white paint on wooden planks. “It was also the first time my pa let me handle the varmint rifle. Lord, I had always wanted to paint the dirt with some poor unfortunate critter's blood. But there, huddled in the corner of our garage, cornered by our old hound dog, was a three-legged, one-eared, fat-ass ol’raccoon. I didn't even feel bad for her, she was a mean ol’cuss, hissin’and spittin’ and standin’her ground. But there was somethin’about her that made me pause. Pa was hollerin’‘shoot that sumbitch’and it woulda been real easy. Pa woulda patted me on the head and said 'good job, son, I'm proud of you' and I could count the number of times he said somethin’like that to me on one finger. He woulda made me a coonskin hat and I woulda gone to school lookin’like Daniel Boone. But he just kept hollerin’, and the dog kept on barkin’his fool head off, and that raccoon kept on hissin’ back, and so I turned the gun around and pointed it at my own pa and said ‘Lord help me, but after all she's been through, it ain’t nobody's place to strike down this mangled ol’raccoon but GodAlmighty’s.’”

“Dios mio,” Miguel says.

“Anyway,” Leon says, opening the door.

Miguel hears the sound of scratchy little feet on hardwood deeper in. His heart flutters.

Leon steps in first, takes a picture frame down from the wall, and shows it to Miguel. “This is her.” In the photo, a fat raccoon wearing a party hat is seated in a baby's high chair, reaching out with one hand for the cake in front of her on the tray. “Ol’Lefty, the first raccoon I ever saw. They say that raccoons are little thieves. Well it must be true, because she sure stole my heart.And there's a bunch of rascals in there ready to steal yours. Wait here a sec.” Leon hangs his hat and heads down the hall. Then, he shouts, “Now, you ready?”

“Sí. Yes. Ready.” Miguel hears a baby gate unlatching, then a frenzied scramble.Ahorde of raccoons and a single possum skitter around the corner and funnel down the hallway towards him, each wearing party hats that say “Bienvenidos, Miguel.”

“Gracias,” he says.

CONTRIBUTORS

Amber Jean Boykin is a published writer currently based in South Florida. Her passion comes from being immersed into different cultures, as her father served in the U.S. Navy as well as personal travel. She uses these experiences and integrates them into her pieces, highlighting on the unique features of life.

Rae Bynum is a Creative Writing major at Stephen F.Austin State University. Her work has debuted in HUMID and Voices and in art exhibitions. When she’s not wordsmithing, Bynum spends her time making memories with her loved ones. In her spare time, Bynum enjoys photography, reading, and daydreaming.

Abigail Celoria is a senior at UNC Wilmington pursuing her BFAin creative writing. She has been writing avidly since the fifth grade, with a particular affinity for literary fiction. She currently serves as an editor for two of her university’s publications. Her work has previously appeared in Atlantis: A Creative Magazine, Carolina Muse, Quirk, and others.

Jattu Fahnbulleh is a senior English and Creative Writing double-major at Widener University.Alongside reading for the Blue Route, they like to participate in Lone Brick Theatere’s seasonal theater productions, watch anime, play video games, and listen to/create music

Whitney Flores is a Latine from a Virginia town at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They are a senior studying communications studies at Christopher Newport University.

Keegan Fobes is a third-year history major at Penn State University. He received the Lehman and Cranage Creative WritingAwards for his poetry and short fiction, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Folio, Fission, and Kalliope.

Chinedu Gospel is a Nigerian poet, anASSON student from College of health sciences, Okofia. He is also a member of the Frontiers Collective. He tweets @gonspoetry.And enjoys playing chess and listening to music when he’s not busy with school work or poetry. Some of his work have been published in different online and print magazine and journals. He recently won second place in the Blurred Genre contest, 2023

Ella LaBarre is a second-year English major at Grinnell College. Her work has been published in The Albion Review and the UNLV Creative Arts Journal.Her work has also been featured in Red Cedar Review.

Michel O’Hara is a poet and photographer living in LosAngeles, CA. She is completing her B.A. in Creative Writing atAntioch University LosAngeles. Michel’s work has appeared in gallery shows and photography exhibitions across the U.S. and was included in the anthology Personal Narrative. Currently she is an editor at the literary journal Two Hawks Quarterly.

Alexa Santos is a junior nursing major at Widener University. Outside of academics, she plays in the Widener jazz band as a saxophone player as well as participating in the marching and concert bands as a clarinet player and as one of the band's drum majors. She also loves her pet bird Romeo.

Dyl Sitterly is a neurodivergent student at Duquesne University. He is a proud GED recipient and began his collegiate career at Butler County Community College, where he was President of the Writer's Club and student editor of the school’s award-winning literary and arts journal FACETS. Previously, he was the only community college student to become a finalist in the 61stAnnual Hollins Literary Festival Fiction Contest.

Amanda Tecco is a junior nursing major at Widener University who has always loved to write. She has taken writing courses at Widener such as Flash Fiction and Creative Writing (focusing on poetry and prose) and enjoys working on Widener Ink, Widener’s in-house literary journal. She not only loves to write but she also loves to read the works of other aspiring writers. Working on The Blue Route has been an amazing experience that brought forth so many beautiful pieces of writing.

Sara Wilkins (She/They) is a senior English major at SUNY Geneseo. She is currently the productionassistant for the literary journal Gandy Dancer and is an assistant at Darhansoff & Verrill LiteraryAgents. She enjoys writing poetry and nonfiction, and loves to read fiction.