Creative Nonfiction by Carol E. Anderson 

Mike was a man-boy with scraggly brown hair that twisted into loops around his collar and a feathered mustache that trailed over his top lip like a walrus; horn-rimmed glasses always perched on the end of his nose; not a handsome man, but he had a certain charm; I’d met him teaching at a vocational center and lunched with him and others a few times but nothing outside of work, so it caught me unawares when he called one night and asked to come over for a drink—his wife was out of town, my mother was over—he brought wine for us and an iced coffee for her, then he called again—it was a sunny day, tulips bursting in red, yellow and fuchsia, smells of lilacs twirling in the wind, “wanna go for a ride”—in his big blue truck out to Kensington Park where the lake shimmered and small sailboats skimmed the water and the sky was so blue—and then he asked me out again–after class—his arm sliding around my shoulder on the bench seat, his eyes glancing in my direction as he drove, his fingers at my shoulder nudging me closer; the smell of English Leather permeating my senses; unhappy in his marriage—I was his confidant, a willing listener, so sorry to hear, how long had it been, what would he do—then it was a daily ritual—school ends, jump in the truck, drive around, find a place to park and talk, and then park and talk and kiss, then park and talk and kiss and touch—then wait for the phone to ring on weekends, sneak out all dressed up for dinner and dancing at the Fairmont downtown;  of course he’d leave his wife for someone more understanding, more sophisticated, patient, able to meet  his needs—someone like me–and then he did and confirmed I was the true love he’d been seeking because at twenty-six I was so wise and empathetic and available –-it was then we made plans for a six-week summer vacation out West and up to Banff with the promise of starting our life together; he traded in his old blue beat up truck for a brand new yellow one with the extra seat in the back and a cap to cover the bed; he traded in his old camera for a new Cannon Rebel to capture the memories of our beginning; he traded in his old solo tent for a double, for when we would sleep beneath the stars and marvel at the miracle of us—he even traded in his tattered tan backpack for a new black one with shiny gold trim—we were ready; the last task was to attend his brother’s wedding in Ohio; I stayed home and packed, made burlap curtains for the truck, planned our route, made turkey and avocado sandwiches for the road—we left the night he returned; it was a tortured silence all the way to Colorado—no excited discussion of plans, no jubilation to be on our way, no pulling me closer in the truck—until we arrived at a friend’s house in Boulder; he left me there after a day, said he needed time  to think in the mountains, then called from El Paso five days later—I got the last seat on the plane, first class to Texas; it was a rough landing, he met me at the gate and explained that he’d been smitten by a woman he’d met at the wedding; he’d driven to Arkansas to tell her; Now she was flying to meet him to take the trip we’d planned together—I was the last thing he traded in.                                                           

                                                                     *   *   *

Carol E. Anderson is a life coach and former organizational consultant whose passions are writing, women’s empowerment and travel photography. She is the founder of Rebellious Dreamers, a twenty-year strong non-profit that has helped women realize dreams they’d deferred. Carol holds a doctorate in spiritual studies, and master’s degrees in organizational development, and creative nonfiction. She is the author of the award-winning memoir, You Can’t Buy Love Like That: Growing Up Gay in the Sixties. She lives with the love of her life and their sassy pup in a nature sanctuary in Ann Arbor, MI.

A Memoir by Lee Ann Stevens

I’m sorry about the time you wiped your finger along the wood of the book shelf and yelled at me because it was dusty. When I stood there, holding the hand of our three-year-old son, with our unborn daughter rocking in my womb.  When we were on our way to the neighborhood pool on a hot August Saturday. 

“How many books have you read this year, anyway?” you ask, your cold eyes fixated on my face, your voice thick with suppressed rage. 

You stalk around the room inspecting the level of dust on other shelves.

I’m sorry I don’t choose to make dusting a priority.

“What do you do all day anyhow?” you growl. “Spend time with those supposed friends of yours?”

I’m sorry I’ve found a community of women in the latest town we’ve moved to. After the latest job transfer you said would change everything because it was that other job in that last place that made you go to bars instead of coming home to your family at night. 

I’m sorry I don’t leave a meal prepared for you so when you come home at 2:00am you can have the dinner I didn’t know you weren’t going to show up for.

I’m sorry I can’t leave the hospital early after the Caesarian that brought our daughter into the world and you’re finding it a challenge to care for our active son all day.

I asked you once, when we were still young and none of this had happened yet, “Do you ever look at an expanse of grass on the side of a hill and imagine yourself rolling down through it all? The joy and freedom of it. Do you ever feel your heart expand at the sight of sunlight on a verdant field?”

“No,” you said blankly.

I’m sorry I didn’t realize then what that said about you. 

I’m sorry I changed the rules of the game and left you.

I’m sorry I wasn’t better to myself sooner.

I’m not sorry I was able to survive you.  

*   *   *

Lee Ann Stevens writes fiction and creative nonfiction. Publication credits include Straylight Literary Magazine, Good Old Days Magazine, the blog BoomSpeak, and Story Circle Network Journal and publications. Additional work will soon appear in The Journal of Expressive Writing, Persephone Literary Magazine, and Pure Slush Lifespan Series

By Jane H. Fitzgerald

 Some people wait all of their lives for that little moment of glory that makes them feel special.  Opportunities such as playing the only piano piece you do well at a big party, or saying the perfect smart repartee to a snide remark, or seeing an old partner who broke up with you, while looking your best with a hot new date, or knowing the exact answer to an obscure question asked by your boss at a meeting. This type of moment gave Lachy a new experience.

Little Lachy was only six years old when his moment of glory presented itself. He was very small for his age, with beautiful blue eyes, sandy colored hair, and a little space between his two front teeth. He radiated happiness and innocence, being appealing and totally lovable.

Lachy was at a pool party with people of all ages. Suddenly, the DJ stopped the lively music and announced a game of Trivia. The subject would be the solar system.  Fortuitously, and uncommonly, for someone his age, Lachy had been avidly studying this subject on his iPad for two years. He had become obsessed with the planets. He even had a program that featured questions about, “What If’?  What if Mars became cooler, how would it affect the solar system?  Lachy was a self educated expert possessing knowledge which extended far beyond the names and positions of the planets. Only his family knew of his intense interest in the solar system.

No one at the pool would suspect that Lachy would be a serious contender in Trivia. The DJ handed out pencils and pieces of paper for answer sheets. The first question was asked, and Lachy quickly and quietly wrote his answer.  His older cousins sitting nearby noticed this and tried to copy him.  Lachy was too unaware to understand that this was cheating. As the game progressed it became apparent that Lachy was, without effort, answering all of the difficult questions such as; what is the sun primarily made of, how long is a day on Neptune, which planet has the most moons, what is the hottest planet, and so forth.  Not easy questions even for the highly educated adults. At the end of the game the DJ collected the papers and grandly announced with glee that Lachy was by far the winner.

Lachy took it all in stride. He was modest and unassuming. After all, the study of the planets had occupied much of his time, and he took his knowledge for granted. His other sub-specialities were meteorology and anatomy, but the solar system had remained his true passion.

Lachy received a prize of a coupon for a free drink or ice cream.  He didn’t seem to care if he won or not, and the prize didn’t interest him much. He preferred chips over all other treats. As they left the pool, he asked his father,

“Dad, may I please have a bag of chips for winning?”

His father lovingly picked him up and said,

“ Sure Lachy, even though your mother and I think you overdo it on chips, this one time, we will buy you a bag of chips, we are so proud of you.”

Lachy snuggled his face into his father’s neck and whispered,

“Thanks, Dad.”

                                                                      *    *    *

Jane H. Fitzgerald is a former middle school history teacher who is now a writer.  She has written four books, including, Notes From the Undaunted. Jane has been published in many online sites and print journals including, Isele Quarterly Magazine, Shanti Arts Quarterly, Green Ink Poetry, Little Old Lady Comedy, and more. Jane’s writing covers a wide range of topics from nature and humor to grief. She lives in the sunny state of Florida.

http://Amazon.com/author/janefitzgeraldpoetry

https://twitter.com/janehfitz1

https://janespoetry403493064.wordpress.com

A Memoir by Elizabeth Reed

Before mani-pedis were affordable, before limos were the chariots of choice, before the first kiss of the night was the breathalyzer you put your lips on, the spring prom was a rite of passage, sometimes for drinking, sometimes for sex, for wearing a gown or that first French kiss mangled in braces.

My date was Adrian, a parent-approved date with Portuguese hair so curly and unruly that he grew it out and picked and puffed it into an Afro. His ruffled mint-green shirt matched the mint-green halter dress I made, a halter dress over a halter bra, as if that would ever halt my budding interest in genitalia I wasn’t supposed to know anything about. I leaned my long-sleeved mint greet jacket patterned with tiny daisies that tied under my breasts, against his white linen tux with a black satin stripe bordering the collar and the pockets that concealed his plans for the evening—a square, foil package I’d never seen. 

My corsage of two white and yellow roses, curated symbols hiding the wild dandelions growing at my feet and up my legs, waiting to be plucked, to be deflowered. I was a late bloomer compared to the high school junior and senior girls, whose whispers I overheard in our car rides home from music events. The best prop of the evening? His ’57 Chevy, the car his father bought when his son was born, waxed and shined like a mirror of the past and into the future, a long front seat with no annoying console in the middle. 

White suit. Minty smiles. A prom that ended at 11:30 P.M. and a midnight curfew. The guardrails my parents thought would hold us in place. The guardrails I smashed.

                                                              *   *   *

Elizabeth Reed is a writer, musician and traveler. She was born in Portugal and is married to a native German, giving her a variety of cultural perspectives. An intrepid traveler, Betty and her husband have traveled to forty-six countries with one or two children in tow. She is a three-time cancer survivor and parent of a child with Juvenile Arthritis. She believes in adjusting, not giving up goals. Her articles and essays have been published in The Boston Globe Magazine, The Rumpus, Parents, Fifty Give or Take, and other journals.

By Chris Pais

In the deepest innards of New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42^nd Street, she waits for the last passenger to get off the last Greyhound bus and goes home disappointed again.  He wasn’t there.  In a ritual of waiting and longing unbroken for eighteen years, each day she takes the uptown train to Times Square after her city job.  She makes her way from the subway station to the bus terminal through labyrinthine passageways and crowded escalators, passing street musicians, evangelists, soothsayers, pan-handlers, police officers, hustlers and hordes of peak-hour commuters.    

Eighteen years ago he left her, no longer able to put up with their arrangement.  They had a marriage of convenience.  She worked and supported them and in return, he interpreted her dreams.  It did not start this way; they were childhood sweethearts, they married young and led a conventional life in the leafy suburbs of the city.  They couldn’t have children despite their fervent petitions during Sunday mass, despite all the prayers that their relatives offered on their behalf to saints specializing in this type of thing and despite numerous visits to fertility clinics.  Her desperation and yearning for a child led to an unsettling anxiousness that found expression in her dreams.  

Her dreams left her sweating and breathless in the middle of the night.  She looked around for him but he was always away working the night shift.  She used to lay awake waiting patiently for him to return home and recounted her dreams, but he had no idea what they meant.  She grew hysterical and could not be consoled. She wanted him to say something.  Anything.  He had no idea what her dreams meant, and did not know what to say. She asked him again, day after day.  After several weeks, weary, helpless, desperate and beaten down by the daily onslaught of her narrations, he said he knew what they meant.  He told her that the dreams indicated that they were going to have a child soon.  As soon as he muttered those words, she calmed down and hugged him tenderly.  This ended the turbulence that had been rocking their lives.  Although this brought her calm, he was fatigued from interpreting her dreams.  It rendered him listless and unable to function.  Soon, she made him quit his job so he could stay home every night to interpret her dreams.  

  Some days, she dreamed about a clubhouse full of animals.  Some animals played canasta in the foyer while others discussed the Categorical Imperative by the fire and the rest watched college football on television.  The squirrels rooted for the Lions, the elk rooted for the Gators and the porcupines rooted for the Eagles; while the animals with a philosophical bent of mind (such as the three-toed sloth, the spiny anteater and the tapir) didn’t care too much about picking sides in a mindless sporting spectacle.   This means we’re going to have a child soon, he said.  Some days, she dreamt about incongruous weather phenomenon; snowstorms in the Sahara, sandstorms in Alaska.  This means we’re going to have a child soon, he said.  Once she dreamt that all the bears went on a strike against hibernation, and instead pranced around the tundra singing Christmas carols around a bonfire.  A Christmas-themed dream surely means we are going to have a baby, he said.  When she dreamt she was chased by a dog down a dark alleyway, it meant they were going to have a child soon, he said.  Some days she dreamt she was floating over a cemetery and could read the names on all the gravestones.  Death means new life and we’re going to have a child soon, he said. Despite the monotony of his predictions and their patent inaccuracy, his confident, consistent, eloquent and soothing interpretation of her dreams brought her comfort and reassurance and held their marriage together. He was not sure if she believed him or if his words were just a salve to soothe her pain and gave her hope.  He was not sure if his words had any meaning.  He slowly lost a sense of who he was, and did not know if he could be taken seriously anymore.  After years of marital stability resulting from mutual delusion, he cracked and decided to leave.  Since then, her days have been filled with waiting, her nights have been ones of longing and her life has become an unending episode of anxiety.

It is past midnight as she emerges from the train at her stop and takes the long flight of stairs towards the exit.  The station is dimly lit and she is the only passenger going through the turnstile.  It makes a sound that reminds her of an old cash register and it makes this sound just once, unlike during the rush hour when the constant influx of commuters leaves no silent pause as the turnstile churns in quarter-turns.  It is a foggy night and the mist is colored by the streetlights, some of which are flickering with white, while others have malfunctioned into a steady orange hue.  Her apartment is only a few blocks away and she is in no rush to get home.  As she turns into her street, she sees the shadowy figure of a man in front of her apartment building.  He looks weary, with drooping shoulders, his chin almost resting on his chest.  She is afraid, but the man shows no sign of hostility.  She approaches the building with confidence and as she gets closer, he walks towards her.  She does not recognize him at first, but soon she sees his unmistakable eyes, now nestled in sockets furrowed with age.  They collapse in a hug as the streetlight bathes their beaten bodies which have coalesced into one.  He wraps his arm around her waist, she rests her head on his shoulder and they enter the building.  We will have a child soon he tells her, as they cross the lobby of the building and stumble towards the elevator.     

                                                                    *   *   *

Chris Pais grew up in India and came to the United States to pursue graduate studies in engineering. His work appears in Poetry India, The International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Wingless Dreamer, Wild Roof Journal, The Literary Bohemian, Defunct Magazine and elsewhere. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where he works on clean energy technologies and tinkers with bikes, guitars and recipes.

By R.C. Goodwin

Stiff as sentries, they sat in a booth at The Great Wall, a small windowless Szechuan place that had seen better days. Susannah, in her forties, presented a study in strong solid colors: maroon blouse, dark gray skirt and jacket, jet black hair. Her only jewelry was a wedding band.  Jill, in her twenties, wore designer jeans, a yellow flowered shirt, and blue Cardigan; she sported a gold bracelet and four rings. 

An elderly Chinese waiter took their orders.  “Lemon chicken,” said Susannah, her voice clipped, “and Chivas on the rocks.”

“That sounds fine okay,” said Jill, indifferent. “And a glass of Chablis, please.” When the waiter shuffled off, Susannah spoke first. “I must say, this is a new experience for me. Having lunch with someone I’ve had thoughts of killing.” 

Jill’s eyes widened. “I don’t think anyone has wanted to kill me before. How did you plan to do it?”

“I didn’t plan it, I just had passing fantasies about it. Nothing elaborate. Crushing your skull with a tire iron, say. His too, of course.”

“What kept you from it?”

Susannah shook her head dismissively, as if the question wasn’t worth a proper answer. “Because I didn’t want to lose my freedom over such a silly trifle. Because I’ve learned to weigh actions in terms of their consequences. Unlike you and him.” 

“He was important to me from the first,” Jill responded, blushing. “As a mentor and then a friend. As someone I could talk to about anything, someone I felt I’d known for years instead of months. Whatever we had going, it was more than a trifle.”

She broke off as the waiter creaked towards them with their drinks, and resumed. “We weren’t as callous as you might assume. I never liked the idea of seeing a married man. Until we met, I’d never have considered it. But then I took his seminar, we worked together on my dissertation, and he —”

“— made you feel like the most special woman in the world?”

Jill nodded.

Susannah swigged down half the Scotch. “He does that brilliantly . . . he listens to you, drinking in what you say, looking into you with those piercing green eyes, and you feel like the center of the universe. His universe.” She stirred the Chivas. “I don’t know if he works at it or if it’s just an inborn talent.” 

“Whichever, it’s effective. There’s more, though. He’s still young, but old enough to have seen and done a lot. His fellowships, his books, his political involvement. I’ve known a slew of boys but here was a real live grownup.”

“Debatable.” 

They finished their drinks. Susannah summoned the waiter— “Another round.” 

 

“How did you find out?” asked Jill.

“An extra movie stub. I was doing the laundry, going through the pockets. And there they were, two stubs. It clicked immediately. All those late nights at the library. His general distraction. His insomnia, that especially. As a rule, he sleeps like a hibernating bear. ‘You’re having an affair,’ I said. He didn’t try denying it. Truth is, I think he was relieved. Deceit and lying don’t come naturally to him, I’ll give him that.” 

Toying with the empty glass, she continued. “‘Jill’s the best graduate student I’ve ever had.’ It wasn’t just what he said but how he said it . . .  the lilting impassioned voice. And you stopped coming to the house with his other disciples. Strange, I thought, the favorite student disappears. Well, it makes more sense now.”

“I’m not a good actress. If I kept coming over, you’d have known for sure.” Jill paused. “Besides, it would have pretty sleazy. Eating your food, drinking your liquor, while I—”

“— slept with him,” Susannah finished the sentence.

 

The waiter brought their entrees, a pot of tea, and more drinks. They picked idly at their food.

“What did you really think would happen?” asked Susannah a few moments later. “That he’d leave me? That I’d kick him out?”

“I had no illusions we’d last forever. I knew he wouldn’t leave you. He spoke of you too fondly. Married men come on to me all the time, they try to paint their wives as jerks or bitches. He wasn’t that way at all. He took pride in your work too. Your books and lectures, your reviews. He considered you the best film critic in the business. But I admit, I sometimes wondered what life would be like with him. If we could start fresh after I got my Ph.D. Go to the West Coast, write books together, start a family. I knew it wasn’t likely, but I couldn’t let go of it.”  

She stared at a point beyond Susannah’s shoulder. “I also knew that if you did find out, he’d have to choose between us, and I knew he’d choose you. So I hung on to our time together and tried to be grateful for it. But sometimes I got greedy, I wanted more. At times I even had some passing thoughts of killing you.”

Susannah raised her eyebrows. “Hmm. Here we are, two women who’ve wanted to kill each other, having a civilized lunch together, as genteel as a pair of nuns. Hitchcock could have done great things with that. Slipping cyanide into each other’s drinks, perhaps.”

“Does he know we’re meeting?”

“I didn’t tell him, but I doubt he’d like it much. It would go against his controlling grain.” Susannah shrugged. “Or else, he might be flattered. Sometimes he’s as predictable as turkey on Thanksgiving, and sometimes he surprises me no end.”

Jill poured herself tea. “I never thought he was predictable. That was one of the things I liked most about him. I never knew if he’d be quiet or expansive, if he’d talk about history or tell a joke. If he’d be aloof or tender. He could be the most tender man I’ve known—”

“Back off, sister! You’re talking about my husband!” Susannah threw out the words like poisoned darts.

“I’m sorry.” Jill lowered her eyes

“I wonder, are you really?”

“Yes. I’m sorry I hurt you, especially since you’ve done nothing to hurt me.  I’m sorry for everyone’s sake, including my own, that I let this get so out of hand. But it’s hard to say I’m sorry the whole thing happened. Being with him, however briefly . . .”  She left the sentence hanging.

They tried to resume eating, with small success. Then Jill looked across the table quizzically. “Why did you want to meet like this?”

Susannah considered. “Oh, for several reasons. Because I’d built you up as somewhat larger than life. Brilliant, beautiful and all that. I needed to see you in more human terms. Because I needed to know what happened from your vantage point, I wanted a sense of how you felt about him.  And I wanted to let you know how I felt about him.”

“How do you?”

“You really don’t know? I love him, of course. If I didn’t, I would have left that first night, or asked him to leave.” She stopped to massage her forehead. “I’ll admit, the temptation to kick him out was considerable . . . still is, at times. Really, it’s such a cliché, ageing professor clings to youth by taking up with a student. I loathe clichés, I always have.”

“I won’t try to defend what we did, but it went beyond clichés.”

“That depends on your perspective.” Susannah fiddled with a chopstick. “Apart from my still loving him, I also let him stay because we have a history. Almost thirty years. Christ, we met as teens! The places we lived! Our first apartment, in Brooklyn, with the bed that sagged like a V unless we slept diagonally. Did he ever tell you about it? Our idea of a splurge was a weekend at the Jersey shore. His fellowship year at Cambridge. We flew there on what must have been the last prop charter flight across the Atlantic. Seventeen hours, including two on the ground in Newfoundland while they fixed an engine. How I took film courses and wrote reviews for The Village Voice while he finished his thesis. God, the way we worked, the way we dreamed! The graduate students were all in the same boat, and the boat was a leaky old tub, but we were close. We still are, a lot of us. We send each other Christmas and birthday cards, we get together when we can. We had fun, and we survived.”

“You’ll survive this too.” 

“I know.” 

                                                                     

The waiter cleared their dishes, still with considerable food on them. He refilled their teacups, and brought them fortune cookies. Susannah opened hers first and put on her glasses. “Love is a two-edged sword,” she read aloud.  “How profound. Timely, though. What does yours say?”

Jill opened hers and laughed curtly. “It says the same thing.”

*   *   *

R.C. Goodwin has had thirteen short stories published in Center, Elixer, Northwest, and Writer’s Digest Online. among other publications. Three have won literary competitions; two others were included in anthologies. His debut book, THE STEPHEN HAWKING DEATH ROW FAN CLUB, a prison-centric collection of short fiction, was published in 2015. His novel, MODEL CHILD, a psychological thriller, was published in 2018. In 2023 his short story collection, THE MONSTER’S GIRLFRIEND, was shortlisted for the Acacia Fiction Prize of the Kallisto Gaia Press. His current project is a memoir, MAKING GOD LAUGH. The title comes from a proverb: “Do you know how to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans.”

By Persis R Singh

He smoked four packets of cigarettes a day. Sometimes her father would light one cigarette off the other. And then one day, he stopped. Just Like That. Her mother pleaded and cajoled and coerced, and he stopped. She was tired of breathing the smoke, in bed especially with  the mosquito net’s cave of suspended smoke. Her father’s skin began to glow, the whites of his eyes became white again. He never looked better. He said he never felt better. And then one day he picked up a packet of Benson and Hedges and started smoking again. Just Like That.

*   *   *

Persis R Singh is a pseudonymous Fiji-born writer. ‘No Crying Aloud,’ her first book of poems, was snapped up by a university press a decade ago. Fearful of family backlash, the author decided against publishing at that time.

Creative Nonfiction by Andrea Marcusa

The forgotten letter to mail that your beloved picks up and walks to the post office, a tiny task made sweet with the taste of last night’s kiss still resting on his lips.

A set of felt tip pens presented to you because he knows how much you love to write your drafts in aquas, pinks, lavenders, and limes.

The silence you keep instead of ripping into him with sharp words about his unpacked suitcase or dirty dishes. Words that will fester and linger in his heart long after your gripe is forgotten, and clothes and dishes are put away.

Saying “sure” to seeing Casablanca yet again because you like to sit next to him, scroll your phone and rest your head on his shoulder while he watches.

The peace in your quiet home, filled with the two of you busy working, and the invisible tie to him that anchors you to the ground.

Him rubbing the small of your back in exactly the right spot and holding you in his arms so tight that you must unhitch yourself to breathe and then the way his hand is always ready to take yours when it finds its way back to him.

How on Valentine’s Day, you park your self-pity at his hospital room door even though outside, the city blazes with expectation and carefree couples hail taxis and doorbells ring with bouquets of scarlet roses. With you in your winter parka and he in his cotton hospital gown, the bed curtain cocooning you both, the TV news on low, his heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen levels dance past in yellows, reds, and blues on the nearby monitor. You take out two hearts in pink and silver foils, one dark chocolate the other white, unwrap and divide each and then set them on his bed table beside the covered cup and straw.  He picks up a white half and you select a dark. This wasn’t how you’d imagined Valentine’s Day. But beside the bed his Vitals blink HR 80, Temp 99, BP 120/80, Oxygen 95.  

Chocolate never tasted so sweet.

  *   *   *

Andrea Marcusa’s writings have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, River Styx, River Teeth, New Flash Fiction Review, Citron Review, and others. She’s received recognition in a range of competitions, including Smokelong, Cleaver, Raleigh Review, New Letters and Southampton Review. She’s a member the faculty at The Writer’s Studio. For more information, visit: andreamarcusa.com or see her on X: @d_marcusa

By Haley DiRenzo

I’d text him after parties to come over when my roommate would be out. It was never terribly late, because I usually wanted to leave a place the moment we arrived. A gaggle of girls pin-balling through the door with the force of a landslide.  

These people never saw more than the surface – the cigarettes in your pocket, the lipstick on your teeth. I was just a body double, the traced chalk on the sidewalk marking the place where someone more interesting had been. I couldn’t be myself in these spaces with all these people performing. But I performed too, wrapped my fingers around the cups given to me, and brushed the hair out of my friends’ faces while glancing sideways around the room. Looking for someone, waiting for something to happen. 

So I would ask him to come over, and we would talk about philosophy and medical school applications and our conservative families – two boring people away from all the places where we had to act like we weren’t boring. The conversation before the sex a balm over a wound, making me believe this was more than just physical. I’d convince myself this was what I was looking for, the cure to the loneliness I felt around everyone else, something that might make me want to stay. That might ease the knots I felt forming during every other moment of trying to become who I was.  

“Should you stay over?” I asked one night. Thinking it would be nice to wake up together, make coffee, eat bagels, play pretend. “Maybe I shouldn’t,” he said. “Maybe that will turn this into something it’s not. Something complicated.” 

He warned me from the beginning – that he would not be my anchor or my remedy. That he wouldn’t make me feel more solid in those moments when I was melting. He would never show up in those places where I was searching for rescue, catch my frantic eyes, and be the reason I stayed. But still I called him over. Escaping one performance for another. Pretending he would see something inside my fading outline before I washed away completely. 

*   *   *

Haley DiRenzo is a writer, poet, and practicing attorney specializing in eviction defense. Her poetry and flash pieces have been published with or recently accepted by a handful of online literary journals including Eunoia Review. She lives in Colorado with her husband and dog.

By Arvilla Fee

Various scents of humanity assault my nose as I take the first empty seat I find, middle of bus #39. The man beside me has an outdoorsy scent of pine and something else I can’t identify, not entirely unpleasant.  As I prepare to sink into cell phone oblivion for the ride home, a loud noise to my right catches my attention. A young lady sits alone one row back, her owlish glasses perched high on her button nose, her plaid jumper and white knee-high socks neatly in place. She’s clutching a small red handbag to her chest, as if her life depends on it—and maybe it does.

Two younger men, though well beyond the age of high school shenanigans and fashion-ripped jeans, are seated behind her, and they keep reaching over the back of the seat to flick the young lady’s head and pull her blonde braids. Does anyone else notice? It’s obvious from the lady’s physical appearance that she has Down Syndrome, and the appalling lack of human decency has me on my feet in an instant. 

“Excuse me,” I say to her, while glaring at the boy-men, “Is this seat taken?”

She grins and scoots over. “Nope. My name is Georgia Fry. I’m twenty, and I like dogs.” 

The hooligans behind us snicker; I turn and laser them with another look. “Nice to meet you, Georgia Fry. My name is Phoebe. I like dogs, too.” 

I feel fingers creeping behind me before I see them and whirl to face the men.

They smirk like fifth-graders, and I make a quick decision—hoping it’s the right one.

I get to my feet and begin speaking in my best radio broadcaster voice : “Attention bus patrons. There are two men on this bus who seem to have forgotten we are all human beings living on one planet and that we owe it to each other to be kind and considerate. They are tormenting my new friend, Georgia Fry, who happens to be a lovely person!” 

The men stare at me, mouths open.

“Shall we say good riddance?” I ask, pulling the stop rope.

Everyone is now staring: passengers, the men, Georgia.

“This ain’t our stop,” one of the men snarls.

Then chants of “Off the bus! Off the bus!” rise like a tidal wave from every passenger aboard. Even the driver joins in.

“Just go,” one says, sulking.

After they exit, cheers erupt. I bow to Georgia, and she stands and waves at everyone.

“Georgia Fry!” I begin. 

“Georgia Fry! Georgia Fry!” Everyone shouts and claps.

We take our seats and grin like twin sisters.

*   *   *

Arvilla Fee teaches English and is the managing editor for the San Antonio Review. She has published poetry, photography, and short stories in numerous presses, including Calliope, North of Oxford, Rat’s Ass Review, Mudlark, and many others. Her poetry books, The Human Side and This is Life, are available on Amazon. Arvilla loves writing, photography and traveling, and she never leaves home without a snack and water (just in case of an apocalypse). For Arvilla, writing produces the greatest joy when it connects us to each other. To learn more about her work, you can visit her website: https://soulpoetry7.com/