works its way around my mouth, like marbles I’m trying to keep from my throat with my tongue. If I swallowed one would I shit it out, see a shiny glass eye looking up at me from the toilet? I search for grief support groups, meditation grief groups, books about grief, I sleep most of the day, all night, I dream that my mother isn’t dead, she’s clawed her way through mud that’s been piled on top of her in a makeshift burial; she re-appears, pieces of dirt and grass in her silver hair. “Wow, Wow,” were her last words, said with wonder, then the health aide injected another dose of morphine into her open mouth. In those fleeting moments of consciousness, I changed her diaper, told her my dead father was home waiting for her, convinced her that one day we’d sit together on a bench in Seward Park next to our imaginary apartment in Lower Manhattan after having lunch at our favorite French bistro, picking up cappuccinos at the corner café, watching the Chinese ladies play Mahjong, the kids climb on the metal jungle gym, listening to the dogs bark at each other on the basketball court. And yes, now I remember! I shared this vision as her breath slowed; she said wow, wow because for a few glorious moments we both believed it was true. 

                                                                      *   *   *

 

A Memoir by Rebecca Tiger

Rebecca Tiger teaches sociology at a college and in jails in Vermont. She’s written academic books and articles about drug policy, addiction and celebrity. Her stories have appeared in Bending Genres, BULL, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Emerge Literary, Peatsmoke, Roi Fainéant and Tiny Molecules, among others. 

A Memoir by Tim Clancy

In 1964, when I was ten years old, my parents gave me fifty cents a week for doing the dishes or cleaning a bathroom. Knowing that she could trust me to do it right, my mom would sometimes pay me a dollar or two for an especially arduous several-hour cleaning job, like washing all the walls in the house or scrubbing all the scuff marks off the basement floor. If I wanted anything more than that, I’d recruit a friend, and we’d go to the houses of older folks in the neighborhood, folks who didn’t have kids, and just get right to the point: Got any work for us? We can pull weeds, rake, shovel snow, clean your garage. If it meant hours of scraping paint on a hot summer day or chipping away at an ice covered driveway on a bitter cold day in winter, the lure of a payoff in dollars—or just one dollar—was, for me, at the age of ten, irresistible. 

But so was spending it. That same year, I rode my bicycle to Kresge’s, a “dime store” in Berkley, the next town over, and, with just three dollars, I bought Christmas presents for my entire family, which, at the time, consisted of two parents and six siblings. These gifts were mostly small, plastic, and soon lost or broken; nonetheless, it was thrilling to buy a little something for each person in my family: key chain, spool of thread, squirt gun, pair of dice, miniature baby doll, tiny bar of soap.

My mom’s mother—Margaret Bailey—lived in Berkley. We called her “Grammy.” The summer following my Christmas shopping spree at Kresge’s, I rode my bicycle to her house on Cumberland Street. She knew I was trying to earn some money and had promised to “put me to work.” I was happy to oblige. 

It was a still, humid day in late August. Grammy’s yard smelled of fermenting apples that had fallen from a huge old tree that shaded the deep green of her small backyard. Using a butter knife as a digging tool, I spent the afternoon swatting mosquitos and pulling tightly packed tufts of grass and dandelions from between the bricks that formed a path between Grammy’s house and her garage. After a few hours, my face and arms itching and my hands raw from clutching and digging with the butter knife, Grammy invited me in for lunch. 

In her tiny green kitchen, she served me a baloney sandwich with a pickle, a few potato chips, and some iced lemonade. Since I almost always had several siblings or a friend to eat with, it felt strange, but certainly special, to be eating in the company of just one other person, my grandmother, something that had never happened before—or since.

The underside of the gray formica-topped island where we ate our lunch was covered with hard little lumps of dried chewing gum, probably stuck there by the youngest of my mother’s siblings, Patty Jo, who, at the time, still lived with Grammy in the house on Cumberland Street. Chewing gum was not allowed at my house (“It rots your teeth!”) so whenever we visited, I’d sneak a chunk loose, slip it into my pocket and, later, in the privacy of my wanderings, chew it back to life, with gusto. 

After lunch, I went back out in the yard and resumed my work until all of Grammy’s brick walkway was clearly visible: an interlocking pattern of hard brown rectangles, connecting house to garage. I walked back and forth on it a few times, admiring its simple, sturdy construction and the way it seemed to glow in the shady yard. 

Grammy fished two dollars from her purse, handed it to me and said “I wish it could be more.” 

I believed her. 

                                                           *   *   *

Tim Clancy is a retired English teacher. He lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a short walk from Lake Superior. Among others, his writing has appeared in Paul Auster’s anthology “I Thought My Father was God,” The MacGuffin, and Catamaran.

By Ann Kammerer

Some Saturdays I’d get restless after working all week for salespeople who never invited me to happy hour.

When the sun set, I’d load my backpack with beer and cigarettes, lace up my boots, and bundle up in a corduroy coat and black knit hat. I’d skirt down the alley to a dingy park, sit atop a splintery picnic table beneath a clouded moon, and listen to the tangle of rusted swings.

One Saturday, music pulsed from a rental house high on a hill. Lured by bright windows mirrored with silhouettes, I made my way up a set of worn stone steps.

“Who are you?” A blonde guy in a polo shirt and khakis blocked me at the door, flanked by two identical guys.

“I’m Linda,” I lied. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Like who?” he said.

“Yeah, like who?” the second said.

The third simply stared.

I didn’t answer and nudged past, the three guys muscling, grabbing my backpack.

“Hey.” A guy in flannel with dark wild hair broke through the swarm. “Leave her alone.

She’s with me.”

The three guys laughed. One pushed me toward him.

“Take her,” he said. “She stinks anyways.”

The guy in flannel took my hand.

“Let’s go.” He pulled me through a mob of people to grab a plate of snacks, then led me up a staircase to a room at the end of the hall.

“This is a lot better,” he said. “All those people are jerks.”

He swung the door open and set the chips, pretzels, and cheese on the empty plank floor. The plaster walls were bare except for a world map and a wrinkled poster of Che Guevara.

“Wanna beer?” The guy fished two Dos Equis from a Styrofoam cooler then sat down on a mattress strewn with worn paperbacks by Pablo Neruda, a Spanish phrase book, and a spiral notebook filled with scribbles. 

“You can sit,” he said. “I’m not like them. I won’t touch you unless you want me to.”

I peeled off my backpack, then my coat, and lowered myself next to him.

“Thanks,” I said. “I mean, for saying you knew me.”

He leaned back, the top of his head brushing the world map, his face unshaven, his eyes speckled and hazel.

“Sure,” he said. “You looked like someone I might know.” 

We shared the chips, then pretzels, not talking. He popped cheese in his mouth, then pressed a small piece to my lips.

“I bet you name’s not really Linda.” He licked his fingers and leaned in. “I’ll tell you my name if you tell me yours.”

He took off my hat and smoothed my hair, asking if it was OK. 

“Sure.” I said. 

He slipped off his shoes then mine.

Pressing together, we stretched the length of the mattress. We lit cigarettes and reclined on our backs, a blanket pulled to our chins, our heads propped on folded over pillows.

“I’m leaving soon,” he said. “On a motorcycle. To Mexico, maybe to Panama or wherever.” 

He blew smoke rings, his jaw clicking.

“It’s good we met, I guess,” he said. “Too bad we hadn’t sooner.” 

                                                      *   *   *

Ann Kammerer lives in Oak Park, Illinois, having relocated from her home state of Michigan. Her work has appeared in Fictive Dream, One Art: A Journal of Poetry, Open Arts Forum, Thoughtful Dog, The Ekphrastic Review, and anthologies by Crow Woods Publishing and Querencia Press. She has received top honors and made the short list in several writing contests. Her debut chapbook of narrative poetry “Yesterday’s Playlist” was published by Bottlecap Press, with the collection “Beaut” forthcoming from Kelsay Books.

By Sarah Rose George

Connie was almost certain that her boyfriend had just asked her a question, but she was too busy wondering if she was the only sick-fuck in the room. 

I mean, really– what were they doing here? Really doing here? How many more game nights would they have with Francine and Dean until someone finally suggested an orgy? Or swinging? There was no other reason why Dean would look her in the eyes like that when they talked, Thomas and Francine yammering on in their own little world across the table from one another, an unfinished game splayed out on the dinner table, ignored.

There was only one real way to know for sure: someone would have to make the first move. It wouldn’t– could never– be Connie. God knows she had been mistaken about what she thought were sure bets before. But it was killing her. She felt totally insane, throbbing with unmet needs. 

“Babe,” Thomas said, nudging Connie with his elbow. “It’s our turn!” 

“I know,” Connie lied. “I’m just thinking.” 

“She’s strategizing,” Dean said, raising his thick eyebrows. 

She had been with Thomas exclusively for more than three years now, and already she was wondering if their romance had died. Were they really meant to go on like this? Both of them pretending that the other could give them everything they could ever want or need? She didn’t really want sex anymore– he always initiated. It wasn’t that she wasn’t attracted to Thomas, she was. Is. But there was just something missing. That drive. That desire. But isn’t that what everyone always tells everyone else? That sex dies when you get married? But they weren’t even married! 

Connie picked up her blue piece and moved it three spaces. 

“Interesting choice,” Dean said. 

Connie just shrugged, trying to stop herself from staring but staring anyway at Dean while he considered his move, his brows narrowed toward the board in far too much contemplation for this stupid game. 

When she had first met Dean, Connie had thought he was attractive, and she swore that he thought the same thing about her. Every game night onward, her fantasies congealed. She could picture it so clearly in her head, as if remembering a movie she had seen. It went like this:  

She and Thomas got up to leave. Francine and Dean hugged them goodbye at the doorway. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you so much for coming. Dean hugging her, still hugging her, now a couple of seconds too long. That night, with Thomas snoring next to her, Connie’s phone, face up, would buzz, a nuclear bomb of light through the blue darkness, and she would snatch it to her chest as quickly as she could. A text. From Dean. Not in the groupchat with the four of them. Just to her. Maybe we should hang out just the two of us sometime. And then they would. And then they would start sleeping together. Thomas and Francine didn’t need to know. It was just sex, after all. Just something they needed to sustain their relationships that really mattered to them. 

She should just say it. Chicken shit, just say it. You can laugh it off as a joke! Just–

“Connie,” Francine said, a smile on her lips that looked threatening and then coy and then… “It’s your move.”                                                                   

                                                                  *   *   *

Sarah Rose George graduated from Bard College with a BA in creative writing. She currently lives in New York City and works in book publishing as a production editor and freelance proofreader. 

A Memoir by David Riessen

Tomorrow is the funeral. It has been five days since our beautiful, 24-year-old son Sam suddenly died. When he was first born, we, like all parents, counted his lifespan in days. Then weeks, then months, and finally years. I wonder if death is like that. Will I say Sam has been dead for seven weeks? How about, Sam has been dead for 15 months? Twenty years? Somehow it feels like he has been dead forever. Are we dead before we are born? Or does that not count? Is there a difference between before birth and after death? 

Before Sam died, life was full of the usual complement of half-truths, well-intentioned untruths, and harmless lies. After Sam died, there is none of that. None. If I have a disagreement with someone, we resolve it with simple honesty. “I’m sorry that you feel that way. I love you – we can figure this out.” Or something like that. Although these are the worst days of my life, they are also the most real and beautiful. We have no time for trivia and no energy for social niceties. Nothing but grief, love, honesty, tears, laughter, more grief, and more love. It is the fullness of life, and it is going to last forever. 

 My mom, oldest brother Howard, and a few other relations arrive at about 6:00 p.m. It is the first time I have seen any of my non-nuclear family since Sam died. I meet them at the door with hugs, but no tears. No tears? Why am I not crying? (Or as three-year-old Sam would have said, “Why amn’t I crying?”) And why is my family not crying? (Or as older Sam would have said, “Why are they so fucked up, Dad?”)

Indian food has magically appeared on the dining room table, and so my family and I sit down. Debi and the ten or so others who are in our small, old, lovely house have retreated out of sight. Who can blame them?

“Wow, look at all this food!”

“Is this Oriental food?”

“It’s Indian, Mom.”

“You can’t say Oriental anymore, Aunt Norma.”

“Well, whatever it’s called, it looks delicious.”

“Where did it come from?” someone asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “A restaurant.”

“Are there a lot of Indian restaurants in Larchmont?”

“Is this tandoori shrimp? I don’t think I’ve ever had tandoori shrimp. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as tandoori shrimp.”

“It looks delicious.”

“It is delicious.”

“Who’s going to eat all this? I’ve never seen so much Indian food in all my life.”

“What’s this dish?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“I think it’s chicken masala.”

“No, it’s lamb masala.”

“Lamb? Are you nuts?”

“David, is this chicken masala or lamb masala?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Have some rice. Who is going to eat all this food?”

“Who wants some more chicken?”

“It’s lamb.” 

“Maybe it’s Vindaloo.” 

 And on and on it goes. All this stupid food talk is spoiling my loss of appetite. I have barely eaten in the last five days. Loved ones have put food in front of me from time to time, but I can’t remember eating, and I am certainly not eating now. 

“Howie, when are your kids getting here?” I ask.

“Emily is flying in tomorrow morning.”

“What about Martin?”

“Oh, Martin isn’t coming.”

“What? What do you mean he isn’t coming?”

“He couldn’t make it.”

“He couldn’t make it? Why not?”

“I don’t know. That’s what he said.”

At this point, there is a short, awkward silence, which is quickly filled by the sounds of eating and what I assume is more nonsense about the food. I’m not sure what is being said because I’m still trying to process my interaction with my brother. Martin is Howard’s 33-year-old son. We are not a close family and only get together for major life events. Bottom line: Martin and Sam have almost no relationship. Still, they are first cousins, and I thought that would have counted for something. “He couldn’t make it” means he couldn’t be bothered to take the 78-minute flight from Buffalo. And apparently, my brother couldn’t be bothered to discuss the well-known Rules of Mandatory Funeral Attendance with his son. My brain finally clears, but for the first time in five days, I am unable to say what’s on my mind. All I can do is listen to the narishkeit.  

“Ooh, Naan. I love Naan.”

“I think that’s Paratha.”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s so good. This might be the best Oriental food I’ve ever had.”

“You should say, Asian, Aunt Norma.”

“Well, then it’s the best Asian food I’ve ever had.”

“It’s Indian, not Asian.”

“India is in Asia. David, isn’t India in Asia?” 

And suddenly, I can’t take it anymore. Do I yell at my brother? Spill my guts? Cry? No. I want to be honest, but I can’t. Instead, I tell a story. 

“Did I ever tell you about the time I got caught shoplifting?”

 All eyes are immediately on me. Everyone is now full of chicken (or lamb?) masala, but hungry for a story. Any story. A little entertainment.

  “It was July 1975: the summer between high school and college. I walk around the parking lot until I find a plastic shopping bag with the Two Guys Department Store name and logo printed on it.” 

“Two Guys?” my mom interrupts. “Two Guys has been out of business for years.”

“Mom, please. Just listen for a minute.” I want to say, “Do you think you can do that? Listen for a minute? I know I’m asking a lot, but maybe for once in your life you could just –”

But I don’t say that. That would be horrible. And I’m not horrible. I’m good. I’m a good boy. So I tell the story. And they love it. And I love telling it. Lots of laughs. I love nothing more than lots of laughs. We are all having a great time.

And then this sick feeling expands in my chest. This heavy, oppressive pressure that threatens to crush me from the inside out. I can’t do this anymore. Without another word, I move away from the table and find Leah, who helps me escape upstairs. When I come down some time later, those strange people with whom I share DNA are gone.

I sit down at the dining room table with my chosen family, and we eat the leftover food, which I’m pretty sure is chicken masala and naan. Intimacy and love abound. India is definitely in Asia. And I can breathe again.

David Riessen has been writing plays, screenplays, novels, and TV scripts on and off since he was a teenager. In the wake of his son’s sudden death, he has focused on creative nonfiction, which seems to suit his new reality. Two of these stories are featured or forthcoming: one in Defenestration and the other in Moon Park Review. David lives in Larchmont, New York with his wife Debi and dog Raven. DavidRiessen71@gmail.com

By Barbara Kivowitz

As her birthday approached, she became smaller. Her body deflated and her thinking became more chiseled. Mostly nouns and verbs, no context or flowers. We sat at the window table in the fancy tea salon – sparkling white linen tablecloth, sparkling spoons and forks, sparkling array of obsidian and sapphire and emerald cakes and twisted golden marzipan sculptures on a slowly rotating tiered carousel.  She sunk down in her seat so her eye level met the 3rd button of my shirt.  I asked her, “So how does it feel to turn 90?” Her face slowly melted into a wet porridge of sneer and desperation. She mumbled, “How do you think?” I leaned forward and considered touching her arm but instead grabbed a pig shaped marzipan cookie. I chewed slowly, letting the sugar dominate. She reached for a golden eclair encased in a veneer of chocolate lacquer. She pulled her hand back before her spindly fingers made contact. She replaced her hand in her lap. Her other hand lifted the sparkling linen napkin from her lap and began to gently wipe the corners of her mouth as if she were brushing away the crumbs of the uneaten eclair. Each gentle dab of the napkin removed a particle of her red lipstick until her lips contracted to the size of a tiny pillow.

                                                                     *   *   *

Barbara Kivowitz started writing when she developed a chronic pain condition and discovered that journaling was the only time she felt no pain. She is largely recovered from the pain and is still writing. She and her coauthor wrote “Love in the Time of Chronic Illness: How to Fight the Sickness Not Each Other,” a guide for patient/caregiver partners. She has published essays, creative nonfiction, and prose poems in journals and popular magazines. She is a retired comparative literature teacher (and speaks five languages), social worker, innovation researcher, strategy consultant, and is currently an advocate for bringing the voices of patients and families into all aspects of healthcare policy, education, and practice. She lives with her husband in San Francisco and in the Sierra Foothills where she hikes, swims, and keeps an eye out for mountain lions.

By Tom Gartner

Alma hated shrink-wrap. It made her think of suffocation, of all the warnings she’d ever read on plastic bags, of all the horror movies she’d seen where the eyes of B actors went hazy as they struggled for breath. She would dream, sometimes, that she was drowning, gazing up through twenty feet of translucent jade at the unreachable air. She would wake to find that she’d been pressing her pillow to her face.

As her breath came back, as she puckered her lips to force air out of her lungs so more could come in, she would flee her bed. But in the kitchen, the gleaming clarity of the knives hanging on the wall would bring on images of mutilation, of evisceration.

In the bathroom, the steady concussion of water drops on porcelain swelled in her imagination to a Niagara-like roar that slowly rose until it threatened to close over her head. In the living room, the picture window seemed to summon her out into the darkness, where a void opened below the narrow deck.

For a time, Alma found comfort only in the coat closet, with all her coats and sweaters torn from their hangers and wrapped around her like a protective cocoon. If she heard a whisper in the fabric’s rustling that she could strangle on a sleeve, it was only a whisper.

But her scars had healed and faded, so much so that she was sometimes surprised to find the small dark patches of faded tissue on her torso. The seizures had stopped entirely, and her vision had cleared. She tried to be grateful: it was a gift of sorts, she knew, that imaginary fears had taken the place of real ones.

She could see now that a process had started, that if she gave herself to it those fears would drop away too. Her strength would come back, her will would harden, and the people who’d made her suffer would taste fear themselves. Those fears would be real enough, and she would make sure they came true.

*   *   *

Tom Gartner’s fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals, including The Madison Review, California Quarterly, Kestrel, and Twelve Winters. Other work is forthcoming in Third Coast. One story was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives just north of the Golden Gate and works as a buyer for an independent bookstore in San Francisco.

By Susan Golden

Oh, I wasn’t typical. The ordinary measures of success – big house, big car, big bank account – weren’t very accurate indicators for me. What I was sleeping on revealed so much more about who I was and where I was going.

Childhood: Sporting its rightful position as the centerpiece of a young girl’s room, my bed was a white, French provincial version, embellished with gold-color accents and a pink ruffled bedspread and canopy. I dreamed that the bed could fly me to school, soaring down the street, somehow navigating the school’s narrow hallways, and finding space to land in my first-grade classroom. That magical bed could cast an enviable brilliance upon an otherwise ordinary child.

College: The convenience of dorm life came without a choice of furniture. The standard-issue twin bed was a satisfactory support for a study-weary body late at night, a reminder of that point in life when a bed’s functionality, rather than its style, was its primary purpose. But its small dimensions posed a challenge with two overnight occupants, as one person’s face usually ended up pressed against the cold, grey, cinderblock walls.

Graduate school: True furniture acquisition began, including a queen-size futon on a sleek, pale wood frame. It was very trendy, but the comforting squishiness of an innerspring mattress was sadly replaced by a deadening “thud” against the solid cotton batting as I lay down each night. And its delivery took a yeoman’s effort to haul it up the stairs of a fifth-floor walk-up.

Early career: With my young social life focused on going out rather than entertaining in, splashy interior design was not yet a priority. Moreover, my frequent relocation encouraged practicality and, in some instances, frugality, like the simplicity of a mattress lying directly on the floor. Its mere eight-inch height made it challenging to get up in the pre-dawn hours, but it was cheap, and the ability to dispose of it rather than move-and-reuse substantially reduced the transit expense.

Home ownership (beginning): The purchase of my first house was duly accompanied by the purchase of a brand-new bedroom set (arguably Step 3 in the home buying process). It was early in my “living large” years, and my bed of choice was a majestic, cherry wood model with four posts that stretched almost all the way to the ceiling. Grandly dressed in black linens with dramatic floral accents, piled high with oversized pillows, it was my first iteration of a bed that was eye-catching and obviously expensive. I had “arrived”, at least in terms of sleeping accommodations.

Home ownership (continued): I purchased a huge house which included a huge master bedroom to which I added a huge sleigh bed. Its dark wood curled voluptuously at its head and foot, screaming decadence and wealth (or perhaps just a high credit line). It would elicit “wow” when it was time to sell the house later on. And I owned it now, proudly.

Career climb: Those years were adorned by the (initial) glamour of near-constant travel and an expensive rollerboard case. Sleep often took place at 36,000 feet in the cradled comfort of a fully-reclined business class seat and in the sumptuous bedding of high-end hotels. I even acquired several fluffy, king-size pillows from a major hotel chain. My own bed then oozed with luxury.

Mid-career: The materialistic bragging rights morphed into embarrassment when relocation – just across town – required an overstuffed, 53-foot trailer truck. I yearned for simplicity again. While in a temporary apartment between houses, I was comforted by the absence of true furniture. No actual bed, just a soft, lime-green fleece blanket, lined with a sheet, that I unrolled each evening across the floor and rolled up each morning for space conservation. Despite my age and net worth, maximal was replaced by minimal, and I was happier.

Mid-life: Deep in a swirl of life events, and in the midst of yet another move, I spontaneously gave away the yacht-sized sleigh bed to one of the moving guys. I was relieved as it was hefted into the back of a pickup truck, spewing over the edges and corralled by yellow ropes. Good riddance. I moved into the little condo and shopped for a twin-size mattress, no frame. It would be perfect for a snail-like curling up, a withdrawal from chaos for a few hours of attempted sleep each evening. But the bed salesman suggested a queen-size instead. “Room for two, just in case”, he said coyly. Surprisingly optimistic in that moment, I agreed to the purchase of the larger size. A partner did join my life a short while later. The adult-size bed was already in place, thanks to the salesman with forethought.

Pre-departure: I spend most of my days in my current bed as illness overtakes me. The bed’s high arches of richly grained wood form a headboard that resembles outspread wings. Its symbolism of flight is very comforting. My body is heavy, my head woozy, as life slips away from me. Yet, as I sink deeper into the plush mattress and billowy covers, I imagine the headboard’s wings wrapping around me and lifting me up, freeing me.

Deep in the night’s darkness, my clock projects the time across the way, high up on the wall, like a glowing red scoreboard. As the daylight rises, the clock’s numbers fade on the wall. Time is leaving me. The wings of my current bed and the memories of my childhood canopy bed come full circle. As I approach my last breath, I believe that my bed can fly after all. Or at least that I can.

                                                   *   *   *

Susan Golden writes fiction and non-fiction. Her work appeared in Harmony Magazine, a medical humanities journal. She has lived on both US coasts and flown over two million miles. Her writing is inspired by her longhaired mini dachshund, who tackled every obstacle with zeal.

By Erin Jamieson

The seals bask in buttery sun, stretching their bulbous bodies. Even a hundred feet away, I catch a glimpse of sharp, yellowed teeth- a stark contrast to their fine whiskers and beady eyes. 

I inch closer, barefoot, my shoulders chilled from a gust of salty wind. The sound of waves crashing against the beach is a sound that has haunted my dreams this past year, an incessant rhythm that invades every moment I breathe. It is the sound of everything and nothing, of my childhood and now, my desolate 30’s. 

What these seals don’t realize is that this has nothing to do with invading their space. If I had a choice, my body would take up no space at all. 

This is about stepping into the forbidden, about hearing the ocean in a way I never have before, about the tide inhabiting my body rather than my mind. 

My first memory of Half Moss Beach is with my father. 

We moved to Half Moon Bay when I was ten, my father gripping the steering wheel as we drove on tortuous California roads. We came for his job- but mostly to get away from the memory of my mother. Because no matter how much paint he coated her room with or how much of her clothing and furniture of hers he sold, the rooms always smelled like her, always echoed with the memory of her laughter. 

After we unpacked in our cramped apartment, my father took me to the beach. I sprinted to the ocean, despite the crisp air, ready to feel the warmth of the waves, like that final trip we took to Hilton Head Island.

My father warned me. But of course I didn’t hear. How could I, with the hypnotic sound of the waves, a sound that alone could drown out the memory of my dead mother’s voice.

When the first wave hit my chest, I gasped in shock, the cold numbing me in a way few things ever had. I lost my balance as a second cold wave towered over me. 

The next thing I knew, my father was pulling me to the surface, shaking his head. “I told you, Elenita.”

He hugged me, and gave me a broken seashell the color of a robin’s egg. 

That should have made me wary of the ocean.

Within a year, I bought a wetsuit from my earnings I saved, doing yard work in a ritzy area blocks away from our apartment. 

Within two years, I was surfing regularly, disappearing for hours at a time. I had no mother, no true friends, and an ever distant father- but the ocean was always there. Waiting for me, embracing me into a world of tides coming and going, where life on land seemed to matter so little. 

Drifting out of a relationship is painful.

Losing touch with a best friend is more so.

But losing your second parent is a pain that doesn’t have a name. It’s the pain of pressure building without release. It’s a pain that has a pattern, just an endless presence. 

After I learned about my father’s death, I returned here, to my childhood home. Partially because I had to clear out the same apartment we moved to, two decades earlier. 

Mostly because, across the country, in rural Ohio, I kept waking to the sound of waves crashing.

But now the apartment is empty and I have no one left to call, no one left who will see if I’m doing alright, no one left to miss me.

I am 33, single, childless, no siblings, no parents- only a distant aunt who sometimes sends me a belated birthday card in July instead of April.  Who thinks I still work for a newspaper that shut down a year ago, when, really, I’m serving peanut butter chip waffles to happily retired couples. 

The seals, even, have each other.

Everything makes sense here: the sloped dirt paths that lead to the beach, the blanched almond sand, the predictable pack of surfers who haven’t lost their way. 

Except me.

I tip toe closer to the seals, to the forbidden corners, closer to the tide or the sharp, yellow teeth- whichever comes first. 

But there must be no mother seal here, and they slink away, glancing back with their beady eyes, their movements slow and careful. They do not realize I’m more of a risk to myself than I am to them, that I admire them in ways I have never been able to admire myself.

But The tide is here, as it has always been here for me, for over two decades, even if I thought I could escape it, construct a life separate from my past. I dip a toe in, and the cold numbs me, just as I hoped it would. I wade in, until the ocean laps at my waist, my jeans becoming heavier and heavier as I explore further. 

I close my eyes, and, by instinct- take a deep breath before I go completely under.

A cold, dark world where nothing and everything makes sense, where I can hear everything and nothing at all, a tide pulsing against my heavy body, but just as my head becomes light and it’s becoming more and more painful, something pulls me up, up to the surface, just as my father did that day over two decades ago.

I gasp, my lungs burning, my nostrils filled with salty ocean water, my eyes focused on the hazy gray skies above me.

No one is around. 

I will myself to go back under, to end all of this, but a strong wave pushes me back to shore, where I collapse, exhausting, gasping, spitting out water.

I stand shakily, my foot brushing against a broken shell, a shell the same color of a robin’s egg, the same color of the shell my father gave me when he saved me all those years before.

*   *   *

Erin Jamieson (she/her) holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University. Her writing has been published in over eighty literary magazines, including two Pushcart Prize nominations. Her poetry chapbook, Fairytales, was published by Bottlecap Press and her most recent chapbook, Remnants, came out in 2024. . Her debut novel (Sky of Ashes, Land of Dreams) came out November 2023. She resides in Loveland, Ohio. Twitter: @erin_simmer