Vol. 16 | 2019 Executive Editor Editors Candace “Candie” Getgen Elizabeth Blain Ryan Kraczon Assistant Rogeena Lynch Harry Mehri Executive Editors Natalie Olson Natalie Barrios Dana Peteroy Zackary de Armond Naudia Reeves Aricely Tavares Managing Editors Lexie Velte Trinia Filer Caylee Weintraub Sandra Mollinedo Layout Editor Poetry Editor Jason Elek Ethan Slocum

Art & Design Editor Faculty Advisors Davina Angstenberger Emily Woolf Vallier Lori Cornelius Mangrove RSO Officers Davina Angstenberger Special Thanks Callie Brannon Dr. Billy Gunnels Priyanka Lehr Jim Gustafson Natalie Olson Stephen Cavitt Mangrove Review is the student-edited literary and arts magazine for Florida Gulf Coast University, showcasing the work of FGCU students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, and members of the community. The views and opinions expressed in Mangrove Review are solely those of the individual authors and in no way represent those of the editors and staff of Mangrove Review, employees of Florida Gulf Coast University, or the University Board of Trust- ees.

Mangrove Review gratefully acknowledges support from the Honors College, the Office of Undergraduate Scholarship, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Student Government of Florida Gulf Coast University.

If there are no mangroves, then the sea will have no meaning. It is like having a tree without roots, for the mangroves are the roots of the sea... — words of a Thai fisherman

Mangrove Review takes its name from the mangrove tree. Of the more than 50 species of mangroves worldwide, Florida’s three na- tive species — black, white, and red — form the habitat necessary to preserve the life cycle of the estuaries that line the length of the Florida peninsula. Without them, Florida would quite possibly be nothing more than a mere nub off the coast of Georgia.

Copyright © 2019 by Mangrove Review No portion of Mangrove Review may be reproduced without permission. Mangrove Review is published annually in the spring. Mangrove Review will consider submissions of poetry, prose, and artwork from Florida Gulf Coast University students, alumni, fac- ulty, staff, administrators, and the community at large. The reading period for submissions is from September 1 to November 30 of each year.

Submission guidelines Submissions must be previously unpublished and accompanied by a short biography. Please do not put your name on the manu- script or file name. Instead, include a cover page with the title of your piece, your name, and contact information.

Poetry Submit no more than five poems per reading period. Prose Submit up to four narratives, but no more than 10 total pages (3,000 words) typed and double-spaced, with 1-inch margins, for any one reading period. Visual Arts All artwork must be submitted as a high-resolution JPEG image, with the title of the artwork as file name. We will consider no more than five images by any one artist per reading period.

Submit your materials to [email protected]

Contents

Poetry In Lieu of Plans, Dorothy Brooks...... 9 Last Days, Dorothy Brooks...... 10 Reaching after Stillness, Dorothy Brooks...... 11 Self Love, Erin Cone...... 12 Hurricane, Dr. Edwin Everham III...... 17 Breakfast Time, Wanya Greene...... 18 The Wild Nun Sings Too Loud at the Christmas Leaves, Scrod Johnson...... 20 Happiness, Faith Houseworth...... 21 We Are Boogeymen, Faith Houseworth...... 23 A Box of Memories, Faith Houseworth...... 25 The Book of Water, Diana Howard...... 26 Santa Monica Unplugged, Diana Howard...... 27 Black: Fear of Fatherhood, Eugene Kinchen...... 28 The Artistic Woman, Eugene Kinchen...... 30 Closed Doors, Erica Terese Krueger...... 31 St. Augustine, Hildy Matthew...... 32 The Mourning Beach, Marilyn Mecca...... 34 Sunday's Ghost, Marilyn Mecca...... 35 Through the Trees, Harry Mehri...... 36 Loss, Binh Nguyen...... 37 Shaker Lakes, Nicholas Ranson...... 44 Mulberries, Naudia Reeves...... 45 Passing Love, Eduardo Rodriguez Vazquez...... 46 Notes from Art Class, Jan Tramontono...... 47 Visual Arts 44 Hummingbird, Candace "Candie" Getgen...... 49 Ease, Brittny Breier...... 50 Elegance, Brittny Breier...... 51 Melancholy, Candace "Candie" Getgen...... 52 Serene, Brittny Breier...... 53 Simple Beauty, Brittny Breier...... 54 The Magic, Candace "Candie" Getgen...... 55 Cypress in Rain, Hannah Burdge...... 56 Jiquilillo Fisherman, Hannah Burdge...... 57 Bob's Turtles, Hannah Burdge...... 58 Nica Chicas, Hannah Burdge...... 59 Vine Veins, Hannah Burdge...... 60 Surfing in Lima, Clay Motley...... 61 Octopus Meets Friend, Arianna Webster...... 62 Octopus and Ship, Arianna Webster...... 63 Shattered Rainbows, Arianna Webster...... 64 Poetry, continued My Mountaineer, Kerry Wallerius...... 65 Elves in my Backyard, Sharon Whitehill...... 66 Indecent Exposure, Sharon Whitehill...... 67 Sowing Seeds, Joan Winokur...... 70 The Ruler Said, Joan Winokur...... 71

Prose The Windy Hill, Trinia Filer...... 72 She Hated Honey, Candace "Candie" Getgen...... 87 Christmas Lights, Julie Gramazio...... 88 The Black Dog of Hanging Hills, Faith Houseworth...... 94 The Birdman of Naples, Anna Karras...... 95 Tying the Knot, Anna Karras...... 98 The Changing Hills of Western Massachusetts, Mark Massaro...... 100 Listen, Jessica Murphy...... 109 One Last Time, Jessica Murphy...... 113 A Young Food Critic, Dana Peteroy...... 119 Ink, Naudia Reeves...... 121 The Learned Toad, Savana Scarborough...... 125 Dreams, Thomas Small...... 130 Packing, Sierra Williams...... 133 Daily Route, Sierra Williams...... 138 `Eleven Teal Roses Left Behind, Megan Willis...... 142 2018 Writing Awards Fiction winner Seawalls, Caylee Weintraub...... 145

2018 Writing Awards Poetry winner Childish Dreams, Sydney Van Dreason...... 150

2018 Writing Awards Creative Nonfiction winner South by South, Rogeena Lynch...... 152

2018 Writing Awards Step Ahead winner Publix Shift, Zackary de Armond...... 158

About the Contributors...... 163

Cover photo by Erica Terese Krueger

Dorothy Brooks

In Lieu of Plans attend to light falling through leaves cacophony of birdsong surrender watchfulness tune in to the rhythm of your heart’s beat the taste of rain wait for the next right thing you will know when it arrives it will bear a part of you it will bring you home to yourself

9 Dorothy Brooks

Last Days

The artificial light casts a greenish glow. You look sicker than you are. Or maybe you are.

The doctor has scrubbed his hands of you. You won’t get better. Another failure.

Yesterday you were an MRI. Today a face. Soon you will be a name etched in granite.

You dream of oceans, of waves rising higher and higher. You can’t see the shore.

Awake or asleep distances accumulate.

The waves have their own logic. In dreams, they carry you away.

10 Dorothy Brooks

Reaching After Stillness

Agnes Martin, 1912-2004

I empty my mind create a space wait my back to the world I don’t think I paint large stretches of white canvas pale patterns of color grey horizontals margin to margin boundless as the horizon as the empty mind tremulous like wind shaking the aspen falling the way blue falls black like the night sea nature parts a curtain I go into it find beauty find happiness call it Morning Star call it Gratitude call it One Fine Day. Note: Many of the phrases are taken from a 1997 interview with Agnes Martin; others are titles of her work. 11 Erin Cone

Self Love, an Index

For my Sister. Your struggles are my own.

Beauty Unattainable standards, to which you hold yourself to. An idea. Society has molded your vision, set your standards. Impossible standards to which you hold yourself account- able. An image you let destroy you. Unable to see that you are the beauty that you seek out. Your search for this beauty has made you blind dear sister. It has always been in your posses- sion. Bulimia Your weapon of mass destruction. A method, to you. Enemy to me. Your answer, your resolve. Your comfort and your vic- tor. Your obsession, one that yielded the results you so direly were in search of. A disease. Plaguing your mind, your body, and our family. We were helpless, led to closed doors and hospitals. Come dear sister, let me help you wash your hands and brush your teeth. Cone Orange and vibrant. Markers to ward off hazard. Our last name. A name we have shared since youth. You have always been told our name means strength so you hide. You can- not let us see. You will not let us see. Your mind, the hazard. Our name does not ward off your damaging self-image. The bright orange does not blind the hatred for your body. Let us help you. Let us help ward off this danger. This self-inflicted hazard. Never is a cone strong in its singularity, but as a unit. Let us be your unit. Crying Your silent tears at night. In your room or in the bathroom. A dressing room estranged to you. Weeping for the body you

12 think you should have, not loving the one you possess. Sad- ness and regret for the look you desire, the look I know you already possess. Your tears blind you from the light in which you encompass. Your tears cloud your judgment and darken your face. Sobs that alarm me in the middle of the night. Sounds and sadness I cannot cure, but I want nothing more than to bear your sadness for you. CrossFit Another sport you plunge yourself into. Another sport you demand will yield the results you are in search for. Intensity that brings you no satisfaction. The patience you lack, the fortitude of your resolve leaves you restless. You are not in search for a cure. A remedy that will simply mask the greater problem. Determination Your will. Your hunt for the perfect body. A never ending search for the perfect number on the tag of your jeans. A trait you certainly embody. One I am no longer certain carries a positive connotation. Diet Harmless in its intention. Master of disguise. A word that resembles the plague in our household. A simple gesture that became the hill in which you tumbled down. It began with small corrections, small fixations. Masked itself as innocently as possible. Developed into an ulcer that would leave scars on more than just one body and mind. Distant Farther out of touch we have become. Right before you worsened. You grew apart from me to grow closer to the disease. You had a goal in mind you demanded to achieve. A goal that could not involve me or mother and father. A goal that would rip you from us like the moon rips away the tide from the sandy shore. We wait for you like the beach does the tide. We pray the moon gives you back to us. Selfish in its intention. Intentions you provoke through this awful vision

13 of yourself. We wish you saw you the way we see you. Strong blue waves, billowed with foamy whites. The light dances within you. You are a vision, our beautiful ocean. Eat A forgotten habit. You made it the enemy, no more a ne- cessity. It could not exist to bring you anything other than self-loathing and tears. You often skipped it. And when you didn’t, you convinced yourself of the atrocities you had just committed and purged your body of the grief in the most awful of methods. No food was celebratory. All food was dangerous. All food was the enemy. Enemy You are your own worst enemy. My dear sister, there is no one alive who would wish harm to you the way you wish it upon yourself. You have forgotten your friends, family and food. You see only stretch marks, and model ads. You are blind to the beauty in which you have always possessed. A battle we know you can win. A battle you refuse to engage in. You have lost before it has even started sheerly in the absence of your fight. Fat What you see in the mirror. Arguably, all that you see in the mirror. A word in by no means do you resemble. Three letters that haunt your mind day in and day out. A word that keeps you from buying the cute dress you saw on the mannequin. A word that prevents you from indulging in a piece of your own birthday cake. A word that encourages your lashing out at mother and father. One that has allowed you to lose sight of us. Of yourself. Friend A concept you have lost touch with. Friends there for you screaming to be heard. Not to be mixed with family. It is your only friend now. Fear The sound in mom and dad’s voice. The look of concern in

14 their eyes. The confidence of your doctors and your new- found promises fill their ears with hope, the opposite of fear. A powerful word. One that more often than not destroys everything in its wake. Limited Like the way you have chosen to live your life. Limited to certain foods, certain feelings, and a reflection that is not your own. The confines of your mind, the genius creature who paints herself in a completely new way. We were once limit- less. Free, riding go karts on the endless acres we owned. Our laughter once limitless, is now estranged. We know only of concern and soft whispers now. Longing To be out of this situation. For you to be better, healed and healthy. You yearn for the perfect look. I yearn for my sister. Long for our connection and memories to reassemble them- selves from off the bathroom floor. Lost You wake up at midnight and walk to the fridge. You stare at the food that disappoints you. Your stomach gurgles and wants for food. I watch you from the corner. I heard you get up and followed you out. You stand at the refrigerator for over an hour before finally admitting defeat and walk back to your room. You head for the bathroom instead. Are you lost my dear sister? Redemption Eating food. No more throwing up. No more fasting. No more tears. You are better now. Seeking forgiveness for those you hurt. From yourself. You are learning to care for the ves- sel which will take you through life. Mother seems happier now. Her hair less grey, her face less dark. You seem well. Not as fragile as before — redeeming your self-love and worth. Redemption looks good on your dear sister. Reflection The mirror you broke in resentment of who looked back at

15 you. Shards of glass cut at my feet as I rush towards you. I try so hard. You are so broken. Just like your mirror now. The mirror is so broken and I cannot put it back together. Why can’t I put you back together? Rehabilitation Four weeks gone. To a place unfamiliar to us all, especially to you. Your road to recovery. Your road to loving yourself beyond your body. You look better now. You left a stranger, a shell of my sister. You returned to me my childhood friend, my companion. I have missed you greatly. Welcome home. Scales A tool used against you. Determining how often you throw up in a day. How little you ate. How many tears you would cry. Dusty, cold, and lifeless — a machine that remains unfeeling. I cannot begin to understand how these numbers tormented you so. Skinny The sounds of vomiting in the bathroom. The grotesque smell of what was once in your stomach. The sobs at night and on the bathroom floor. A goal. One which you have set for yourself without reason. I can see your ribs now dear sister, when will enough be enough? Skinny is not a foreign country to you but you insist you have never visited the land. Stretchmarks Purple lines you swear you see. There are no purple lines. I see skin. You see failure. I see the hatred for your body in a map that is invisible to me. You say they are all over. I see only your freckles and pale complexion. You call in mother and father for their opinion. They do not see what you see. No one can see what you see. One day I hope you see what I see. There are no marks on you dear sister.

16 Dr. Edwin Everham III

Hurricane

I sit in the shade of the yellow elder, planted after Irma.

She took our trees our backyard forest our home.

She took our roof, but she didn’t take us.

We replanted small trees, to bend with the next wind.

Already, in the morning they are tall enough, to cool the sun and let me write in their shade.

If the next hurricane takes them — we will plant again.

17 Wanya Green

Breakfast Time

You wake up, 6:30 in the morning eager to Eat a bowl of Frosted Flakes. You should have Put on your shoes because now you stepped On your nephew’s Legos. Don’t you remember Your brother and his girlfriend and his son sleep In the living room? You may want to keep the light Off, you don’t want to wake them up at this hour.

It was challenging but you tiptoed your way into The kitchen. The refrigerator light should be Enough to see what you are doing. Oh wait, It broke 2 months ago. Better use your phone For light. But hey, everything is still cold.

You found the milk, but it was not too hard to find. There are not many things for it to hide behind. You keep lining your finger along the remaining Amount of milk but it is futile, you know it is not Bigger than your pinky. Thankfully it is enough.

Well it is enough for you, but what about your Sickly single mother? She needs coffee for energy. Your younger sister likes milk with her cookies, Don’t you remember what is like when she doesn’t Get her way? Oh and of course baby formula.

You decide to put the milk back in the refrigerator, It just isn’t worth it. Might as well let others have it Right? Lunch is only about 6 hours later in school Anyways. You don’t need breakfast to help pass Your math test today. You just need to keep your Head up. One day you’ll get all the milk you want. 18 What is that trickling down your face? Don’t tell Me, a tear? Again? Don’t do that, you promised you Wouldn’t do that again. You have no reason to. Think about the energy your mom will now have. Think about how your sister won’t give any attitude. Think about the baby, at least he won’t be hungry. Now please, wipe the tear off your cheek, it’s just milk.

19 Robert Hiatt

The Wild Nun Sings Too Loud at the Christmas Leaves

Once, when I was a kid, some extra communion wine Led to Sister Mary’s legendary karaoke overload. We all were amazed, And there was very little Grace

20 Faith Houseworth

Happiness

Happiness is a nightmare, that haunts you for the rest of the day. It is walking alone. It is being able to stay calm. It is a therapy appointment. It is the smell of mold in the middle of the night, and knowing that it will cost too much to fix. It is the blood of snakes on a shell road — watching their eyes fade to black. Happiness is seeing death take them away. It is falling down stairs. It is falling asleep with tears. It is leaving the hospital. It is having an ugly green cast. It is the fifty-seventh page in a book with thousands. Happiness is a path you’ve gotten lost on before. It is not wearing long sleeves — and not fearing the scars. It is coffee at three am. It is swerving, and hitting the curb. It is picking the color of sheets, for an abandoned room. It is remembering a birthday, two weeks too late. It is not gagging at a reflection, or regretting the surgery. It is lightning that strikes a tree. Happiness is watching the world burn. It is a broken bronzer powder —

21 with the knowledge that you will have to replace it before tomorrow. Happiness is knowing that no one will understand. It is a broken phone. It is losing a baby blanket in a hurricane. It is an overflowing garbage can. It is not having friends. It is wanting a cigarette dipped in whiskey. Happiness is burnt skin, and eyes that can no longer see. It is having hair that never listens. It is biting nails. It is a dirty fish tank. It is forgetting to buy creamer for coffee. Happiness is holiday cheer, but no one to share it with. It is burnt pasta and pepper sauce. It is a box of horrible memories. It is not having a clue. Happiness is forgetting, and remembering a memory from years ago.

22 Faith Houseworth

We Are Boogeymen

Children have minds that can pick out the surreal from the real. They can’t block the scary, or the beauty, from their world. We were once able to see too. We saw clouds as monsters and flowers. We saw stars as wishes. And we believed that we could be anything we dreamed. And we were horrified of the man only visible in the dark. That man might be holding a key. The key to our hope and renewed joy. We now pay for an escape to a once free world. Haunted houses and candy corn. Movies and books. Yet the man in the shadows continues to watch. He masks himself within our lives. He smiles sweetly with pointed teeth like razor blades. He wears a suit and tie behind a desk. The children know run away and hide. They know to question what he says. We stare blankly ahead in his mirror. We answer and follow his rules. We look unknowingly into the gaze of the man who knows all. The man who holds the keys to many things. We’ve stopped questioning and believing like we once did. We stare into our reflections and ponder how we got this way. Where did we forget? Where did we lose the key? The keys that can bring us joy —

23 and fear — into our now quiet minds. We’ve forgotten what is was like to play hooky on Wednesdays. We smile and our lips curl up because we now match the reflection. The reflection of what we once feared. We watch and wait for the next ones. We hope someone will bring us the key. We hope to one day be free. It is lonely here in the dark and the only sound we can hear are the keys that ring from somewhere too far away to reach.

24 Faith Houseworth

A Box Of Memories

A hill once covered with snow, An argument over nothing time and time again, A movie about the end of the world, A broken ankle and a lost passion, A few years of tears and mutual sadness, A mother and daughter’s bond over a horse, A life of luxury I cannot afford, A fruit I hate and have never tried, A brother smoking on a gravel road, A sign to watch over your shoulder, A building that inspires curiosity, A mountain of trash that turned into a park, A wave of heat and a wish for snow, A circular stairwell at a stranger’s Christmas party, And a need for love that has yet to come.

25 Diana Howard

The Book Of Water

for Kris

She opened it, pointed to a tear-stained page and asked me to read, yet why in the middle when earlier chapters may speak more plainly of when she stopped growing or how she survived without water like a possible flower set to bloom in the middle of a drought? I have known buds that struggled just to lift their heads.

I don’t know her story nor what drove her to a razor sharp edge but my heart stood at attention, for I knew there were other words not yet written and owned.

Flow will feed a starving bud. To bloom we must be watered not in drops or glassfuls but flowing rivers where in our nakedness we are nourished, where with our tears we are kindred.

26 Diana Howard

Santa Monica Unplugged two poems for a dollar a blues guitar grocery cart closets and movie stars ocean beach for miles it seems pot — lots of pot and coffee beans glutinous food gnarled, ratted hair any smile will do with a dollar to share for Vietnam vets who sleep in the park for addicts and drunks who live in the dark hikers and bikers singers on the street blown up breasts and sutured seams. too many cars too many bars on windows.

27 Eugene Kinchen

Black: Fear of Fatherhood

I’m scared to bring children into this generation And not just because of its vile ways and lack of maturation Not because of the lack of parental ability of me and my wife And definitely not because I’ll leave and won’t be a part of their life I don’t want them to grow up and see how much our race is hated by this “great nation” The thoughts of hooded racists, injustice, and inequality are those that cause me vexation This world is cold enough without wondering what age my child will first be called a nigger Or whether or not they’ll come home in a body bag by the same officers that squeezed the trigger Worried about whether my children will fall victim to a stereotypical statistic Afraid that they’ll hate their skin though the reasons are sophistic Will my daughter be laughed at for the way she wears her hair And if her physique doesn’t “match” her skin color will she be looked at with indecent snares I hope she’ll be proud enough to wear her natural hair even with perm and weave within her reach Hope she’ll see the beauty in her dark flesh and won’t see the need for skin bleach Will my son be a hypocrite and despise all women of his color except his mother Or pick his choice of gang colors just to end up killing his brother I pray that I could see him walk the stage to further his mental somewhere like Duke or Yale Instead of being a witness on the stand while he’s sent to life in jail Will the world poke fun at their noses and lips and call them ugly Or make them examples of their hatred and hang them by a tree

28 All these thoughts beat at my mind like a whip to my back And it’ll break my heart for them to ask “why’d I have to be born black”

29 Eugene Kinchen

The Artistic Woman

There’s more behind the stroke of her paint brush. And the precision of pencils and pens The colors of different shades, hues, and blush From dusk to the sound of the morning hens Sprouts from the seed of her inspirations Her canvasses her cloth; her hand is her loom Turns the simple into complex creations Like what can develop from within her womb Paper, tile, buildings, skin from head to toes Finding its worth between her curves and lines Values like the stones in her ears and nose Not given by numbers and dollar signs Just artistry of the rib of Adam The talent and vision of Une Madame

30 Erica Terese Krueger

Closed Doors you swam in the river i was drowning in the ocean you picked the wildflowers in the field i was a leaf falling in the forest you rolled in like an early morning fog i was lightning in the evening sky you longed for the moon i was dancing between the stars you searched for the heat of the fire i was smoke rising from the embers

31 Hidy Matthew

St. Augustine

St. Augustine is the place everyone leaves. Everyone, that is, besides my father. He even bought a dalmatian: “a friend for rainy days,” he said.

On Saturday nights, he sits on a half-cut log with his dog, gazing at the sky. His Sardonyx eyes shining under the sparkling stars. I doubt he will ever leave, even if the water gives him dysentery.

Us kids left that town years ago. Harry, the oldest, moved to Chicago to start his own business. Johnathan and Katrina, the twins, both have children of their own. I went away to college, gaining knowledge and a fancy sheet of paper. The four of us moved on. Each of us living our different lives outside that old, sleepy town.

But we still remember the former times. Memories of bikes and dolls. Of polka dot suspenders and matching yellow sundresses. Of the time we tried to take a trip across state in an old, beat up Volkswagen. “You can’t get there in the car you’re driving,” Dad said. Yet, we did.

However, we are the same family that we used to be. Harry and I, despite our age, still hate peas. Johnathan still fiddles with model cars. Katrina continues to scribble down short poems. Dad relentlessly maintains his garden.

32 We might come to visit...never to stay. Where the sandy beaches and clear water has no effect on our happiness. Where bad memories tend to overshadow the good. Yet, Dad will remain.

33 Marilyn Mecca

The Mourning Beach

Dawn shivers without promise of candy striped umbrellas, whiffs of coconut oil or kids kicking up sand.

Clots of gray clog the sky. The sand lies bruised, beaten, pocked from pounding rain.

Bracken and spent shells shucked from the sea form a thick, shaggy eyebrow hugging the shore.

I trek this wild side of Mother Nature respectful of her flattening winds, her bulging, angry waves. Grateful for her shadowless solitude. For the time granted me to reflect, to renew on this, the mourning beach.

34 Marilyn Mecca

Sunday’s Ghosts

The ghosts of past lives wander the Chelsea Flea Market on Sunday. Their finest heirlooms rest inside glass cases. Their ordinary wares pile on to folding tables and carts. The curious, the treasure seeker, the tourist browse to the hum of dealers making deals, hoping “a special price for you” just might mean something special for them. Tchotchkes of dead households spill over three city blocks. Collectibles from Royal Albert to Rockwell’s Americana. Deco frames worth more than the lives tucked inside them. Hangers draped with memories abandoned in attic albums. Crocheted tablecloths from food- stuffed family holidays. Christening gowns limp from all the hand-me-down years. On most Sundays I find something old, yet new to me. Today I leave with a black bakelite mourning cameo pin, praying it’s Victorian Revival 1930, not Woolworth 1980.

35 Harry Mehri

Through the Trees

The last time I saw my father we walked through the trees; speaking of life, its making; construction, golden. Listening the river raced beneath

A cigarette, shared, holy dust poisoning cleansing, both hearts full, yet, I feel despair. My Father looks tired, old and fading

A white linen silk, within the air push through the thought my children, dancing, there, they won’t meet my father,

Have a drink with him In the light of the fading sun Nearly departed, in An amber grove

We walk through, the trees.

36 Binh Nguyen

Loss

A Admission Two tickets and a concert of our lives in June. You wanted to go before August—you were moving. I got them. A surprise for you. Apprehensive I was, but anything, in disbelief. You went away, I didn’t know. Was this your plan? To leave me, alone? You couldn’t have left. I don’t want you to. Except, you did, but I won’t ever believe it. Not now, Not here, Not there, Not ever. Autonomous robotic movements, slow and meaningless. I found a photobook of us, on the shelf above my bed. I grabbed it, skimming, my eyes glazed—a tear formed and fell. I didn’t feel it. I don’t feel anymore. I put the book back in place And walked to the balcony, we used to hang out here. Mind- less movements, but they all lead to our — my — favorite places of us. C Colorado the family cabin was there. We used to go every winter with the family. Logs stacked outside — a uniform pyramid — ready to be burned. You used to chase after me in the snow and I would throw snowballs at you. Laughter filled our lungs. Night time was my favorite time, you would tell stories about the most

37 Extraordinary things. A soul you said, can be as beautiful as the galaxies. A soul you said, can be as dark and empty as the galaxy. “Your soul,” I said, was the universe and a billion stars. This was my place but your haven. Counting time. Seconds, minutes, hours. I want them to move faster. Faster than the speed of light. The clock, instead, told me no, I have to wait. My ADHD makes waiting feel like loathing. You used to tell me, “You have to wait sometimes because when time moves fast, you’ll blink and miss everything: the sunsets and sunrise, the smiles and conversation that could have happenned, the good days, the bad days, and the mundane ones.” You were right. Time did start moving fast and I missed everything, including you. Cotton a soft fabric used to make your favorite clothing. Warm. You loved that grey sweater. Sewed by hand and gifted on Christmas by mom back in 2015. I remembered seeing something similar at the store. Except it was perfect, the seams weren’t as rough or sloppy — clean, straight, and manufactured. You loved handmade things. You loved how the uneven stitches felt underneath your fingers, the threads that fell out of place told you it was made with effort, and the warm feeling you get in your heart when you wore handmade things. I made something for you too, it was a pair of gloves to match for next Christmas. 38 I never got the chance to give it to you. E Energy you had all of it. For the both of us. Entry a personal log. Once in a blue moon, I would write about something. A poem, a story, a note. One about love, two about the future, and three tidbits about my life. The love one, you helped me write. Two about the future had you in it, and the three tidbits were about you. Even without you, they still have you in it, somewhere. Envy you had it all. You gave it all. Nothing was harbored or forbidden — honest. I wanted what you had, mentally and emotionally. You were so good, too good to anyone and everyone. I hope to someday be like you. F Face value. What you said was what I believed. Everything was true for me. Tell me if birds all sing the same tune, I’d believe you. Tell me a thousand cranes could grant me a wish, I’d believe you. You told me face value is “false,” and research would do me better, I believed you. Nowadays, I don’t consider what I’m told. Fine a song repeating in my soul. Loud enough for the next person to hear. Loud enough to drown myself, indefinitely. Footnote a note at the end of every page or entry. You tended to leave one in every other page of your papers. Sometimes, when you write notes for others, you would

39 leave one too. I recall a personal note you wrote for me before my mid-term, a footnote, in neat cursive, “Even if you don’t do great like you want to. You’ll still always be great to me.” I want to start writing some too. H Habit “You’re doing it again? That’s no good for you,” you said. “I’m trying, really. You know habits are hard to break.” I stayed up late — coffee flowed through my veins — sleep does not exist tonight, tomorrow, or, maybe, the day after. This was the fourth time you caught me. You guessed third time would have been a charm. Hand comfort and safety. When I was three up until I was ten, you would hold my hand because I was afraid of the dark. Kindergarten was a ball of yarn. Tangled. Who, what, when, where, why, and how — I need answers, I am scared of things I don’t know. You held my hand and smiled. The answers appeared. Sometimes, I’d reach for a hand and emptiness greets me. I want to hold your hand again. I miss your comfort, I miss my safety, I miss you. Hello you would say with enthusiasm. When eyes contacted each other, a hello you would give. Help given never received. I never ask for help, I still don’t. You, however, gave it anyways. I could drop six pins, tell you not to help but you would pick up the other half, grab the rest from me and put them away. Taking my

40 problems and yours — “I’ll handle it,” you would say. I should help more — “Isn’t it too late?” that voice in my head reasoned. L Late punctually late. Every party and dinner I was invited to, I would show up late. Three o’clock? See you half an hour later. “Be ready by six,” you would tell me before a family event. I showed up late. I never broke the habit. As usual, when you were gone. I was late, again. Only this time, I can’t be late anymore. Laugh Contagious. “Why do you laugh at everything?” I questioned. “If you’re not laughing then there’s something to be worried about. Are you worried?” “No,” I answered, laughing. Love I kept myself at bay. A lot. An “I love you,” before you left. An “I love you,” during a conversation about me. An “I love you,” after a every phone call. All the “I love yous” you said to me, were left unsaid from me. I found another footnote from you — located in between the first pages of my favorite book, Joyland, while the cabinets were getting dusted and boxes were getting packed — written in neat, pretty cursive on an old post-it, faded and wrinkled, “I love you! Have a great day!” “I love you too,” I whispered, tucking the note in my back pocket. S Same to remain unchanged. Walking down the stairs of the apartment building, I stopped. I forgot something important. I ran back up to grab it and

41 ran down the stairs again, almost tripping. Stopping at the end, I looked up. An image of a blue cast wrapped around one broken ankle and an IV needle stuck in a left arm, popped in my head. You fell down the same stairs, while running. Two years ago. Search to look or seek for something carefully. Google: “How to cope.” I binged google for answers. First two sites were — the same. “Don’t be afraid to ask for help.” The back button became a close friend. Like a broken record player, Search search search search. I was looking but I couldn’t find you anywhere. Selfless “You always put others before yourself. You got hurt bad,” I said, upset. You got hurt from helping an old man get his wallet back. A guy slashed your arm. “How can I help myself when I can’t help others,” you replied, giving me your full attention, while your arm bled heavily. W Whale 52Hz. The loneliest whale to exist. I told you sometimes I wish I was the 52Hz whale. “Why?” you asked, looking at me funny. “Because they swim the ocean, constantly singing but other whales don’t come.” “Well, if you become one, I’ll become one too, so we’ll be lonely together,” you said, mimicking Dory’s whale call. “You never leave me alone,” I replied, laughing. Alone. I became the 52hz whale, singing but no replies seek me.

42 Wish things I say at night, when I’m missing you a little too much. Write a story about things you love or a letter about how you feel. Write about what you wanted yesterday. Write about today. Write about politics. Write a poem and address yourself or someone. Take a break but keep writing. Stop only when you feel right — you used to say to me when share my thoughts. I did all of that. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I came up with something. I’ll share it with you someday.

43 Nicholas Ranson

Shaker Lakes

Beside this lake, relic of a lost estate, geese croon at the weir, while others haul out above the margin on some unnecessary trip; and the herring gulls, naturally, pretend there’s fish and tail each other; and at my feet the fry swarm. Other gulls drift on the lake to leeward, staring upwind, content at intervals to flap back to their stations. One now, only because it pleases him drops from his flight, breast first, ungainly: oh exhibitionist! To play the clown you have to know What grace is. A mallard and his mate slap off and up, create their curve against the elms and glide in to the place they left. It means nothing, except to say: we do this because it is our nature. At my feet still the winter branches wave, busy at their losing game, blocking the flow that breaks from them downstream to every destination. The water frets, hardly containing all the secrets teeming there; and the sun, above all, — how these moments conspire to catch at it. Even this woman here, her face offered up, lids closed, heavy, surrenders. 44 Naudia Reeves

Mulberries

My fingers are stained a shade of pink so otherworldly you’d have to live it, to know it.

And you’ve lived it.

You’ve lived a life so chaotically colorful mulberries, spinach, sunflowers—

You’re so chaotically and wonderfully colorful.

45 Eduardo Rodriguez Vazquez

Passing Love

Fractured hearts try to commune with stolen kisses in the dark. They’ve cheated love to pass the time.

Those hearts will not admit their crime.

Fractured hearts cannot embrace, nor can they ever pacify the pull to close the grave divide that lost devotion left behind.

Those hearts will never intertwine.

Fractured hearts learn to ignore the fine lies they use to sell the enticing images that cost a tooth, an eye, and then a nail.

46 Jan Tramontono

Notes from Art Class

Paint to the edges. Leave none of the canvas blank. Let broad strokes reveal themselves. Never go cheap. Never use filler. Remain pure. Layer the color. How you apply it matters. Always explore darkness first. For example, start with deep hooker green. Be generous, add a glint of pale-yellow sunlight. Make sure to let only pinpricks of light shine through. Don’t get attached too quickly. Acknowledge mistakes. Paint over them. Stand back. Let incongruence emerge Squint. Stop and look at possibility. Be open to surprise. The unexpected allows you to change direction Squint again. Blur the detail — you can ruin a painting with clarity. Stop. Revise. Analyze. Gain courage from what you see — Note the list of the palm

47 Beaten but not snapped Listen. Add the croak of the tree frogs who stir beneath that muddied gold water Find turbulence before you discover calm Toward the finish, see the sharpness of eased edges. Stand back. Look. A new way to see.

48 Candace "Candie" Getgen

44 Hummingbird

49 Brittny Breier

Ease

50 Brittny Breier

Elegance

51 Candace "Candie" Getgen

Melancholy

52 Brittny Breier

Serene

53 Brittny Breier

Simple Beauty

54 Candace "Candie" Getgen

The Magic

55 Hannah Burdge

Cypress in Rain

56 Hannah Burdge

Jiquilillo Fisherman

57 Hannah Burdge

Bob's Turtles

58 Hannah Burdge

Nica Chicas

59 Hannah Burdge

Vine Veins

60 Clay Motley

Surfing in Lima

61 Arianna Webster

Octopus Meets Friend

62 Arianna Webster

Octopus Meets Ship

63 Arianna Webster

Shattered Rainbows

64 Kerry Wallerius

My Mountaineer

My mountaineer, I know you are depressed so stop now to take a rest, I see you are in a valley, but I give you permission to start a rally.

Feel free to kick and scream because no matter what you are still chasing your dream.

Dare others to follow you on until the break of dawn. For when the sun rises you will be able to see just how far you have gone.

So, feel what you feel and acknowledge those feelings are real. My dear mountaineer, this journey you’re on is quite a big deal.

Keep your head up and chant that battle cry. Through that dark valley you will go, but just watch how much you will grow.

On this rest, be sure to take some deep breaths and remember I wish you best.

But most importantly of all, I need you to know my love follows you through the highs and lows, forever and always, wherever you may go.

65 Sharon Whitehill

Elves In My Backyard

I have a student this year so focused on fairies and elves she’s renamed herself Pixi — writes stories of brownies and imps, talks to all who will listen of the crystalline long-distance vision of sprites, of how elves spice the air with the breath of their laughter, glow green in the dark. Though I’ve never cared much for elves, Pixi’s preoccupation reawakens a childhood fantasy of miniature people secretly living in my back yard. Of winning their trust. Of gently plucking one of them out of the grass to stand upright on my open hand. And every so often, no reason except that I could, I’d clamp my hand shut and squish — an action that prompted a shameful but sensual thrill, a visceral feeling of power. To handle these humanoid elves — so androgynous, hairless, and helpless! To eliminate them at my whim, nothing to stop me! Nothing but my mother’s cross voice: “Be quiet, you’ll wake the baby!” 66 Sharon Whitehill

Indecent Exposure

I sold my house three decades ago and still suffer seller’s remorse. Irrational, you will say. Unreasonable. If you insist on a reason, it’s this: the current owner is guilty of house abuse.

First, she stripped it naked of silver-blue vinyl intended to cover its blistered skin: exposed its shame to all eyes. Next, she scraped leprous scabs from the clapboards I knew were allergic to paint and kitted them out in puerile pink latex. (I could have told this molester they would bubble, pucker, and peel.) Finally she dressed them back up in silver-blue siding like mine — which lasted until a windstorm lifted their vinyl skirts high to be bustled away. I shudder to think what this snatcher of innocent houses might perpetrate next.

Indoors (she bragged after the fact) she rudely denuded the walls in a private striptease: bared the bedroom of blue and white lace,

67 disrobed the kitchen of yellow chiffon, skinned the study stark of nubbled sea-gray paper. All my enhancements she scalded away, my disguise for cannon-musket-and-flag décor. She intends to re-costume the walls in “correct” vintage dress. No doubt involving a pattern of cannons, muskets, and flags.

Unkindest cut of this latter-day Brutus? She dug up the lush English garden planted in lieu of the lawn I plowed away — mowed my tall clusters of flowers ribboned with paths, a collar of color to flatter its frontage. What did she know of my struggle to keep down the adamant grass that sneaked back to the surface like stains that re-bloom on a blouse? What did she care of my dear cohort, robbed of its strong suit, who had reverted to frumpy? A common apron of grass tied over its house dress again.

Do not be fooled by the pretty back yard. A seam-ripper unto the end, an abuser so leery of witnesses to her dark deeds, the damned interloper dismantled the deck, built so immodestly high, I suppose, that it exposed

68 her transgressions. Distrustful of dogs, she disposed doghouses and kennel like outdated corsets and stays. Her alterations? Ornamentals on brazen display, a pseudo-chic sheath aimed only to advertise cleavage and curves.

She tried to wipe the place clean of me. Rub me out. Does she not know that whatever abuse she inflicts, whatever erasure she tries to effect, that house will always be mine?

69 Joan Winokur

Sowing Seeds

I sweat under the Florida sun, loosen the roots of the palm, replant it, as I have been replanted into more fertile ground with room for growth.

By my side, sturdy as the shovel he wields, my husband-to-be spreads new roots, too. (I want to wipe his furrowed forehead.)

Our paths crossed as we navigated the border. Eyes met in a union of determination. There was no looking back.

Now we work the soil, toil to create a landscape that welcomes transplants and our children-to-be.

70 Joan Winokur

The Ruler Said

The Ruler said, “Build a Wall.”

Build it high, align each rough red brick so there are no cracks to let in the Light.

Build it strong to last for generations, sturdy enough to deter desperate dreamers.

Guard it well so Thought can’t creep in. Ideas could then slip through, and before long, Change might follow.

71 Trinia Filer

The Windy Hill

he first time Amaris sees an angel, she’s four years old.

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She and her mother recently moved into a house up on a hill where the wind always blows. The house isn’t new but it “just need some cleaning and renovating and it can last a couple months. But fixing it will be worth it to finally have a place of our own.” Amaris has a father, too, but he’s always gone to work, so she only sees him in the mornings—before dawn, while she’s in bed he’d leave a kiss on her forehead before leaving to work—or be- tween dinner and her bedtime. Her father is out working hard, Ama- ris’ mother tells her, and is why he always comes back tired and at late hours. Amaris thinks he should work less, but the girl is only four years old and the importance and significance of work and responsibility hasn’t rationed yet, and so she never questions further. She and her mother occupy their small house on the hill all on their own— sometimes her mother sows embroidered patchwork quilts to sell, and on other days would be out in the garden. Amaris likes helping there—together, they grow bright red tomatoes, large crisp heads of lettuce, sunny butternut squash, and fresh cucum- bers, the latter which are Amaris’ favorite. She specifically enjoys helping with watering the garden. Her mother once told her that God had blessed her hands for growing and healing—Amaris’ mother tells this as she pulls out more weeds, dirt smudged onto the knees of her denim pants, hair sticking to her neck, and her sun-blessed, dark carob skin beginning to glisten from the heat. Amaris thinks that God, whoever he is, must be really nice to make her mother special.

72 Up on this hill, they live in a house they are in the process of ren- ovating. Amaris’ father works to pay the bills. She and her mother venture down to the main street of town to sell and trade some of the vegetables grown, and Amaris lets it be known that the cucum- bers are extra specially made by her. It’s from their garden up on this hill on a humid afternoon that Amaris first sees an angel. Squatting near a lawn ornament, she focuses on a trail of ants climbing a potted flower, up and up and up to get to its petals. Her mother sits in a rocking chair on the porch, a novel in hand. Amaris calls to her, questioning about why the ants are eating the flower. Her mother answers, “because that’s just what they do.” Then, she stands and returns inside the house to fetch glasses of lemonade. It’s upon this moment that Amaris looks up from the flowerpot— and for what reason, she can’t give—but there, standing beside the far corner of their house and glowing like a burning candle in the daylight, is a short, stout woman glowing in all white and yellow. And, bewildered, Amaris’ first thought is of curiosity—when did the woman get here, the girl wonders. The woman appears non- threatening and is warmly smiling and Amaris suddenly has a feel- ing of security and calm, and thus isn’t the least bit frightened as she begins approaching the glowing lady. Though the closer Amaris approaches, sun flares come into view and reflect, and the woman burns brighter with every step until Amaris has to stop several feet away and shield her eyes. Her second thought is of questioning: Amaris asks if the lady wants to talk to her mama. She doesn’t get an answer; the lady hold- ing that same, apple-cheeked smile with sun flares around her head like a halo. Amaris takes a step closer and has to cover her eyes altogether. The girl asks again if the mysterious woman is here for her mother and offers to fetch her. Amaris’ fingers glow red from the reflect- ing light. She repeats her question once, twice more, hoping to get an answer but growing irritated by the seconds because she doesn’t receive one. Her questions stop when her mother returns to the

73 porch, a glass of ice-cold lemonade in each hand. Her mother asks who Amaris is talking to with her hands covering her eyes or if she’s playing hide-and-seek with her toys. When the girl removes her hands, the glowing woman has disappeared.

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After telling of the silent, glowing woman, Amaris is told to not dabble in the absurdity of imaginary friends. She’s told that no mat- ter what, they aren’t real and are only in her head; that things like this are serious and warrants concern when one starts seeing things. Amaris is also told that if she ever “sees” any “imaginary ladies” again, her mother would help make them go away.

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The second time Amaris sees an angel, the weatherwoman re- ported an impending lighting storm for the next night, but Amaris’ mother believes it will come early. Her father will be out working late until the early morning, Ama- ris is told, as she and her mother stand on the porch, the streetlights shining and a cool summer breeze blowing. Her mother has a hand on her hip, still in the bright yellow sundress worn when down in town earlier that day. Amaris asks if her father will be back soon, as in the next couple of hours. Her mother says no, but in actuality she does when he will be. There’s an edge to her mother’s words, an almost restraint of emo- tion in her tone, but she inhales deeply, sighs with a huff, and walks inside the house, reminding her daughter to follow before Amaris can question her mother’s tone. Amaris is six now and will be starting first grade at the end of summer. Against a wall in the living room are cardboard boxes stacked and

74 filled with notebooks, small dry erase boards, unsharpened wooden pencils, and hardcover one-inch binders. The girl already knows the routine in preparation for the first day: she’s chosen a bright yellow bow she wishes to clip to her hair throughout the first week, con- trasting against her buoyant cloud of ebony curls but matching with her favorite dress, and she knows to enunciate for introduction that “it’s Ah-mar-is, not Am-aris.” From the windows of their home, Amaris and her mother can see the lights still on through the neighboring house further across the plateau of the hill. Now it’s nearing dinnertime. The stars are coming out and the streetlights have been on for longer. The small, solar powered porch lights are on—there are several, lining the concrete driveway on one side; they were installed near the end of the house’s renovation a month ago. From down the hill, the laughter and cheers of children playing kickball in the street can be heard. Amaris’ mother lays thick cuts of bacon in a frying pan, instructs her daughter to begin undressing and preparing herself a bath, and not to forget to bring her stuffed toy inside—the one she’s played with all day outside and is now covered in dirt and grass stains and spilled juice—which Amaris suddenly remembers is forgotten, still outside. Her shirt is halfway pulled over her head when she’s rushing back to her mother begging to go retrieve her toy. And after several pleas that she’ll be really, really quick and that she knows where it is! It isn’t far, I promise, her mother allows. Amaris finds her toy facedown in a patch of wet dirt beneath an overhanging butternut squash vine behind a large stone lawn or- nament. She brushes off the toy and droplets of rain fall on her forehead and elbow. Her mother calls from the opened door, a hand hovering over the porch light switch. Amaris shouts back that she’s returning. The grape juice from earlier has left a deep, red stain on the toy’s white fur and the bow- shaped plastic hair clip that had been on it is missing. The rain begins to drizzle. Her mother calls Amaris by her full

75 name—a warning to follow her given orders. Amaris searches around her feet for the missing plastic bow, looks beside the plant she found her toy, and is taking one last step around when she sees a mysterious figure again. This time it isn’t a small, welcoming short lady radiating calm and light. This time it’s a figure, tenebrous black and willowy. From a distance, Amaris thinks it’s as tall as a tree. What comes to her mind is that it resembles a sunflower in body shape and that it’s standing guard at the edge of the trees, nearly blending completely. It’s body is thin and tall, like a sunflower’s stalk; its face—which she’ll draw with a white colored pencil for description—is grim and haunting, reflects under the moonlight; its “halo”—surrounding its face like the petals of a sunflower—is more of a hood to a cloak that wraps around its head, the rest hanging down and over its feet. And it just stays; it doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. It only stands and waits, watches, guards. It just stares. And stares, and stares, and stares— Amaris jumps as her mother shouts her name once more, and coincidently it’s followed by distant thunder. And, more shaken by the thunder, Amaris is sure, the young girl’s walk back to her home is quicker than before. She doesn’t look back either. That night, she hugs her toy a little tighter and asks her mother to read her to sleep.

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Come morning, a large tree had fallen, stretching across the gar- den and a stretch of the lawn. The area where it landed had been on top of where Amaris’ toy had been hidden. It was only a coincidence, her parents are convinced. When Amaris tells she thinks otherwise, her parents rebuke that there’s such things as tall, ominous sunflower-shaped people, and Amaris is scolded for the tale — however, it’s more out of fear for her wellbeing.

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76 The third time Amaris deals with angels is figurative rather than literal: it’s during a sermon about people in The Bible having heard the voice of God. In the plush red pews, women wearing wide-rimmed hats and matching brightly colored skirts cool themselves with flyers or printed hand fans. They never put them down, Amaris notices. Most of the men are wearing suits; most of them don’t give money during mid-service offering. The preacher is a loud man who sweats easily and carries his Bible as he paces. He talks about how it’s a gift to be able to hear God, to be able to touch and create things, to see certain things. Amaris’ mother and father nod along and clap with the rest of them. For the longest time, she’s viewed her mother’s green thumb as a gift—because that seems like the right word for it.

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It’s during one late fall afternoon, while searching for the source of distressed meows, it happens again—literally, not figuratively this time. It’s a couple years later. Amaris is ten now, and she’s following the sound of meowing, hoping to find a family of cats reportedly gone missing when she catches a flicker of movement within the shrubbery. She’s just searched the perimeter of her home and was looking through the small crawlspace beneath the porch they like to hide, convinced that is where the noise is originating, calling with clicks and strangled gurgles in hopes of luring the cats out, when movement at the edge of the lawn catches her attention—there, the neatly mowed grass ends and the trees of the surrounding forest begin. This time, it appears in a spot not far from where the ghostly sunflower-shaped apparition had been years ago. This time, it is a small, plump and fuzzy looking creature peek- ing out from the overgrown greenery. From a distance it resembles a cat, but up close, it doesn’t have the tail to match, it’s fur devoid of any markings, and though the meowing grows louder as Amaris

77 nears, the thing’s mouth does not open. It’s also semi-transparent; the girl able to see the ground beneath its paws, the brush behind its back as it stretches, and gives another insinuating call. Turning its back, it trots into the woods. It’s only after the translucent feline pauses to look over its shoulder as if making sure Amaris is fol- lowing, and after giving one last look over her own shoulder, does Amaris follow. Now, this one isn’t like the others—whom she’s come to dub the Christian name for heaven-sent messengers. None of the ones she’s met appear in burning spheres of brimstone, or possess beautiful feathered wings and wrapped in white togas. But Amaris is quite sure of what they are when this cat-like apparition leads her deeper in the woods. They’re approaching voices. Ducking low to remain out of sight, she’s glad for once that she’s short for her age—as Mrs. Felicia al- ways coos about after church service while pinching Amaris’ cheeks and fawning over whatever fluffy pastel dress she’s wearing that day—and follows the creature further into the woods. The voices grow steadily louder and she’s quickly able to identify that they be- long to men, and then that they are much, much older than her. That there are three of them. That they are discussing something impor- tant, something nerve-wracking that requires stealth, precision, and for one of them to “stop being a little pussy, Tom!” Amaris follows and squats behind a large spiky-leaf bush, peer- ing through the branches to watch the three young men who are still yards away. They’re loud enough for her to pick up what their discussion is about: what the empty bags on their backs are for, why they’re wearing gloves and hats, and why one is carrying a baseball bat. Luckily, Amaris is low to the ground and a good distance away so when she retreats, heart pounding and huffing like she’s running a mile, the young men don’t notice. She bursts out of the forest, running across the lawn just as her mother exits the door to call for her daughter. The little girl rushes up the few porch steps, into the house and to the kitchen where

78 she’d last seen her mother’s cellphone. Her mother doesn’t keep it locked, so she swipes the screen, presses the phone button in the bottom corner, and dials a number. And because her mother hadn’t thought Amaris’ running was for a troubling emergency—she thought maybe it was for the bath- room, maybe for a toy she wants—her mother is quite stunned when finding Amaris cradling the cellphone to her ear and plead- ing frantically into the receiver that they need help and protection because someone is going to come up and hurt them. Her mother snatches the phone to hang up just as Amaris is giving their address. She’s scolded for it, of course; the signature, “just wait until your father gets home,” is spoken. Then, she’s given a punishment: no more TV for the next week and a half. But a police car has already been dispatched and pulls up in their driveway. Even though it’s nearly an hour later and night is begin- ning to fall, it’s miraculously in the nick of time—because as Ama- ris’ mother is outside apologizing, the little girl spots the same men begin creeping out from the edge of the forest, faces covered and one holding a bat, planning to hide in the shed in the backyard. The men freeze, as if just seeing the police car. And it’s when one of them notices the girl pulling at the cop’s pants and frantically point- ing, do the young men bolt. When they’re caught not too long after, it turns out that all three had been prepared to break into Amaris’ little home. It turns out that they had been armed with guns and are wanted for the robbery of two other homes. When questioned how she knew about the burglars, Amaris ex- plains to her mother that she followed a ghost-cat into the woods and saw the men. But upon hearing “ghost,” her mother is more alarmed than admiring, and pleads for her daughter to tell her if she sees ghosts again because she worries for her daughter. She makes Amaris promise to never ever follow ghosts again because they bring nothing but despair. Amaris doesn’t see that cat-like apparition again.

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A week later, the cat belonging to an elderly neighbor births a lit- ter of kittens. All but one of them has patterned fur, the one being pure white.

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When she’s eleven, Amaris thinks she’s grown enough to walk out of the house, proclaiming that she has enough moxie to run away and start a life on her own—which really translates to either bunking at a friend’s or her grandmother’s. She’s packed a small duffle bag full of pajamas, her favorite books, clothes, and bags of potato chips, instant noodles, and canned peaches. She doesn’t get far from the house for two reasons: one, that it’s quickly nearing nighttime, the street and porch lights on, and the oncoming autumn season is felt in air, making her zip her sweater closed. And two, because she doesn’t get further than the edge of their hill where it slopes steeply to asphalt road, when she sees an- other mysterious creature, this time sending a chill through her. This one is identical to the tall one she claims had been shaped like a sunflower when she had been smaller. And like the one before, it’s near the edge of the forest tree line, standing and staring with a blank expression. But unlike the one before, this one is holding what looks like a large sledgehammer. It’s standing, ghostly still and staring at a point straight off, and around its feet are small rocks and puddles, speckles of thick liquid across the grass and dripping from the end of the hammer. It takes Amaris seconds to realize that the liquid is blood and the small “rocks” around its feet are actually dead squirrels and rabbits. Needless to say, Amaris didn’t go anywhere that night. Though in the next morning, there is no evidence of the creature, no trace of blood or dead animals on the grass. She begins to wonder if she’s truly only imagining these inci- dents. This time, she doesn’t tell her mother.

80 rrr

It’s the final three weeks of summer vacation her family makes a split-second decision to finally visit the beach. It reaches 92 degrees by high noon. The sand is covered with smoothed, broken shells at the water’s edge. Beachgoers lay out on towels, in unfolded chairs, or hunched and sweating over barbecue grills. Periodically, a seagull would make a dive for someone’s hotdog or a dog biscuit. Amaris and her family are alternating between lunch and run- ning through the crescendoing waves, their dark skin turning golden under the sun. Her mother takes a break to collapse in a lawn chair; her father closes the grill and joins. Amaris is playing at the water’s edge with another girl with kinky hair when another incident happens. The two girls had left their crayon blue bucket too close to the shoreline. Amaris barely catches it in time before it’s swept out to sea. In that short time of catching the bucket, her new friend is called back to her family to reapply sunscreen. There’s the periodic shell or other sea-thing riding on the cur- rent; Amaris glances inside her bucket to make sure the water is clear to pour it out onto the sand to begin another sandcastle, but stops. Her first thought is that the sight inside is something froma movie seen in class — about a little red fish that wishes to be human — because the thing swimming around in her bucket isn’t as hori- zontal as normal fish, and it has a very un-fish-like face and larger eyes. But what really throws her off is that the strange fish is nearly transparent with nothing to see inside — no bones, no organs, noth- ing. It’s such a peculiar and puzzling thing that she’s sure will be the highlight of her summer when she takes it home, and also when showing it off at school and proclaim that she has the real fish at home! So of course she runs as fast as she could without spilling to show her parents. It’s just as she gets under the shade of their large umbrella,

81 excitedly asking for her parents to see what she’s found, when a little boy begins screaming in agonizing pain in the seawater. Who Ama- ris assumes is the boy’s mother comes rushing to the water’s edge where her son is clutching his leg. It turns out that jellyfish had come to shore, riding on the waves. It also turns out that, when Amaris looks down again, the mysteri- ous, almost cartoonish fish has disappeared from inside the bucket.

rrr

Throughout the return home that follows soon after, she tries convincing her parents that she hadn’t been trying to show off a bucket of empty water. She talks about a fish that isn’t there, a trans- parent cat, a shiny lady, and a tall shadow monster. Her father shows his concern in the glances given to his wife.

rrr

Amaris is thirteen and sitting through a church sermon, the topic having to do with forgiveness, rebirth, and prophecy. Adults clap in agreement and shout praises. The choir harmo- nizes when the drummer plays. The preacher stomps his feet and breaths exasperatedly into the microphone. Amaris’ parents praise and cheer along with the audience. When the preacher talks about keeping the newer generation safe from the satanic influences in the world, Amaris’ mother grips her hand. The preacher talks about how a mother’s love can prevail all, and Amaris’ mother kisses her daughter’s head.

rrr

On the eve of Amaris’ fifteenth birthday, she’d promised a party that she isn’t confident will happen due to her parents’ full sched- ules. She’s disappointed, yes, and at the end of an uneventful school day, she decides to turn it to a happy ending herself. So diverging

82 from her route home from school, getting off the bus at an unfamil- iar stop, she tries to find her way to the nearest coffee cafe—because she’s fifteen and is confident that she’s finally old enough to drink coffee. And if no one is willing to get it for her, then she’ll gift it to herself. The only problem is that Amaris must have gotten off a stop too early because she doesn’t quite recognize where she is. In spite of her parents’ worry and the consequences of not having a charged cellphone and disobeying orders, she can’t turn back now. So in- stead, she wanders down the unfamiliar street, head high, and ignor- ing the creeping suspicion that she’s being watched. She ignores the pale skinned, creepy old man she passes sitting at a bus bench, and begins regretting her decision to venture on her own. She’s only fif- teen and shouldn’t be walking by herself; she shouldn’t be having the suspicion that the man is still watching. In his dirty hunting camo shirt and worn khaki shorts, he wipes his mouth, his limbs long and boney; she shouldn’t be aware about how his eyebrow rises in an in- sinuating manner, and he proceeds to follow from a distance. She’s fifteen and she shouldn’t have a racing heart or be worrying about such things. Amaris grips the shoulder straps of her book bag tighter and walks a bit faster. He follows her until she approaches an intersection. And as luck has it, before she reaches the street, she crosses through a driveway and a large pickup truck backs out, a large wagon hitched on behind it, putting the necessary distance between Amaris and the terrible man long enough for her to sprint to the crosswalk, the sign count- ing down from WALK just as she approaches. The next time she meets an angel is on this day. It’s after she’s crossed the crosswalk and is still at a brisk pace when she catches sight of a brightly colored animal disappearing into the trees lining the right side of the small town sidewalk. Hur- rying past a gas station and drug store, she jogs to catch up with the animal—a cat or small dog, she can’t be sure—but she is certain that once finding it hiding behind a broken, hanging branch, it’s another

83 ominous creature just like the translucent cat she once saw, and the tall dark giant, and the stout glowing woman. And this one, which is a bright, striking green and shaped like a large puffball with leaping legs, signals with a nod for her to follow—the move reminding her of the translucent cat years ago. And taking any chance to hopefully escape the creepy old man, Amaris goes without much of a second thought into the small section of trees. The puffball hops ahead, leading the way. What is perhaps ten minutes later (though it feels longer due to rushing adrenalin), the trees begin to thin out. The puffball stops, perching on a rock, and Amaris guesses that this is the end of her journey. Exiting the trees, she comes to a familiar clearing, cut grass lawn, a vegetable garden — She knows that her home had been on the other side of town. But almost magically, Amaris exits the forest and she’s there.

rrr

On the local news that night, there’s a brief story about a crazed gunman injuring two and killing one. It had been at the coffee shop a block away from the crosswalk Amaris had been at. The mug shot on screen is of the same deranged fair man that followed her.

rrr

It’s inching toward the middle of her last high school year when Amaris tells the reason she didn’t go to the bash at the local bowling and skate palace is because while on her way home a month ago, a tall, cardinal red person was waiting for her alongside the sidewalk at the bottom of their hill, who looked to the invitation in her hands and shook his head. Admittedly, Amaris tells this after those who had gone to the bash at the skating palace report assaulted by an uninvited stranger. Amaris also tells that she once saw a strange fish in a pond fore- telling a thunderstorm so she insisted to buy candles, batteries, and

84 portable chargers. Three nights later, they were well supplied when the power cut out. And needn’t leave the house when a bear tracked through their property. Amaris tells how she also knew about a robbery at a grocery store, about how she predicted a freeway crash pileup en route to a friend’s house, and more by the help of eldritch creatures. She tells these stories and more of questionable, imaginary creatures. It all comes out because it’s the ending of the last high school year and she doesn’t wish to keep secrets from her parents before she’s to leave home, and because she trusts them enough.

rrr

Amaris will be eighteen in two weeks. Months ago, she attended a mandatory meeting with her church’s preacher, per arrangement of her parents, before she is to go off to college. There had been several prayer sessions with the purpose of cleansing, protection, and unbinding spirits. Olive oil was applied to her forehead and there had been much shouting, much suspicion, and many assumptions. Her parents were pleased with the results. Now, Amaris is sitting on an exam table in a patient’s room at her doctor’s, her mother in one of the waiting chairs beside her. As the nurse leaves to call in the doctor, Amaris’ mother is livelier than her daughter feels. And as the doctor begins the check-up with routine questions and vitals, her mother speaks for her daughter and explaining the reason for their visit. When asked personally how she feels, Amaris answers with shrugs and “I guess so,” and an “it’s ok, I guess.” She’s dull and dreary and unhurried. But she smiles and tells that she’s fine, that she feels normal, that she feels apathetic. Amaris is no longer able to see angels.

85 Candace "Candie" Getgen

She Hated Honey

he was a beekeeper. Yet no matter how much she was ques- tioned or begged for a straight answer, she would never tell Syou that she hated honey. But she did. No one knew it. Her girlfriend didn’t know it. But perhaps if the agitated humming chirr of a bee’s wings meant anything, then it meant that the bees knew it. Clementine, with a name as sweet as the glue of cloying torment, hated honey. Hated herself. And if the rushed pulverizing of hon- eycombs or smoking of the hive that lasted a little too long meant anything, then it meant she hated even the bees. Hated their over- gorged bodies that upheld her livelihood. Hated their bumping and beating against her skin and the way they mashed their stupid little faces into pollen like drug-addicts on cocaine. But she did not hate her girlfriend. Of course not. Not Laurel. Who could feel such a way towards a woman of such rapturous beauty and massive compassion? A woman who, on the day they first met, wore a delicate sundress and sterling silver necklace. A necklace with a charm shaped like a honeybee. A charm so tantalizingly shiny that it echoed her smile. A smile so glossy and boiling with genuine attraction to Clementine that the poor fool told the girl in the sun- dress that she was a beekeeper. A beekeeper? Dear God! Now Clem- entine has to commit to it. An eternity of sap and sugary coatings on everything she loved. A life spent laboring over pollinators till it was nothing but sediment gathering lethargically on the floor of a still- watered pond. Oh the mundane life she despised. The life destined to leave Clementine in an orange-tinted goop of obscurity. Oh but all that for all of her. For Laurel. Clementine wanted her so bad it felt to be absolutely worth it. All of a sudden sacrificing a childhood’s worth of dreams felt trivial if she could just get a kiss. And she did. And many more. And even more than just a kiss. But now Clementine is a full-time beekeeper and all she can articulate to want is to tell her girlfriend that this was all for her. All

86 of this sweat and muck and massive nylon netting was for her. If only she could know the extent of Clementine’s effort and passion for her. Or know only that she hated honey. If only what lies under could become clear and glittering and realized. To an extent, Laurel knew something. The kindly girl knew at least that Clementine was awful at beekeeping. Too rough. Too flustered and heated at the very essence of what makes a bee. She watched on as Clementine huffed about the backyard yanking sheets of honeycomb and sending the bees to sleep with soporific clouds. Clem, as she was lovingly nicknamed, swatted at cordial bees like they were mosquitoes. Clem crushed honey-laden comb with the force one needs to tenderize meat and it made a mess of everything. Yet, it was charming. The cutest thing Laurel has ever seen. Clem made her warm with emotion and overwhelmingly tender. The haughty girl who trudged around the hive was someone Laurel want- ed to protect in something like a jar or little bear-shaped bottle. Clem who was awful at beekeeping yet somehow lived off of its profits. But, she would never know why. The sweet and tolerant girl would never get to know why Clem kept bees yet secretly heaved at the flavor of honey. She would never get to know the efforts Clem went through to secure her love or the facades kept to keep love thriving. It was a reality that remained coated in the filthy detritus of guilt and suppression and would amalgamate into a runny jelly of rotten sugar.

87 Julie Gramazio

Christmas Lights

he night was a blur of lights. White lights dripped from the rooftops; red, blue and green lights blinked from the bushes, Tand Santa was lit up in an ominous golden hue with an out- stretched hand beckoning one in for a closer look. With lights aglow in magic, movement, and choreographed to the sound of Christ- mas music, many drivers forgot to pay attention to the all-important brake lights. It was Christmas Eve and the Joyce sisters prepared to embark on their most favorite of holiday traditions — enjoying the festive atmosphere and waiting for the fender benders. Christmas Eve was good for at least five of them. There was something so mesmerizing about watching strangers fight to the backdrop of “Silent Night.” “Come on Laurie, hurry up,” Janice said. “You just missed an- other one.” “I’m coming,” Laurie replied. She slipped into her Christmas flip-flops and grabbed the wine and a box of fancy Swiss chocolates. “Here, I got us a nice bottle of Prosecco.” She handed Janice a flute and poured the bubbly into the glass. Taking her seat on the wooden porch swing, and carefully posi- tioning her wine so as not to spill a precious drop, Laurie asked, “So what did I miss?” “You missed a good one,” Janice replied. “A couple was in a Honda Civic, and they had a five-year-old in the back of the seat when they slammed into a SUV packed with kids. Everyone got out of the car. The drivers started screaming at each other, and the kids poured out, and they started running around the nativity set. One of the smaller kids grabbed hold of baby Jesus, and he started running around the lawn with it. It was complete chaos.” Laurie looked up the road and could see nothing but a steady line of slowly approaching vehicles. “Ah, but the night is still young,” she said. “Here, have a chocolate,” she said. She passed the box over

88 to Janice who quickly plucked out a dark chocolate that was speck- led with hazelnuts and popped it whole into her mouth. Janice reached for the Prosecco, which was now half empty, and without bothering to pour it into her glass, she took a healthy swig directly from the bottle. Laurie rolled her eyes. “I should have just gotten you a beer.” “No, this is fine,” Janice said, as she reached into the box for another chocolate. From across the street they heard the familiar sound of another dull thud, and the Christmas music was interrupted by the shrill sound of two women fighting. “Watch where you are going,” one woman said to the other. “This is not a parking lot you know,” the other woman screeched. “You gawkers take all of the joy out of Christmas,” she said as she examined the damage of her front bumper. “Hey, get out of the way,” the driver in the next car yelled. The two got back in their cars and pulled up the road a bit, and the fight moved out of earshot. “Should we follow them?” Janice asked. “Nah, it’s comfortable here. Let’s just wait for the next one.” The soundtrack shifted to “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” “So, the house looks great,” Laurie said. “You even had time to decorate for Christmas. I like how every house on the block deco- rates. Do you think you might compete with your next-door neigh- bor next year?” “Have you seen the meter on the side of his house? Janice asked. No way am I going to spend that much money on electricity. A few lights on the railing and a lit-up tree works just fine for me. I am glad you like the house though, moving was a pain in the butt. It took two weeks to get all moved in, but the boxes have finally been unpacked. Mom kept so much junk in the garage, old boxes are still stacked from the floor to ceiling.” Kanes was great though, they were a big help. I was able to point at the furniture I wanted, and they had it delivered that same week. “It’s the first Christmas without her. She loved looking at the

89 lights.” Laurie said, trying to change the subject. “Yeah, Mom loved Christmas. She must be so happy to see me all moved in and celebrating my first Christmas in this house.” Laurie cringed. While Janice might fool other people, Laurie had witnessed the artful manipulation that Janice employed to get Mom to sign over all her worldly possessions just days before she died. Laurie tried again to shift the subject. “So, I wonder what Aunt Becky is doing tonight.” “Probably getting drunk, but if she was smart she would be in church repenting her sins,” Janice replied. She grabbed hold of the almost empty bottle of Prosecco and poured the remainder of its contents into her glass. Laurie stared into the distance and tried to focus on the dancing icicles. She tried to focus on her breathing and let the anxiety wash over her in waves. She tried to time her breathing to the rhythmic moving of the white lights. She heard a loud pop and could see foam gushing from the top of another bottle of bubbles. She had been saving that for Christmas Day. “Oh well,” she thought as she handed Janice her own glass. It was only a few months ago that Mom had called with the news that she was dying. Laurie had been stuck, as if anchored to the bot- tom of a lake, and it took a precious week to make the drive out to visit with her dying mother. Janice took advantage of this time to get her to a lawyer and arrange the chess pieces for the game she wished to play. Later, Laurie would find out that Janice had known weeks earlier that Mom was dying. Proximity had its benefits. Mom regretted giving Janice the Power of Attorney almost im- mediately. “Laurie, if you lived closer you would be the one taking care of all of this,” she said. “I know, Mom,” was all Laurie said. The fact was Janice DID have the Power of Attorney and this struck fear into Laurie’s heart. POA gave power to a madwoman. Mom only had weeks to live; they all knew it. There would be time later to fight over what was right. For now, the only thing to do was to be present. This was not so easy.

90 One day when sitting out by the pool, Mom turned to her and said, “Laurie, I am sorry.” She paused. “Do you remember the story in the Bible about Joseph and his many-colored coats?” Mom asked. “Yes,” Laurie replied. “His brothers tried to rob him of everything that was precious, but in the end, Joseph received the highest of honors.” “I remember,” Laurie said. “I just want to let you know that I regret not having put your name in the will, and I plan to change that,” Mom had said. “Thank you,” was Laurie’s only reply as she bent over to give her mother a hug. “All you want is money,” was Janice’s reply as soon as Mom had walked out of the room. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Laurie said. “You need to leave right now,” Janice had said, her voice rising to a high shrill. “I am not going anywhere,” Laurie replied. Janice’s eyes took on a glazed look, and out rushed a torrent of poisonous lies. Janice wanted Laurie gone. She flew into the house in a rage. “Mom, Laurie just wants your money. She needs to leave.” “I am not going anywhere, and Mom, I don’t want your money. In fact, have you considered giving it all to hospice?” Laurie asked. Mom sank heavy into her chair. “I am not getting chased out,” Laurie said. “I have every right to be here.” With that she headed into the kitchen. Mom’s kitchen, now Janice’s kitchen, had a fully stocked refrig- erator with all the leftovers from her farewell party meal. Only mom would host a party to say goodbye to everyone she loved. How Lau- rie wished that Mom could show the same love and compassion to her daughters as she could for her friends and acquaintances. Laurie grabbed the leftover ham, the turkey, the butter, the mashed pota- toes, the carrots, the celery, and a block of cheddar. She had all the makings for a good shepherd’s pie. An hour later a masterpiece was pulled from the oven and placed lovingly on the kitchen table. Mom

91 had two pieces; this was the last solid food she would ever eat. Laurie kissed her mother on the cheek and said a terse goodbye to Janice. In the car, Laurie cried. Why did everything have to be this difficult? Was death like this in every family? Before she arrived home the phone rang; it was her mother on the line. Janice was de- termined that the will remain as is and like a poisonous geyser she issued forth a torrent of black lies. “When are you going to learn, Laurie?” Mom asked. “When are you going to learn to be quiet?” For the days and weeks that followed, Laurie remained quiet. Janice did not. When their mother entered a coma induced state, Janice flew into another psychotic rage. This time the episodes had witnesses. This time Mom heard. When Mom died a few days later it was Laurie who held her hand. Janice packed up the few things that Laurie had asked for, the whole of her inheritance, into a duffel bag and placed it for her on the porch. The very porch where they now sat watching the Christmas lights. Staring at the blinking icicles and looking at Janice gulping down the last of the second bottle of Prosecco, Laurie finally decided that she was done with being quiet. “I really don’t think you handled Mom’s death very well.” Laurie said. The two women began to fight. Their shrill voices breaking through the song “Little Drummer Boy.” “You were a terrible daughter,” Janice said. “I was the one that Mom loved.” “You think you were a good daughter?” Laurie replied. “I have the house.” Janice said. “That doesn’t make you the 'good' daughter. You weren’t talking to Mom before her cancer diagnosis, and when you found out you kept it quiet from me so that you could get her to a lawyer. It’s true that Mom and I had a difficult relationship, but she could have died before I could make peace with her. All because you wanted this house and what little money she had.” The two sisters continued to fight. Loud shrill voices interrupt- ing the sound of “Joy to the World.” Love, anger, greed, and grief

92 mixing like colors on a tangled strand of lights. Car windows rolled down, and more then one person exclaimed. “For God’s sake, don’t you know it’s Christmas.”

93 Faith Houseworth

The Black Dog Of Hanging Hills

woman worked in a dog shelter. She didn’t work because she liked the dogs, or because she needed to. It was a place for A her to go between three and five in the afternoons before returning to her home. She washed the dogs, walked them, played with them, cleaned their kennels, and at the end of the day she fed them and left. She remembered all the dogs that came though the shelter. Every paw and muzzle were categorized in her mind. She never saw more than one dog twice. A black dog came into the shelter the morning she found her husband. His fur was matted, and his shoulder was broken from a car that hit him the night before. She bandaged him and fixed the wounds she best she could. She washed the blood from his side and the dirt from his face. She cleaned a kennel in the front of the shelter for the dog, gave him a place to rest, and water to drink. She bushed his fur until it shone; she played with the toys he limped over to give her. At the end of her shift she placed him into the kennel and fed him. She was leaving when she ran into her husband. He was coming to the shelter to find a dog that could join him on his evening hikes though the surrounding mountain side and forests. She told him of all the dogs in the shelter. He left with the black dog that night. She told him how she cared for him. She also told him what he liked and didn’t like. They walked and shared their interests until the moon rose above them. They continued meeting and walking and talking. A year later they married on a mountain cliff in June — with the black dog walking down the aisle holding the rings.

94 Anna Karras

The Birdman of Naples

aturday mornings will find me up at an ungodly hour and knee-deep in fresh-cut flowers. I sell them at the 3rd Street SFarmers Market for extra cash. It’s expensive for a guy like me to live here, especially on a librarian’s salary. This is not your average farmer’s market with fruit and veggie stalls. We’re as high end as they come: fresh-roasted coffee from Bali, the local French bakery selling almond croissants, handmade candles and chocolates, artisanal cheeses and grass fed beef. Gulf shrimp as big as my fist. The insanely wealthy don’t come until around ten. I suppose they need time to put together outfits, eat a little fruit set out by the housekeeper. Sip their espresso poolside while they skim the head- lines of their newspapers. The ladies wear carefully curated outfits: silk shirts, skinny jeans artfully distressed, chunky jewelry. Or they go for the tropical look that Lolly Pulitzer or whatever her name is with leather flip flops and glossy pedicures. They have eco-friendly shopping bags hung over their bony wrists to carry the produce they will never cook for themselves. The gentlemen of this exclusive club favor golf shirts with sweaters in pastel colors casually tossed about their shoulders, soft leather loafers and no socks. They swing their Bentley and Maserati key fobs around their fingers like gunslingers in an old Western. Everyone has a dog and they all see the barber more than I do. I always feel sorry for the guys who walk those tiny dogs that look like rats-on-leashes. I’m sure their wives keep their balls tucked safely in their handbags. The worst, though, are the little strollers some of the women push about, with a purebred something that eats god- dam steak for dinner. Do I sound angry? It’s easy to fall into the trap of being bitter, seeing all the “haves” while this “have not” eats more ramen than

95 he should and pays half his salary in rent. But it’s these very people that I collect $50-$100 a pop so they can go home and play house by arranging flowers for an afternoon. I was an English major, I know that’s what women of a certain status did in centuries past: flower arranging, meal planning, and shopping for matching fucking rib- bons. Honestly, things haven’t changed much. But then the Birdman comes. He’s an old man in a grubby red Hawaiian shirt and straw hat with blue macaw feathers trailing behind him. Scraggly white beard that falls down his chest: a Jimmy Buffet Santa Claus. Surfing up and down his arms are three giant white and yellow cockatoos. They sit on his arms, his shoulders, climb across his chest as he saunters slowly down the street. I can always hear them coming before I see them. They screech and caw, chatter and ululate. They are never quiet, though the Bird- man never says a word. He just walks up and down the two blocks of the market and displays his feathered treasures. I often wonder if he’s deaf. How could he not lose his mind with all that racket right next to his ears? The billionaires don’t know what to make of him. I can see the expressions of mingled astonishment and disgust on their faces as he passes by. Some of them take out their phones to snap a picture and not because he’s a wonder. I’m sure those pictures end up on Facebook or Twitter and are treated with mock and scorn. This particular morning is hot and muggy. I’m sorting blue hy- drangeas and streaky pink peonies when I hear him. I have a regular customer with me, a tiny woman with a mass of smooth blond hair and a tight face. She always drops a wad of cash on my flowers and she comes every week. She pushes a puffy marshmallow in a dog stroller. She pauses rummaging for her wallet when the first screech sounds down the street. Her eyes flick up and she sees him, rumpled and grizzly, coming towards us with his crackle of cockatoos. “Eeeah! Eeeah!” One screeches. Its mates take up the call and the tiny woman shudders.

96 “He shouldn’t be allowed here with those filthy animals,” she says, “I’ve heard birds carry all kinds of diseases.” She pushes her dog a little further out of the main thoroughfare as if they are going to swoop down and eat her precious. I say nothing but take her money and wrap her flowers in gold tissue and tie them with a glittering ribbon. She takes them warily, looking over her shoulder as the red Hawaiian shirt draws near. She swings herself around so the large bundle of flowers is be- tween her and the Birdman. And just like a magpie, one of the cockatoos leans out and nips the ribbon binding her bouquet to- gether. She shrieks, louder than the birds, and throws the flowers into the air. The Birdman watches with interest, the glinting ribbon trailing from his cockatoo’s beak. Flowers litter the pavement, tissue crushed under foot as the woman tries to hide behind me. “I do apologize,” the Birdman speaks, his voice surprisingly soft for such a large man. “Charlie is fond of shiny things.” The woman cowers behind me, in turn shielding her dog from Charlie’s sharp beak. The Birdman and I lock eyes for a brief moment. In his look I see someone who has been alone far too long — his birds holding space between him and the world. The familiarity of it scares the shit out of me. But then the gaze is broken and he saunters on, the sparkly rib- bon trailing behind him with the macaw feathers. I squat to pick up the scattered hydrangeas and peonies, inspect- ing them for damage. But before I can reassemble them the woman with the marshmallow dog runs off in the opposite direction without a backward glance. I still have her hundred dollar bill in my pocket.

97 Anna Karras

Tying The Knot

assie wore dingy green Converse sneakers under her wed- ding gown. Everyone, including her bridesmaids, thought Cshe was wearing a pair of satin hot pink heels, strappy and studded with Swarovski crystals. But she had slipped into the bath- room stall and swapped them out, stuffing the pink shoes into the menstrual pad disposal. She thought of those sandals, wedged tightly inside that box with her own used tampon, as she stood at the back of the church, bou- quet of pink peonies and green hydrangeas in her trembling fist. Her breath felt unreal — hard and plastic and frighteningly short, like a Barbie Doll. The organist was winding her way through the final notes of the prelude. It was almost her turn. Jack stood at the front of the church, waiting for the doors to open, to see his Cassie for the first time since they’d had their fare- well kiss the night before. It had been long and slow, just as he imag- ined it should be. But when they had parted she had looked at him like a wild animal — something feral and cornered. It had been a fleeting look, so when it had vanished and her lips curved in a smile, he wasn’t even sure it had been there. What was to be afraid of? He cleared his throat and felt the nervous energy ripple through him. The ushers at the back opened the doors and there she was, head to toe in white silk, a long lace-edged veil falling to the floor around her. She was perfect — a vision so beautiful she did not seem real. Intricate beadwork glimmered from her dress as she moved forward towards him. His reward at last. Cassie felt the soft cushion of her well-worn shoes with ev- ery step she took up the white runner strewn with pink rose pet- als. Her hair was swept back so tightly she was getting a headache and the wedding hadn’t even really started. She felt the weight of four hundred eyes upon her, assessing her appearance, judging her expression. She was trying to smile, was she succeeding?

98 Jack smiled so wide he felt his cheeks aching as she approached. Her beautiful body filling up the bodice of her strapless dress shift- ed his desire into overdrive. When he had first met her she was a punk — blue hair, ratty jeans, the perpetual Converse sneakers. It had taken a long time to coax her into her natural hair color, into clothes that displayed her body instead of hiding it. He remembered her false horror the first time he bought her a pair of three hundred dollar boots. He appreciated her beauty and found that the effort she now put into her appearance was a dazzling sight to behold. She was someone to be proud of: someone to show off. Cassie carefully climbed the three steps up to the altar, no hint of the secret under her skirts. She handed her bouquet to Taylor, Jack’s twin and her maid of honor. Cassie took Jack’s hands and pressed her lips together, feeling the stickiness of the three coats of lip gloss that Taylor had applied just minutes ago. The minister spoke but Cassie did not hear a word. Instead the noise coming from his mouth was muffled and distorted, like it was being spoken through an echoing tunnel. She blinked and felt the mascara pull as her lashes parted. She wondered what he was think- ing: Jack of the deep blue eyes and black hair. Jack who had picked her up when she had been broken thing and treated her like she’d been worth something. Jack who had said he loved her when she was at her messiest, her lowest. Jack who lavished attention on her, making her into her best self. Jack gazed at Cassie, eyes full of careful adoration. He knew this was it, this knot would be too tight to unpick. Once it was done, it was done. He’d won. He’d taken an ugly duckling and turned her into his very own swan. Cassie clutched his hands so tightly her French manicure bit into his flesh, but he did not wince. She thought of her pink shoes, slow- ly being stained red, and repeated after the minister.

99 Mark Massaro

The Changing Hills of Western Massachusetts

he old coffee shop still resides on the eastern slope of the natural hill in Cotton, Massachusetts. Four generations of Tthe Miller family have owned it and the shop has only been closed twice: Once was during the Blizzard of ’75 and the other was during the Nor’easter of ’18. Inside of the brick building, walls are littered with jazz memora- bilia and the wooden floors groan quietly under the patron’s foot- steps. The elderly crowd dominate the daytime rush and the high schoolers take over at night. Quiet jazz plays on a jukebox. William Fischer hasn’t been here since he moved away sixteen years ago. Walking through the screen door felt strangely familiar, like he was recalling a muddled past life. The only difference that is clear is a shameless advertising opportunity by way of blue t-shirts with “Miller’s Coffee,” written in white, displayed by the large chalk menu on the wall. Old Man Miller recognizes William, calling him, “Little Fisch,” and tossing a shirt at him, “on the house.” He even points to where Williams Little League picture is still hung, from the fall of ’94, complete with gap-toothed half smiles from the pre-pubescent neighborhood kids. William stands in the back row, with his flat- rimmed green hat crooked to the side. He takes his coffee and walks to a small round table by the win- dow overlooking the town forest. Squinting his eyes, he can make out a tree fort, high above the earth. The town is beautiful upon first glance. Will moved away when the upper-class delinquents began getting their bored hands on opioids. A flurry of customers come and go. Will glances quickly in their direction, hoping to catch a familiar face or swap some high school stories. Some recognition would solidify his homecoming, but he’s always enjoyed solitude. 100 Ruby Perkins-Harris hasn’t been here since yesterday. Walking through the screen door felt routine by now. She stops in during her lunch break from teaching history at Cotton High School and orders a coconut water with a chicken-caesar wrap. She wants to change her order some days, but Old Man Miller gives her a fast nod and begins assembling the order before she can stop him. William and Ruby haven’t been in the same room in sixteen years. Will spots her first, turning his body so she can see him easi- er, nervously tapping his knee with his thumb. His palms begin to sweat, and his mind goes blank. Their eyes lock. He smiles. She does a double-take, looking from Will to the old cash register and back again. “Oh my god,” she says, tightening her grip on her purse strap. Will raises his hand in a soft wave. Ruby walks out of line, Old Man Miller acknowledging her as she points to Will’s table. “Oh my god,” she says again. She places her purse on the table. Will stands up, feeling the weakness in his knees, and they hug politely and easy. She smells like incense. Sitting, Ruby asks, “What are you doing here?” “It’s good to see you,” Will says. “You, too.” Her wedding ring hovers between them. He glances at the ring while she nervously fiddles with it. “I’m…I’m home to…uh…sell my parents place. They moved to Florida recently and I promised to…take care of it for them. They’re already under stress from the move and they’re old, so…” “Yeah…yeah, I knew they were leaving. I heard it.” “How are you? You look great.” “Thank you. You too.” “Yeah.” “I’m a mom,” she says, “and I’ve been married for seven years, almost.” “Wow,” he says, “You’re a mom. Okay.” He runs his fingers through his hair, considering that she’s finally a mother, especially

101 after what happened. “You?” “Not married. I have a girlfriend back in Chicago. We live to- gether. The only girl I’ve ever lived with actually,” he says, realizing that it’s true. Ruby explains the benefits of settling down and starting a family, beginning to sound like an infomercial, a far cry from the hoola- hooping girl who would sneak joints into concerts in her bra. “Yeah, we shall see,” he says, sipping his coffee as his phone vi- brates with a new text. He ignores it, choosing to focus on Ruby. They talk about the growing up, and about how everything peo- ple said was true: the earlier bedtimes, the occasional bad back, and the tolerance of alcohol. “Why did we ever want fake I.D.’s back then?” he asks, “We were so concerned with being old.” Old Man Miller brings over Ruby’s wrap and water. “Take your time,” he tells her, “No rush.” Will and Ruby scurry to their wallets. Will produces a twenty-dollar bill from his and tells Mr. Miller to keep it. “What’s your last name now?” “Perkins-Harris actually. I hyphenated it.” She explains that he grew up in Eastern Massachusetts and that Will wouldn’t know him. Despite this, Will already despises him. “You never sent divorce papers. Didn’t I give you an engagement ring made from tinfoil? I slid it through your bedroom window in middle school?” “I … don’t remember.” “Does he know I exist?” “He knows there was a guy back in high school,” she says, add- ing, “A pot-dealing jock-hippie guy.” Will raises his eyebrows at the simplified summary of his adoles- cence, suddenly considering that he might remember things differ- ently, saying, “Well … it was a long time ago.” “You get that shirt here?” “Miller tossed me one while I was ordering coffee,” he says, adding, “I’m in that Little League photo over there. The green

102 uniformed one.” He signals to the wall and Ruby turns her head. “Funny,” she says. Ruby explains that her family is doing well and that she now teaches at the high school. “Cotton High?” “Cotton High.” She nods, with resolved acceptance on her face. This isn’t the first time she’s had to explain her lack of change to old acquaintances. “What do you teach?” “History.” Will says that he teaches literature at a small university, adding, “We both became teachers. God, I can’t picture you in that building as a teacher. Anywhere else, maybe.” “Teaching’s so hard, am I right?” “Oh yeah. My weekends consist of planning and grading. I feel bad that Jessica and I don’t go out more.” “And what’s she do?” Ruby asks, pulling on a black hair tie around her wrist. Will sips his coffee quickly and says, “She’s an artist. Painter.” Ruby nods politely, suppressing a smile, a smile that Will is used to when he discusses Jessica and his relationship. “You’re not on social media?” he asks. “No,” she says, “Too many students request me on it. Gets annoying.” “If your students only knew how crazy we were. God, remember when we were at that party and the cops came and we hid in the closet? They zip-tied our wrists,” Will says. “Oh yeah,” Ruby says. “Or when we’d hop fences to rob the poolhouses’ minifridges?” “Well, that was a long time ago.” At the time, the exploits seemed important: sex, drinking, and parties. The recognition that they were barely teenagers makes Will anxious, knowing how his survival is pure luck of the draw. “Well … tell your family I say hi. I bet they’re happy grandparents.”

103 “Oh yeah,” she says, stretching. “Your family?” Ruby holds the clear plastic to-go box in her hand, wanting to eat but has suddenly lost her appetite. Instead, she uncaps the bottle and settles for a sip of her coconut water. Will explains how well his family is doing and the feeling of strangeness by starting to take care of his parents, especially when his father calls about technology problems. “My dad’s the same. He takes his dog in the hills and just walks. He says that he goes up there to talk to himself since he’s the only one that listens to him.” “Remember when I first got my car and your dad came to the door with a bat?” Will laughs, picturing him walking down the walk- way, swinging it like a conductor. His phone vibrates again. “Oh god, yeah. Like he didn’t know you at that point.” She shuts the drink lid and shakes it. New wrinkles appear besides her green eyes. Will stares in curiosity. “So, what’s it like being a mom?” “Being a mom is amazing. All of the clichés that you hear are true.” “I bet,” he says, sipping his coffee again. “Yeah…I always knew you’d be a great mom.” “Yeah…thanks.” She instinctively holds her hand to her stom- ach, remembering how it felt to have a baby grow inside of her. She remembers the sudden food aversions and how she kept her husband at a distance for the first few months. “I’m sorry that I didn’t reach out more. I didn’t know if you even wanted to hear …” “Will,” she says, shaking her head, “Come on. It’s fine. I didn’t reach out to you either.” “I mean …” he says, moving his open hand from his chest to her, “you know.” “It all worked out. We both had scholarships that we couldn’t turn down. We’re both happy and healthy. Both have careers. I knew you’d be fine.”

104 “Yeah, you too. I know. I honestly think our parents wanted us away from each other. Like, they wanted us to experience something else. We were too codependent.” Will remembers how he overheard Ruby’s mother once say that Will is a great guy but she’s young and should date around. He felt paralyzed with betrayal that night. “They were probably so happy that we got away from this town when we did.” Ruby looks out of the window at the hills. “Can you believe all we went through together? 9/11, proms, losing Cassie, Steve, and then Nick, and, uh … I mean … I mean … you know.” Ruby doesn’t say anything. A quiet recognition crosses her face. “Remember how we found out? At Barnes and Noble?” “Yeah,” she says, “That was horrible.” Will picked up a pregnancy test in the next town over and met her outside of the book store. They went over the directions in the poetry section and Ruby disappeared into the women’s room to take the test. While pacing outside, picturing his life as a teen parent, his parents walked up to him, holding a few books in their hands. During the small talk, Ruby came out of the bathroom and stood with the family for a few minutes, unable to communicate to Will. Will stared wide-eyed at her, and she forced a polite smile while Will’s mom asked her prom questions. His parents finally left, and Ruby collapsed into Will’s embrace, crying and holding tightly by the Cliffsnotes display. A month later … they lost the baby. They were going to name it Abigail for a girl or Jackson for a boy. “You tell your husband about that?” Will asks, leaning forward. “Yeah,” she says, studying her hands. “He knows.” “You ever think about that?” Will’s throat clenches tighter, mak- ing him gulp deeply when swallowing. “Not really. I think I processed it and moved forward.” “Yeah,” he says, stretching backward. That small life that no one ever knew … determined so much, he thinks.

105 Ruby drinks some of her coconut water, and says, “And then the night of the invasion. We laid in bed thinking that it wouldn’t hap- pen, then the bombing started so we shut off the T.V. and sat on your roof.” “There were a lot of memories,” she says, with a passive indica- tion in her voice to change the conversation. Even after all of this time, her emotions are still clear. Will knows she’s uncomfortable and wants to leave but he doesn’t know when he’ll see her again. The last decade seems like a bad dream and now he’s back in front of someone who knows him better than most. Will follows her eyes to the hills. “I wonder if our lock is still around that tree branch,” he says. “Branch must have grown around it. Poor thing must look like that turtle from the pollution advertisements.” “Lock?” she asks, reaching for her purse. Changing the subject, Will asks, “What are your kids names?” “Philip is four and Stella is six,” she says, proudly. Will nods his head. He says, “Like Great Expectations?” “Yes, like Great Expectations.” A part of her is embarrassed that he saw through it. “Your favorite movie. My favorite book.” She takes out her phone and starts scrolling through pictures of them. “They’re definitely Perkins. Their faces have the Perkins cheeks.” Will holds the phone for a beat, staring into the faces of Ruby’s offspring. Strangers. “I should be getting back. I only have an hour break, but it was good …” Ruby rises up, saying, “It was good to see you again. Good luck with everything, Will.” “Ruby …” “I really got to go. Really. I have papers to grade. You know how it is.” “Can we meet up again since I’m home?” “I mean, Will, that wouldn’t be kinda fair to my husband, you know? Or your girlfriend.”

106 Feigning innocence, Will says, “Nothing weird. I’d love to meet him. And your kids.” “Maybe,” she says, draping her purse strap around her shoulder. Will picks up her plastic to-go box and hands it to her. “Thanks again for lunch.” Ruby hugs him quickly and turns towards the screen door. She goes through it and Will collapses into his chair. He watches her walk across the gravel parking lot to her silver Toyota 4Runner. Will wonders if there is still a tape deck inside or if she upgraded to a C.D. player. Ruby anxiously shakes her hands rapidly in front of her. The chicken caesar wrap slides across the passenger seat as she turns out onto the main road. She breathes in slow, repeated patterns that she learned from her yoga D.V.D., saying “That was fine. I’m fine.” William sits at his empty table, still holding the coffee. Her sudden departure quickly revealed the quietness in the room. Soft jazz still hums. He places his hand over his mouth, staring out of the window to the hills, remembering a simpler and easier time. His five-o-clock shadow has hints of grey on the chin. He has to do the math to fig- ure out how old their child would have been: 17-years old. God. That’s how old we were. Customers come and go. Will waits until his coffee is finished and departs to his rental car, his new shirt draped over his shoulder. Miller walks to the table, wiping it clean with a white rag, humming along with the music. He pats Will on the shoulder as he passes. At tables, teenagers laugh, posing for photos and sipping hot cocoa. Will feels invisible in a world that he used to be very present. Run- ning into the girl that he lost his virginity to is a mile-marker of sorts. So much has happened since I was that person. Will digs his phone out of his pocket and finds the missed text messages from Jessica. With his mind completely absent of thought, he calls her. The phone rings twice. “Hi baby,” Jessica says. “Hi. “How’s home?” she asks. Will wants to admit his newfound confusion and explain the mir-

107 ror that he was just presented, but he doesn’t want to flame any fires of insecurity in her. “It’s really good. I’m at this coffee shop that I used to come to in high school. The owner remembers me.” “That’s so sweet,” she says, “I’m just about to go to the gym for some hot yoga. I just missed you and wanted to say hi.” “Hi …” “Hi,” she says. “Are you okay?” Will says, “Uh … yeah. I’m fine. It’s just weird to be home. I was someone else here.” “Well, I’m sure I’d love that Will, too,” Jessica says. Will returns his gaze out of the window toward the hill. One choice can vibrate outward, disturbing everything in its path, leaving a trail of ashes. In the forest, by where the trails meet, a tree has dozens of locks on its branches. Most are loose and new, but a special few are pre- venting the growth of the branches. The school bell chimes loudly across the valley, signaling that the day is moving forward. Cigarette butts and crushed beer cans blend in with the falling red and gold leaves around the base. On one of the older locks, the initials “WS + RP 4-Eva” is still visible but is slowly becoming overtaken by rust and time. The branches seem to groan under the pressure. Hours later, Albert Miller locks the front door to his business. He counts the drawer and loads up the dishwasher, stretching his weary back in the process. His knees have been aching, but he doesn’t al- low it to get in the way of working every day. He stopped driving five years ago but locals always stop to pick him up when they see him walking. The pictures of his grandchildren on the wall keep him focused and content. The photograph of his late wife makes him remember. Albert Miller is a part of this town. He’s seen all of the families come and go, knows some secrets and some truths. He remembers Ruby and Will when they were kids. They’d skip school and hide out in his store. He smiles, thinking about the brief reunion and how much they’ve grown, but it fades when he thinks about how much was left unsaid.

108 Jessica Murphy

Listen

usually never come to Starbucks to work. I prefer to work alone in my apartment. The less people I have to deal with, the better. I Thankfully, in the busy café, people are absorbed into their own friend groups and their own conversations. That means they won’t talk to me. I wouldn’t respond anyway. I continue typing away on my paper that’s due in only a few hours. I silently curse my roommate and her New York boyfriend that’s only in town for one week. I also silently curse hormones and, while we’re at it, emotions. I tap my pen against the edge of the table, about to bring it to my lips and start my bad habit of chewing on the cap, when a tap on my shoulder makes me jump. I probably went a good foot in the air. While I’m used to people tapping me to get my attention, this tap came from behind me. No warning. Who does that?! I spin around to give my attacker a good how-dare-you glare. My pissed off stare falters for only half a second when I see an attractive man standing above me. I have to crane my neck to look at his face. He has a tattoo on his left arm, but it’s mostly covered by his t-shirt sleeve. It looks like he left the house without brushing his hair, but ten bucks says he styled it that way. When my eyes make it back to his face, his lips are moving. I give him my very best apologetic smile and tap my right ear before shaking my head. Whenever I do this, I get a range of reactions. Some stumble through what very little ASL they think they know. Others continue to talk, probably apologizing, before giving up on the conversation. Some point to their lips and exaggerate all of their syllables. I like to imagine that they’re talking louder at that point. A few have just shaken their heads and walked away. This guy doesn’t.

109 He taps his lip then points at me. I resist the urge to roll my eyes. I begin to sigh and turn back around when he makes a scribbling motion in the air and points at me again. What? Did he seriously just want a pen? I can only sit there dumbfounded as he takes the seat next to me and all but rips the pen from between my teeth. Seriously, who is this guy? Instead of leaving with my cheap, plastic writing utensil, he taps on my arm twice and then makes a “gimme” motion with his hand. I slowly move my arm in front of him. He leans over it and presses the pen to my skin. He’s ... writing on me? I’ll admit, I've had whole arguments on napkins. Once, Ollie, my ex, and I had a whole conversation in class back in high school by ripping up paper and passing it back and forth hidden inside a mechanical pencil. When he began to learn sign language for me, we would fingerspell under our desks. But I’ve never had a conversation quite like this one before. We both have our bookbags on us, assum- ingly full of paper, yet he chooses to write on my skin first. It feels like a whole month passes when he finally sits up. I pull my arm back and read what he wrote on my forearm. You look familiar. Are you serious? He goes through all that trouble to tell me this tiny sentence? While I’m sort of from the area, I’ve never seen him before in my life. I give the guy a confused look. Then I motion for my pen back. I catch a faint smile when I continue motioning until he gets it. I want his arm. He puts his forearm in front of me and I try to think of the best response. I don’t think so. I moved from upstate. I let him have his arm back. He reads my message, then motions for me to hand over my arm and pen again. He writes his response right below his first one. Never mind. I’m from Pennsylvania.

110 I have to laugh when he lets me have my arm again. Without even asking, he lays his arm in front of me and gives me a full toothed smile. It’s like a switch; he smiles, and I can’t help but mirror him. What are you doing down here then? I see something distant in his eyes as he reads his arm. The rea- son he left? Did something draw him here or did something there scare him away? He taps the pen again the top of my arm for a minute. When he thinks and tries to focus, he chews on his bottom lip. The answer he finally settles on is: School. And to be closer to my sister. My turn. Older or younger? His turn. Twin. His arm. Does she go to college here? My arm. No. She works an hour from campus. We go back and forth until I have to give him my left arm. I’ve written all the way up to his sleeve. The handwriting kept getting smaller and smaller. I sort of forget that we’re not communicating like normal peo- ple. When I lost my hearing, I stopped using my voice as well. I have no idea how I sound to other people. I should’ve known what was coming when he writes on my knee, I know you get this a lot but, you’re deaf? Instead of asking for his arm, I simply nod. He writes right be- low the first sentence, Were you born deaf? I shake my head. I hold up nine fingers. He begins scribbling immediately. Since you were nine?! I shake my head frantically and reach for the pen. He offers his arm. Ninth grade. His eyebrows go up. He wastes no time writing on my leg, You’re my hero. I laugh. My throat moves, and I’m surprised he got a real laugh out of me. He smiles, maybe even laughs too. Can you read lips? Instead of shaking my head, I motion for the pen.

111 Can you understand ASL? He shakes his head; I raise my eyebrows and the corner of my mouth rises. He gets it. On my thigh, he writes, What’s your name? I write directly on his wrist below his palm. Avalynn. Call me Ava. Instead of writing on my leg again, he takes my hand and writes below my palm, like I just did on him. When he’s done, he puts my hand palm down on the table and sort of holds it there. He holds up one finger, then slides forward in his chair. Gently, he tucks the pen behind my ear. His brown eyes hold mine and I wish I could hear what his laugh sounds like, or what it sounds like when he says my name. Can he sing? For crying out loud, what’s his name? His fingers follow a trail down my ear before he gets up from the table. The very last thing to go is his hand on top of mine. He doesn’t look back. When he’s completely out of my sight, I look down at the last thing he wrote. It’s his phone number, followed by Hi, Ava. I’m Boston.

112 Jessica Murphy

One Last Time

he TV is off exactly three seconds after she hears the silver car pulling into the driveway. T The wine glass is in the sink as soon as the driver door opens. The bedroom door is shut four seconds before his key twists in the door. She jumps into bed and pulls the covers around her. Quickly, she reaches her hand to her hair to make it look messier. Her makeup is still on. Not that he will notice. She made sure the flowers at their wedding were blue, his favorite color, and he didn’t say anything about it then. She hates blue. The door creaks open and shuts a second later. She could hear his voice, though muffled through the door, talking on the phone. Business deal this, business deal that. She hears his briefcase hit the floor of the kitchen. The fridge opens and shuts. She hears him say goodbye to whoever is on the other line. He starts playing a YouTube video or something, loud enough to leak through the bed- room door. A can pops open. She knows he doesn’t drink on week nights, so it’s probably just a Coke. She listens to him, imagining him taking a long sip of the soda. Leaning back, putting one hand on his hip. She hears him set the can down. “Honey?” he calls. She freezes, too scared to even put her arm under the covers. She squeezes her eyes shut. You’re asleep. You’re asleep. He says her name. She focuses on making her breathing even. “Why is there a glass in the sink?” He opens the door and flips on the light. She fights to keep her eyes closed. Don’t react to the light. Don’t react to him.

113 His footsteps. Her name again. He reaches the head of the bed and begins shaking her shoulder. She has no choice now but to snap her eyes open and feign tired- ness. He still has on his jacket and shoes. Through the open bed- room door, she can hear the video still playing from his phone on the kitchen counter. “Why is there a glass in the sink?” he repeats. She props herself up on her elbows and looks anywhere but his eyes. “I, uh, just had a drink before bed and just ... set it down.” He huffs and walks away from the bed. “You know I don’t like drinking in the middle of the week. Just wash it out next time.” He begins to walk back towards the kitchen. He leans over the counter to watch whatever is on his phone, Coke in one hand. After about a minute, he looks back at the sink, then his eyes stare daggers into her, still in bed. “Come get the glass. Please.” Defeated, she throws the covers away and slowly gets up. She has to walk behind him to get to the sink, unconsciously picking up her pace as she does so. “So, I got into the office this morning,” he narrates, even though his phone is still playing, “and they said I had a conference meeting right away. I corrected them, told them there’s no way, because I had an important client coming in. Turns out they were looking at tomorrow’s schedule, and I was right.” She smiles a little as she runs water over the glass. “Glad you got it straightened out.” He nods, finally pausing the video on his phone. He leans against the counter and stares at her. She focused on the wine glass. Maybe if she scrubbed it harder, she’d break it. “Did you call Hank?” She snaps her head up. “Huh?” “I called you at lunch. The car is making a funny noise. Did you make an appointment with Hank?” She quickly scans the conversation in her head. Sure, he had called at lunch, but Hank or the car never came up. “No, I didn’t call. You never told me to,” she answered honestly.

114 As she always did. But that was never enough for him. “Look, I called you at lunch. Do I need to pull out my phone to prove it?” “No. I’m sorry, I just don’t remember you saying anything about the car.” “If your memory is that bad, you should see a doctor or something.” “I’m sorry.” “Just call him, okay?” She nods. It’s all she can do. “So, what’s wrong with the car?” “Listen, jeez. It’s making a funny noise, sounds like a thumping. Might have something to do with the air vents. I need it fixed before my conference next week.” “Alright, I’ll see what I can do.” “Can’t you take it tomorrow?” She bites her lip. Still looking at the damn wine glass in her hands. “I made plans. Trevor and I — ” “Trevor? Really?” He laughs, but he clearly doesn’t think it’s fun- ny, and picks up his phone to text someone. “You can’t do this one thing for me? What does Trevor need that’s more important than your husband?” The answer is nothing. But Trevor is her best friend and has been for ten years. She and Trevor had never dated, but simply having a guy friend was enough to make her husband cautious. And jealous. “We’ve had these plans for the last month. There’s a farmers’ market downtown and — ” “That’ll take all day?” The question isn’t meant to be answered. He sighs. “You know, I don’t ask for a lot. I work hard all day to support us, and you don’t. Who pays our bills, huh?” He pauses, not needing the question answered. “Tell Trevor to help you with the car. I don’t care.” “Alright.” She mumbles it and hopes he hears it. She sets the glass beside the sink to dry. He finishes his drink and throws the can in the trash. She tip-toes around him as they go

115 throughout the rest of their night. Later, they’re both lying in bed. His phone lights up the whole bedroom, with another YouTube video playing loudly. She lays fac- ing the wall. She jumps as he suddenly smacks her shoulder. “Babe, you have to watch this,” he says with a giggle on his lips. She doesn’t turn over. “This video is hilarious. Babe.” “I’m falling asleep.” “Come on, just watch this one. Then we can go to bed.” “I want to sleep.” With her back turned, she doesn’t see his hand jerk her shoulder. She just sucks in a breath as he forces her to face him. “Why do you treat me like crap?” She goes red. “I ask for one thing! A simple video! If I was Trevor, you’d say sure! You’d watch a hundred videos for him! Should I be worried? Are you cheating on me?” “What?” She sits up on her elbows. “No, of course not.” “You’re always hanging out with him! Anyone else would think you’re dating.” “Are you still not over that?” She kisses Trevor once, before her and her husband even started dating, and he never lets it go. “It happened, didn’t it?” he asks. “I’m married to you.” He’s fuming. “Why are you so sassy to me?” She should’ve watched the video. She should’ve just watched the damn video. “Huh? Why are you so rude to me?” She doesn’t feel the slap until three seconds after it happens. “Other girls don’t treat their husbands like this. You make me sick.” You make me sick. She bolts out of bed. Runs for the bathroom.

116 She watches her hands close the door. She hears herself sob. She watches the same hands that closed the door turn on the faucet and bring water to her face. She hears herself choke on her tears. She finally sees the mirror. Her cheek is bright red. For now. It’ll go away. It always does. He’ll say good night. He’ll say I love you. He’ll give her a kiss on his way out of the door to head to work. He’ll compliment her outfit and her cooking, and they’ll laugh and none of this will matter in the morning. It always goes away. Not tonight. Who would she even tell? Who would believe her? She hears a knock on the bathroom door. He’d find out if she did. He'd be so mad at her. He walks in. “Stop being so dramatic, baby.” She never loses eye contact with herself. “I didn’t even hit that hard. It didn't even hurt.” Lie. “Come back to bed. It’s not a big deal.” Lie. He walks up behind her and wraps his arms around her waist. She’s not sure she even feels it, she just watches the mirror. He rests his cheek—clean and white—between her shoulder blades. “You know I love you.” Lie. Lie. Lie. Everything out of his mouth was a lie. This was the millionth mistake. The millionth “I didn’t mean to.” “Baby.” She stares at her reflection. At her cheek. “Let’s go to bed. One video. Then let’s go to sleep.” What am I going to do? If she told anyone, he’d be so mad. He’d scream. He’d do worse than slap her.

117 She grips the rim of the sink and takes a deep breath. She makes her decision. “One last time,” she whispers to herself. One. Last. Time. She follows him back to bed and falls asleep with dry eyes.

118 Dana Peteroy

A Young Food Critic

s a young food critic, you’re told to take full advantage of the famous food critic name you’ve inherited from your late Afather by traveling the world. Experience everything. Taste everything. Take time to explore the foods of the multitude of cul- tures around the globe. A short girl with eyes like molten lava cakes looks over her shoul- der to your booth at a bar in Brooklyn. A giggly girl with a bright purple backpack and a taiyaki in one hand waves back at you from the sidewalk as the bus lurches for- ward through the streets of Tokyo. A freckled girl holding a nearly empty mug of beer shuts the door to the long-closed Dublin pub behind you. A tall girl with honey-golden hair and a pastel blue mini-dress blows a kiss to the dining car window from the train station plat- form as you depart from Berlin. When the girl with her frilly dragon-fruit-pink apron opens the door to your second-story California apartment, the smell of sugar and fresh bread erupts from the kitchen behind her like a balloon letting out air. Her short curly hair is frizzy from the hot kitchen. Her smile reminds you of two perfect rows from an ear of white corn. The girl bakes you your favorite dessert to celebrate your new column in The Sacramento Bee. Flour cakes her round face like a pale rouge, and chocolate is streaked down her pink apron. She beams at the grand Black Forest gâteau that sits in front of you. You pick up a shiny fork. You don’t hesitate to get started. A girl with an upturned nose puts out her cigarette in the ash tray next to the strawberry crepes and closes the curtains of her bedroom window, shutting out the view of the Eiffel Tower. A girl with skin like coffee beans picks up her shirt as she leaves your hotel room in Port-au-Prince, leaving the scent of her

119 sweet-pea perfume on the sheets. A sad girl with a high ponytail tells you she’ll eat a deep-dish pizza for you after her flight back to Chicago. A tan girl who lives a few blocks away hands you a doggy bag out of her car window where she drops you off a street down from your apartment. A girl with features like a porcelain plate towel-dries her blonde angel-hair using the girl’s dragon-fruit-pink towels from under the bathroom sink. The girl looks down at you from her second-story apartment window. Her balled fists resemble two Brussels sprouts. One stran- gles her wrinkled dragon-fruit-pink apron. Her face is red under the dabs of flour. She looks tired. You can smell the grease from the donuts left frying and burning in the kitchen. You sit at the counter of the diner across town pushing soggy hash browns across a yellow plastic plate. The bell tinkles above the door, and you look up. A girl with hair and breasts and a nose and two eyes looks back. She smiles with a mouth full of yellow corn. You turn back to your potatoes, and you think about how food is supposed to bring people together.

120 Naudia Reeves

Ink

e got the star when he was 16 — that one, he credited entirely to the alcohol: H The shots of tequila that told him: “Yeah — letting this cute girl give you a stick-n-poke is a fucking great idea.” The mixed drink of god-knows-what that encouraged him to get an out- line of a star and put it on his bicep because “that’s unique, right?” The three chugged beers that kept the pain at bay enough for him to only shed a few tears — tears that he would deny happening if anyone ever asked. The tattoo was done in twenty minutes, in which time a small crowd had gathered around to watch. As soon as he got up, Tim Collins gave him a rough pat on the back that almost sent him back to the ground, his booming voice amplified by alcohol-infused con- fidence. “You fucking legend. Letting a girl stick ya with needles just to get it,” the jock winked, thrusting his hips into the air as unsubtly as possible before walking off along with the dissipating crowd. “He’s joking, yea? You didn’t just let me tattoo you to get me to sleep with you, right?” His attention was back to the girl now, and it took a few mo- ments for his foggy mind to piece together an answer. “Depends on if it worked or not.”

rrr

The small rose on his other arm came three weeks later. He was at tattoo girl’s house for the third time that week. Her name was Danielle Rose, and he thought it was a great idea, and she thought it was cliche, but that didn’t stop her from agreeing and permanently inking his skin with a piece of herself. She broke it off with him four days later, said she wasn’t looking for something serious.

121 He didn’t regret the flower.

rrr

He got the chrysanthemum over his heart two years later. There were white chrysanthemums in every vase that decorated the small church. He wasn’t even sure if his mother had liked chry- santhemums, he never thought to ask when he still had the chance. But then the breast cancer grew and strengthened, and his moth- er shrunk and weakened. And then she was gone, and everyone said chrysanthemums were traditional at funerals, so chrysanthemums were ordered. He went to the tattoo parlor the next day. The artist warned him that it would hurt like a bitch, the chest is a sensitive area, but he was adamant. He focused on the pulsating neon lights and tacky signs on the walls while the needle repeatedly broke his skin and left black ink in its trail. It hurt— it hurt like nothing he’d ever felt before. Each petal was a fresh wave of agony and there, under the guise of pain, he let himself cry.

rrr

His grandfather passed and a chrysanthemum was added two months later.

rrr

A year later, he was studying abroad in England when the letters “LDN” were etched onto his forearm. He was drunk, and he was happy. “I think I’d like to remember where I am,” he drawled out, eye- brows furrowed together in serious, inebriated thought,“I’m quite happy right now.” He tells the friends he made at the bar that he’d like to start a

122 collection of cities on his skin, so he started with where he was. His friends laughed but he couldn’t stop smiling, couldn’t stop thinking of the possibilities.

rrr

“NYC,” “LA,” and “DC” were added to his forearm over the next three years.

rrr

He was 22 when a butterfly joined the rose on his left arm. “Any meaning behind it?” The artist asked flippantly, only half paying attention as she set the tattoo gun up from across the room. He paused for a moment, unsure. “’Cause I mean — normally I’m tatting this on drunk sorority girls who think it’s uber cute to get a little butterfly on their back,” she chuckled, shaking her head before settling into the small stool that stood next to him and raising her eyebrows at him. “So, any special reason you’d like a butterfly on your body for the rest of your life?” “I came out.” “Ah, you’re gay? No judgments, man.” “Bi.” “Ohh, like ’em both and you’ve got all the options in the world, huh?” He cracks a grin. “Yea, I guess.”

rrr

His grandmother joined his grandfather, and then there were three chrysanthemums on his skin. He felt he had a garden blooming from his chest.

rrr

123 The letter “M” settled on his skin beside the butterfly on their 6-month anniversary. He met Matthew in one of his graduate seminars. Their first date was to a local fair. They kissed at the top of the Ferris wheel, and Matthew’s lips tasted like cotton candy, and he loved it. It didn’t take long for him to decide he loved Matthew, too.

rrr

They moved in together not long after that, and the small outline of a house joined the “M.” “You want me to what?” Matt’s eyebrows drew together in con- fusion, and he put a hand on his hip. His freckled face was pulled in a mixed expression of amusement and perplexion. “Draw a small house for me. Just an outline, please?” “Why?” “You’ll see.” Matthew drew the house, the tattoo artist inked it, and he loved it dearly.

rrr

It was their one-year anniversary, and nothing new was added to his skin. But “Andrew” was scrawled permanently across Matthew’s wrist.

124 Savana Scarborough

The Learned Toad

asically, that’s all there is to it.” Amanda finished show- ing Samuel, their new hire, around The Learned Toad. “BHer mom had been worried when she found out that the Samuel Butte was the new hire, but she was weary of all men, former prisoners or not. Squishing a roach underneath the toes of her mud colored boot, guts sprayed out with a crunch. Rubbing her boot harder into the ground she smeared the guts around, lessening their color and pushing them deeper into the already soiled grout which Samuel suspected had once been white but was now dirtied with years of un-mopped beer and vomit, occasional blood splatter from a brawl. And bug guts, apparently. “Any questions?” She asked. Walking behind the bar she opened the fridge disguised as a part of the wooden panel and pulled out a beer. “Probably not,” she said to herself as she took a sip from the lukewarm drink, “bartending’s about the only profession that ain’t ever changed. Well, that and whoring.” Amanda laughed at herself, watching Samuel to see if he would laugh as well. He didn’t. He stood at the end of the bar, running his fingers across the rough, splinter-filled oak. Bending over he squinted into the booze stained wood, dragging both hands towards each other to pinpoint the lo- cation. “Aha! Found it.” Amanda looked over his shoulder. Carved into the bar was a misshapen heart. Inside, carved so each letter interlocked, was SB+KR. “You were right,” Samuel said. “This bar’s never changed.” “That’s not what I said. I said bartending has never changed.” Taking another sip of her beer she pulled out the ripped vinyl stood and sat down, adjusting her skirt so the protruding pieces would not jab her. She waited for Samuel to sit down as well, but he kept hunched over looking at the carved heart. Amanda had never noticed that particular carving before. In her five years of working at The Learned Toad she had witnessed numerous carvings into the

125 un-laminated oak bar, with many of the men coming in a few weeks later to cross out their carving or edit the initials. SB+KR was the smallest one, lines filled in with cheese whiz, dust from other carv- ings, blood, and every alcohol they served. And since Samuel knew it was there, she knew it had to be at least fifteen years old. “You’re right though.” “About what?” Samuel gave the heart one last trace over and pulled out a stool. “About this place never changing. We are the only real bar in Naples.” “I think every place that serves alcohol can technically call them- selves a real bar.” Finishing her beer, she gestured with her hands a circle of The Learned Toad. The place was a rundown mess. Not a single piece of furniture had been replaced since it opened in ’52, and the cleaning of the floor consisted of whatever bartender could no longer stand the sight of blood on the floor anymore before they dropped a few wet paper towels down and rubbed it around with their foot. The bar had never been laminated and people would regularly get splin- ters in their hands and arms (one time a woman had gotten seven in her left butt cheek, but Amanda did not like to dwell on that fact). The only lighting was seven bare bulbs scattered throughout and entertainment was a ragged-out pool table and dart board. There were no televisions or A/C. Cooling came from the windows always being open, hoping a breeze would blow in from the harbor. “This place is authentic, man. This is what bars should be.” “When I used to come here this place had about thirteen regulars and that was it.” “We have about fifteen now, thank you very much. But come on. I love this place. When man invented the bar, he didn’t want kitsch lights and a karaoke machine. No. This is what it means to be a bar. About four years ago this bar opened up down the road on Alligator Alley. You know what its name is?” “Tell me.” “Sunset Bar and Grille. Sunset! We are in Florida; how much

126 more generic and pathetic can you get than Sunset? I bet you there are over a hundred Sunset Bar and Grilles in south Florida alone, but you know how many The Learned Toad’s there are in Florida? One. Right here baby. Us. And we serve real drinks, like Everclear. And tequila, straight. Not some fruit shit like Sex on the Beach.” “I like Sex on the Beach.” Amanda laughed. Samuel shrugged and motioned to the bottle of vodka behind her. She had drunk two beers while showing him around and had opened a third, so he figured she would not mind him drinking on the job. “Oh, God. You’re serious?” “As a judge.” “That’s sober.” “That’s what I’ll be until you make me my Sex on the Beach.” Sighing, Amanda opened the cabinets and took out a mason jar and bottle of peach schnapps. Pouring the ingredients into the mason jar she stuck a straw in and stirred, then pushed it across to Samuel. He took a long sip and smacked his lips, smiling at her. “I’m surprised you knew how to make this.” “Of course, I know how to make it. I’m a bartender.” Samuel had finished the drink and decided to try his hands at darts. They were the same set he had played with back in high school. It was almost six thirty and the bar still empty. He hoped we would remember how to make everything, but from what Amanda had told him the place hadn’t changed. Whiskey on the rocks and tequila shots required no memory. In the distance he thought he could hear a live band coming from Sunset, but that may have been a trick of his mind. “So, when do the regulars usually start shuffling in. Dammit.” He completely missed the board, sending the dart flying into the plaster wall. “Normally around eight.” Amanda lobbed the dart at the board. She hit the one. Better than missing. “Hmm. So, what do you do while you wait? Can’t watch TV. Dammit!” He missed again. “I just watch TV on my phone. We do have Wi-Fi. Bullseye!”

127 Amanda jumped up and mimed a slam dunk. Samuel didn’t care at all about that. “What?” “What do you mean what? I got a bullseye dude!” “No, I mean what you said about watching TV on your phone.” “Oh.” Amanda paused. Then, pulling out her phone from her pocket she handed it to him. Taking it, he examined it, pushing the home button. A photo of Amanda and a cat appeared, prompted then by a keypad. “How long have you been out? You really haven’t seen an iPhone?” “Not in person. I — I knew they were smaller, and everyone had them, but I didn’t know you could watch TV on them. I’ve never seen one in person.” In his two weeks since being released, Samuel had stayed home, only going out to get McDonalds. He relished the aloneness of be- ing at his house. Just him. It hadn’t been just him in so long. “Yeah, I just watch Netflix. See, look.” Pressing her thumb down she unlocked her phone. “It’s fingerprint activated. Okay, see.” She clicked on the Netflix button and the red screen popped up. “You can just choose whatever you wanna watch.” “Like regular TV?” “Kinda. There’s no commercials.” “Why not?” “Because I pay for it so there’s not. Here, you know Cheers, right?” Samuel nodded. Amanda clicked on Cheers, bringing it up. “So, it’s on right now?” “Yeah it’s on.” “It just started.” “Yeah.” “What if it hadn’t just started?” Samuel asked as the theme song played. “What do you mean?” “You clicked and it started at the beginning. Did you know it’d be on?”

128 “No, it always starts at the beginning.” “But if I wanted to watch it at like two am, something else would be on?” “No. Everything that’s on there is always on there. All the time.” “But not at the same time.” “No,” Amanda said. “At the same time.” Setting down her darts she watched the glow flicker across the man’s face as he stared into her phone. “Fifteen years is a long time.” He whispered. She thought he was growing to cry. “Yeah, it is. But hey. Cheers is always on.” “Cheers is always on.”

129 Thomas Small

Dreams

n occasion mornings started with my mother muttering the words “I dreamt of Dennis last night.” All activity at the Obreakfast table stopped. A dreamy expression came over her face. Then, as if in slow motion, she lit one of her Kent cigarettes and exhaled a large plume of grey smoke. She sat rigid, her eyes unfo- cussed, as though watching a movie, that only she could see. My father looked across at her, the expression on his face that I saw only on the mornings when she uttered those words, was a pained mixture of pity and loneliness. Saying nothing, he went back to his paper. After a prolonged pause, during which no one said anything, I would resume eating. Amidst the Sugar Crisp and toast crusts, I don’t recall he ever asked her what she’d dreamt about. He assumed that I would forget having heard anything, that I was too young to understand what was being discussed. I grew up, went away to college, and stayed far away, rarely return- ing, although I wasn’t sure why. Forgotten for many years were these odd words mumbled at the breakfast table and the accompanying silence. Yet, I heard them in my head on those rare occasions that I looked into the face of some one else’s blond infant. That should have told me something, but didn’t. Then as now, I was much like my father. It couldn’t happen today. Back then, no one suspected because it was such an outrageous thought. Had I had children of my own, I would have figured it out sooner. But I was careful, very careful. The women with whom I slept were always touched at the diligence I exhibited in taking responsibility for birth control. Mistakenly, they thought it was their best interests that motivated me. Steering clear of the rocky shoals of parenthood, I willingly gave up the evenings when I could sit at the edge of a tiny bed and read Good Night Moon. Never would I run along side a two wheeler as some one wobbled off into a nascent independence. By striking that

130 bargain, I also made sure that there would never be an occasion when I would find myself kneeling at the side of the tub while someone, not yet one year old and blond, splashed in the rising water. My father was long dead. Mother had lived in a nursing home for several years before reaching the point where she didn’t recog- nize her visitors. On the occasion of one of my exceedingly rare visits she was sitting in bed eating a piece of toast, when she said, “I dreamt of Dennis last night.” She looked in my direction, her eyes unfocussed. Knowing whom she thought I was, I asked, “What dream?” Her reply chilled me. “You know,” she looked at me with a half smile, the smile that passes between people long married, when they share a private truth. “Of the last time I bathed him.” I said nothing, just stood at her bedside, listening to my heart beating audibly. “That kid cried too damn much,” she said. It didn’t seem possible that the wizened woman lying in the hos- pital bed had ever been capable of such a thing. I gripped the bars at the side of her bed, acknowledging finally, what I had discounted for many years as faulty memory. “Tell me,” I said, “About your dream.” Her eyes focused on a point at the other side of the room as she stared into the past. Her voice was wistful as she spoke, “I made sure it was the last time.” I said nothing. At that moment, I was again four years old and playing with Matchbox cars on the floor of my room. Like most days, Dennis had been crying from the moment he awakened that morning. In the bathroom, water sloshed audibly, which was odd, because we didn’t take baths in the afternoon. Standing at the door, I peeked into the crack between the door and the jamb with a clear view of the tub. My mother knelt on a bath mat at its side. Water gushed from the faucet, Dennis continued crying and flailed as it deepened around him. I went back to playing with the cars on the floor of my room, pretending not to notice that Dennis was no longer crying. He lay

131 still as she dried him, dressed him and put him into his crib. After he’d been taken from the house, I crawled onto my father’s lap. His face was prickly against mine as I tried to get as close to his ear as possible to tell him my secret. He took my face in his hand, his fingers pressing painfully against my four year old jaw, my mouth held firmly shut. “You saw no such thing,” his voice was low and resolute, his stare unwavering as his dark eyes burned a hole in my head. A silent mo- ment passed during which he waited for me to believe him, before he took his hand away. Now my sleep is interrupted by the sounds of Dennis’s panicked thrashing, as distinct as it was fifty years ago. I awaken drenched, my shirt stuck to me, unable to catch my breath as though I too had been held under water. Sometimes, I smell the faint aroma of a Kent cigarette. Although there were several women who wanted me, I never married. The other side of my bed remains empty and cold, for I feared the parent I might grow to be like. Either one of them.

132 Sierra Williams

Packing

mma crept to the landing and poked her head over the handrail. Her mother’s voice floated up the stairs, singing Ealong with her favorite country station on the radio. The sound could have been coming from the den or, Emma hoped, the kitchen. The kitchen meant cooking, which meant Mom would be busy until dinner. Emma set a toe on the stairs to go down then piv- oted and rushed to her room, braids bouncing along her back. She left the door cracked so she could hear the music. “I think she’s busy,” Emma said to Benedict. Benedict Benning- ton III gaped back at her and turned away to stare at his own re- flection in her mirror. Emma rolled her eyes. The Benningtons had never been talkative, and this one thought of himself as an aristocrat on the basis of surviving longer than the others and dining on the tastiest fish flakes Emma’s allowance could buy. He spent his days in watery luxury, surveying his kingdom from the corner of Emma’s dresser and taunting the neighborhood cat whenever she pawed at the window. “Anyway,” Emma said, “we can’t waste time.” Emma sank to her knees on the floor and dragged her adventure bag out from under her bed. The adventure bag used to be her sister’s ratty pink backpack that she’d handed down to Emma two years ago. Emma would have walked to school in her underwear before carrying that monstrosity, but Mom had given her the Look and asked her to “get at least one more year out of it, sweetie,” so she did. To help hide the shamefully girly color and salvage Emma’s pride, Mom had collected buttons and patches and stickers featuring all the places Emma wanted to go, and they’d plastered them all over the backpack until only the tiniest spots of pink showed through. Emma had flaunted her revamped backpack at school last year and rattled off facts about the countries on it to anyone who asked. Now, even though the adventure bag had retired from active backpack duty, Emma kept it just in case she got

133 the chance to go somewhere. “I’ll have to pack light, you know.” Emma beat the dust bunnies off the adventure bag as she carried it to her dresser. She yanked the drawers open and frowned at the hand-me-downs inside. Does Mariah have to wear so much pink? She rooted through the masses of mismatched socks and wrinkled t-shirts, pulling out anything blue or green and leaving the pink stuff behind. “Do you think it’ll matter if my socks don’t match? I think blue and green look nice together, but Mom says it’s important to match. Do you think anyone will care?” She glanced up at Benedict. Benedict stared down his fishy nose at the peasant kneeling in a puddle of crumpled clothes. “You’re right. They probably won’t.” Emma stuffed the socks in the bottom of the adventure bag and flung in an extra pair of shorts. She pulled out the big bottom drawer, the one she never put laun- dry in and that Mariah called “the graveyard of abandoned junk.” Emma didn’t care what her prissy sister said. To her, this drawer held all the possibilities in the world, definitely more than the wish- ing well at the mall that Mariah and her pink-loving friends tossed money into. This drawer was the treasure chest where Emma, like a pirate, horded her riches. She sifted through the prizes inside. A rubber ball painted like a globe, two boxes of colored pencils, Dad’s old tie-dyed shirt that she’d rescued from the rag pile, seashells, the bracelets with the green glass beads that Mom used to wear, sketching pads—everything she cherished lay before her, but Emma was hunting for some really special things. “You’ll have to guard this while I’m gone, okay, Benedict?” She pointed a spork at him. “Guard it with your life.” Benedict bobbed in the water, giving his solemn oath. “Good.” She pawed around the drawer one more time before she found what she wanted. “There you are!” She brushed some dust off the cover of her journal from last year and added it to the pile with her sketchbook and colored pencils. “I want to show off my art and my stories. Plus, Mariah totally lied about not having a boy-

134 friend last year, and I can prove it!” She pulled one more book out of the drawer, but this one was heavier. It was the old picture album that used to sit on the shelf in the den. Emma had stashed it in the treasure trove when Mom had done her last bout of tidying. Besides, she’d taken quite a few of those pictures with her own camera, so if the album wasn’t welcome in the den anymore, it might as well stay with her. Emma flipped to the back, to pictures from two years ago. Dad grinned up at her, toasting the camera with a beer in one hand and his other arm curled around Uncle Patrick, who was hugging Aunt Susan, who was giving Mom an air kiss. Everyone was smiling, even though Mom’s smile looked a little sad, as though she might cry. Mom’s smiles always looked like that. Emma flipped to the very last picture, a group shot of her, Mariah, and Mom. Mom smiled big in this one, and she didn’t look as thin as she had in the other picture. Emma added the picture album to her pile and considered her backpack, tilting her head to the side. “I don’t think everything’s go- ing to fit. Do you?” She didn’t wait for Benedict’s answer but began tossing clothes out. “I’ll be fine with only two extra shirts, right? And not so many socks?” “What are you doing?” Emma’s head snapped up and around. Mariah lounged in the doorway, arms crossed. Emma scowled. “Get out of my room!” “I’m not in your room, idiot. Mom sent me to get you. Dinner’s ready. What are you doing?” “Nothing.” “Liar.” Mariah minced into the room in her pink socks and poked Emma’s pile of treasure with one toe. “Is that the old picture album? Mom was looking for that weeks ago. You said you didn’t have it. I knew you were you lying.” Emma endured this defamation of character in dignified silence. “You might as well stop whatever game you’re playing and come down. Hey —” Before Emma could stop her, Mariah reached into the treasure chest and yanked out an old baseball cap. “This is Dad’s!”

135 “Give it back!” Emma leapt at her sister, who held the cap out of her reach. “It’s mine!” “Is not!” Shove. “Is too!” Shove. “Dad gave it to me!” “You didn’t want it!” “Thief!” Mariah gave one last shove, and Emma reeled, knocking against the dresser. Benedict’s fishbowl rattled, water sloshed over the rim, and both girls watched as the bowl hung in midair for a second before crashing to the floor. “Girls? What was that?” Emma knelt in the watery mess, scooped up Benedict, and ran to the bathroom. She heard Mom’s voice ricocheting up from downstairs. “Girls?” “Nothing serious, Mom! Emma knocked the fishbowl over,” Mariah shouted down. “Did this one survive?” “I think so.” Emma filled a cup with water and slid Benedict into it, letting out her breath when he started swimming in circles. Tears came with the breath, and she stood crying over the sink. “I’m sorry, Benedict. I’m so sorry.” “Hey.” Mariah slid in and shut the door behind her. “Are you okay? I’m sorry I pushed you. And for taking the cap. It’s just— What were you doing in there with all that stuff?” “Packing.” “What?” “I wanted to go see Dad, so I was packing.” Mariah stared at her. “Emma, you can’t visit Dad.” “You and Mom act like he wasn’t ever here! You can forget him if you want, but I don’t have to!” “Emma.” Mariah stooped down. Emma felt her sister’s arms slide around her and froze. Mariah was too cool for hugs. “Emma, you can’t go see Dad. They wouldn’t let you in.”

136 Emma tried to pull away, but she wasn’t strong enough. She went as limp as Benedict had been and laid her head on her sister’s pink shoulder.

137 Sierra Williams

Daily Route

l shuffled through the doors of the only French bakery in town, a yawn splitting his face as the bell jingled to welcome Ahim. His sneakers scuffed the white tiles as he walked up to the counter, and he winced at the obnoxious squeak they made. He remembered scrubbing tiles as a child alongside his mother, how the cloying smell of the soap would waft into his nose and stay there as his arms traced endless circles with the scrub brush. The smell had stayed with him for days afterward, in his skin and hair and clothes like a lover’s scent that he couldn’t wash off. He swore he could smell it even now as he glanced at the black scuff mark he’d left behind. No one would have to scrub it. People used mops now. His mother was a stern Frenchwoman who hadn’t believed in mops. Al rang the little bell on the counter and rubbed his hands over his face to wake himself up. What was the point of getting up early and robbing himself of sleep? And think, you could have skipped this shift. But no, Laritza’s brat needed to see the doctor. Al’s boss had asked if he could cover Laritza’s shift, and of course, he’d said yes, even though he was supposed to work the night shift, because extra money was good money. He met his own eyes in the mirror that spanned the wall behind the counter. If only he could rob a bank and fill the bags beneath his eyes with money. He rang the bell again. “Hello?” He rang a third time. He needed to be at the bus barn in thirty minutes. “Hello!” “I’m sorry, monsieur.” The girl that worked the counter darted from behind the swinging doors that led to the back, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. “I’m very sorry. How can I help you?” “Didn’t you hear the bell? Or the one over the door?” “No, monsieur. I was in the back, filling pastries.” Al tossed his hands in the air. “What’s the point of the bell if you can’t hear it?” He noticed the bright pink cord dangling from her neck. “Maybe you should turn your music down.”

138 She stared at him much like he imagined a surly cat would. “How can I help you, monsieur?” “I’ll take a coffee, cream, no sugar. Please.” “Will that be all?” “Yes. Thank you.” He slid a five-dollar bill across the counter. “My pleasure.” She picked the bill up by its corner. The cash register clanged open, and she dropped the change into his palm, looking past him. “I’ll get that to you in just a moment.” Al grunted, glanced at the tip jar, and pocketed the change. His sneakers scuffed the tile again as he walked to one of the little tables, and a smirk danced over his lips. He sat, staring at the giant mural of a little town, which he could only assume was French, that domi- nated the back wall—a tiny fragment of home in this sleepy Florida burgh. Little painted couples danced as old men played their accor- dions and fiddles. A woman sat outside a café, daintily holding her cup as a waiter hovered nearby. Al remembered his mother’s stories about her life in France. If she and this picture could be trusted, every town in France was perfect, charming and picturesque. Maybe that’s why his daughter had wanted so badly to go. Too many stories from grandmama. Maybe that’s why— The cup clattered as the girl set it on the table, coffee sloshing over the rim. She retreated before he could say anything, vanishing behind the swinging doors. Al took one look at the coffee and knew: not enough cream. It’s too early in the morning for this. He lifted the cup to drink anyway and laughed at the way the porcelain looked between his fat fingers. He’d always had stubby fingers, but nowadays they were thick, doughy like a baguette and getting thicker. He sucked in a deep breath, filling his lungs with the scent of fresh-brewed cof- fee, the scent that his wife had used to wake him up in the mornings. She would creep barefoot into the bedroom and wave a hot mug right under his nose. The coffee was his alarm, and he would stick an arm out of the blankets and grope for the mug, or for his wife, whichever he found first. On the best mornings, he’d find her first, and the coffee would sit abandoned on the bedside table. He’d never had time for breakfast on those mornings, and he’d never cared.

139 Al looked back at his fingers. If he squinted, he could still see where his wedding ring used to pinch him. A little painted woman, her hair woven into one long braid, so much like his wife, laughed at him from the mural. “Alphonse!” Phillipe bustled from the back, his pristine apron reflecting all the light in the room. “You’re here early.” “Morning shift.” “Let me refill that for you.” Phillipe plucked up the coffee pot and another mug for himself, pouring for them both like a man ac- customed to being master of the house. Like a man accustomed to closing his business for a month out of the year to travel to France. Like a man who could afford to do so. “How are you this morning?” “I’ve been better. Tell your girl her accent is terrible.” Phillipe shrugged. “She’s a student. What can you expect?” “Better coffee.” “I ground these beans myself.” “Hmm.” Phillipe laughed, a deep belly laugh that made him arc back in his spindly chair. “You should come in the mornings more often, my friend.” “I hate mornings.” “Yet here you are.” “This is different. This is for work. You’ll never see me this early again unless I pick up another morning shift.” “Would you?” “No. Maybe. It’s good money.” “Ah.” They sipped their coffee, watching the morning sunlight creep through the big window and across the floor. “How is your saving coming? Have you hit your goal yet?” Al knew this game. He played it with himself every day. “Nearly.” “Good! And when you do?” “I’ll go see my girl.” “Excellent! And…your wife?” Al shrugged. “We made our choices years ago. Its my girl I want to see. She must be in university by now.”

140 “Have you let her know?” “I will as soon as I save enough to go and stay a while.” Al checked his watch and rose. “I have to get to work. I’ll see you later, Phillipe.” He turned to leave, moving so quickly that his sneakers didn’t have time to scuff the floor.

141 Megan Willis

Eleven Teal Roses Left Behind

stood next to her grave, a specially made teal rose in my hand, ready to be laid down next to the ten others that already looked Iwilted. They had all come a few days before on the anniver- sary of her death. It was supposed to be a celebration of her life they said, the fact that she was no longer in pain. I had made up some lame excuse about school, but I couldn’t be here with them. I couldn’t celebrate someone who chose to leave the rest of us behind to suffer, closer to being even more alone than we already were. Before, we had all been at her funeral. Jamie and Rachel sobbed as their hands clenched mine so tightly I couldn’t remember how long it took for the feeling to return. I remember all of us taking turns laying down our teal roses, butterflies, or ribbons on top of her shiny black coffin. I felt guilty for the inner repulsion I had al- ways carried for her mother, who now would never get to hold her daughter’s hand again. A sixteen-year-old girl who had never gone to prom, had never even driven a car. I guess before that, someone in her family had to have found her dead body … the note … the pills. Before, I remember seeing her as they wheeled me back into the neuro ICU after my second brain surgery. She hadn’t been moving. A thick tube was shoved down her throat. To me she looked like she could have been dead. “Wha…” I tried to speak. My hand fumbled in her direction to try and get the nurse to see her. Understand me. “Oh, are you and Miss Emily friends?” I think I nodded, but I was already so tired again. I couldn’t speak. “She’s alright. Dr. Linskey put her in a ketamine coma because of the pain, we will wake her up in a few days,” the nurse said. I knew what that meant. Her surgeries had failed. She was losing this fight. She would never not be in pain. Six months before that, she was wheeled into my room after I had my first surgery and she had her second. I was already on my third

142 day of recovery and doing great. I had knack for bouncing back from surgeries. My body adjusted to drugs easily. She was not the same. I remember her continuous crying, vomiting, and her mother fussing over everything. Actually, it was more along the lines of complaining over everything. I did the only thing in that room that seemed to shut her mother- and everyone else-up. I rolled over as best I could and flung my arm out to the middle of the space between us. Slowly, even though she was still crying, she reached her skinny, pale arm out to mine. I grabbed her hand and squeezed. A few minutes later her dark eyes shut and she finally fell asleep. She had gotten the message. We never had to feel alone in this again. A few days before that, we had gone to downtown Disney, and Jamie and I had gotten her away from her micromanaging mom. It was the first time I had seen her smile since I had met her a week ago. That moment made Jamie and I realize something. Emily’s mom, at least in a way, needed her child to be in pain. To be sick…She needed to be needed like that. She fed into it, and built it up. She made her daughter into the ultimate victim. It takes a conscious choice to be happy through this type of pain. Her mom took that choice away from her, and Emily let her. Before that, I had heard Emily in the room above mine pacing and screaming her way through the attacks of pain. She had seemed shy then, but I realized later on it wasn’t that at all. She had been living in pain so long she was thoroughly terrified of everything and anything that could set it off. Including talking. Before that, I had met Emily’s mother first, and not Emily be- cause she was too tired that day … too much pain. Her mother told me and all the other kids with Trigeminal Neuralgia who were also staying at the Ronald McDonald House that none of us had to worry. We would all be okay. Emily’s pain would always be worse. I hate her for that still. She never even asked me my name before that came out of her mouth. What kind of adult tells a group of scared teenage girls, waiting to have their brains cut open just to have

143 a chance of having a few years to not live in pain, how severe our disease is or isn’t? I’ve wondered if she ever considers now that maybe we just han- dled it better. That maybe making comments like that in front of her child, because she frequently did … crushed Emily’s hope? Before that, Emily was a twelve-year-old girl who had been in pain for too long and had asked her mom, “If dogs get euthanized when they are sick, why can’t they do that for people too?” Four years before that, she was eight years old and got a disease that she never asked for, never deserved, and eventually drove her into making a decision that lived up to the horrible nickname of our disease. She was diagnosed with the Suicide Disease and she is not the first or last one to leave the rest of us behind.

144 2018 FGCU Writing Awards Winner: Fiction

Caylee Wientraub

Seawalls

y mother doesn’t plan on having a daughter. After my brother is born in the late winter of 1977 Min Florida, during one of the coldest year on record, she and my dad figure they are done having children. My brother was a difficult pregnancy, and my mother spent almost two days in labor before my brother was delivered by C-section. The surgeon who did the cutting left my mother with a jagged scar that never healed right. My mother finds out she is pregnant with me in February of 1978 when she is home alone with my brother while my dad is at work. At this point in her life, home means our fishing town on the west coast of Florida, where my father has just taken a new job as an architect. For her entire life, my mother believed she would stay in Colorado, where she and my father both grew up and fell in love. My mother is not used to living in a state without moun- tains, and Florida’s openness unsettles her. Being in Florida makes my mother understand why people once thought the world was flat. When she first moved here, she had nightmares about falling off the edge of the world. When she told my father about her dreams over their morning breakfast, he laughed at her. He tried to explain to her about physics, about gravitational pulls, but no amount of science could stop my mother’s dreams. The day she finds out she is pregnant with me, my mother tries to fight the panic rising inside of her as she walks out of the bath- room. Upstairs, my one year old brother starts to cry. Even as a baby, my brother does not like being alone, a trait he inherited from my mother. She decides she will take him with her for a walk as she thinks about what she should do about me. Before she settled down,

145 my mother had been a runner. Though it’s been years since she’s run any marathon or walked any farther than past the clam farms at the end of our street, movement still helps her think. As my mother holds my brother’s hand, walking him through the shadows of the slash pine forest at the edge of our neighborhood, she wonders if she should keep me. She is 20 years old, and has just cut her hair shoulder length. For her whole life, she’s had long hair, and every now and then she finds herself reaching for hair that isn’t there anymore. She constantly finds herself grasping for what’s al- ready gone, like her dream of going back to school and her dream of completing her nursing degree and her dream of returning to the life she had before she dropped out of college in her junior year when she got pregnant with my brother. If she has me, my mother is afraid she will disappear entirely, sealed into herself like a barnacle at high tide. She will carry this feeling with her for some time. My mother walks on the seawall I would later scrape my knees on when I was three. She keeps my brother on the inside of her, away from the edge she walks along. She can see the murky water of the Gulf sloshing beneath her, and she can’t help but think of the baby growing inside her, the way I am scarcely the size of a saltwater pearl. It’s getting close to dark now, and my father will be home soon and wondering where she and my brother are, but still she keeps walking along the seawall, along that precipice. My brother wants to go to the beach and look for dolphins, so the two of them keep walking north, towards the shoreline. As she walks, she goes over her options. She took two years of health science class- es, and she knows how an abortion works. She pictures the procedure in her mind, tries to imagine what that kind of loss would feel like. She remembers the time she took her high school friend Cindy to get an abortion, how they cut class and drove to a clinic in Boulder an hour north of their high school. She remembers how Cindy looked empty for the next few years in a way that went deeper than any sadness my mother had ever known or recognized. In college, my mother loved biology. As she walks, she thinks back to the embryology class she took in her freshman year, the class

146 she had met my father in. She estimates that I am about five weeks old, that by now my major organs are forming: liver, lungs, brain, eyes, heart. She pictures my cellular mitosis, finds comfort in imag- ining my DNA replication, the coiling of nucleic acids around his- tones, curled like the new shoots of the morning glory vines she sees every morning from the kitchen window. She tries to conceptualize the microscopic, tries to imagine traits being passed down as they were in Mendel’s pea flowers. My mother struggles to remember her calculus classes as she determines how many cells I have, but trying to picture my exponential growth is like trying to picture infinity or empty space; she can’t do it. My mother feels like she can’t do a lot of things lately. She and my father have been married for over a year now, and she feels like she cannot reach him, that he is in a place far away from her. She feels far away even from herself. When she was a little girl, she’d imagined having a family would feel different, that she would feel more whole, that it would color in her empty spaces. For a long time, she believed she would be a painter, and though she still paints sometimes, the images are more difficult to find, harder to imagine. She is tired. My brother, even at one years old, has frequent nightmares, but he does not have the language to tell my mother what he dreams about. My mother understands this feel- ing, of being afraid without being able to express why. My mother longs to leave our fishing town and head to the city, where she always imagined she could work as a nurse and an artist. Back when she and my dad had been young, they talked about living in New York or Chicago. My mother dreamed of living in a loft and painting pictures of my father as he drank wine while the sun went down over the city skyline. By now, my mother and my brother have made it to the beach and are looking for dolphins. She watches my brother try to dig out the coquinas burying themselves in the sand. It’s here where my mother thinks about leaving my father for the first, but not the last, time. She thinks about packing up my brother and heading back home, to Colorado. She imagines getting in the car and driving all night

147 without stopping. My father is a good man, the kind that brings my mother flowers every Sunday on his way home from the grocery store, the kind who cries when he sees beautiful things like white pelicans and ripples and light on the canal behind our house and my brother learning how to sing. But my mother craves excitement, not kindness. She wants to travel and paint and my father can’t com- prehend why she always has the urge to run, why she always feels trapped. But by now, my father is beginning to accept that there are parts of my mother he will never understand. Watching my brother meander along the shoreline, my mother knows that she can’t leave my father. She knows this is her life now. And maybe it’s the way the light makes my brother’s face look sud- denly older or maybe it’s the way my dad had been looking so empty lately, but it’s there on the beach where I almost drowned on my eighth birthday that my mother decides that she will keep me. I do not know what finally convinces her and she has never told me. My mother is like that; she can make up her mind and snap it shut as tightly as the clasp of the locket necklace my father gave her the day my brother was born. My mother smiles at my brother as he squeezes the air sacs of a piece of washed up seaweed. She takes a picture of him with her camera, and shows the picture to my dad later that night when he comes home, when she tells him about me. I was born the fall of the same year, at the end of October, the only Scorpio in my family. For most of my life, I’ve been told how much I look like my mother. We have the same peat colored hair, the same eyes, and when I was younger, she and I would sometimes even have dreams about the same things, like the horseshoe crabs on the beach or the spotted eagle rays we saw one summer in July. My mother tells me this story shortly before my high school graduation, when I’m torn between accepting a track scholarship to the University of Miami and staying home and marrying Skipper Cassidy, the boy I think I love. Skipper has promised that if I stay, we can start a family together, that we can stay up late picking out names for the ten week old baby I’m due to have in the winter. Skip-

148 per dropped out of school two years before, and has a good job at the local construction company building seawalls. On weekends, he guts the tarpon the local fishermen bring in before they sell to com- mercial companies. He doesn’t make much money, but I know that he’ll make me happy. My mother listens to me as I tell her this, the two of us walking along the same path she took eighteen years ago. She tells me the choice is mine, stay or go, but of course, she tells me I should go.

149 2018 FGCU Writing Awards Winner: Poetry

Sydney Van Dreason

Childish Dreams

At the break of dawn, we wake up, yawning as we mourn the past days and fret for the next that are filled with work. Our best friend is coffee, not because we want it, but because our lives feel uncontrolled, driven by a blind driver void of hope.

It seemed like just yesterday we had so much hope, back when we only looked up and when there were real emotions and we could feel. There were once the days when drinking this here coffee felt like a treat and not like just more mindless work.

When we were children, we dreamed of work, of jobs that filled our tiny hearts with hope, for futures not full of late nights and excess coffee. We only dreamed of growing up, forgetting to think about all those days where we’d be so numb to the point where we can’t feel.

We have grown tired of it, I feel, of all the responsibility and hard work. We all have those days where life outweighs hope and we go anywhere but up. But I don’t want to measure life anymore by the drip, drip, drip of coffee. 150 As I sip my freshly brewed coffee, I start to wish I could feel what children feel, that excitement when a rollercoaster inches up, that joy when good marks are given to class work. During that lifetime, there seemed to be an eternal hope That reminded us that life had many more days.

And in those future days maybe we’ll realize that we don’t really like coffee as much as we like the artificial hope that comes with the feel of pretending to enjoy work and forgetting about our dreams that we have somehow given up.

It’s one of those days where the sun is up And I have a coffee on the way to work, daydreaming of the childish hope I wish I could still feel.

151 2018 FGCU Writing Awards Winner: Creative Nonfiction

Rogeena Lynch

South by South

We who are born of the ocean can never seek solace in rivers: their flowing runs on like our longing, reproves us our lack of endeavour and purpose, proves that our striving will founder on that. We resent them this wisdom, this freedom: passing us toiling, waiting and watching their cunning declension down to the sea. (Brathwaite 13-18)

hen surrounded by a sea of strange faces and foreign tongues one inevitably craves familiarity. After the first Wfew weeks of thrill and wonder have passed, all the reds, blues and yellows simmer down to a morbid shade of grey and soon you grow weary of the scenery, the food, and the strange culture until it all reaches a crescendo this Sunday night when you’re locked away in an ice cold dorm and you find yourself contemplating buy- ing a ticket and taking the next plane back home to Jamaica. The nostalgia that washes over you is a vast ocean and without realis- ing it, you are more than ready to drown. And so you find yourself yearning for the unthinkable—you yearn for Hell. You desire the 94˚ of still heat that hangs over your country like a thick veil; the par- ticulars of the place: the wayward souls, the sinners, the estranged relatives, family, friends and the people with all of their national and individual flaws. All of this — good and bad, dark and light — is home, and all you want is to be home. For you, home is in the Caribbean. It is Jamaica, with its rugged and bucolic landscape that is nothing but an Elysian setting. It was

152 as if the Great Artist had taken great care in crafting the curves and edges of the leaves, the bumps and ridges of the mountains, and the texture of the white sand as waves slide up the shore before be- ing dragged back to their home, only to repeat this timeless routine again and again and again. In the heart of all this grandeur are great cities and towns, but only one is home. Home is the small one bed- room apartment in Mt. Salem, Montego Bay. To most, this place is insignificant — just a stain on a speck of an island — but to you, it is everything. It is home. Since today is Sunday, you think of home in relation to this day. You think of the walk to church and back. It’s short, but tedious with the battered and uneven road that you must travel, and the over- whelming scent of cow scat that’s scattered across the surrounding field. The sun is unrelenting, your legs are pounding and it feels like your blood has turned to molasses. But before death can smile at you first, you see the green and orange house, a jewel in this concrete jungle, and you can finally breathe. To passers-by it is a spectacle, an anomaly amongst the typically flat, bland houses that are scat- tered across the community, but to you, it’s hideous. The yard is a wasteland, covered in concrete and building blocks and metal wires. The green and orange reminds you of mould and soggy sunsets. The architecture is pretentious; the building is slanted and while the second storey (the landlords’ portion) is better designed, with green balusters, a gold-painted grill and a perfectly tiled veranda, your half is the pitiful replica. Your grill is forest green and was designed by pernickety welders who saw it fit to spend days creating a Victorian gate, paying more attention to intricate patterns than actually making the gate easy to unbolt. Your mother has to force her slender brown hand through one of the spaces and awkwardly twists her wrists to the left until she impatiently rams the key into the lock and forces the gate open. But the task is done, and soon you go past the white plastic door and you’re inside. The house consists of only one bed- room, a bathroom and a living room joined to the kitchen, but this humble space is flawless. Being owned by your mother, a Margaret Thatcher with the facade of an immaculate nun, this house is always

153 neat. The rooms and carpet are swept each day, the bathroom is cleaned every two weeks and all the furniture is matching in colour, symmetrical and in good order. But despite all of this, the air is per- petually hot and stale. With the house being partially in the ground and for fear of the menaces outside, particularly the mosquitoes and the forty-legged red devils (which, with a single jab can cause one’s joints to lock and make them experience excruciating pain until the venom is out of their system), the windows are rarely opened. In- stantly, the heat inside the house coils around your body and strikes you. Within a few minutes heat rashes erupt across your skin and sweat bursts out of your pores faster than the race horses rushing out of the starting gates at Caymanas Park. It trickles down your skin and drenches your Sunday best. But none of these compare to the odour. Your sister, being a rather hairy pubescent girl of only 11, has reached that stage when even the slightest traces of sweat on her body will cause her to give off a stench that is strong enough to wipe out an entire species. You all hastily change out of your church clothes and into the only thing anyone who values her life would wear in such a place: flimsy dresses, skirts, marinas and shorts. What you hate most about Sundays is the silence; the deafening, ear-aching silence that could make your ears bleed. The neighbour- hood is always quiet on this day and the same reverence that is ob- served outside is expected to be followed inside your home. The T.V. and radio are kept off unless it is to view something befitting of the day: maybe a Joel Osteen rerun, or some Christian programme, but of the three of you, only your mother can be bothered to do this. You and your sister would rather to lock yourselves away in the small bedroom, sprawled across the lumpy queen-sized bed that all three of you share, and quietly play on your devices. After the usual hellfire sermon at church, once you pass the door, all the “holiness” is left behind and only the residues remain, which you two believe is enough to make you “Christians” and have your names written on Saint Peter’s list in permanent ink. But your mother is one who bites silence between her teeth and

154 grips tranquillity with her fists, so an average Sunday after church is deadly quiet. For hours, the only sounds that tease your senses are breathing and, occasionally, the chatter of your next door neigh- bours, who (of course) are Seventh-Day Adventists. But soon this calm would be slaughtered, that holy hour, when the dinner is being prepared. You and your sister jump to your feet to see this anticipat- ed ritual begin. The clatter of pots and pans, the sharp thudding of the knife against the cutting board as your mother swiftly chops the onions, thyme, scallions and garlic, and the sight of the naked flesh of the chicken being coated in browning and an array of seasonings. The scents that rise in the air are agonising, and as if on cue, the ravenous beasts in your stomachs force their way through, gnashing their teeth and growling indignantly. It is now that the feel and the ache start to set in, and you realise just how hungry you are, the way your gut clenches and feels like a void that you could fit the sun and moon in and still have space for the planets and the stars and the darkness in between. Within minutes, a perfectly seasoned portion of meat makes its descent into its hot oil bath and the entire house is filled with the harsh cracks and sizzles, and the tantalising smell of a Sunday din- ner. All the meat juices and flavours take to the air, as one section of meat after the other makes its way into the pot. A thin sheet of aromatic smoke has filled the kitchen and stretches its wispy fingers to every nook and cranny of the house. Not too long after, your mother begins your favourite part of these preparations—the cook- ing of the rice and peas. Not many teenagers can say that they enjoy this more than the meat itself or that it is arguably the best part of this traditional Sunday meal. But to you, it’s everything. It is your heart, your drug and you may very well sell your soul for it if the occasion arises. You watch as the water becomes tainted by the es- sence of the kidney beans and how the coconut powder spreads like clouds across a burgundy sky as your mother mixes it in. But what is most amazing is the magic you behold; within thirty minutes stiff grains of rice have swelled and burst and are now threatening to fly out. And to you, the subtle scent of coconut mixes deliciously with

155 the scent of the sizzling meat cuts that are a burner away. During these torturous minutes, you and your sister task your- selves with cleaning the kitchen, sweeping the house, mopping the brown tiles or mixing the drink for the night’s dinner. And before you know it, it is time. The feast has been prepared and served. The scents mix harmoniously as a film of steam rises from the hot dishes. The meal is, of course, carefully arranged on the plate because your mother is one for aesthetics, though, this is always in vain. Once you two hastily say your thanks and graces, your hands anxiously grip your forks and you mercilessly devour the meal. Stabbing into the perfectly fried chicken, you rip it apart and shove chunks of rice in your mouth, unable to stop the sigh of satisfaction and the groan of discomfort that passes your lips as the flavours ravish and scorch your tongues. The meat is spicy and well-seasoned in that way that is distinctively Jamaican, and the slightly sweet taste of the rice and peas mixes perfectly in your mouth. In the midst of all this, you grab your cups, chugging your drinks noisily and looking like Vikings at a grand feast. As always, your mother’s clipped voice interrupts the celebration, her thin lips pressed into a tight seam of disapproval before she decides to speak. “Stop the eating and drinking...use the knife with the fork...tek innu hands out of the plate...mind innu choke pan di rice!” You obey, but reluctantly. You two only concede to her warning because her temper is fiercer than the mightiest of storms and only a fool would test it. Though, you wish she would understand that with skills like her own and with the assurance of secrecy behind the walls of your home, neither you nor your sister, cares about, much less remembers, the word “etiquette”. When the dinner has ended and the sun has dipped below the horizon, the habits of the week return. Outside is now filled with the sound of passing vehicles, the obnoxious slap slapping of slippers as women and men stomp down the hill, pass your house and down the road to some street party not too far away. Soon enough, you will hear blaring music and the unnerving sound of fire crackers be- ing thrown and guns saluting the start of a new week. Your mother

156 eventually gives the word and, at long last, the television and Wi-Fi can be turned on, and just like that, all interactions end for the night. You settle in the bedroom with the laptop, your sister is watching the T.V. and your mother silently reads the newspaper on her phone. The heat and odours in the house are replaced by cool night air and the world outside comes alive. These, however, are no longer your reality, but simply memories. Memories that were once insignificant but are now the most valued as you find yourself curled in a corner in this chilly dorm, the ghost of a Sunday dinner on your mind as your tongue is betrayed by the unsavoury taste of cream crackers and melancholy.

Work Cited Braithwaite, Kamau, “South.” A World of Poetry for CXC. Ed. Mark McWatt & Hazel Simmons-McDonald. New Edition. Jordan Hill, Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 2005. 148. Print.

157 2018 FGCU Writing Awards Winner: Step Ahead

Zackary de Armond

Publix Shift

he midday lulls were kicking in along with the bowl I had smoked a few hours back; either way it was the same feel- Ting. North Fort Myers is the part of Fort Myers you know is trash the second you stray off the main roads into its neighbor- hoods. You can't drive through without some lifted truck running you off the road as it passes. The entire city represents the stereo- type small town. I guess people genuinely enjoy living this way, and I respect that, but it definitely isn’t for me. I can’t help but think these people aren’t aware of the full scope of the world. It seems they just curl up in North Fort Myers. The police at this point were routinely running to Suncoast, the neighborhood where most of the drugs in the city where produced and sold. The bud that came out of there was decent, but going into Suncoast to get it was not worth it. The people there all carried some form of protection, and shot off whenever they felt like it. Day and night you can hear the distant snaps of guns. I like to as- sume it is practice targets. All I know is once I’m out of here, I’m not coming back. It can’t be like this everywhere. It’s not that I feel above the people I lived next to, I just don’t fit in. That is for the future though; for now, I just needed to work enough to help pay my parents’ rent. Whatever’s left I use for recreational purchases. I get up, get dressed, and into my car. The cheap seat wrap clings to my back as the built-up heat smacks me in the face. I head down Slater Road to the Bayshore light, and into an angular parking spot of the Publix shopping plaza. “Hey Josh how are you doing? Hey would you mind staying a

158 little later today? Kristie called off again saying she was ‘sick’, so I need you to cover her shift,” Eddie, my manager, says to me. “Yeah I guess I could use the money.” “Alright awesome, so you’ll be here until 11:30 P.M. to help front the store after we close?” Eddie asks. Fuck, I have school tomorrow, but desperately needed the money. “Yeah man I got it,” I say. “Oh, and let's make sure we are in complete uniform when we come in ok? You are the face of Publix, the first and last thing peo- ple see when they are here. So make sure we are always smiling and being polite! The customer is never wrong!” Eddie finishes. I look at him for a second and for the first time I see how seri- ously he takes even smallest things, as if his life depends on coloring in between the lines. “Yep,” I say, walking away to clock in. “Yo bro! What’d that bitch midget want?” Darius my co-worker asks me at the clock-in computer. We treated Eddie with a respect we did not really feel. “Same bullshit. ‘I need you to pick up more of other’s slack, and at a shit wage while maintaining the utmost of professionalism’,” I say. “Hehe, just ignore his ass man,” he says. “Wanna bag for my checkout?” “Might as well, I don’t feel like talking,” I say. “What’s wrong?” Darius asks, “Don’t tell me you’re worried about paying your parents’ rent again?” “No it’s more just the stress of keeping up with all the work be- tween school and this place,” I sigh. “I just never seem to get ahead.”

rrr

The worst part about working here is everything is so flat colored and surreal. Like once you walk in, you enter a realm of perfection, but with the right eyes you see the fake behind the perfect Ameri- can grocery nightmare, where according to our motto, “Shopping is a pleasure” but in truth, will strip the leather off your wallet. The

159 sales every week consist of the products you become convinced you need. But there is one on every corner, and even the denizens of North Fort Myers shop there. Just as I finished bagging a couple’s groceries, a man walks up to the line where Darius is cashiering. The man takes one look at him and walks right back around to a line that already has customers. “What the hell was that about?” I ask. “I’ll tell you exactly what the hell that was,” Darius snorts as he pulls on the skin on his arm. “The color of my skin has some of the people who walk in here a little unhappy. You didn’t see that look he gave me?” The man put his groceries on the conveyor belt and waits for his turn. “Honestly no I didn’t catch it, but at the same time I am not used to looking for those things,” I whispered over my shoulder. “Hey Abbey, can you help this couple out on lane ten?” Eddie asks the bagger in the next lane over. “Yeah I’ll take care of it,” Abbey replies, quickly following his orders. “Great and who is supposed to bag for me?” the man asks, look- ing dead at me. “Boy, what are you doing hanging around that nig- ger? You better get your skinny ass over at this register and start packing my groceries,” he demands. Completely shocked by what came out of his mouth, I quietly head over to the registers. Darius looks at me with a face of be- trayal, but then with a bewildered laugh says “The customer is always right!” I give a nervous laugh back. The man has a gallon of milk, two boxes of cereal, paper towels, and laundry detergent. Hardly enough to need a bagger. I bag the two boxes of cereal together and the paper towels along with the laundry detergent. “Boy I asked you a question. What were you doing with that nig- ger?” the man asks me again. “He is my friend, and the only person I feel like speaking to right now,” I reply dismissively. “What the hell you need someone like that for? Boy you and me

160 are gonna take a walk outside and have a conversation,” he says. Hearing this Darius hold up his hands, cups them and yells out “Have fun out there, boy!” “Yes, sir,” I smirk and take up both bags and the gallon of milk. He swipes his card, takes his receipt and we both start to leave. “Don’t mind all the guns I have in the back of my car they are only for protection,” he says. “Yeah I guess you have to have something at all times, right?” I ask a little sarcastically, figuring he must be like all the other people who live around here. We walk a little farther until we reach a faded red ‘93 Plymouth Acclaim. He lifts the trunk and instead of just a pistol, he has an array of assault weapons. Automatics. Semiautomatics. Guns I have only seen on the news. I know I am not safe. I quickly put the bags in his trunk to free my hands for whatever was going to happen next. Stepping back I look at him. His demeanor changes and I wait for him to say something along the lines of “This is what you get for being friends with a nigger” and put a bullet in my chest. “I always carry these on with me! It’s too dangerous out here without them. With all the violence, these niggers are killing each other quicker than we can,” he says conspiratorially. His gaze meets mine, and his toothless grin spreads over his face. He is not joking. This bald man uses these for way more than protection. “Yeah, I think they need me inside,” I mumble and walk away. I turn around to make sure he isn’t pulling anything out. He stares back at me still grinning, then gets in his car and leaves. His license plate reads “01-Klan.”

rrr

“What the hell happened out there bro?” Darius asks when I return to the register. “The guy has a shit load of guns in the back of his car,” I say, “But I got his license plate and gave it to Eddie.” “Damn dude, good call on getting the plate. Too bad that doesn’t help me feel safe,” Darius murmurs.

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About the contributors

Zackary de Armond is a sophomore, majoring in Integrated Stud- ies. He hopes one day to have a recording studio and to continue writing short stories and poems.

Brittny Breier is a junior at FGCU, majoring in Environmental Studies. In her free time, she loves to beach-comb, travel the world, and go thrift shopping. Brittny hopes to one day contribute to the conservation world just as much as Steve Irwin.

Dorothy Brooks’ work appeared in Mangrove Review in 2014, and has also appeared in numerous other literary magazines, including Tampa Review, Atlanta Review, Poet Lore, Louisiana Literature, Broad Riv- er Review, and Chariton Review. Her full-length poetry collection, A Fine Dusting of Brightness, was published in 2013 by Aldrich Press and her newest chapbook, Subsoil Plowing, will be released in late 2018 by Finishing Line Press. Her poem “Hearing Loss” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, 2018.

Hannah Burdge is in the inaugural year of the BA/MA English accelerated program projected to finish her BA in 2019, and her MA in 2020. She is passionate about writing and photography, portray- ing life itself as organic and natural. Upon finishing her formal stud- ies, she wants to go into full-time ministry or teach English abroad.

Erin Cone is a senior, majoring in English at Florida Gulf Coast University. During her free time, Erin enjoys reading and paddle boarding with her German Shepherd, Luke. Erin’s relationship to self love/care is one that runs deep, as she hopes it is a message that will become universally understood and celebrated.

Dr. Edwin Everham III is a Professor of Marine and Ecologi- cal Sciences who loves being a teacher and scientist! His research focuses on how ecosystems change through time, in response to

163 irregular events like hurricanes, fires, invasions of exotic species, and human activity.

Trinia Filer was brought up in a library in north-central Florida. Her upbringing fostered her love for complex, compelling, and en- lightening stories, and she began creating stories at a very young age, often driving her mother crazy by their sheer number. She will soon be graduating from Florida Gulf Coast University with two degrees, one in Psychology and another in Integrated Studies with concen- trations in English, Philosophy, and History. Her work in Mangrove Review is her first publication.

Candace “Candie” Getgen embodies the amalgamation of your favorite childhood candy and a box full of tangerines. She is fre- quently found conversing with the ghost of your great grandmother or sharing a cup of Jasmine tea with the neighborhood cats. Candie sees herself as a friend of the honey bees and hopes that they see her as a friend as well. After graduating college at FGCU with a BA in English, Candie hopes to be able to melt into the moss and return to her home in the great swamplands of Pangea. Of course, she would also appreciate a sweet job in editing or publishing.

Julie Gramazio believes in dreams. As a non-traditional student (read old), she is fueled by passion, determination, and coffee. When not working on understanding literature, or trying to write it, she can be found paddling around the mangroves in her small yellow kayak. She believes that it is never too late to pursue one’s dreams, and she hopes one day to write the next great American novel. Julie is the winner of FGCU’s 2019 Writing Awards in the categories of Creative Non-Fiction and Service Learning.

Wanya Greene ultimately decided to pursue a career focused around writing instead of other career paths that family and friends expected of him because of his accomplishments throughout high school. While a sophomore at Florida Gulf Coast University, he

164 plans on gaining as much experience in various writing positions as possible. He hopes to one day create novels and stories that are not only entertaining but also inspire people to think critically in their daily lives.

Faith Houseworth is a first-year student majoring in English and minoring in Creative Writing. She has received an honorable men- tion for her work from Ringling College of Art and Design’s “Story- tellers of Tomorrow” contest in 2016. She is nineteen years old and is a fourth-generation native from Sarasota, Florida.

Diana Howard is a poet and children’s author who spends her win- ters in Florida and her summers in South Dakota. She is a member of both the South Dakota State Poetry Society and the Gulf Coast Writers Association. Her work has previously been published in Pasque Petals, the journal of the South Dakota State Poetry Society, South Dakota Magazine, and Three Line Poetry.

Scrod Johnson has lived on one or another of any number of is- lands in the Gulf of Mexico for the past thirty years. He continues to do so today with one wife, one daughter, one dog, two cats, some fish, and many roaming creatures of the neighborhood of undeter- mined origin. His work has appeared in: The Alarmist, Apeiron Review, and Johnny America, among others. He is honored to have been one of the featured poets at the Broadsides Poetry event at the Alliance of the Arts in 2014. At times, he teaches at FGCU under an as- sumed name.

Anna Karras is a librarian, rabid knitter, and world traveler, and never misses the Sanibel Island Writer’s Conference. She lives in Naples, FL with her husband and two exasperating cats. Her work has also appeared in Vamp Cat Magazine.

Eugene Kinchen is a journalism major from Broward County, Florida. He started writing poetry at the age of 14, and continues

165 to expand his knowledge and style of poetry. His poetic influences are William Shakespeare, Edger Allen Poe, Langston Hughes and Tupac Shakur.

Erica Terese Krueger was born and raised in Southeast Florida. A 2016 Florida Gulf Coast University graduate, she holds a Bach- elor of Science in Marine Science and a minor in Geology. Erica is currently in her last semester of her Master of Science in Environ- mental Science at FGCU, and works as the Administrative Specialist for the Department of Language and Literature. She has always had a deep appreciation for the ocean, where her love of photography began. Writing is sometimes uncomfortable to her, but as someone near to her heart explains, “Erica is the best writer educated in sci- ence.” She is a self-proclaimed coffee addict and has a slight touch of OCD.

Rogeena Lynch is an international student from Montego Bay, Jamaica. Her piece, "South By South" was written almost four (4) years ago in her Composition I class when she decided to share her struggles with homesickness and cultural displacement during her first semester at the university. Since then, Rogeena has grown immensely and adapted to life in college and in a different country. However, she still hopes that her piece "South by South", will con- tinue to resonate with anyone who has the chance to read it.

Mark Massaro received his Master’s Degree in English Literature from Florida Gulf Coast University with a focus on 20th Century American Literature. He is an English Instructor at two universities. When not reading or writing, he can be found in his black Chucks at a bonfire in his home state of Massachusetts, talking with friends and listening to classic rock. His creative works have been published in Literary Juice Magazine, The Pegasus Review, and the Mangrove Review. His happiness is next to his wife, with their son in his arms, and their golden retriever curled up nearby.

166 Hidy Matthew is currently a student at Florida Gulf Coast Uni- versity. She is pursuing a degree in Public Health, focusing on either Epidemiology or healthcare administration. After graduating, she plans on going back to school to also receive a degree in Ultraso- nography. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, listening to music, and playing the piano.

Marilyn Mecca worked for an international airline for over 30 years and had the good fortune of traveling the world. Now retired, she has the time to turn years of memories into poetry and the op- portunity to be an Arts Volunteer at the Alliance for the Arts, the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, and Golisano’s Children’s Hospital.

When Kayvon “Harry” Mehri isn’t scribbling his emotions into words, he enjoys reading, sketching, sculpting, and spending time in nature. Sharing his love for poetry is his adoration for the environ- ment, and sustainable agriculture and development. Upon graduat- ing, he will be relocating to Maine to gain experience in organic farming, and inspiration from nature for his future works.

Clay Motley is the Director of the Honors College and Associ- ate Professor of English at FGCU. His primary area of research is American popular music, including blues, early Rock ’n Roll, and country. The featured photograph was taken in Lima, Peru, dur- ing an Honors College study abroad program that Motley co-led in summer 2018.

Jessica Murphy is a freshman at FGCU majoring in communica- tions. Writing is one of her biggest passions, and she is excited to share her work with others. Music is also something she values along with reading and writing.

Binh Nguyen is a sophomore at FGCU, majoring in Health Sci- ence with a minor in Chemistry. She loves to play the guitar, create digital art, and write in her free time. Her passion for writing did not

167 begin until freshman year of college. However, the poems and short stories she now writes allow her to express herself creatively and relax when life gets a little too busy.

Dana Peteroy is currently a senior at FGCU and is an English major with Education and Creative Writing minors. After straying from the pen for several years, she aims to stick to her younger self’s goal of practicing the art of writing by becoming a Creative Writ- ing minor. Once she graduates in August 2019, Dana will begin her first step in her graduate studies in the English Masters Program at FGCU. Dana works at the FGCU Writing Center as a Writing Con- sultant and plans to one day be a high school English teacher, a col- lege professor, an editor, or (the ultimate dream) a full-time author.

Nicholas Ranson built this poem from a walk around one of the Shaker Lakes in Cleveland, Ohio. A former RAF reconnaissance pilot from the 1960s, and a co-founder of Bits Press in the 1970s, he is working again at the poetry mill after long silence.

Naudia Reeves is a junior at FGCU, majoring in English and mi- noring in Creative Writing. She loves experiencing the world through writing, music, and art, and plans to continue creating for the rest of her life. Naudia is grateful for the endless inspiration and love sup- plied by her friends and family.

Brooke Reilly is a sophomore at FGCU who is majoring in Exer- cise Science. When she isn’t studying for her anatomy class she can be found watching The Office or taking hikes through the Six Mile Cypress Preserve. She also enjoys painting and drawing in her free time and loves visiting her family in New Jersey whenever she can.

Savana Scarborough, an eighth-generation Florida native, gradu- ated cum laude from Florida Gulf Coast University in fall 2018. She majored in English and minored in creative writing. Her favorite authors include William Faulkner, Dean Koontz, Karen Russell, and

168 Patrick D. Smith. Her favorite subjects to write about are the Skunk Ape and the Everglades.

Thomas L. Small’s credentials include fiction published in Passages North, the literary magazine of Northern Michigan University, The Cooweescoowee, and the literary magazine of Rogers State University, among others. His creative non-fiction has been published in Amo- skeag. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers-Newark in 2011 where he studied with Jayne Anne Phillips and Tayari Jones. Additionally, he has twice been accepted at the Yale Writers Confer- ence and most recently attended the Sanibel Island Writers Confer- ence in early November 2018. He is presently working on a collec- tion of short stories.

Jan Tramontano is a poet and fiction writer. She’s published two novels, What Love Becomes and Standing on the Corner of Lost and Found, three poetry chapbooks, Woman Sitting in a Café and other poems of Paris, Floating Islands: New and Collected Poems, and Paternal Nocturne and her poetry collective’s Java Wednesdays. Her work appears in many literary journals. A longtime New Yorker, she now happily calls Naples home.

Sydney Van Dreason is a senior majoring in English with a minor in Creative Writing. After graduating college, she hopes to become a published author as well as a show writer for Disney. She mainly writes short stories and flash fiction, and she has published poetry in both The America Library of Poetry’s collection in 2016 and in FG- CU’s Mangrove Review in 2018. Currently, she is working on a short story collection of modern fairy tales. She can always be found with a notebook, pen, novel, and a secret stash of candy canes.

Eduardo “Eddy” J. Vazquez is a senior at FGCU and will be graduating next year with a Bachelor’s degree in English. He began writing at sixteen years old just to see if it was something that would catch on and is happy to say that it did. Writing is the only medium

169 that allows him to communicate the things that spoken word does not. Eddy is currently working on two novels, one of which is a col- lection of short poems and prose, while the other book is a work of fiction.

Kerry Wallerius was raised in Jacksonville, Florida most of her life before leaving her nest to join the Eagle’s nest, here at FGCU. She is currently studying psychology, hoping to one day to work with dogs in animal-assisted therapy or service training. Kerry is motivated by making opportunities for herself and gaining experi- ence by immersing herself outside her comfort zone — just last semester she studied in New Zealand! She hopes to inspire others through kindness, empathy, and an open mind.

Arianna Webster is a nursing major at FGCU hoping to minor in art. Octopi are her favorite animal and she loves to paint and draw. Two of the paintings published in this journal are part of a larger series on octopi.

Caylee Weintraub, a junior at FGCU, lives in Bokeelia, Florida. Her work has been recognized by Johns Hopkin’s University, Se- wanee: University of the South, Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, Polyphony Lit, and Imagine. She is an alumna of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio.

Sharon Whitehill is a retired English professor from Michigan now living and writing in Port Charlotte, Florida. Among other pub- lications (two biographies, two memoirs, and miscellaneous poems) her recent achievements include two chapbooks: The Umbilical Uni- verse (Cosmographia Books, 2018) and Inside Out to the World (Fin- ishing Line Press, 2019). Another unpublished chapbook, Michigan Turns, was a semi-finalist in the 2018 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest. Of the two poems for the Mangrove Review, Dr. Whitehill notes a shared theme: memories of two particular houses.

170 Sierra Williams is an English major and senior at FGCU who adores good stories. She usually reads and writes fiction and loves playing with words to bring the characters she envisions to life. Sierra is a student leader in Chi Alpha Campus Ministries. When she is not working with Chi Alpha or writing, she can be spotted either curling up with a favorite book, practicing archery, or belting out show tunes.

Megan Willis is a sophomore at FGCU currently working on her English degree, who loves to read and write fantasy. Although she tries to stay away from real life as best she can, her writing takes on the topic of chronic disease. In her spare time, she enjoys listening to music, playing with her kitten, and volunteering at the local Ron- ald McDonald houses.

Joan Heller Winokur graduated from Connecticut College as an art major and has been involved in the arts throughout her life. She discovered the joy of writing poetry in her mature years. Her poems have been published in numerous literary journals. In 2014, her book The Sand Recognizes My Footprints was published by Aldrich Press.

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