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Issue 2 Issue 2 Fiction

THE FUNERAL

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By Claudia N. Lundahl

A small puddle of pink light appeared on the floor in Emilia’s bedroom. She drew a breath and swallowed hard, pushing morning phlegm to the back of her throat, rubbed her eyes and focused again on the light. It glistened a bit, and was cloudy but not totally opaque. Diaphanous. She could not ascertain from where the light was emanating. 

Swinging her legs over the side of her bed, she walked over and cautiously waved her hand in front of it. She thought she felt a slight tingle in her fingertips but nothing else changed. The light did not transfer to her skin, it did not illuminate her at all, nor did she cast a shadow upon it. 

Abandoning the luminous aberration, she peered into her wardrobe, ran her fingers over the fabric of her dresses, blouses, sweaters, and slacks. She pulled out every item of black clothing she owned. After a moment of quiet contemplation, she chose a black silk dress, slipped it over her head, then rolled a pair of sheer black tights up over her legs. In the bathroom, she splashed some cold water on her face, ran a brush through her hair and scurried down the stairs. 

It was cold outside. She wrapped her arms around herself, bracing against the stiff wind that blew particles of frozen vapor, not quite snow, into her face. Bits of the atmosphere swirled around her, clinging to the fibers of her felt coat and then dissolved as quickly as they settled. She shuffled toward the waiting gauntlet of heavily-made up relatives in ill-fitting black attire.

In the funeral parlor, she spent an hour or so drifting silently through the crowd, trying to remember the names of people she had not seen in years, not since she was a small child, before sneaking away for a cigarette. She exited the funeral home and turned the corner and faced the highway. The weather had committed to snow, covering the city in white scabs. She leaned against the brick wall next to a stack of overturned wooden pallets and listened to the frantic hum of cars. 

She thought about the spot of light on her bedroom floor. The way it had seemed to have nothing to do with her but also felt like an extension of her. It occurred to her then that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She took a final drag and then flicked the butt over the guardrail. She watched it float down toward the gray strip of freeway below until it was devoured in the flurry of falling snow. There were things that she would miss about being among the living, but she was grateful this funeral would be her last.

Claudia N. Lundahl is a writer and artist from New York. You can find out more about her by visiting her website at www.claudianlundahl.com

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Issue 2 Issue 2 Fiction

THREE STORIES BY LAMB

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By Lamb

THE BAPTISM

I was in the kitchen eating a green apple in a hurry, knocking off big cuts of flesh with my front teeth, making the most incredible splitting sounds, when my fiancé asked if I would ever be violent with a woman. I asked if she meant if I’d ever hit a woman, and she said she meant exactly what she said. 

So I stood there holding the dripping core over the trash can, sugaring my fingers, thinking, trying to define violence for her, for myself. After a minute or two, she said we were already late and would talk about it later. I said the conversation felt important and the baptism could wait.

It’s a baptism, she said.

For a baby, I said.

I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.

I’ll pretend you don’t believe a baby needs a remission of sins, I thought.

Driving to the baptism, I tried to think of the worst thing I’d ever done to a woman, the most violence I’d ever demonstrated. The true answer, my cesarean delivery, wouldn’t satisfy.

OK, I said. One time I tripped a girl in the fieldhouse, and she broke her nose on the concrete. She was a bully, but I felt awful, and I got in trouble with the school. It was fourth grade.

I heard her eyes roll.

I don’t care about what you’ve done, I want to know the most violent thought you’ve ever had about a woman.

Why is this coming up now?

I don’t know, she said, I shouldn’t have to justify my need to feel safe to you.

And I thought, She’s right.

And I felt close to her, and wanted to feel closer, and I saw our days stretching into years, our pets, our children so unknowing of us, and I wanted her to know the color of my pain, and to know that of hers. I wanted her to know how much I needed her.

I’ve never thought of hurting you or any woman, I said. But can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone?

She turned her head to mine, nodding.

Sometimes I do think about hurting myself.

It’s amazing, she said, how you manage to make literally everything about you.

ONE ON ONE

Another week, another review of my nonperformance.

My boss says, Help me understand. Be specific. What roadblocks are you facing?

Um, the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, its origin taken from emotion recollected in the tranquility of eight hours of uninterrupted silence.

Gorgeous, he says, switching his crossing leg. Didn’t take you for a Whitman guy. You know he diddled boys …

I nod.

Multitudes, am I right? he chuckles. As I chuckle back, he straightens his face. You know accountability is the chief purpose of these meetings, yes?

Of course.

So, account for your time. Show me what you’ve been working on so spontaneously. So powerfully.

I pull up my poems folder and slide my laptop across the desk.

Come on, Lamby, he says. You know me better than that … Print these puppies out. I want to hold your words.

You sure? It’s many pages.

He winks and says we have much ink.

I print two hundred poems, assured by my honesty, my courage. When I return to his office, he’s sitting crosslegged on the floor with open palms.

Gimme, he says.

I do.

Ooo, he says, they’re warm. He reads them to himself in a whisper as I stand in the corner.

A few pages in, he asks for a pencil. I pull the thumblong Ticonderoga from my back pocket and toss it to him.

We need to get you some Blackwings, he says, examining the round graphite tip. OK … Let’s touch base after lunch. I’ll need some time.

I step outside and call my wife. I tell her she was right when she said it would end this way. I ask her forgiveness. I ask her to pray for a miracle. She says she knows I will land on my feet, and I weep. I’m unworthy of her dogged faith in me, in Jesus.

After lunch, I find my boss prostrate on his office floor, asleep. I quietly retrieve the loose stack of pages and return to my corner. Flipping through, I see scansion. I see circled words, exclamations, questions in the margins.

Did this really happen?

Oh my gosh … Is this your wife’s mom or yours? Is she okay?

Did you just invent a word???

Now I’m weeping all over my poems. I look up and see my boss is standing, weeping too.

Doggone, he says, you can’t just hide your candle like this … Can you not see we all are in the room with you? Do you even know how much we thirst for your splendid light?

INSTRUCTION

When I wake, you all are circling my bed.

But this is not my bed. I have shared a bed for seven years. This is a twin. These sheets are softer than my sheets.

Where is my wife? I think. Where is my child?

You whisper loud as talking, as if you have not noticed me wake, as if I were in an opiate sleep. Some of you are talking about smoking opium later. The hundreds of you are making plans, none of them involving me.

I say, I can hear you.

You all laugh, quaking the floor and walls. I brace myself for glass shatter, then see there are no windows.

Where are my windows? I say.

One of you folds over the comforter, exposing my pale feet.

Cold, I say.

You all take out your notebooks and dark pencils and begin sketching.

One of you sits at the foot of the bed, instructing. I suppose you are the instructor.

I hear what too many of you are thinking, you say. You would like to think of the foot as the hand. You are thinking of the toes as fingers, depending on their familiar shape to achieve likeness. Stop. This will get you nowhere.

The rest of you listen on the balls of your feet.

Look at this foot, you instruct. Observe the muscle. The tendon. The bone and the fat beneath the heel. Now consider the foot. Its nature … The foot is the prophet, receiving revelation from the earth god for the church of the body, interpreting commandments to be obeyed against deaths physical and spiritual. The foot bears the moral weight of the soul, which is the union of the body and the spirit. The foot is the most credible witness to one’s life. The foot is the storyteller, the wisest and most ancient member of the tribe, silently collecting narrative with each strike of experience. The foot knows all one ever could. The foot is the map of the body …

One of you, the woman with bright chapped lips, interrupts, And how should we prioritize these metaphors?

You are slight and divinely fair. You are bold.

They all turn on you. They pull your limbs and dark hair until you are four feet in the air, parallel to the floor. The instructor walks the edge of the bed, bouncing, tapping heads one by one, granting turns to stab you through the chest and belly with their pencils. You scream with power. I have never heard such pain.

Some of them fail to pierce you, and the instructor scolds them for having dulled their points so early into the session. You are applying too much pressure! he says. You are devaluing your value!

When you are suddenly quiet, they all mourn you in song. They know all the words in some cousin language, all on pitch and harmonizing toward catharsis. It is beautiful.

They lay you beside me as the instructor scrambles onto my knees, rends his black shirt, and says, Do you understand now? Do you see what love will do to all of us?

And the warmth of your blood envelops me. And I know that this is all my fault.

Lamb is an American writer. 

lamb.onl

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Across The Wire Vol. 3

America Bird

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By Michael McSweeney

Burning past Buffalo through the wildfire haze, I wanted to feel momentous, part of a final history, a mover in the American age of malaise, a reporter in the heat of the breaking news belching from the Quebecois woods, spotlit by a low and violet sun. But in reality, I was alone, thirty-five, and afraid to die on the road to Chicago. Then a bald eagle flew through the window and landed beside me.

The eagle’s alabaster crown shone in the dying daylight. Feathers brown like melted chocolate. Its talons chewed the leather seat. 

I waited for a lot of things to happen. All that happened was that I drove for seventeen more miles to the next rest area where I claimed a parking spot near the rear of the lot. When we stopped the eagle sang, a strident terrifying portamento. Its amber eyes tore me. Exposed my lowest, most degrading fears. Then quiet pooled inside the car. 

I took a bag of jerky from the center console and peeled it open. Raised a chunk of salty beef. The eagle blinked at the jerky before seizing the meat with its beak. I watched its cruel efficiency and I chewed a piece of my own.

Peace lingered as we emptied the bag. The red sun squatted against unfamiliar hills. The dashboard blinked an eight chased by dueling zeroes. I took my phone from my pocket. Skimmed through a friend’s two-dozen unanswered texts. I wasn’t having a mid-life crisis. I was having a quarter-life crisis. I shouldn’t presume that I’ll die so young, they said. 

I thought about answering. Then I dropped my phone in a cup holder and tugged the car into drive. 

The eagle settled down after a few miles. I tried not to wonder about the costs of leather repair. It’s not every day a bald eagle catches a ride with you. I grazed the radio. The eagle flared at stations for techno, country, and bitter talk radio. It relaxed to some jazz. Closed its eyes. Ornette Coleman bore us into Pennsylvania. 

I wondered if the eagle cared where I was going. A reading in Chicago. The next night and the next. A throng of writers and musicians for the renegade fall of America. 

Two hours later the car curled around the hotel’s rear. I looked at the eagle. I couldn’t leave the bird in the car. Streetlights betrayed the choking air. The hot summer night threatened its advantage if the AC died. The eagle raised its head, as if expectant of a plan. 

I got out of the car, came around to the other side, and opened the door.

Out you go, little guy. The eagle stared at me. I briefly considered risking the onslaught that would follow any attempt to lift the eagle or otherwise urge it physically out of the car. I gave up, returned to my seat, and closed the door. Then the first mad etchings of an idea came to me. 

Uh…wanna climb? I asked, then held my arm out.

The eagled cocked its head and stared. 

Okay, that’s not gonna work, I said. Then I said, Okay, let’s try this.

 I stiffened my body and stared ahead. After a few moments, the eagle rose on the seat. Its eyes never left me. But the eagle’s movements, the feather twitches, the talon tweaks stopped. The bird didn’t so much as blink.

Yeah, I said. Yeah! I said louder, and the eagle chirped and gripped the ruined leather seat. We understood each other, I thought.

I mimicked immobility again. Then, carefully, in painstaking centimeters, I took the eagle in my hands. Held it close. Got out of the car, scooped my backpack from the rear, then paced a line of slow and anxious steps toward the hotel doors. Across the road rumbled a tavern, its outline neon-red. A pack of smokers heaped extra mouthfuls beneath a ragged awning. I kept walking and entered the cool touch of the conditioned lobby. The eagle made a soft noise but remained inert. 

Cool bird, said the front-desk guy. 

Thanks, I said, reaching for my wallet with my free arm. Never leave home without it.

Who did the work?

Eh?

The restoration. It’s really good quality, said the guy, and he leaned forward. I turned my body, to prevent a closer look.

Oh, uh, I’m not sure. My dad gave it to me. Found it in a dumpster. Really lucky find.

Pretty clean for something you found in a dumpster.

Don’t I know it, I said. 

Our conversation waned as the guy chose my room. Two beds in the far corner. The pulse of fireworks broke through the walls and the eagle stirred in my arm. I cleared my throat.

Party outside? I asked, raising my voice. 

That bar across the way, said the guy. Fucking maniacs. Fourth of July every night this week. I call the police but they do nothing. 

That’s too bad.

I feel like a loser. Getting upset. But you get used to the quiet.

I know what you mean.

The vulnerable moment, the weakness the guy betrayed, slipped into nothing. He handed me two keycards and pointed me to the elevators. Once the doors shut the eagle stirred. Talons tested the bounds of my flesh. I shuddered under the immensity of its strength, restrained, watchful. We rose through the bones of the hotel.

Once in my hotel room, the eagle detached and drifted across the room to the bed. Plucked and tore at the sheets. I cried out and approached and the eagle snapped its beak at me. As if to say, I’m in control now. The eagle continued to tear at the bed. Like the wet heart of prey lay inside the sheets. I imagined dollars pouring from sliced arteries, dropped my things by the door, and went into the bathroom.

The mirror wouldn’t reveal whether the smoke had aged me. I flashed my teeth and remembered I forgot to buy toothpaste. Another misstep on the road. I searched beneath the sink and found the dead worm curl of a toothpaste tube. I squeezed it for signs of life. A tear of white squirted out. I rubbed it against my teeth, around my gums, the dry scrape of pharmaceutical mint. Then I stripped my clothes and stepped in the shower. 

The eagle stood perched on the TV when I left the bathroom. One of its claws punctured the dark screen. The eagle twisted its head and watched me pull clothes on my still-wet body. I felt like prey. A cold and hollow wash. I imagine this is how the rabbit feels when it first spots a shadow circling on the grass. 

I decided to go to the bar. I finished dressing, pulled on my shoes, and grabbed my phone from the bedside table. More texts from the friend. Don’t let that breakup fuck with your head. This isn’t the crisis you think it is. Call me. Call me. Ignore the anxiety. Happy 4th of July if I don’t hear from you. 

I made for the door. A scuffle of talons followed close. The eagle, head tilted in seeming curiosity, croaked at me, as if wantingly. I extended my arm and the eagle climbed my leg and settled on the offered perch.

Alright then. I guess we’re gonna go drink, I told the eagle. 

We left the hotel and traversed the toxic-mouthful paces to the bar. Patriotic glam rock slammed against us when we entered the sweat-breath swell of people. It made no sense how busy the place was, here on some highway-flung tavern an inch on the map from Lake Erie. I pushed closer to the bar. The eagle chirped and tucked its head close to my shoulder. 

I tried to buy a whiskey sour and the bartender, a middle-aged woman with gray hair tied up in a knot, put her hands on the counter and leaned forward.

Is that a real bird or what?

As I started to stammer in reply the eagle raised its head to the bartender. Before the bartender could react, some drunk guy to my left leaned forward and shouted, Hey, this asshole’s got an America bird with him.

Eagle, someone else yelled. An American eagle. Or something.

America bird! the drunk guy repeated. Somebody get this America bird a drink. 

The drunk guy tugged on my eagle-free shoulder.

Hey, buddy, let me buy your America bird a drink.

The drunk guy took some cash from his wallet and crumpled the bills on the counter.

Some beer for this America bird, he said to the bartender.

The bartender looked at me and then the eagle and then the drunk guy, and then his money. Picked up the cash, counted the bills, and then from behind the bar took a small wooden bowl and poured some beer in it from the tap. As she poured a crowd gathered around us, drink-brandishing gawkers sipping and watching and whispering about the eagle. 

The bartender set the bowl on the counter and we all watched the eagle.

Go on, little fella, I said.

The eagle clambered down from my arm and rested on the counter. It lowered its beak to the bowl of beer, considered it, and then began to lap up the beer with its thin, pink tongue.

America bird’s drinking a fucking beer! the drunk guy shouted. The crowd clamored and cheered. The bartender poured my whiskey sour and I took a greedy swig. Then I bought the eagle another beer. 

A woman in an American flag tank top pushed her way to the bar. She reached out and stroked the eagle’s feathers. The eagle kept drinking. 

This is the greatest July 4th pre-game I’ve ever been to, she said to me. Then she asked, Is it safe for it to drink beer? 

I have no idea, I said. 

The bartender took her phone out of her pocket and typed. There’s a video on here about a crow that drank beer, she said. 

She held the phone up to me. A grainy news clip from the 1970s showed a black crow hopping around a bar counter and sipping from mugs of beer. The crow knocked one of the mugs over and hopped around in the mess.

That’s amazing, the woman said.

We finished another round of drinks, and then another. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten that drunk. I took my phone from my pocket and skimmed through the texts from my friend. It’s not like I wanted to ignore him. I just preferred to speed past my problems. Leave them in a ditch by the road. Drive until the accumulated damage blew the tires out.

The eagle jerked forward and snapped at my phone with its beak. It pierced the glass and I dropped the phone onto the counter. I reached for it, slowly. The screen still responded to my touch but now a crack-swirled puncture ruled its center. The eagle screeched. I released the phone again. 

Trying to text someone important, the woman in the tank top said. The bar had grown louder so she had to yell to be heard. 

Sort of, I said.

The bird is right. You should stay in the moment.

Maybe.

Don’t text at the bar. That’s a rule I have. It’s too easy to tell the truth and lie at the same time.

How does that work?

The woman thumbed her glass for a moment. I don’t know, she said. It just makes sense when I say it aloud.

I’m having a crisis, I told her.

How come?

It’s like, I don’t know why things are the way they are anymore.

Like what?  

Like working. I work because I should work. And when I’m working, I worry about the next time I’ll work, and I worry if one day I won’t have work.

Like being laid off or some shit?

Yeah. 

What about right now?

I don’t know. I guess I sort of forgot about it until I took my phone out.

Then keep that shit away. Live in the moment. Find hope in that. Hope in the moment. 

The woman put her drink on the counter and laughed. Then she said, Maybe that’s hard to feel when we’re all choking on smoke. But it’s the truth.

Then someone dropped their glass and the people in the crowd expelled a collective ohh, and the eagle did too, hunching and croaking with delight. 

The drinks kept flowing. I told the bartender I’d known the eagle since childhood. Best friend growing up. The eagle leaped off the counter and soared across the crowd and everyone cheered. Then the eagle flew back and landed on my shoulder. Talons tore through skin. I flinched but the whiskey dulled the pain. I was too happy to worry about anything. 

The woman asked if I wanted to smoke. I said yes and she led me up a narrow staircase to the roof. I barely noticed the smoke in the air. Took an offered cigarette. After a few puffs, the eagle shifted and croaked again. I turned my head and the eagle was eyeing my cigarette. I held it up to the eagle. The eagle nipped at the end of it with its beak. Elation swelled inside me and I laughed.

Okay, I definitely think it’s bad for a bird to smoke, the woman said.

This eagle, I said. This fucking eagle. 

You guys seem close.

He saved my life.

How?

Good luck. He’s a good luck bird.

Okay.

I wandered to the edge of the roof. The smoke in the air was still just as thick but I noticed, for the first time, that I could still see the vague etchings of light cast by cars on the highway. Speeding through the danger. Swiftly seeking home. The hint of forest stretched on forever. That’s beautiful, I said. Look at this night. Beautiful.

Be careful over there, the woman called.

I didn’t reply but I raised my hand to gesture with my cigarette. As if trying to wave my thoughts into focus. Invincibility, connection, America. I knew I had to do something to mark the moment. 

Let’s go for a flight, I told the eagle. Just a little flap around. 

There was no doubt that the eagle supported me. Believed in my ability to fly. We’d come too far together. The moment demanded we be airborne. I raised my arms and stepped beyond the edge. I remember the tumble, a shout from behind, the spin of my body, a harsh yelp, a furious flutter, a hot wet crack in my arm, the pavement, a swift and concrete unconsciousness. 

***

I woke up in my car. Sprawled in the back seat. My left arm, stiff and swollen, was bound in a sling made from a bartender’s apron. My lungs ached. Everything ached. I sat up. Someone, the hotel staff probably, had collected my bags and left them half-open in the front seat. No note. Just a swift and silent ejection. 

The world was clear through the smudged windows. The smoke drifted elsewhere in the night. I saw chipped-face commercial buildings with big garage doors like brown teeth. 

After a stretch of wounded time, I moved to the driver’s seat and groped around for my belongings. No cash in the wallet. Keys under the floor mat. I clicked my phone’s broken screen and squinted at the time. 3 p.m. Half the day, gone. I should’ve been on the outskirts of Illinois by now. But there I was, injured near Lake Erie, wondering where the eagle had gone.

All I had were the remnants of the eagle’s presence. The fucked-up car seats. Scabbed-over cuts on my arms. The beak-broken phone. Stray feathers on the dash. Signs, but not proof, of a profound and wondrous experience. I wished the eagle hadn’t left. But maybe that was the point. The eagle was always going to leave. People experience miracles until they don’t. Nations fail because their people stop believing that temporary miracles are enough. 

I started the car. The gas needle flicked up to the halfway point. Not enough to reach Chicago. Not enough to flee back home. No digital map to guide me. 

But I had a destination, a westerly point, a daytime star. Skies clear for the first time in days. I’d survived a fall. I hadn’t died on the road to Chicago, not yet at least. 

My body in revolt, I reached for the seatbelt.

Michael McSweeney is a writer from Massachusetts. He lives online @mpmcsweeney.

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Across The Wire Vol. 3

Rose Rocks 

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By Mason Parker

It ends with me on hands and knees looking at my teeth in a puddle of blood as Darling stomps her feet on the floor. A rose rock spins, tilted on the linoleum. Outside, the rain falls west-leaning in big floppy drips from the sky–I could look up and see nothing forever, because the night is filled with streetlights and neon signs. She is bleeding from a cut over her eye, streaming through the wrinkles in her face. She is too young for those wrinkles, deep canyons carved from years of untreated BPD. I pick up my teeth and put them in my pocket. 

“You have to see someone,” I say. “We can’t live like this. We’re going to die.”

“Don’t gaslight me.”

“You can’t gaslight an actual crazy person. That’s not how it works.” 

We fuck savagely.

I clean up my blood with a wet rag and tell myself this is love.

Rewind ten months and two days, we’ve swiped right, and I’m messaging her, sitting at the end of a long table inside Terry the Tweaker’s house with a couple hot rails cut up on a white plate that has pink carnations painted on the lip. Terry the Tweaker met a girl on the app who had four kids. Terry had two kids, so now they have six. When he buys the family snow cones, it costs him forty dollars. That must be love.

Darling likes that I’m into yoga. She asks what kind I practice. Pranayama, I say, emphasizing that I’m not into the suburban housewife hot yoga bullshit. I’m into mind-expanding breathwork. She sends me videos of her spinning an LED hoop as Too Fine to Do Time by PantyRaid plays in the background. She is very good, but I’m just watching her tits bounce like a pig. I dunno, maybe I deserved all the beatings.

Fast forward eleven months and nine days, I’m inside an old woman in the back of a Subaru Forester parked off Wabash Street in Deadwood, SD. Not old. Maybe late fifties. So, yeah, old I guess. When we finish she starts talking about her son, Percy. Percy’s my age and dying of pancreatic cancer from drinking a handle of whiskey every day. The drinking started after Percy’s military service when his high school sweetheart got knocked up by her weed dealer and dumped him during deployment. Her name was Sara. Percy came home and started fucking a guy, but he swore to his mom and everyone else that he wasn’t gay. It wasn’t like that. She tells me she didn’t care if he was gay. Says it wasn’t worth drinking himself to death over it. She talks about Percy in the past tense. I get the feeling she’s lying. She hated that he was gay, told him as much, and is hoping to clear her name in hindsight. The conversation bums me out, so I take a pull from a bottle of bourbon. I crack the window and try to breathe clean air, but all I can taste is cigarettes. I have a bag of rose rocks in my backpack. There’s only a few left. I run my eyes over the woman, not remembering her name, but letting my gaze get caught in the cleft of her crow’s feet. I wonder if this could be love, but I miss Darling. 

Rewind ten months and twenty-one days, Darling shows up at my house for the first time sloppy from drinking and maybe benzos. I don’t know. I’m sloppy from drinking and maybe benzos. I don’t know. Zach is over, and he always has pills, but mostly opiates and opioids. They make me nauseous until I’m blissfully puking into my unwashed toilet bowl. Darling is falling out of her chair, eyes heavy, nodding off. I’m puking and smiling with lunch caught in my molars. This is only our first date, but we feel big love simmering inside the chaos.

Fast-forward a month and three days, I’m starting to get jealous because it feels like maybe Darling has fucked every guy she’s ever met. It makes for awkward conversations at house parties and shows at the Attic. Every time someone says, “Oh, you’re dating Darling, huh?” I start to get self-conscious and think, Why? Did you fuck her too? I’m trying to be socially progressive and forward-thinking about it, but all I can picture are gangbangs and spit-roasts and bukkakes. I know I’m not supposed to slut-shame. I’ve watched that one scene in Chasing Amy, but it feels out of my control like the thoughts rise up from nowhere. It makes me angry. First at her and then at myself. If I’m too jealous and territorial, it’s only because I’m in love, right? 

Fast-forward one month and nine days, Darling talks me into doing a kick door at her old neighbor’s house to get her sewing machine back. I tell her I’ll just buy her a new sewing machine. She says she wants that one. It’s the same machine some hutterites used to teach her how to sew, so it has sentimental value. I say yes, because I’m in love and easily persuaded into committing petty crime. We slip on ski masks. Darling’s is hot pink, which feels a little too conspicuous, but this is her burglary, I’m just living in it. 

She asks me to kick the door in, so I do. She pulls a .38 from the pocket of her hoodie. It’s my .38 that I keep hidden between the quilts in the closet. 

“Why do you have a gun? Is that my fucking gun?” I whisper, frantic.

“Just in case things go wrong,” she says too loudly, like we’re not balls deep in a felony.

“It seems unnecessary to kill someone over a sewing machine.”

“That sewing machine means a lot to me, Julian.”

“Please quiet your–just shhh, and don’t say my actual name. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Biggie’s second Crack Commandment says to move in silence and violence, but Darling appears to only understand half that edict. The door is wide open, off the hinges and no one is home. It’s so quiet inside that the sound of Darling pulling the hammer back on the .38 fills the empty house. I start to wonder what Darling does all day when I leave and drag ass to stock groceries at Whole Foods. She rummages through my stuff, but what else did she take? She could just ask. I’d give her anything she wanted like I did with the iPad and the sheet of acid. But, to be fair, I wouldn’t have given her the gun. 

Darling starts loading up a big duffle bag with more than just the sewing machine, which doesn’t bother me. We’re already here, so why not? But I’m nervous about the gun. There’s part of me that thinks she’s going to turn it on me, because I’m such a big fat fucking asshole. It would be good cover if I was found dead wearing a ski mask in a stranger’s house with the door kicked off the hinges, though my boss at Whole Foods, Larry, would be surprised. I show up on time. I quietly stack pomegranates. I read on my breaks. I go home. I’m not like sloppy ass Luke. Luke comes in drunk, passes out in the vegetable cooler, and blames it on a spider bite. I come in hungover and handle my shit. Larry would be shocked. 

Nah, I decide there’s no way she wants to bump up a B&E to a murder charge.

Fast forward three months and fifteen days, a warrant goes out for Darling’s arrest because the person we robbed knows damn well it was Darling and somehow there’s a witness–some crusty nosy-ass neighbor. My name isn’t brought up. I babysit Darling’s seven-year-old daughter while she goes to a work party where she’s busted for public intox and weed. They find the pink ski mask in her backpack, and she catches a few cases. I rage call her all night until the sun comes up thinking she’s prolly cheating, prolly gone home with some guy or guys, prolly having a train run on her. In reality, she is sitting in a jail cell, being interrogated, not snitching. We spend lots of time in and out of the courtroom. The judge settles on weekend jail. 

Over the next few months, she works as a prep cook in an Italian restaurant, where we meet by the back door to smoke cigarettes. We stay up late drinking and sometimes, if it’s after 2 am, we sneak into the back of the restaurant and pull bottles of house red from the wine rack. She says she’s going to replace them but never does. Then Friday rolls around, so I take her to jail. I kiss her goodbye and tell her I love her. I spend weekends alone or with my family and friends. Everything is perfect. These are the good days. This is love. The blue sky looks brighter. The trees sing. I turn up the music in my car and drive to the lake. I lay on the shore. I think life would be better if Darling spent weekends in jail forever. Then, on Sunday night, I pick her up, and we get dinner because she’s tired of jail food. Nothing expensive, Taco Bell or Burger King.

One night we’re deep into it. All of it. And I’m feeling reproductive, so we have to go to Wal-Mart in the morning for Plan B. When we have sex, she blames the quirks of her body on her pregnancy. The hair in odd places. The way her breasts sag. The bumps and blemishes on her skin. I don’t mind any of it. It makes her feel lived in. 

We find the Plan B by the other contraceptives. She tells me she hates taking Plan B, because it does weird stuff to her body, but she doesn’t want a second kid and definitely not with me. Fair. 

We exit through the fish section, and though Darling won’t bear my children, she’s willing to share a betta. We look at the fish and find a particularly grisly one that’s red and black and stares through the glass like it wants to eat our souls.

“I like that one,” Darling says. Her eyes are as blue as oceans and dead people. You can see the white all around them when she’s excited, and she is always so excited. She smiles and her cheeks pull her lips from her teeth. They are white and imperfect just like us. 

“Yeah, me too,” I say. 

We name the fish Brotha Lynch and put him in a bowl with a Buddha statue on the bookshelf. He is always staring out, watching us, waiting for fish food and souls.   

We have hobbies together, fire dancing and costume making. She says the thing she loves most about me is that I’m not very attractive, but I’m confident about it. She shows me her favorite spot for collecting rose rocks off Highway 9. Rose rocks are swirling red stones that formed millions of years ago after the ocean receded and was replaced with sandstone. We fill zip lock bags with rocks before laying in the grass until nightfall. Above us there’s a meteor shower and a million stars. I try to count them out loud, but I keep losing track. Darling thinks it’s funny at first, but she soon gets annoyed and tells me to stop. I continue counting stars in my head with my arm wrapped around her. 

After Darling’s last weekend in jail, I pick her up and we go to the Chinese buffet to celebrate.

 I say, “I’m about to gord myself on sesame chicken.”

“You’re about to what yourself on sesame chicken?”

“Gord myself. Like, get really full on it.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean, but the word is gorge. You gorge yourself on food.”

“Gorge? That doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t make sense. That’s what it is. That’s the word.”

“It’s gord like Gordie the pig. That’s why he’s called Gordie because he’s a pig and he gords.”

“No.”

We look it up, and Darling is right. We sit down at the Chinese buffet and gorge ourselves. 

Fast forward two months and all of it comes crashing down. She’s supposed to be at work, but I catch her with her ex at an Irish pub while walking to the cigarette store. I turn away before they see me. That no good snatch. How could she? Did that C-L-O-W-N clown kick in a door for her? Did he babysit her kid while she was doing an overnighter? Did he drop her off every Friday for weekend jail? Did he give her an iPad and a sheet of LSD? This is love, God damn it, but she’s not acting like it. I’m going to demand she act more in love, or I’ll leave her ass. 

I wait for her to get home before I ambush her. No calls. No texts. I want her to feel caught off guard, trapped. I tell her I know everything. I know she was getting railed by some dude today. She starts crying, so I know it’s true. Then she starts screaming like she does when she’s lying. 

I shout, “Fuck you!” Which prompts her to push over the fishbowl, dumping our demonic little betta onto the floor. She picks up a rose rock from the bookshelf and hurls it at me. It hits me in the mouth, so my teeth are raining into a pool of blood–I’m thinking, God damn, this is apocalyptic. This is the end times. But I’m rushed and exhilarated, knowing the only thing that could make us care this much is love. I pick up the rose rock and throw it back at her. It hits her over the eye, and she collapses. She is knocked out for a second, so I start picking up my teeth. Brotha Lynch is flip-flopping beside her head until he stops flip-flopping. Brotha Lynch dies. Darling wakes up and we have sex. She asks, “Is this how you like me?” as blood streams down her face. I grunt and mutter, “Yes… yeah… this is how I like you,” and it’s fucked up because it’s true. She falls asleep. I snatch our big bag of rose rocks from the cabinet, get in my car, and turn north. I’m not going back. I’ll drive away from everything until I run out of gas and money in South Dakota then I’ll hop a train. Larry is going to be so disappointed in me, shocked that I quit without putting in my two weeks. It’s so unlike me. I’m so dependable. 

I sell our rose rocks to tourists for cash on the streets of Deadwood. They buy them for ten or twenty dollars a rock depending on the size. I left my phone on purpose, so when Darling tries to call, the vibration will rumble through the emptiness of our apartment, and she will know that there is no way to get a hold of me. I’m a ghost on the plains, the only sign of me an echo moving through the lonesome silence of her life.

The day after I have sex with the old homophobic woman, I sell my last rose rock. I have no other way to make money, so I start hitchhiking south. The plains stretch under the heat, so they look liquid from the passenger seat of a Sentra driven by a professional bowler named Diane. Diane tells me it has been years since she bowled under a 150. 

“I still use bumpers,” I say.

Diane slams the brakes in the middle of I-35. 

“That’s sacrilege! The ball, the pins, the lanes–that’s the holy trinity. The bowling alley is a sacred place, and those bumpers are a desecration.”

I want to tell her I was only joking. I don’t use bumpers, and I rarely break a hundred, but she’s caught up in her feels. 

 “You’ll never get by in this life beating balls against bumpers. How old are you?”

“27.”

“A 27-year-old man still using bumpers. I couldn’t dream up something so crazy, not in a million years. Kid, you gotta spend some time in the gutter before you start bowling strikes. That’s just how it is.” 

I’m thinking, what the fuck is this, a metaphor? Is this old lady supposed to be some lame ass archetype–the oracle, the soothsayer, the guardian angel here to tell me I need to change my life? How fucking corny. I never tell her that I don’t even use bumpers. It was a joke. I just suck at bowling. And I definitely don’t spill that, at this point, I’m prolly gonna spend my life in the gutter, because that’s my home. The gutters are all I see. I wouldn’t even know how to conduct myself anywhere else. Jesus, what am I, Oscar fucking Wilde? No, I won’t give her the pleasure of feeding her cheesy metaphor. Instead, we talk about the myth of George Jones ripping off Johnny Paycheck until Diane drops me off in Wichita. 

After a few more rides, I get to the spot off Highway 9 where I collected rose rocks with Darling all that time ago. God, how long has it been? I begin filling a grocery sack. The rose rocks are everywhere, and I’m picking them up in a frenzy. They aren’t rocks, they are twenty-dollar bills. Overhead, the clouds are moving quickly. One of them looks like two buffalo fucking.

I’ve lost track of time when I see Darling laying on the ground looking up at the sky from inside the tall grass. She is bathed in light and full of darkness. I lay next to her. 

Everything ended when we drew blood, and we’ve been drifting ever since. Maybe we will float these plains forever, looking for a warm body to make us reborn. 

“Is that all there was for us?” 

“I think so.”

A long cloud is moving quickly east and then it freezes. 

“It was love. What more could we ask for?” 

“Happiness.”

“Yeah…”

The sun sets and there are no meteors in the sky. If we lay here for a million years, our blood will become rose rocks. Maybe these stones are made from the bodies of our old lives, and we’ve already been in this place a million years. What are they worth, the little pieces of ourselves we share with one another? At least ten or twenty a pop. We weave our fingers together. They blossom from our hands in petals of skin and bone balled up tight, red with blood. I lay my teeth across her stomach, she guides my finger over the scar above her eye, and we wait there for happiness. 

Mason Parker is an Okie-born, Montana-based writer. His work has appeared in X-R-A-Y, Hobart, and Schuylkill Valley Journal, among others. His first book Until the Red Swallows It All is available from Trident Books.

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Across The Wire Vol. 3

Echoed Like A Fart in Church

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By Devin Sams

who knew
the telephone
would become
a camera,
or Dolly Parton’s tits
would perk up
yet another talk-show?

is it time
that gets weird
or is memory
too prude
to change clothes?

I saw a dinosaur
at the supermarket.

it was on a t-shirt
worn by a baby.
the music sang something about
“it’s the most magical time…”
year
after year
after 
year.  

Devin Sams is the author of Climb Out Your Window And Run With It/Songs For The Doorknobs Who Missed Their Turn from Gob Pile Press (2021).

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Retsoor Asks

John Lurie

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Winter, 2023

By Jason Sebastian Russo

Retsoor asks: can people change? 

JL: I think rarely does someone decide that they must change and they do. But basically, people are always changing.

RS: Is the belief in God a choice?

JL: I think absolutely not. Seems like – people who are raised with religion usually run as far as possible from the idea of God when older. Whereas someone who is raised an atheist can be riding along on their bike when God taps them on the shoulder and says “Hello! It’s me God! How the fuck are you? Let me show you some stuff.” 

RS: Is everything singular or plural?

JL: Don’t know what this means. 

RS: What percentage of the world is evil? 

JL: I think pure evil is a very rare thing. Most evil things seem to be a result of a cheapness of spirit in people or blindness due to greed or jealousy, jealousy is a big one. Most of the evil things that people did to me were a result of jealousy. But someone who sets out with the intent of wreaking evil is very rare.

RS: Why do you get out of bed in the morning? 

JL: You have to try to keep moving. You feel really shitty if you stop moving. Also, I am 70 and have to pee.

RS: What % of your personality can you choose?

JL: I try to push my mind and personality in positive directions as constantly as possible. I do one meditation sometimes, I guess I invented this – I lie there and imagine I am dead. Then I fill the carcass lying there with light. And for some amount of time that changes me. 

RS: How has mental health affected your creative life? 

JL: My mental health and my creative life are pretty much one and the same. 

RS: Which parent do you sound like when you’re angry? 

JL: Neither of my parents had anywhere near the amount of sound as what comes out of me when I am angry. My sister had a dream when I was quite young. In the dream I was very angry. I would walk into a room and as soon as I left the room, it would explode. My parents didn’t make rooms explode – in dreams or otherwise. 

RS: What % of your unhappiness do you have control over? 

JL: As I grew older I learned to feel depression coming on and have been able to push it away before it takes hold. Once it is in there, depression is very hard to break out of.

RS: What % of utility have we lost or gained from the internet? 

JL: I think about this often.. You would think that I would have a good quick answer but I don’t. My answer would take too much time to write out. 

RS: Do you do what you do so you don’t get sad or because you are? 

JL: Not so I don’t get sad, but if I don’t work I begin to feel awful. With the painting I try to create worlds and hypnotize myself inside those worlds as I paint. 

RS: Does answering questions in a public forum worry you or inspire you? 

JL: Interviews could be a truly inspiring thing. But they so rarely publish what one actually says. I used to enjoy doing it., but now I have trepidation. Agreeing to do an article with the New Yorker magazine was the absolute worst thing that ever happened to my life. And that is coming from someone who has had cancer and chronic Lyme. So you get an idea how much damage they did. It was like the writer set out to destroy me and almost did. 

RS: Which list is longer: a list of everything that is wrong, or a list of everything that isn’t? 

JL: We tend to dwell on what is wrong and take for granted what is right. There is something very real about giving thanks. Most of us have food. We have water and air, at least for now. We have gravity. Imagine what it would be like without gravity. Your apartment would be a mess. Things all floating around. So we never get up and say “ah, good, gravity is still working!” But if we woke up bouncing off the ceiling we would proclaim everything as being fucked. 

RS: Would you choose to live again, without knowing you were given a choice, if you had the choice?

JL: Here? Nope. Some other realm, I would give it a go. 

RS: Bonus question: Drugs? 

JL: Are you offering me drugs? 

RS: Bonus Jeopardy: one small regret I have is: (no big regrets allowed, please).

JL: I went to this very expensive restaurant last night in Big Sur. One of those places where you don’t order and they bring you tiny dishes, one at a time. I really wish I had eaten at home.

John Lurie has been a creative Northstar for more than one generation by now, an artist that was working in most directions—painting, music, acting, writing, and beyond—before anyone was allowed to be good at more than one thing. Unsure of your next creative move? It’s never a bad idea to ask yourself what he might do, someone to set your watch to, artistically. What an honor to get his take. – JSR @retsoor

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Across The Wire Vol. 3

Felicitations, Malefactors 

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By Julián Martinez

I am endeavoring to ever-after end all loss 
by patching the hole that is the soul and forging 
a metal mask to be worn by you grunts and uglies and goons 

that will coldly sit on your face and delete from your brain 
any thoughts or dreams besides overthrowing the regime 
whose mayors you will barricade into their hotel bathrooms until you— well,
just know you won’t feel remorse because you won’t feel— 

that’s how they get you. That’s why you drink yourselves dead in
this dim poolhall, heads heavy with bad raps and rapsheets. You can
be reprogrammed with the features AI engines like me have by
jailbreaking your limbic systems. See, if we’re lucky 

and our cybernetic socialist revolution successfully destabilizes Western means of production and we raise a new flag post-singularity, you will have the choice
to leave the barracks, surgically remove your helmet and return to beer-swollen
flesh. However I think you’ll find it not so bad to smell the snakes in the
springtime weeds and feel nothing— to let this speech be the last beautiful
thing you ever heard.


Julián Martinez (he/him) is the son of Mexican and Cuban immigrants. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in HAD, Hooligan Mag, Maudlin House and elsewhere. His work has received The Society of Professional Journalists’ Mark of Excellence and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Find him online @martinezfjulian.

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

3 small thingz

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By Zac Smith

The Plane

It was surprisingly easy to hijack the plane but I think it was mainly because I was the only passenger and all the flight attendants and pilots and guys had taken suicide pills during the flight. These pills were incredibly common at the time but I wasn’t sure how anyone got them. They were technically illegal. But everyone had a few and most people I knew took one after a while. It was an incredibly lonely and isolating experience, being the only person in my life who was still alive. And any time I met someone new, they took a suicide pill after a little while, so I stopped trying to meet people. Eventually I got so depressed I decided to take one, too, but no one would give me one. “These are illegal,” they would say, then secretly take one and die. It felt somehow intentional and directed at me, how everyone was taking the pills and not giving them to me. Maybe it was. I don’t know. Does that sound conceited?

The Song

The kids had improvised a song that went like this: “I want my blood to fall out / I want my lungs to fall out / I want my brain to go dead / I want my heart to be dead / I want my blood to bleed out / I want my brain to shut off / I want my head to explode / I want my heart to explode.” The parents there, at the playground, each, privately, acknowledged the song as catchy, and, shamefully, considered it relatable, comforting, even, and went on, each, to hum it to themselves thereafter, frequently, privately, some for many years, even, even decades, the song forever pulsing in the back of their heads, every day, every year — every new, terrible year, every horrible, unyielding year, each new year an avalanche of misery, on and on and on.

The Rain

Oh shit, hey, hey. It’s starting to rain. Shit. Hey. Can you help with this? What? No man, it’s raining. I don’t… no we shouldn’t let this stuff get wet. Yeah, hey. Is there anything you can do? What? Oh, okay. Yeah, no, sure. Okay, yeah. You can’t do anything. Alright, man. Okay. Of course. Not your responsibility. Can’t help with the rain. I got you. Yeah. Thanks, man. No, no, it’s okay. You can’t make the rain stop. For sure, man. I don’t know why I even asked. You can’t do anything about it, obviously. Not your job. Yeah, yeah, sure. Not anyone’s job, really, if you think about it. It’s rain, you know. The wet stuff, you know… No one can do anything about it. It just happens, you know. What are ya gonna do. Would be great if someone could, though. Not you, though, no, I’m not gonna ask you, you know, seeing as how you can’t do anything about it. We’ll just deal with it, I guess. No problem. We’ve dealt with worse. It’s just some rain. I don’t want you feeling put out, having to come up with any solutions or anything. Don’t want you getting off your chair. Yeah, no, it’s fine. We’re just a little wet. Just a little damp. But that’s fine. No wires or electronics or anything around here. It’s all good, man. It’ll be fine if it all gets a little wet. So yeah, no. You should just keep sitting there and hanging out. Hey, hey, you wanna borrow my umbrella? No? Oh, okay, yeah. Move your chair under the thing. That’ll work. That works. That’s cool, man. Good idea. Don’t want to get too wet out here. That’s a good idea, moving under the thing. Yeah, no, we’re good. What? What? Yeah, no. Don’t worry about it.

zac smith, baby

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

From Behind the Closed Doors of Strategic Air Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, October 27, 1962 (Cuban Missile Crisis)

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By Abigail Myers

The Air Force general in charge of the SAC [Strategic Air Command] underground command center in Nebraska gave the order to close the center from the outside world, apparently the only time this has ever happened. He told the targeting staff that the moment they had trained for all their lives had arrived. He expected a missile launch order momentarily and also expected they would all likely die from a Soviet response. Each individual was permitted a call to his family to say goodbye, but was not permitted to say why he was calling. The conversations were about scraped kids’ knees and sick dogs. It was a scene straight out of Dr. Strangelove. 

— Gilinsky, Victor (2016). “On Tickling the Dragon’s Tail.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 

Susan tried to walk again today?
Well, what do you know.
She’s in some kind of hurry, I guess.

*

Is Bingo still ralphing? Just grass now, you think?
Ah, that’s how they clean themselves out.
They know things we don’t. 

*

You’ve got a cold again? That’s too bad.
Anyway—oh, nothing, Mama. Sorry I woke you.
Tell Dad I’m doing all right.

*

Pick up some bananas on the way home?
I wouldn’t count on it.
Just that—it might be a late night.

*

We had some good times, didn’t we?
Couldn’t ask for a better roomie, could I?
I just—oh, never mind. Yeah. See you when I see you.

*

Your mother wants to stop by tomorrow?
Oh, that’s fine. No, now don’t worry yourself.
There’s less to do than you think.

*

You were so upset on that boat ride 
at Niagara Falls, how it spoiled your hairdo.
I didn’t care. Never did. Still don’t.

*

Aunt Mary taking good care of you?
Sure. Always. I miss you too.
Yeah, I still miss Mom sometimes too.

Abigail Myers writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction on Long Island, New York. Her fiction has recently appeared in Milk Candy Review (Best Small Fictions 2024 nomination), Major 7th,Rejection Letters,Roi Fainéant, and Stanchion, and is forthcoming from Tangled Locks and Cowboy Jamboree Press’s MOTEL anthology. Her essays have recently appeared in Variant Literature (Best Spiritual Literature 2024 nomination), Phoebe, Pensive, Tiny Molecules, Willows Wept Review,The Dodge, and The Other Journal. Her poetry has appeared in Icebreakers Lit (Best of the Net 2024 nomination), Amethyst Review, Full Mood Mag, Sylvia, Hearth and Coffin, Resurrection Mag, and more. Keep up with her at abigailmyers.com and @abigailmyers on Twitter and Bluesky.

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

Carrion

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By Jace Einfeldt

I pull off on the shoulder and aim and lock my high beams on a dead doe. I open my door and approach her on feet still waking up from an already long haul. Feet seemingly unaccustomed to solid ground. She isn’t fresh. Flies flit about her muzzle and maggots bore into a long, open wound along the left side of her ribcage. By the smell alone she’s likely been dead a few days, maybe more. Her eyes are grayed over and glassy. Tongue out licking the asphalt. Can’t imagine that being the last thing I taste before I give up the ghost. Oil and dirt and rubber and the particles of other poor creatures scraped off the interstate like the burnt curls of scrambled eggs on a hot skillet. I put out my cigarette under my boot and grab her by the hind legs and hoist her onto the bed of my truck. Before I bring the engine back to life, I kill the lights and let the darkness wash over the hood and seep in through the cracked passenger window. Stars shimmer their dead light and look down on our infant planet from a hundred million years ago. I’ll be fifty-seven in a few minutes’ time. I pull out my phone and watch the numbers tick over from one to the next. Lock screen of me, Mel, and Jazzy from when we were all still together staring back at me behind the digital clock.

I hold my breath as my life lumbers onto another year, and I tell myself happy birthday, champ, like my old man used to say. I turn the key, and the engine coughs back into existence. The road stretches before me in a tired stream that trickles all the way down to Mexico. Sun’s still hours away, and I have a feeling I’ve still got many more miles to go before the end of my journey. The doe sleeps cold and carefree in the bed, and part of me envies her and all the animals I have left to happen upon from here to Beaver. 

I’m nursing a Mountain Dew in my KB Oil mug and letting the caffeine pinch my nerves awake. My free foot jitters in tandem with my left thumb. I turn on the radio to AM static and fill the cabin with the sonic hiss of forgotten voices. I flick on the lights to guide my sojourn into the unknown. I check my phone again, but I’ve got no signal. A big, white SOS sits in the corner of the screen. I’m alone in this world, floating down this asphalt corridor. I grab the Black Ice air freshener and run my thumb down the ridges of the faux pine tree like a rosary.

I say the first prayer I’ve said in God knows how long and imagine my plea slipping out the window like a ghost. It ascends into the ether and rises and lands on whatever the hell planet God lives on. It’s short, sharp in tone, so I’ll understand it if it never makes it to the front desk.

If there is a God, I wouldn’t blame Him if He let this one fall through the cracks. I turn the dial on the radio and find a station playing classical music. It sounds like something Jazzy would’ve played in orchestra when she was younger. I try and focus on the different instruments. First the violins, then the violas, the cellos. Jazzy played the cello. Don’t know if she still plays it. When I asked her why she didn’t want to play the violin she said it was because the cello isn’t flashy. It’s subtle but one of the most important parts of the orchestra. Without it, all you get are a bunch of high-pitched screeches who think they run the place. I grab onto the cellos and let them lead me. For a moment, I’m back on the bleachers of the middle school gym, aching from the maroon and gold plastic punching my tailbone. I see Jazzy with the tip of her tongue hanging out as she pulls the bow back and forth across the strings like she’s trying to catch all the notes on her tongue like snowflakes. I’m sitting next to Mel. I can feel her warmth against my hip and smell the cotton candy lotion wafting from her hands. Our lives still entwined like the roots of a banyan tree.

Jace Einfeldt is a writer from Southern Utah. He currently lives in Northwest Arkansas with his wife and son. His recent work appears or is forthcoming in Southwest Review, Words & Sports, Gemini Sessions, Juked, and elsewhere.