To Know Everything (on the Camino de Santiago): A Story of Connection // Eliza Hayse

Outside the chapel of lost souls, we eat overripe nectarines, bruised from our bags. Two days prior you mocked me for buying them, telling me they would go bad quickly, that I should opt for a sturdier fruit. I’d ignored you, and now we hold the bruised fruit in our hands as we sit on exposed stone, the sun pounding on our shoulders. I peel away some of the skin with my teeth and the juice, which had been longing to burst, collects on my lips, dribbling down my chin. You use your fingers to split the fruit open at the suture, nectar spilling from your fingers.

“See? They’re nearly rotten.” You take a bite, and I watch your jaw move.

“They’re sweeter this way.” You look at me and grin, and I don’t meet your eyes but I can feel them. We sit quietly, the stone wall cool, the chapel shadow leaning left in front of us. We eat around the dark bruises in the white flesh. You take the pit out of your nectarine and place it between us, like an offering to the God we mock.

“What makes a soul ‘lost?’” I break the silence, and the words sink in the humidity. I can feel them settle on the lobes of my ears, on my hairline, on my shoulder blades.

You laugh, but it catches in your chest. “A soul that is here.” This time, I look at you. Your nose and cheeks are burnt, and your curls are flattened from sweat. I pick up the pit you placed on the stone. It is cracked, so I split it open with my thumbnail and reveal the seed inside.

“You know the seeds of stone fruit like this contain cyanide?”

“Why do you know that?”

“I know everything, remember?” I place the open pit down, the seed revealed. Next to me, you tear off a piece of bread and hand it to me.

"Then you tell me, what makes a soul lost?" You gaze ahead and tear another piece of bread off, this time for yourself.

"Then you tell me, what makes a soul lost?" You gaze ahead and tear another piece of bread off, this time for yourself. The way you speak is stilted, not because you are uncomfortable but because English is still unfamiliar, and so your tongue is too heavy in your mouth and on the back of your teeth. I want you to meet my gaze, but when you glance at me, my eyes find the sky and I squint. I take a few minutes to respond, my jaw feels stiff and marionette-like.

“I don’t think anyone can know that until they are being prayed for.” This response seems to be satisfactory to you, and the smile on your face is almost too soft to see, but I know it well.

“I think maybe we are lost souls.”

“Yeah, that part is obvious.” I rest my hand on the bench next to me, centimeters from yours, calculating the space like I am considering a math problem. My brow is furrowed. Both of us gaze straight ahead at the long grass; the chapel doors closed, the steel gates rusted. I wonder what it is like inside, and I wonder if you wonder that too.

When we met, I liked the way your shoulders moved when you walked. You seemed so at ease like the air was cradling you. You smiled like you had a secret, and I liked that too. The first thing you told me was that I seemed scared. I don’t think you knew how much that was true. You were rolling a cigarette so gently, looking at me sideways. Your t-shirt was dirty and hung on your frame like ivy on wet stone. I was leaning against the wall, looking past you, through you, not even remembering your name. My hands were shaking, I think. They always do.

Outside the chapel, I was thinking about how much cooler it had been then. Now my body is damp, sweat and sunscreen making me sticky. My hand, still so close to yours. If I was to move it just a little bit, would you notice? You reach for the pit, peeling the almond-like seed away and holding it up to the sky. We both look up, noticing the way the sun’s rays make it almost translucent.

Earlier that day, I'd spun in circles in the middle of the road, the early morning light catching on my eyelashes, my freckled arms outstretched. You stood there, unmoving, a portrait that would flash before my eyes with every turn. At one turn, I let myself catch a glimpse of your face. I think your expression was too much to bear. I squeezed my eyes shut as I turned faster, thinking that if I scrambled the fluid in my ears enough maybe I could learn how to make my bones hollow like a bird’s. When I finally stopped, I thought that I would stumble. Instead, I walked straight ahead, focusing on the way my boots struck the asphalt.

“How many seeds would it take to kill a man?” You ask me, setting the seed down, placing your left hand back on the stone, even closer to mine.

“I think, like, 12, maybe?” I respond.

“Perfect. Maybe that’s how I’ll join the 27 club.” You reference the conversation we’ve been having about the artists who created beautifully only to die young. We both idolized them, their inability to weave any peace into their pain; their deaths, so tragic and complete. I swallow and my throat feels tight.

“It would be quite a romantic way to go, I think.” You look at me, and I close my eyes so I can picture the smile on your face without looking at you. When I open them, I meet your eyes and try not to smile back. The effort makes my cheeks hurt. “It only gives you two years to make something beautiful, though.” I am joking, mostly.

“I only need one.”

The day we bought the nectarines, you told me that my eyes unsettled you. “They’re too clear.” I laughed and told you how many people had said the same. I liked making you feel like you weren’t special. You asked me if I thought they skewed the image of the world: "Maybe they make everything too bright to bear." Nobody had mentioned that before, and I didn’t say so, but I knew you were probably right.

We’d finished our bread and our fruit and so we sit, quietly, watching the birds perched on the roof of the chapel. The sun makes the tall grass smell saccharine. I can feel the part of my scalp exposed by the part in my hair burning but I don’t mind. The heat coming off of our bodies mixes in the little space there is between us, and the slight breeze blows it away. The air feels so heavy, but maybe it’s just me. Maybe I am feeling things that aren’t there.

A few days later I would walk away from you. It would be easy, my feet carrying me quickly and softly. In my head, I would turn over these moments again and again as the space between us increased. Your arms that always moved with intention, the lines around your eyes that made me feel so much younger than you, the life-is-easy-for-me smile that I knew had gotten you through so many awkward moments. The ocean, the sand stuck beneath my fingernails, brutal truths almost as bitter as the coffee we drank together. But most of all, the moment I am in now: outside of the chapel of lost souls, where I said a quick prayer, hoping we would meet there again someday. And two pinkie fingers, finally pressed against one another, a tiny declaration of something we both knew but could not understand.

---

Eliza Hayse is a 22-year-old studying her master's in botany. She likes strong coffee and her dog, Sage. Twitter: @elizahayse

Ode to Boy in Nightclub // Zoe Antoine-Paul

All I want is to keep you,
but you are still on the dance floor
and New York City feels like coming down.

An ephemeral march between

pitch black

and too much morning.

You are also there:

blotting memory;

your persistent luster,

strobe lights laced through your skin

flickering

red
green
bright white.

You blur
into Broadway traffic and

I am alone
in Brooklyn again.

[the last call]

3-train sparking past
as the clock strikes 12.

---

Zoe Antoine-Paul writes about the city, the beauty in the mundane, and everyday internal turmoil. IG: @space.junkie13

Redheaded Angel // Wendy K. Mages

Afraid and hyper-focused, I’m riding shotgun, staring straight ahead. Phone in hand, I hesitate to text my sister an update.

We’re in the ambulance now. Send.

My 93-year-old mom is moaning and whimpering as the paramedics try to comfort her. With each sound she makes, a dagger pierces my heart. I hear myself saying, “It’ll be okay, Mom. It’ll be okay.” Tears well in my eyes; I wonder if I’m lying.

The siren wails, lights flashing, we ride through the streets, but there’s traffic. The cars around us don’t (or won’t) pull over to let us pass. It takes an eternity to go even a few blocks.

Arriving @ hospital. Send.

Finally! Send.

I’m walking beside the gurney as the paramedics roll her down the hospital corridors. My mom’s child-sized hand is holding tightly onto mine. We’re taken to a small glassed-in room. Once they have transferred my mom onto the examining table, the paramedics leave and the hospital staff takes over.

We’re in a room in the ER. Send.

Doctors ask a barrage of questions, and I am trying to answer when someone in scrubs with a syringe says, “This will help the pain.” I see my mom flinch, but her moaning stops almost instantly. I take a deep breath, relieved she’s no longer suffering. Suddenly, we’re all alone. The doctors seem to have vanished, perhaps called away to attend to a more urgent case. The room is unnervingly quiet, save for the incessant rhythm of beeping monitors.

“Who’s the lady?”

“What lady, Mom?”

“The one in the window.”

“Mom, there’s no lady in the window.”

My mom came in with abdominal pain, and now she’s talking crazy talk. Waves of panic cascade through my body.

“My mom may be 93, but she doesn’t hallucinate,” I explain to anyone who will listen. No one seems to believe me.

“You said she had a stroke in March?” a nurse oozes dulcet condescension, treacle meant to remind me that my mother’s brain is not what it once was

“Yes, but she doesn’t hallucinate. This just started.”

"Mmhmm," she nods, placating what she clearly believes are my "delusions" and my inability to acknowledge my mother’s cognitive impairment. Yet, I’m more than keenly aware of the impact of her stroke, the skills that were impaired, and those that were left intact. Before we arrived in the ER, my mother did not hallucinate. Her perception of reality has drastically changed in the short time since we arrived, and I’m concerned she’s having another stroke. I poke my head out of the room, but no one will talk to me. I’m told to be patient. So, reluctantly, I return to the chair in my mom’s glassed-in fishbowl.

A sweet redheaded boy appears in the doorway wearing a white coat. “Hi, I’m Danny,” he says, using his first name. I smile and nod. He begins to check on my mom.

My finger moves across my phone.

Doogie Howser just walked in…. Looks about 12. Send.

I stare at the message. It says:

Doofus Howser just walked in….

In my hyper-focused, hyper-vigilant state, this antithetical autocorrect strikes me as hilariously funny. Like a volcano, tremors begin to quake deep inside. I try to suppress this eruption, but I am no longer in my body. I am high above the scene watching the madwoman sitting in my chair convulse into hysterical laughter. I’m appalled!

I look at poor Doogie. I can’t think of a single sane thing to say. I hear myself mumbling something about autocorrect, but Doogie’s not judging. His voice—knowledgeable, kind, and comforting—emanates calmly from the visual epitome of a young choirboy or a redheaded angel all in white. His youthful appearance belies the depth of his expertise.

Danny explains medical procedures like an old pro, but he’s different: he’s listening. When I describe the sudden onset of my mom’s hallucinations, he believes me.

“Don’t worry. It’s the morphine talking.” Danny’s deceptively naïve countenance all but conceals his true wisdom. Unlike the others, he doesn’t discount what I tell him, enabling him to quickly quell my concerns as he shares the etiology of Mom’s hallucinations.

“Oh, okay. It’s just the morphine.”

I’m so relieved! I feel my body relax into the chair as he talks with my mom, quietly explaining to her all the things the doctors are trying to do to help her, all the things the other doctors never bothered to mention.

Love Doogie! Send.

---

Wendy K. Mages, a Professor at Mercy College, is a storyteller, researcher, and educator who performs her original stories at storytelling events and festivals in the US and abroad. website: https://www.mercy.edu/directory/wendy-mages

The Duality of Homes // Madison Summerville

The first time I ever ate dinner at his house was an experience I will not soon forget.

His mother, sole patron of the kitchen, sweats over a pot of sauce. Spices make their way through the air, seemingly guided by an unnatural force. They were made for this purpose, and this purpose only. The sauce simmers while she takes her handmade knives and goes to work on the meat. The knives cost a pretty penny and were made from the finest steel in northern Alaska. Their edges slice through the pork easily as her expert touch coerces slices to separate from the chunk of meat they originated from. No music plays in the kitchen, but her movements are like a dance. A stir here, a new ingredient there, and in my mind, she pliés to the sound of a symphony only heard by me. I do not know much about ballet, but watching her cook has been an experience. She is the prima ballerina, and as she finishes her set (and dinner), she takes a bow after setting the table. I sit at the table next to him. I feel as if I should applaud the show, but he urges me not to. This is a regular occurrence in his house. In fact, this is a daily occurrence in his house. With the growling of my stomach imploring me to take the first bite, I dig in with my fork. As soon as the food touches my tongue, I cringe. The masterfully prepared dish was lost to me forever, and replaced with the taste, smell, and repulsion that can only come from a chef using too much salt.

Dinnertime at my house was an experience I try to forget.

My mother, after working ten hours at the hospital, groans as she makes her way to the kitchen, throwing on an '80s rock ballad. I watch in on her, careful not to enter, because the kitchen can only occupy one chef at a time, as per my mother’s rules. She would tell me time and time again that too many cooks would lead to her getting overwhelmed. In the kitchen now, rock music blaring, she scrounges frozen meats and processed mashed potatoes, exclaiming to the house that we would be eating casserole tonight. The house itself seemed to rumble with the displeased moans of my siblings and father, all located in different rooms. My mother throws the casserole in the oven after adding expired ingredients and vegetables to the beat of raucous drums playing in the background. When the casserole finishes cooking, we all grab plates and serve ourselves. Sitting in the living room with the television playing a crude adult animated series, we eat. We never eat at the table unless it’s a holiday. The rock concert, often loud and unintelligible, is a weekly occurrence in my house. On nights when the concert isn’t present, we order food. The casserole that night, in particular, was delicious. To this day, I don’t know what made that casserole different than the hundreds of rancid ones we had been forced to eat in the years before.

I enjoy both homes. The chaos of one makes me crave the safety of the other, but when it comes down to it, my home will always be where I grew up, and I will always return, whether the casserole is good or not.

---

In her free time, Madison Summerville loves to write horror and hopes to write her own horror novel someday.

Boardwalk Soda Fountain Shop // LindaAnn Loschiavo

My bare feet warmed to burning from the sand,
I’d wave to you, obscured by boardwalk crowds.

Did you greet everyone the same as me?

I watched as you’d extend a palm beneath
A ripe banana, tenderly, as if
To ask permission. Or you’d let me tuck
Wildflowers into cleavage held aloft,
Slick, sweaty, suntan oiled, flecked with sand crumbs.

You like it dirty — even though your hands
Are spotless when you mix strawberry shakes.

You’re wondering how sugar hits my lips,
Eye my reflection showing that pale crack,
Tanned flesh that’s poured inside blue fitted jeans.

Now you’re hunched over the cracked countertop,
Sweeping a butterknife across burnt toast.
“I’m just so hungry. I’ll eat anything!”

Your words and steady gaze have made me blush.
I drop five dollars in your jar and leave
Without my shake because I’m staying here
Two more weeks and imagining how we
Will taste right after, mixed in with the dark.

---

LindaAnn LoSchiavo: Native New Yorker LindaAnn LoSchiavo, a four-time nominee for The Pushcart Prize, has also been nominated for Best of the Net, the Rhysling Award, and Dwarf Stars. Elgin Award winner, "A Route Obscure and Lonely," "Women Who Were Warned,” Firecracker Award, Quill and Ink, and IPPY Award nominee. Messengers of the Macabre [co-written with David Davies], Apprenticed to the Night [Beacon Books, 2023], and Felones de Se: Poems about Suicide [Ukiyoto Publishing, 2023] are her latest poetry titles. In 2023, her poetry placed as a finalist in Thirty West Publishing's "Fresh Start Contest" and in the 8th annual Stephen DiBiase contest.

LindaAnn Literary: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHm1NZIlTZybLTFA44wwdfg https://messengersofthemacabre.com/

socials: @Mae_Westside

Trickle Back, Sad Sack // Lisa Piazza

Late December, the end of another year. Time keeps Rae going. She turns the key. Drives and drives – four freeways, and a grey bridge. She watches the ruddy ducks circle the salt marshes. Follow the western gulls to each onramp: 580 to 280 to 880 to 101. The tires turn a rhyme in her mind: Black cat, Cadillac…Trickle back, sad sack… The words don’t matter. It isn’t a real song, anyway. Just like Rae isn’t headed to a real first date, a real person waiting at a trailhead for her. She has decided to keep a part of herself out of it – the main part. She will show up as a simpler version: part shadow, part shade. Unformed, an outline.

Rae agreed by text to meet her date at the marshes on the peninsula side of the bay. Halfway there she regrets her new pair of jeans from the bargain rack at Target. She feels like someone else wearing them. Come summer she will cut them into shorts and hate them still, then discard them at the curb, but tonight, she drives and watches herself watch herself – an old magic – a practiced art – to be both in the car and above it. Birdseye. Side eye. Goodbye.

She keeps her fingers tight on the wheel. Gray sky, gray gulls, gray road. She drives and lets the sound of the tires guide her: Black cat, Cadillac…Trickle back, sad sack… When Mona was little she sang her a song like this. To pass the time, to change the tone when P.’s rage took hold. Back then, she could still wrap Mona in her arms. She would whisper a made-up thing. A golden net. Always low, always smooth and conspiratorial. She made it sound like magic: an enchanted web that linked them together no matter what tried to pry them apart. It was the only form of protection Rae had as Mona climbed into P.’s black Acura three Saturdays a month as required by the court.

Rae was a gray woman then. Shadow-self. Seldom-felt. Gray night, gray sight. Out the window now she imagines the clouds form a window. A door. She could walk through it if she believed there was anything on the other side.

From the parking lot, Rae texts her date: I'm here. He is a decade younger, has three sons still in elementary school. I’m the tall one, by the lighthouse, he texts. Do you see me? She feels ridiculous walking toward him. Past due. Overdone in her Target jeans, limp brown hair. What will he notice first: the deep wrinkle between her eyes or the horizontal rows on her forehead like the empty lines on a piece of paper?

She walks the trail near the small Silicon Valley airport. As the sun sets, private jets line up. It is loud and windy, but not unpretty with a colorful sky of blinking lights. Still up for dinner? He asks. From a mile up, Rae sees herself nod. The night begs to unfurl into the future. It forces her forward.

Sure.

Rae follows his pale blue minivan from the trail to his house. When he speeds through a yellow light, she stops at a red sure he will drive on. But he pulls over on the other side of the intersection and waits. Rae considers being the one to ditch, to turn left onto the onramp, merge from 280 to 880 to 580 home.

But she doesn’t. He has a pot of soup on the stove and a warm loaf of bread. He asks Rae to toss the salad. His old black lab clumps along at his side, wary. Aloof. When Rae bends down to pet him, he cowers then growls. Emits a timid cry and her date rubs the dog’s ears. Leans in. Looks up at Rae like the stranger she is.

What? Are you some kind of witch?

From above, Rae sees her haggard self, her half-here, half-there heart. Her chin hair gray as bath water left too long. After a second, he laughs – a regretful chuckle. Rae laughs, too. A cackle. She almost says: It’s true, I know some magic. Watch me disappear right here, but she is already doing that - hiding her own mind, tucking a small silence under her tongue to savor on the drive back over the black bay.

This night will fade like the others. Rae will barely be changed by it. Still, the thought gives her an opening, a space. She understands a woman is allowed multiple lives. And a witch? Well, even more.

---

Lisa Piazza is a writer and educator from Oakland, California, whose work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. socials: @lisampiazza

Raised by Wolves // Travis Stephens

my mother is dying
breathing labored, forced
to seek a cool den
the damp earth a refuge
a hole.
We wait nearby, my brothers
who won’t look me in the eye
each watching the wall,
who will be next?
A glance away
let the loud
snarl murderous thoughts
while we others
carry the grudge.

I shiver, understand as always
my teeth rotted and dull.
Even my father, that son of a bitch,
kept his bite until the end.
I was always ignored
last to marrow
filching bits from
other’s old kills.
earn your keep.

We are a large litter
six males, one female.
My wife, baby girl,
always the cute one,
marveled at my brothers
“you have the same eyes,
and the nieces too”.

I’d like to believe
the next generation
is tamer, a little more wag
a little less bite.
But I have seen the way
their own young
start at noises, regard
new puppies with more
than affection.
I have begun to eye small houses.
I don’t need much;
a bowl, a patch of sunlight
& dirt walls closing in.

---

Travis Stephens is a tugboat captain who resides with his family in California. web: zolothstephenswriters.com

After the Relapse // Cat Dixon

Hopefully by the time you read this, I’ll be over the state line, miles away with luggage in the backseat. My scent will linger on that carrot pillow, on the couch, on your sweater I left on the chair. You’ll wonder how I escaped—by boat? By plane? By the orange hot air balloon in the distance? This car is registered to my father. He had me keep it in case I needed it. The magic of the highway—the speeders and slow drivers, the texters and wanderers—never allows a moment of rest. Each flashing headlight is a train crossing and each passed exit is a mirage. There’s no interruption to the race. I wish I had music to pass the hours, but this car wasn’t made for CDs or tapes—only Bluetooth, and I chucked my phone after I cracked its screen. I’ll be going 90 with a cyclone in my hair—nothing to drown out the wind except hope, but that hummingbird has eaten out my chest. By this hour, you’re in the shower—water or tears? The magic of the bathroom is how it’s sacred with its growth of mildew, its coarse hairball clogging under the feet, out of sight, out of reach, its enticing medicine cabinet filled with bottles of remedies to ailments you’ve never suffered. Recovery is a long road, they say, and I wish you easy speedbumps, but I won’t be there to retrace your steps, to clean up the mess, to opine about current events or how you react to stressors. Hopefully by the time you open this letter, I’ll be almost to Kansas—beautiful Dorothy with her red shoes, innocent girl in blue. I wanted a dog, but never got one—my father said I had an allergy. Was it true or just an excuse? Perhaps I’ll never know. I will never know the zaftig bosom of a mother during a fever, incessant nag, the body swap, the unconditional love. We both lacked what we both lacked—both pulled into a whirlpool, a tornado, while everyone stood by and laughed or rubbernecked. Up ahead the cars will slow down for an accident. The firetruck, coppers, tow truck will spin their lights. Perhaps help is only a call away. Whenever a lonely addict calls for help, she ends up ambushed, pinned to a bed, silenced, guests only allowed if they called ahead. Heads turn to survey the wreckage, a blue sedan versus a white van. The airbags deploy. Unfortunately, we were born without those. Nothing to cushion the crash—our heads greeting the dash, our ribs cracked, our fists against the metal. No jaws of life, no one qualified to perform the necessary measures. The nursery zoetrope kept the gulls in endless flight—even the illusion of movement, of relationship, of time reversal trapped us, enamored us with those wings. Let me fly! We cried reaching up. Let me fly! We once whispered into the empty rooms of our youth. Maybe by the time you read this, my car will have broken down. Maybe my quest will never end. There’s an untapped vein under these words, an arm unbruised, a magic not yet cursed. Take this letter, roll it up—a new kaleidoscope for you to peruse.

---

Cat Dixon (she/her) is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She is a poetry editor at The Good Life Review and the author of six poetry collections and chapbooks.

Avocados // Tana Buoy

“I still don’t understand why the forks don’t go in the same way as the knives,” I say while loading the dishwasher. Stabby ends down. Three prongs are just as sharp, just as painful on a careless palm reaching in blind for a spoon for sneaking late-night ice cream straight from the carton. You don’t answer, yet I hear your cheeky voice say, then stay out of the ice cream. In the living room, the television flickers with one of your favorite food shows. They’re all the same to me: renovated restaurants, mystery baskets, bad cooks, soggy bottoms, the pressure cooker. Is it cake or is it cancer?

I open the fridge, inhale cold air tasting of leftover egg salad, search the door for lime juice. The oat milk for your matcha lattes expired weeks ago. I’ve continued to push it further back on the shelf with the excuse the trash is already full. Next time. Always next time. I’m sorry I yelled when you hammered nails and pinholes into the wall without levelling, measuring, searching for studs. You always were trial and error—a little less of this, a little more of that—just go for it and try again as you put up the pictures I was always too busy to hang: Finny as a puppy, the grizzly in Glacier, honeymooning in Maine. Our wedding portrait. My god, we were babies then. I thought we had time.

I open the cupboard above the stove and fight through all your cookbooks for the Ziplock bag containing the recipe for your great-great gran’s guacamole. Set it on the counter safe inside the plastic. What started as oral tradition passed through your matrilineal ancestry is now on a notecard which you repeatedly told me was blasphemous as you wrote down the ingredients, stopping at every letter to rest your shaky hand. Scared the words wouldn’t be legible. Scared it would die with you—In case you meet someone new, you offered.

“Stop it,” I’d said. “You’re not dying. I won’t let you.” Pinky promises.

I want you to know I’m still finding your hair balled in my hoody pockets and stuck like Velcro to the back of my t-shirts and the bottoms of my socks. I’m pulling it out of my ass crack. I don’t know how it gets there, and I slap the long strands onto the shower tiles like you used to do and watch them slither down like thin snakes into the drain.

I’m already fucking this up, aren’t I? Not using the fresh limes, and I think I grabbed the wrong kind of onion. Trying to dice the tomato, but the cutting board quickly runs bloody with tomato guts. Try to stopper it with my hand from bleeding out onto the counter. Fail. These days and nights are an endless fog, thick and gray and void of sunlight, and Finny doesn’t sleep at the end of our bed anymore. Still waits by the door. How do I explain to the goddamn dog you’re never coming home and that I’m a liar? With the crook of my arm, I wipe away the tears burning my face. Definitely grabbed the wrong onion, and my cilantro cuts are atrocious. You once held this knife in your hand, rocking the blade in smooth even strokes. I should have been more present.

I remembered to cut the avocados last because you told me that once exposed to air, the fruit begins to lose its bright green color. Like a doctor performing life-saving surgery under duress, I tear the plastic baggy open from the side, pull out the three avocados one by one. At the grocery store, I’d selected them from the box labeled RIPE because I couldn’t remember how to tell the difference between a good avocado and a bad one. Something about squeezing and being too proud to ask for help. The blade presses against the first and the insides give way before the leather skin does. Same with the other two. My throat constricts. Shaking, I drop the knife onto the counter, pick up the avocados and press them between my hands, a non-bright green mush oozing from between my fingers, shedding their suits and seeds in my fists. You were in remission. RIPE is supposed to mean ready to go, and I can’t stop feeling cheated. We were coming home from dinner and a movie and rocking out to '90s ballads and finally planning that dream trip to Scotland when a black Nissan pickup jumped the median into our lane. I mix the ingredients together right there on the cutting board, bits of cilantro and onion and tomatoes all sticking to my palms. Pour on the lime juice and the salt and slap it into the bowl. I felt your soul leave, slip between my fingers. I wipe my hands, the counter, and load the cutting board and the knives into the dishwasher, press the quick cycle button. The machine groans and gurgles to life, and I swear I hear your giggle. That looks like diarrhea, Mikey. There’s a half bag of chips in the pantry.

I drop onto the couch just as Anne Burrell is coloring a contestant’s finger red with a marker for holding the knife incorrectly, and you’re laughing at the uncanniness of it all. I dip a chip into the bowl of guacarrhea, bring it to my lips. Surprisingly, it’s not as horrible as it looks. Finny walks out from the shadows of the entryway, shoves his muzzle into my crotch for pets. I glance at the wall where you’d hung the large canvas of my favorite sunrise from our last beach vacation, where crooked sunlight pours through the holes in the storm clouds moving across the Atlantic. Seagulls fly in form along the coastline and fishing boats are scattered across the dark blue ocean like mini marshmallows and the silhouette of the freighter teetering the edge of that burning horizon.

---

Tana Buoy received her MFA from the University of Nebraska Omaha in 2021 and is a micro/flash fiction editor for The Good Life Review. Twitter: @ThrowMeABuoy

French Impressionists // Matthew Ellis

I long to wrap myself in the canvases of the French impressionists
Let Sisley and Monet hold me as I weep

I’ll plunge into the Loing or the Seine itself,
into ultramarine and cobalt blue
I’ll wade into the waters of Giverny,
lie amongst the water lilies
madder red and cadmium yellow against emerald, violet waters

I’ll hide in Eragny with Pissarro
in the blossoms of orchards,
white to peach,
blending into the viridian ‘round poplar trees sparkling with autumn hues

---

Matthew Ellis (he/him) spends his time teaching yoga and following creative pursuits in music and writing. You can follow him on Instagram (@matthewellismusic3) or visit his website (www.MatthewEllisMusic.com).

No Reason to Get Up but Get Up // Yvonne Morris

I’ve been reading the pretty, suicidal poets—
hallowed and hollowed, richly bred for pain—
Anne and Sylvia shared a New York taxi in the rain,
discussed therapy and where they’d left their latest lipstick stains.

On a Sunday in January, I can’t leave the gas running freely
in the kitchen, I’ve only got cats as hungry as fleas—
in the garage, four wheels await escape from a dusty TV.

You see, I’m in awe of those women whose fine hands loaded
their pockets with stones, who staggered in the sun,
whose blue veins were exposed
because I’m only green willow, vine and shoot—alive.

No taste in my mouth compares to the sweetness of berries.
My heart doesn’t break with a thought, an awareness,
as fatal as some fairytales would end.

I’ll pick up some ice cream instead.
So I struggle into my jacket and out the door,
choosing to leave regrets—like the bed—unmade,
slipping by the black dog that drags its chain.

---

Yvonne Morris's poetry and fiction have been published in a variety of journals and zines. Her current chapbook is Busy Being Eve (Bass Clef Books, 2022).

Scene(s) from a Chain Restaurant in Papillion, Nebraska // Zach Benak

On a Wednesday night in July of 2014, I washed my hands after a final sweep of the concession stand, patting them dry on my cargo shorts. I clocked out at 8:30 on the dot and walked out the front entrance, listening to the lifeguards hose down the bathhouses as I twirled my car key lanyard around my fingers. Once I reached my 2001 Ford Taurus, I ignited the squeaky engine and rolled down the windows, letting out the stiff, hot air that’d accumulated through my nine-hour shift. I texted my mom a reminder that I’d be home late and drove through Halleck Park, speeding by the baseball fields to catch a breeze. I turned north on 84th Street, whipping through downtown and past the light pole banners that read One of America’s Best Places to Live!

When I reached my destination, slivers of sun were still lingering over the Tara Hills Golf Course. I walked in and looked around the restaurant, seeing where my friends had been seated for the night. I slinked into the booth, letting its cool touch kiss my back through my canary yellow work t-shirt, basking in the air conditioning while I waited for a Mountain Dew. I looked toward the bar to see if I recognized the current karaoke performer, then scoped out the rest of the venue, searching for co-workers who had the same plans as me, or friends who came with a different group, or acquaintances from the area Catholic schools that I should say hello to later in the evening. The front entrance slowly crowded with people who’d come too late to secure a table. The environment smelled like fried food and sounded like an off-key Maroon 5 performance. I was officially in my element, talking shit with friends and topping off a long day in the sun with a greasy meal, seated at the center of Papillion’s social hub.

This Wednesday night in July of 2014 was not specific, not dissimilar to a Wednesday night in June of the summer before, or August of the summer after. Details from this night are interchangeable, as this was a regimen as typical as a morning commute. I don’t remember which friends were in my booth. (It was probably Sam, Megan, and Libby, or could have been Ambi and Alaina.) I ate some combination of queso blanco, boneless chicken wings, mozzarella sticks, or cheeseburger sliders. (The wonton tacos were phased out of my rotation because they tasted like nail polish on one occasion.) The karaoke DJ was either the one who liked me or the one who didn’t. (One praised my performance of “Just a Friend” by Biz Markie; the other said I ruined “Africa” by Toto forever.)

Many factors informed this practice: the novelty of karaoke initially attracted us; the proximity to home made it easy; and the half-priced appetizers kept us coming back. We ate with the world’s fastest metabolisms and least-refined palates. Week after week, we watched an older man in a cowboy hat belt Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” cheered on by his much younger girlfriend sitting at the bar. The perennially pregnant server never charged us for soft drinks, and we’d tip the bill in return, still spending no more than $14 from our summer job paychecks.

We observed but didn’t address the politics that can only play out when dozens of teenagers in a small town are crammed into one restaurant. Existing cliques would publicly crumble, a preview of drama to come when we went back to school in the fall. Classmates we hadn’t seen all summer showed up startlingly thin, sipping Diet Pepsi and making us quietly wonder what was going on. We’d actively avoid rivals and exes and friends-turned-foes seated two tables over. I’d balance my feelings when openly flirting with the girl I’d pined after my entire junior year, while secretly hoping the hot male lifeguard I worked with would show up and notice me, catching adrenaline as I negotiated who I was in public with what I longed for in private.

When the karaoke DJ packed up around 11 pm, and wait staff started doling out tickets with promises of “no rush,” and conversations got deeper as the restaurant got emptier, an air of melancholy quietly permeated, though I’m not sure everyone felt it. Maybe it was just me, unable to live in the moment, already looking ahead to the next Wednesday in July, which would soon become August, which would bring summer to a close, which would constrain Wednesday nights with homework and college applications and practices and rehearsals, and things would change, something I struggled with then but excel at now, far away from my hometown, away from the people and social dynamics that shaped me.

Kicked out of the restaurant after midnight, we finished our conversations and shared final burning desires in the parking lot. I drove across 84th Street, past the high school and into my neighborhood, replaying moments from the night or second-guessing something I shouldn’t have said. I got home and found my dad asleep in the recliner and my mom in bed upstairs, a distance I didn’t think much of at the time. I threw my work shirt in the laundry hamper and retrieved a fresh one from my dresser to lay out for the next day.

The caffeine from the soda had no effect as I stuck my phone on the charger and laid my head on the pillow, completing a routine that I look back on and think maybe every young person needs a ritual as simple and certain, and innocent as this one.

---

Zach Benak lives in Ravenswood, Chicago. His nonfiction appears in GASHER, Thirteen Bridges Literary Review, 45th Parallel, and Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology from Middle America (Belt Publishing 2021).

Seeing It // Thomas Osatchoff

stacking boxes again
this realization the burning
bush this moment this you me
tried tiny bathroom
on the second level
looking out the barred square window
at someone in the empty green lot
lighting a fire like one minute
to make it betweenesses

---

Thomas Osatchoff, together with family, is building a self-sustaining home near a waterfall. Recent work has appeared in New Note Poetry, Letters Journal, L=Y=R=A, Red Coyote, Thin Air, and elsewhere

The Ritual of Killing the Crab // Ruby Marguerite

I buy a crab-stuffed pretzel after therapy. A treat after an hour of crying. I don’t know the name of the man who runs the pretzel store, but he remembers everything about me. He asks how the job hunt is going. I give him a noncommittal answer. This was the question I was fearing, a reminder of failure. But he doesn’t know that, he wants only to make idle conversation while the pretzels cook, rolling slowly through the oven on their metal racks.

In my room, I tear open the cavity that he’s filled with crab. I dig into it with the other bready limbs I’ve ripped off in an animalistic haze, scooping out the crab dip methodically. My ancestors ate food like this. Tearing bread, fruit, meat open. This is the ritual, sitting in my two-bedroom apartment, fighting off the apex predator—my cat—who wants to taste the seafood. Eventually, I submit and give her a piece, and in this way, too, we are both connected to our ancestors. The ritual of sharing the spoils of the hunt.

I am the creature form of ancient souls. I can taste the bloodshed of loss, victory, and food. This is a gift, to be handed a crab dip pretzel in exchange for four pieces of green paper. It is a gift to make conversation with the man who crafts it.

Yet we are both so removed from our food, from our conversation.

I wish to cut into something. I wish to crush the crab with a heavy stone as it scuttles sideways away from me. To feel the grit and shards and juice and blood. To taste the stone and sinew.

***

Growing up, my family was vegan. I never found it strange when I was small. I never knew the taste of meat, dairy, egg. I’ve heard you can’t miss what you’ve never had.

Yet still, I loved watching my mother prepare a pomegranate. She would plunge it into our mottled stone bowl—the one with the cracks—filled with water. I watched as bubbles rose from the submerged fruit, spilling out in columns. She tore the thing apart with her fingers, familiar and soft to me, and the cracking red skin echoed in our chipped kitchen.

When she’d finished, she’d fill little teacups with seeds so red I would’ve thought she named them after me. And I would take the little cups and methodically pick out one seed at a time. Tearing the juicy flesh off the hard white bone with my front teeth. Seeing myself a wolf, deep in the woods up the mountain where they used to live, finally, finally eating after a long hunt.

And lastly, I would crush the pomegranate bone between my molars. Savoring the feel of the shatter. Praising the animal inside me.

---

Ruby Marguerite is, and always has been, a lover of stories. She is a poet and nonfiction writer whose work focuses on family, heritage, and the meaning of being human.

I Lied When I Said That I Missed You // Eleanor Claire

what I meant was that I miss
myself; I miss my youth and the way
that each day somehow stretched out
to hold unending time – or did it unfold
so slowly because each second felt
drenched in cruciation, unmoored and
delicate, I was always so close to the
edge, flirting with the ravine beneath me
and I was always waiting to claim
my inevitable end; perhaps I do not
miss the pain itself, but the way
each moment felt sacred, like I
could taste my own desperation, like
I needed some sudden shock to rewire
my breaking body

and yes, I have come to love this
peace I now hold, but sometimes
I wish I could return to those days,
all flashing lights and thunderstorms,
my chest breaking open with each
sunrise, fists for hands and a mouth
full of broken glass, and sometimes
I want to relive that burning,
that eternal fury, I wish
I could dig my nails in, hold
viciously onto that girl so fervently
chasing her own destruction

and yes, I love this life that I have
built, slow mornings and love that keeps
me warm, but a thrum beneath my
breastbone may always sing
for the chaos that I learned to call
home, for that eternal yearning
for something, anything to burn
away that restless energy
that waits in my bones, curdling
and rotting until I am only
caffeine and consequences, crossed
out letters to my own self
and it feels as if breaking this
tie is like losing the last strand
I have to my own mind, to
being nineteen and reckless, afraid
of everything and nothing all at
once, and I never want to
let her go

I do not know
how to tell you that when I say
I miss you, what I mean is that
I miss myself

---

Eleanor Claire is a writer and artist from South Florida who has been previously published in Verity La, The Cape Rock, In Parenthesis, Paragon Journal, Plainsongs Magazine, and others. IG: @e.escalatedquickly, @eliot_ekphrastic

She Wolfs // Sandra Kolankiewicz

In my sister’s current job, she pours her
love down the drain. She asks questions, is told
lies, smiles back. She regularly distributes
to the unappreciative who just
expect, kinder than I who think at least
thank you is due. In foreign countries, she
buys cans of tuna to feed the stray cats,
though the women bang their pot lids at her.
She waves to them, smiles even in her sleep,
never learned to cook, lost her hair in
menopause, uses a cane for mushroom
hunting even when on wet days the tip
sinks in with the weight of her limp till she’s
bound to fall on the soft ground, lying in
wet leaves and giggling like a girl. We had
the same parents, but she favors neither,
someone’s crazy aunt, the one that’s really
adopted. Hand me a jar of that stuff
you’re always eating, I say, which she does,
right away. To me it tastes bad. She wolfs.

---

Sandra Kolankiewicz is the author of Even the Cracks, Turning Inside Out, Lost in Transitions, and The Way You Will Go. Read more from this author.

Oxnard // Lillian Lippold

A hybrid-genre contemplation about returning to one's hometown

I’m sitting on an abandoned play structure in Oxnard. Nothing is difficult when we are together, so here, things look strange. We haven’t been like this in a while. I’m obsessed with taking pictures on disposable film. You’ve got a new cell phone. There’s a car in the parking lot, fifteen feet from me, but I’m not expecting trouble because that isn’t you, Oxnard, is it? The view from here is astounding. I’ve got chills. The Ventura city lights on the mountain are pretty gorgeous now that I look at them.

I swear I’m with you though, Oxnard, my vantage point, growing up, falling down, metaphor. It has been difficult getting by without your emptiness to companion me.

This is the set for enough horror movies, me and the car and the undeveloped camera to protect me, so I face the parking lot, never avoiding the fact that I could be killed if someone tried. I’m hoping the New Year will be kind enough for me to survive it, but then again, I haven’t been sleeping, so how good has it been really? You tell me I look for omens far too often, and I do.

The car has a headlight out, and I’m raising my eyes to check on it every few seconds while listening to the same song again about a river I’ve never seen. No US state looks the same as the next of them. Would someone know to look for me if I left right now for Alabama, told no one, just caught a Greyhound with the 200 dollars I’ve got and no phone charger? There’s a couple, emerging from the car watching me, who’s had some deep conversation. Obviously, it’s not the first because during that, their right headlight went out.

My coffee’s getting colder, and my dad only eats meat and blueberries these days. Oxnard. Sour blueberries, a taste like the lake water from the little pond in the house where I grew up second. I’m getting better at fueling my body, not good enough, but this city-town is beautiful, beautiful and distracting. I’m trying to be more in the where that I am in. No one knows truly how much I love being in associated place, my body in my body in my shoes.

Anyway, Ventura is beautiful, and Oxnard is probably much more than a metaphor if I ever took the time to know it correctly or learn to drive. The drought-resistant trees are still green despite the desert, and I find myself surprised that so many people own raincoats here. It is uncharacteristically cold for the season.

My hands are freezing. The people in the car have climbed together into the backseat. I just felt a patch of warm in the air, drifting through me, but I’m not sure where it’s come from. They’re having sex, that couple in their car with the missing headlight. I know what car sex looks like. The last time someone fucked me in a car, she parked outside the fire-station-turned-speakeasy across two streets from my too-crowded, wealth-infested college dorm, and I fingered her below me until 3 in the morning. I’m nearly positive she faked it. She must’ve been at least a foot too tall for the backseat. Then, when we found ourselves watching Rent in her New Jersey basement bedroom weeks later, she didn’t want it anymore.

Oxnard, the queers have a problem accepting lovers when they’re easy, when you’re not ducking down below the cop-lit windows, pressed together, cheeks and sweat, blending into each other like this, this, this is what our elders fought for, our bad behavior and worse sex in the back of a car and then our silence when we finally find ourselves alone, in bed together with a safely locked door.

I’ve lost the story here. I tend to when sex is involved. There aren’t swings on this playset, which child-me would’ve thought stupid. I write with a wrecking ball and a wide lens nowadays, in three different notebooks for two stupid hours because I can’t say what I mean. I write the way my elders taught me, deathful without absence, opening beyond and beyond still, a wit that crackles into the Pacific.

The car is pulling away now, rocking up and over the speed bump, and I am wishing I gave a little witnessing wave for the sake of good neighborship, a proof that sex doesn’t just tumble off into the abyss once you’ve finished him off. The writer keeps the score. My bluntness is no mistake. It’s been bred into me like a racehorse who’s always willing to say a bit more than that which should be properly allowed.

Attention is difficult for me because I see well and without a quiet enough place to pick the important things and live with them. I miss my own warm body next to yours, you who holds my hips gentle like the violin bows they’ve become. The drought-resistant tree next to me looks like an angel if I glance up too quickly. The car is gone, thank god, because a mother and a son have just walked by me, and I already didn’t know what to say to them.

---

Lillian G Lippold (they/them) is an interdisciplinary writer obsessed with Place and queer utopia. Minnesota-born and SoCal grown, they've been published in many university pubs and other mags. They definitely love you, too.

Horizon Saber // Anna Idelevich

The saber is melting in spite of January with raindrops over the grass.
A solid horizon hung like a fish, driving me crazy.
Cold in December, dry up, but flared up with the fire of love,
dancing bud catches the rain and knows that there is no death.
It melts with moisture on the tongue and the gums are his bed.
Probably there is no beach, probably there is only one blizzard in my head. Probably it’s time for me to sleep, but whispers that there is no death,
still sings the words again, wiping his nose first:
Everything you do, makes me crazy ’bout you.
Nothing that tenderness hangs, I’m only here until seven.
Everything you do, makes me crazy ‘bout you.
I am a molten sapphire, a souvenir not found.

---

Anna Idelevich: Anna’s poems were featured in Louisville Review, BlazeVOX, The Racket, New Contrast, Zoetic Press, and Shoreline of Infinity among others.

Buttons I Keep // Laine Derr

I still have
glimpses of her –
mouth wiped
on a soiled sleeve,
snow falling
on a February day,
trees etched
on a blouse of blue

buttons
I keep
like a lost
eye – a jar
next to a jar
filled w/ white.

---

Laine Derr holds an MFA from Northern Arizona University and has published interviews with Carl Phillips, Ross Gay, Ted Kooser, and Robert Pinsky. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming from The Phillips Collection, ZYZZYVA, Portland Review, Chapter House, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Laine lives in a landscape, free and quiet.

Today // Kory Vance

we grow old between two bosoms like vines
climbing through crumbling bricks
and mortar to salt the earth
with rubble

i wrote that when i was twenty
or maybe twenty-one

they were the first good lines i ever composed;
the rest of the poem
sucked

today, i am twenty-nine,
alone, and living
in a van

today, i tried to impress strange women on
tinder with facts about
hummingbirds

it did not work

today, i am unemployed for the sake of bitter rest, sat at
a bar drinking my savings, considering the chattering
through my spine that might happen
if i place a blue lily in someone's
hair, the woman who is still
my secret

today i am very aware of how vulnerable
my wafer heart has become
to falling in love

this time, i should not
run

as i have done so many times across state lines
or over oceans in search of gold
from a different
dandelion

but i still see the rubble with a crystal ball eye
i do remember a childhood
fighting back the vines
from green beans

today, i wonder about a life lived alone hovering
on aladdin’s flying carpet
just watching, just
watching

as the little humans clean their water, and cure the illnesses,
and find love, and reduce carbon, and eliminate
borders, and tell the truth, and stop death,
and then the sun
still flares

our god can’t stop it and my gin and tonic
disintegrates the paper straw

and mom and dad are still so sad
that i drink alcohol

---

Kory Vance is a poet and his career can be followed on Instagram @strength_and_poetry.