By Kim kjagain Moes

I’m running out of time part one. Last week I was crushing my writing goals.

Now I type with one hand and think with an uncooperative brain. A few days ago, I noticed my motor skills were getting weaker. 40 years of typing and my left hand has forgotten how to navigate the keyboard.

Just last month my fingers would automatically hit the backspace key when or if I’d moved to the wrong letters. Not now. Earlier today, reaching behind my laptop for my charger, I almost fell into the nightstand because my left leg refused to work.

My leg has been dragging lately. I’m not talking about Igor from that Young Frankenstein movie, but I have to concentrate my entire energy to lift that foot above the ground before stepping down again to avoid hearing that swooshing sound as my shoe scuffs along the floor. This extra effort to lift it up feels like an exaggerated pedaling of a bike, like swimming through sludge, and that’s just my body, the bit I sort of understand.

Describing it is a challenge. I’m frightened and need to get these thoughts and experiences recorded before they are lost forever. I think I’m losing my mind. My words often tangle up, creating confusion in any communication: like saying Antigone instead of anything or using interest in a sentence instead of principle after working in finance for over three decades. Or struggling to find any words at all.  

I’m struggling to find any words at all. How can I be a writer without words? I have no vertigo, yet I have no balance. I walk into walls and door jams with my left side.

It’s a struggle to put on my pants or pull up my shorts. I’m 10 years old again at the outdoor pool, changing into street clothes while still damp because my mom will arrive any minute to pick me up. The difference in efficiency between my left and right side makes the clothes roll against my skin.

While waiting for answers, I tried some underwater physio. It was most encouraging to walk without a limp. However, my arms didn’t benefit with the same level of coordination.

There I was swimming in slow circles with my one T-Rex arm barely moving at all. Swimming in circles or drowning? Surely the latter is worse. All of the answers I’ve received so far only tell me what this likely is not.

It’s not a stroke. The progression is too slow. It’s not MS. The progression is too fast.

There are more questions in my life than on a marathon of Jeopardy episodes. 

Today? Answers. MRI confirms progression was just right for a brain tumour. Fuck my life. 

I’m running out of time, part two. My craniotomy is scheduled for Saturday. 

How do I find the time to say goodbye to all my loved ones? What happens if I don’t wake up on Sunday? I can’t even type out an email that makes any sense or find the right buttons to switch between apps on my phone. How am I going to find the time to call all my loved ones and tell them I love them? I have the opportunity to actually say goodbye if I have to say goodbye, but I can’t do so unless I can phone and get them together on a video call.

Can’t very well message them by text and say, hey, by the way, I’ve got a tumour and I may or may not wake up on Sunday morning. So, one by one I give the calls and keep typing. Fuck.

I’m running out of time, part three. Looking for “lasts.”

I keep looking for opportunities like a last supper or last monster burger or a last coffee with Bailey’s or a last latte from my favorite coffee shop. My partner, good soul that he is, says, “Can you please stop joking and laughing because it makes it hard to think about the future with you asking for all these last moments, and we DO have a future, Kim. So instead, I’ve decided to flip those lasts upside down and make them into firsts so that when, not if, but when I wake up on Sunday morning, I will enjoy every single latte like it is my last and every single monster burger like it is my last because I will live in every single moment that is gifted to me by the opportunity to wake up in the first place. 

Oh my God, I’m still running out of time, part four.

They are wheeling me to the elevator that will bring me to the Operating Room and I’m not done yet. I’m not done:

• living, 
• laughing, 
• loving, 
• sneezing, 
• writing, 
• reading, 
• learning, 
• travelling. 
• I’m not fucking done yet.
• Where am I supposed to pack up all these emotions so that I can process them later? Do they have lockers for that? How do I apologize to my kids and grandkids for abandoning them and crushing their hearts?

But first. I need to wake up to write the next part. I need to be alive to write part five. Universe, please let me wake up.

Guess what Radiant Roses and Ridiculous Rock Stars? I SURVIVED and I’m back to finish my story!

However, I’m still running out of time, part five.

There are some things I need to relearn now, like 

• colouring inside the lines, 
• typing with both hands, 
• holding the paper with my left hand while I write with my right hand, 
• tying my shoes,
• practicing patience with myself while I re-learn (omg, might as well shoot me now, this is going to be almost impossible),
• Asking for help (kill me now, please)
• lifting my left hand all the way up and into the bathroom sink to rub soap against my right hand, 
• how to spell the simplest of words even though in grade three I had to learn how to spell Czechoslovakia and that doesn’t do me any good anymore now, does it? What a waste of space in my head. 

On the other hand (no pun intended), there are some actions that have come back to me like riding a bike:

• temper tantrums
• crying,
• kicking and screaming,
• driving my partner crazy

Every one of us is running out of time, part six

My humble advice to you now:

Do not wait for the rain to jump in mud puddles. Do not wait for the sun to shine for a picnic in the park. Do not wait for stuff to happen, 

• MAKE IT HAPPEN. 
• smile at your neighbour, tell someone you care about them. 
• at every interaction with someone whether you know them or not, spread a little love. it can and will save lives.

*   *   *

Kim kjagain Moes loves dandelions, exploring fresh places, and laughing at herself. Her work can be found online, recently in Jake Magazine and Bright Flash Literary Review. @kjagain on almost all social media. On writing, she says, “Write the life we live, explore the lessons not yet learned, and then, eat catharsis for dinner.”

By Beth Konkoski

Moon on glassy ice, cold booms and echoes along fault lines.  Twelve skate blades clack upriver.  Fish these girls cannot see hang suspended in January cold.  Wind across cheeks like sharp razors, wind through parkas like bullets, wind caught in sheets held by daring fingers, almost tamed with its ballooning.  They turn, ready for the ride of knees rattling, bumps and ridges the moonlight almost hides.  Their speed both joyous and on the edge where each set of two might crash the whole hard thing down or billow, billow, nearly a mile, fly, fly and believe ice holds girls and girls hold back the cold as their cheeks and smiles numb in the dark. 

 

Afterward in a basement, in the night where a wood stove pulses with its collapsing logs and feet take turns nearly burning through socks to warm up their toes, coals fall and the metal gleams its pumpkin heat, as they fill themselves back to life with pizza and grape soda.  The black face of ice sits alone while girls giggle and séance, push deep in sleeping bags with popcorn crumbs, their hands full of gossip they whisper but do not fully understand.  A night so cold and so hot, so quiet and so common.

Late when sleep finally descends, leaving only one, alive to her tears, the outcast this time. 

Slumber party. Skating party. 

And while the others sleep, she sneaks out the door, welcomes the cold, although it violates and nearly turns her around.  Without skates or friends, at least tonight, she stomps her way to the river’s quiet center and stares at the mirror of solid ice, how it reflects moonlight but not her face, how gold can waver there in the cold while she gives her voice a chance to scream, gives her fear of who she might be, a chance to rise, gives her knowledge of who the other girls will force her to become, a chance to bloom and grow like the sheets they held as sails.

 

Over pancakes in the morning, she will swallow this same voice, will let the thick chunk of syrup-coated breakfast move down her throat without gagging.  And she will wait for a ride home without telling any of them what the ice promised her, what she will do to save herself.     

*   *   *

Beth Konkoski is a writer and high school English teacher living in Virginia with her husband and two mostly grown kids.  Her work has been published in journals such as: Smokelong Quarterly, The Baltimore Review, Story, and Split Lip Magazine.  Her collection of short fiction, A Drawn & Papered Heart, won the 2023 Acacia Prize for Short Fiction and was published in June 2024 by Kallisto Gaia Press.

 

By Jennifer Murray Cosgrove

After Paul’s mother had a heart attack, she asked him to go to the house to feed her cat and bring some of her clothes. She limply pulled on the bottom of his shirt and whispered loudly behind the oxygen mask. “Bring two nightgowns, the blue floral and the green ivy. And my robe.” Her face flushed the same hot pink as the plastic flamingos on her front porch. He tensed, waiting for the monitors to sound an alarm. “And bring my unmentionables.”  

“Wh-“

The nurse pulled him aside. “She wants you to bring her underwear. Better bring six or seven.” 

“And my lilac lotion and toiletries.” 

Paul nodded, bent down to give her a gentle hug, held her hand a moment longer while she attempted to squeeze him. 

At the house, he poured cat food in the dish and let the cat sniff him though he had made up his mind long ago he was not a cat person. The cat pressed its body into his hand, forcing Paul to pet it. When the cat left him to curl up on the couch, Paul found a tote bag and began to fill it up with her lotions, a hairbrush, and a toothbrush before turning toward her bedroom. He realized the last time he came in here, he was just a boy sneaking his dad’s cigarettes from the sock drawer. 

As he crossed the threshold, he slipped back in time. The same blue bedspread with tiny flowers. The same gold framed photos. His parents’ wedding. His fat, toothless smile as a baby. The one family photo taken when he was four and his mother still dressed him. There he was sitting between his parents in that awful sailor’s outfit with short pants while his mother beamed in a floral dress and his father’s grim smile contrasted with the sunny yellow Oxford shirt muted just slightly by the navy blazer.  Adorable, his mother always said of the photo, pointing out his fat cheeks.  

Paul stepped over to the headboard and, as he had done as a boy, moved that family portrait behind the wedding photo. The unpleasant thought crossed his mind that someday he would inherit that photo. He moved it back.

Paul went to his mother’s closet and opened the door to grab the robe. He stepped back and covered his mouth. The closet was organized neatly. His mother’s things were on one side, and his father’s things on the other. His navy blazer from the family photo, his white and pale blue dress shirts still crisp, and the well-worn flannel shirts with muted blues, greens, and reds. He pushed aside the yellow turtleneck his father wore exactly once, because Paul’s mother bought it as a gift. Paul and his father secretly hated the sunny color.

Paul leaned in, letting his hand touch the faded blue flannel he most associated with his dad. As his hands moved across the clothes, Paul smelled the scent of freshly laundered shirts. His father died twenty years ago.

Paul had not cried when his father was diagnosed with cancer nor when he died nor at the funeral. Paul had not cried when his wife filed for divorce and told him she never really loved him. Paul didn’t even cry when he got the call to meet his mother at the hospital or when he saw her body looking so frail, trapped by all the hospital contraptions. 

Paul pulled the blue flannel from the hanger.  Collapsing onto the bed, he pressed his face to the soft material and felt a warmth on his shoulder, the size of a man’s hand, as his body convulsed with emotion.

*   *   *

Jennifer Murray Cosgrove has worked in education and social services. She enjoys traveling and going to school, apparently, since she has way too many degrees. She loves when characters take possession of her writing.

By Julie Brandon

Drying the last cup, Margaret glanced out of the kitchen window. For a moment, she thought she’d seen something scuttle across the lawn. Pulling aside the curtain over the sink, she peered out into the dusk. It was too dark to see anything clearly. Margaret had resisted the realtor’s suggestion to install lights on the patio. The nighttime darkness was just one of the many things she loved about the house. Lights would obscure the brilliant night sky. Dishes done; Margaret turned off the kitchen light. Ignoring her doctor’s advice to avoid alcohol she poured a glass of wine and stepped out the back door onto the patio. Earlier that day, she’d arranged her lawn chair and a small table at the edge in preparation for her evening ritual. She sat and watched as the fireflies danced about, their flickering lights calling out for potential mates. As she tipped back her head, a shooting star blazed a trail across the sky. Her grandmother had told her that one should always make a wish at such a moment. Margaret couldn’t think of anything she wanted but old habits die hard. She closed her eyes. Unbidden, an old wish popped into her mind. Margaret opened her eyes and laughed. It hadn’t come true all those years ago. She had no expectation it would happen now.

Something rustled in the bushes. Probably raccoons, Margaret thought. When the noise became louder, she shined her flashlight beam in that direction. It could be a coyote. The noise stopped. She switched off the flashlight and relaxed. Her grandmother used to say that Nature, always referred to with capital N, was their friend. When Margaret was young, she thought her Gran was a witch. The older woman was always concocting salves and mysterious potions in her kitchen. As an adult, Margaret reasoned that her grandmother was a holistic healer. In her heart of hearts, she’d hoped Gran was a witch and that she’d teach Margaret to be one, too. Sadly, Gran died when Margaret was thirteen. Margaret’s parents had sold Gran’s house and never mentioned her again, but Margaret thought of her often.

Lost in her reminisces, Margaret failed to notice the hazy figure that stepped out of the bushes.

It made its way silently across the lawn towards her.  The apparition spoke.

“Margaret.”

Margaret gasped, knocking over her chair as she leaped up. Scrambling for the flashlight, she managed to turn it on. With shaking hands, she swept the light around the patio. Nothing. Margaret let out her breath. She must have fallen asleep. It was just a dream bleeding over into reality. She righted her chair and sat back down. Thankfully the wine glass hadn’t broken. Just as she was about to take a sip, she heard the voice again.

“Margaret, don’t be afraid.”

She closed her eyes. She must still be dreaming. Either that or she was going crazy. Willing herself to calm her breathing, Margaret opened her eyes. A hazy figure was standing in front of her. It didn’t feel malevolent. She couldn’t make out any features. It was as unsubstantial as morning mist. 

“What do you want?” Margaret asked.

The figure reached out a hand to her. 

“I’ve come to grant your wish, but you must come with me.” 

 

Margaret hesitated. Surely her wish of many years ago wasn’t possible. It was just a silly dream of a young girl. It couldn’t possibly come true. The figure waited. Margaret considered the consequences. She was alone in the world. No one would care if she was gone. The whole idea seemed ridiculous. And yet, somehow tantalizingly tempting. What did she have to lose? Margaret stood and placed her hand on the one reaching for her. She expected it to feel cold but as their hands touched, it became surprisingly warm and solid. Margaret’s eyes grew wide as her grandmother smiled at her.

“But you’re dead, Gran!” Margaret sputtered. “What’s happening?”

Gran gave Margaret’s hand a squeeze.

“I’m sure that’s the story your parents told you, my dear girl. They couldn’t tell you the truth.”

Margaret closed her eyes, sure that she was still dreaming. When she opened her eyes again, she’d be in her bed. She opened them but her grandmother, her dead grandmother, was still there.  Does madness run in her family? Gran patted her gently on the shoulder.

“You’re not mad, my dear.” Her grandmother squeezed Margaret’s hand.

Well, if this was madness, Margaret welcomed it. The longer Gran or whatever this was, held her hand, the surer she was that she preferred it to her boring, uneventful life. Perhaps she was a witch after all. It had been her fondest wish; one she’d repeated with each shooting star. Well, that and the other one. Margaret allowed her grandmother to lead her through the Rhododendron bushes. Just before they left the backyard, Margaret glanced back towards her house. She could see her body sprawled in the lawn chair. Unbidden, a bit of poetry she’d learned at school popped into her mind. 

“Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me.”

Margaret smiled. Her wish had been to die quietly in the night. Nice that one wish finally came true. She and her grandmother faded into the darkness, leaving nothing but fireflies and starlight.

*   *   *

Julie Brandon is a poet, playwright, lyricist, and storyteller. She published her poetry collection, My Tears, Like Rain in June 2024. Her work has been published in Bewildering Stories, Corner bar Magazine, Awakenings Review, Fresh Words, Mini Plays Magazine, To Write of Love During War:Poems, Mask of Sanity: The Monster Within, Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival Anthology: Boundless, Kibbutz Gezer International Exhibit, Detangled Brains, Altered Reality and others. Two short plays will be produced for podcasts in the Fall of 2024. Several of her short plays have been produced both locally and nationally. She lives near Chicago, IL.

By Judy Taylor

He stands, motionless, on the busy sidewalk outside the apartment that until this moment he shared with his wife. The light is all wrong, tinged with acid green. Sounds and smells are sharper, magnified. His head buzzes. A cloud passes in front of the late afternoon sun, and as the sudden shadow slides over him, he wonders if he is fainting.

Each hand grips the handle of a brown paper shopping bag. The one in his left is heavier than the one in his right. He stoops to set them down, clumsy bookends for his fine black shoes shining on the cracked pavement. Everything seems to be made of splintered wood and crumpled paper and shattered glass. He loosens his tie and opens the top button of his crisp white shirt. Breathe.

He rubs his sweaty palms against the trousers of his ink-blue suit and stoops again, grasps the paper handles, and begins to walk. The last rays of the setting sun pierce his eyes and split his brain in two. His sunglasses forgotten on the table by the door.

A woman with a briefcase overtakes him from behind, keeping her gaze fixed on a point in the distance as she brushes past in her long gray coat. A bearded man pushing a loaded hand truck approaches from the opposite direction, looking down at his clipboard. Two women in running gear jog by, engaged in a loud and breathless conversation. He is invisible. Loneliness washes over his feet and rises with each step, lapping in waves that push and pull at his knees, his guts, his throat.

At the corner he pauses. Traffic is heavy. He turns away toward the next intersection where a stoplight stands.

Behind him, there is a screech of tires. The crunch of metal. The thud of a body on asphalt.

He freezes mid-step, shoulders drawn up, eyes squeezed shut. Silence. Then an eruption of voices calling out. He stumbles forward again, meaning not to look back. Not to see. Not to feel.

But he can’t go on. He spins and takes it in. A motorcycle on its side. A helmet, empty. A city bus rocking and hissing, its front grill crumpled. Bits of glittering glass and plastic, still trembling where they fell, strewn over the blacktop like confetti. People crouch in a tight ring around a dark form on the ground. The wail of sirens swells, growing louder and louder, until the man drops his bags and presses his fists against his ears.

With paper handles gripped again, he threads between the vehicles that have been stopped by the whistle and white gloved wave of a policeman. Wide eyes and gaping mouths float behind grimy windshields as he passes. He reaches the other side of the street and begins to run, the bags swishing against his legs. He is running from the chaos, but toward what? 

When his mind is quiet, he slows his pace. His breath burns in his lungs. His white shirt, no longer crisp, is a damp rag stuck to his back under his suit jacket. A car rolls past, the thump-thump of deep bass notes vibrating the air, a pulse that matches the pounding of his heart as he staggers along the sidewalk.

Night falls. Streetlights come on. He walks, listing to the left. He switches the bags after a while and lists to the right, weaving on and on from one pool of light to the next. He follows a path into a park, past playground swings swaying in the wind, past picnic tables and cold, charcoal grills, stinking of last summer’s hamburger grease. 

He finds a bench under an oak tree and sits. He is alone. The cold of the stone seat seeps through his skin and into the marrow of him. He begins to shiver, and then to shake, until his teeth and his bones and his buttons rattle. Breathe.

He looks up into the indigo sky. Blinking lights, a jet far from the earth, silently traces an arc from east to west. Gauzy clouds wrap the full moon in a veil and then release it. His eyes follow the pale light, down and down, until he is looking at a man bathed in blue-white, standing in the middle of the park. His beard is shaggy and shot through with silver, and the rivets and snaps on his leather jacket catch the moonlight like sequins. From his right hand dangles a motorcycle helmet.

“Funny, isn’t it,” says the moonlit man. He is fifty paces away, but his voice is close, intimate. “How everything can change in an instant.”

The man on the bench springs to his feet. “Do you need help? Are you injured?”

The moonlit man shakes his head. “Caught me by surprise is all. Just when I thought I was in control.”

“Can you get home alright?” 

“I don’t have far to go.” He smiles and his white teeth catch the light.

“I should be going too.” The man draws his house key from his pocket and sets it carefully on the bench. Then he picks up his bags one by one. A book, an extra pair of shoes, his shaving kit in his left. Pajamas and a change of clothes in his right. “Take care of yourself.”

 The moonlit man turns and disappears under the trees.

                                                                          *   *   *

Judy Taylor learned early in life that making up stories and telling them as if they were true was called lying and frowned upon by her parents and teachers. But by writing them down, she discovered that lies became fiction, something prized by those same adults. 

Stories have always been important to her, beginning with hearing her father read Winnie the Pooh at bedtime. She continued this tradition by reading to her own children and sharing her favorite books with students as an English teacher.

Her short story “Funeral Pie” was published in The Lindenwood Review and “Black Ice” appears in Running Wild Anthology of Stories: Volume 5. When she isn’t reading or writing, she can usually be found wearing a gingham apron, preparing treats for family and friends. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and their rescue dog, Alfie.

By Arya Vishin

That night, as the moon glittered across Dal Lake, the boy slipped out of his house and down to the lakefront. The crows called out to him in warning as he locked the back gate; his Nan used to say they did so when there was a visitor coming.

Gravel crunched softly under his feet. Across the water, the mountains swallowed the sky whole. When he was in primary school, he would watch the sunrise over the lake with the neighbors’ son, and they’d count the colors reflected in the water, deep orange and yellow and pink—nearly two decades on, it was still easy to picture, even in the dark.

Home, the willows and poplars on the bank whistled, go home. “I’m meeting someone,” the boy told them. “Someone I haven’t seen in years.” The trees fell into hushed whispers, whipping their branches at each other as they gossiped. Insolent, they murmured, how insolent.

As he set his foot down on the shore, a silvery snowtrout rose from the water, poking just its slick head out to examine the boy. It looked delighted to see him. I told you I’d be here, it said to him. Come, come. I want to show you something.

The boy hesitantly took one step into the lake, then another. He paused. The waves jumped up to nip at the ends of his pants like street dogs. On his third step, the sediment crumbled under his weight, and he slipped into the water, the lakebed disappearing beneath his feet.

Beneath the surface, the lake was much deeper than it seemed whenever he went fishing with Mamaji. The snowtrout led him forward and deeper into the water until an array of glowing lights crowded the boy’s vision. A vast, vibrant palace shaped like a lotus flower rested at the bottom of the lake, lit up in all shades of pink: magenta to rose to the lightest pink-white, pulsing hot and bright.

Come, the fish said, come. The boy followed the snowtrout through the entryway and the corridors, their walls heavy with thick garlands of jasmine draped over engravings of dancing eel-people. He ran his hands along the folds of the limestone, his fingertips stumbling over the tiny, colourful gemstones carefully embedded in the eel-people’s serpentine eyes.

In the center room, a lone snake waited, its scales a dark peacock-blue under the shifting pink lights. When the boy and the fish entered, it slowly pivoted until it stood upright, staring right at them.

Kill him, the snow trout told the boy. The snake did not say anything.

“I just wanted to see you again,” the boy said. The fish’s eyes flicked back and forth.

Then kill him, it said. You’re strong enough. Kill him and this whole place can be ours forever.

“Forever?” said the boy. The snake turned away. “I can’t. I would miss home too much.”

In here, the fish said, you can still see all the colours of the sunrise. And they’re closer. You can reach out and touch them. You can reach out and touch anything you want.

It wouldn’t be the same, though. The lake didn’t look the same from under the surface. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” he said. The snow trout opened his mouth, full of human teeth, and laughed.

*   *   *

Arya Vishin is a mixed Kashmiri-American & Jewish writer.

                                                                     “All water is holy water.” Rajiv Joseph

A Memoir by Raphael Kosek

I don’t know how I managed to arrive at college without ever having learned to do more than a dog paddle which in my early years barely kept me afloat. My father swam across the Hudson River regularly as a boy, but somehow it was deemed “good enough” for me to swim doggy paddle. My mother was sure she had drowned in a past life and would never look down into the water or go in over her thighs. Determined not to be my mother, I eagerly signed up for a swim class my first year at college. The instructor was a rough and tough middle-aged woman who barked instructions at us and saw that none of us drowned. I loved her. Yes, I learned the back-stroke, the crawl (which is still not my favorite), the breast-stroke and the side-stroke. The first time I tried to make it across the pool, I gasped for breath. I set out to remedy this: one lap became ten, then twenty, then a mile. My seriously stressed freshman body learned to navigate water. This might be a good place to note that as a chubby child, I had never partaken of any athletic activities other than the tortures of gym class, and boogie boarding at the edge of ocean beaches, the staple of childhood vacations. I came every day to the warm, chlorine soaked womb of the pool. I swam as if my life depended on it. I learned not to care about emerging naked from the shower in the women’s locker-room; the bared body was a boundary crossed, the freedom, cavalier. 

I swam a mile a day whenever I could. I swam off the freshman fifteen. I swam off hangovers, (all too often).  I swam off love affairs and unrequited love, difficult projects and papers. I swam because I wanted to write poetry and because I didn’t think I could. I swam because I didn’t yet know how to live; I swam because one never really does. I swam because I wanted to get high on nothing but water and the strength of my own limbs pulling and kicking it. I swam because I could; the discipline was exhilarating. I swam because I’m an only child. I swam so I could go away and so I could come home. I swam so I could own something, so I could give something away. I floated and just let the body be the body, held up in the warm embrace of the pool.  

So whenever I catch the humid, chlorinated waft of a hotel pool as we shuffle in with luggage, the teasing tang of salt after a rain, or the scrubbed clean scent of sweet water, I am transported to the element I love which has borne me above life’s disasters and anxieties—its promise of overcoming whatever needs to be released into the easy embrace of water, buoyed up by my own capable limbs—the only time I can let it all go.

Though no longer a one-miler, I swim out past the breaking waves in the cold waters of Maine trying not to think too much about sharks. Sometimes a wave is a little more than I’m expecting and roughs me up, but I’ve learned to trust my body which still remains reliable. I swim in a deep old iron ore pit rimmed with lush over-hanging trees and lazy summer raptors riding the thermals above me. Though they are both long gone, I  like to think my father is pleased that his daughter can trust her own body in this joyous liquid, and maybe even my mother knows I won’t drown— as she surely believed she once did. Maybe I swim to erase that drowning, to somehow keep us both afloat. 

                                                                     *   *   *

Raphael Kosek is the author of American Mythology (2019) Brick Road Poetry Press, and two prize-winning chapbooks:  Harmless Encounters (2022) and Rough Grace (2014). Her essays and poems have received four Pushcart nominations and been featured on The Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily. She is an editor at the Comstock Review and served as the 2019-2020 Dutchess County New York poet laureate where she teaches part-time at DCC and formerly at Marist College. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and three cats. www.raphaelkosek.com

By Subarna Mohanty

You had a watch that was blue and brown at the same time. When I told you that, on an April afternoon when we were at the bus stop, and explained to you that it amazed me how it could be two colors at the same time, you raised your arm, held up your wrist in front of my face and asked me to look at the watch again carefully. It was actually golden, although old and corroded and ugly, yet it was golden in color.

“My father gave it to me,” you said and threw your arm down. “It’s very old,” you said. “My father’s father gave it to him and to him, his father and to him, his father and so on.”

Pride filled your voice. We waited for the bus to arrive. A red car came, then a yellow taxi and then the green bus we usually took to go back home. You didn’t say a word on the bus. Your gaze was fixed on something in the front, not on any person or any seat or fixture in the bus, but probably on a ghost that only you could see.

At night, you talked in your sleep, as you frequently did and as I frequently heard from across the thin cloth that had come with the apartment and that we had hung across the one big room to separate it into two rooms for both of us. Among the words I could understand and among the words I still remember today, were the words “I’m sorry father.”

You went home in October, and came back after ten days with sweets that your mother made and pickles that your grandmother sneaked into your bag without anyone knowing. Your rusty golden watch that looked like it was two colors, was gone. Your wrist was empty and looked thinner than it actually was. I asked about it. You got irritated and made a red face in the kitchen when we were making dinner.

In December, it rained one night and the power was out. The old landlord had never given us a generator despite taking money for it every month for the two years we had lived there. You complained it was too hot despite the wind and despite the rain, and kissed me. You stopped for a second and asked me if it was okay. You were sweating. You were scared. You didn’t know I was already in love with you. “Only for tonight,” I lied.

When the rain stopped and the power came back, it was already afternoon the next day and we had both unknowingly skipped work. You pulled down the thin cloth separating the room and said that two boys don’t need two rooms. 

“Whose idea was it anyway,” you said and chuckled. It had been your idea, you had found the cloth on the first day and told me it came with the apartment.

I was scared and I was sweating, despite the wind that was still blowing outside and despite the rain that had stopped a moment ago. I hoped you had already fallen in love with me. 

“We can do that more, maybe every night,” I said.

Two days before New Year’s, you went home again. You took the pickle jars we had emptied and the sweet boxes we had used to keep biscuits in the kitchen. “I’ll bring more this time,” you had said and kissed me at the doorway before leaving.

When you came back, the double colored, golden watch which was your father’s and his father’s and his father’s and so on, was back, fastened tightly on your wrist. I had dreamt about your wrist, and your arms, your lips, your thighs and your back, ten thousand times in the ten days you were gone. I might have talked in my sleep too, but no one was there to listen, of course. I wanted to tell you that. But you seemed far away when you stood at the doorway, and I stood at the doorway inches from you and looked at you like you were December rain and all I needed in January was December rain.

You said you were leaving. You said a girl was waiting downstairs, in a taxi whose engine was still on and which was to take you both to your new apartment. You said she was your wife, and that you had come to take the rest of your things.

As you packed your things, I asked if you had brought any pickles and sweets for me. You said you forgot, that it slipped your mind, that it didn’t seem relevant when so much was happening. Outside, it was sunny and bright. I wanted to push you, tie you to the bed that was yours and keep you there forever.

All I could do was say that you had promised.

“What?” you asked.

“The sweets and pickles,” I reminded you.

“No promises were made,” you said.

I cried in your arms and you left after awhile.

Eventually, I left the apartment. When the old landlord asked me why I was leaving, I told him it was because he didn’t give a generator despite taking money. He said there was a generator, that I had to go turn it on and that he had told this to my roommate who left earlier. I told him I had already packed and was leaving anyway.

He asked where the cloth was that he used to cover the generator. I informed him that my roommate and I used it to separate the room into two rooms and probably the roommate took it with him when he left because I couldn’t find it anymore. He sulked and left with the key.

Now I live somewhere where it hardly rains and so power cuts are a rare occurrence, too. There is no need for a generator, or a cloth to cover it or to use the cloth to separate my space from whom I live with. We sleep in the same bed. We dry pickles on our rooftop. We make sweets in our kitchen and eat them with our friends. We kiss every day and every night. And when he sleeps, he doesn’t sleep-talk.

But he snores, very loudly—so loudly that it wakes me up sometimes. I sit up and look outside the window for December rain, even if it’s not December and even if it hardly rains here. There in the darkness, I also wonder if you still use a cloth to separate your room from the person you live with—your wife who was sitting in the taxi that day which was too eager to leave.

                                                                *    *    *

Subarna writes poetry and short stories that explore the intricacies of human relationships. An avid reader and movie enthusiast, she prefers fiction to reality and draws inspiration from the stories that surround her. Her work has been featured in Sparks Magazine and Alipore Poetry Post, among others. Through her writing, she aims to inspire readers to see the world from fresh perspectives, fostering empathy and a deeper connection to the human experience.

   

By Rowan MacDonald

She grips the steering wheel of her ‘82 Subaru wagon, the one covered in surf brand decals that she got cheap in the local Trading Post.  To grip the wheel any harder, would run the risk of the whole thing falling apart.  It would be fitting; another thing falling apart.  Instead, she removes her hands and stares straight ahead. Green boobialla bushes stare right back, unmoved by her emotion, undisturbed by ocean winds that have battered them for generations.  They remain when all else crumbles.  They provide shelter, the refuge that penguins and mutton birds seek from violent seas.  They protect and weather the storms.

She catches glimpse of her reflection in the rear-view mirror.  Her eyes are sunken from sleepless nights, her skin drawn and cheekbones protruding.  Her tongue clicks anxiously against the roof of her mouth, a dark dress making her uncomfortable in the rising heat.  She curses the bright calmness of the day.  If there was swell, she could at least drag herself from the car.  It would be an excuse, a reason not to attend.

Why did this happen? Was it punishment for past sins? Her head rests against the hot steering wheel, pondering these questions, never obtaining the answer she seeks.  Fingers dance over her phone; their album, a gateway to further pain and torment.  

A sigh.  A deep breath.  A primal scream that only seagulls can hear.

***

The car flies down the highway, fields and sheep passing by, the historic winery creeping into view.

She parks the old Subaru among the Mercedes and BMWs glistening under the coastal sun.  She watches the crowd of people filing into white chairs, neatly arranged on the green lawn.  Maybe it’s not too late?

Events from the past collide into present.  She imagines the service and the pause in proceedings – her moment.  

“Speak now or forever hold your peace,” they will say.  

Her mind drifts to the happiness, and good times, followed by the sadness, and cheating.

She lights a cigarette, opens the window and stares at the white ribbons flickering in the sea breeze. She laughs at this new life; one that feels like a birthday sweater from her grandmother that doesn’t quite fit.  

And then she realizes something.  They deserve each other.  

The past is over and no longer exists.  The future is unwritten.  All she has is this moment, and she reverses out of the carpark.  Driving along the highway, she returns to the boobialla bushes and the sea, for it’s her home, the place to cleanse her of the past.  It is the medicine she requires to start over.

Ocean waves lap against the hem of her dress and she smiles, knowing everything will be okay.  

*   *   *

Rowan MacDonald’s short fiction was awarded the Kenan Ince Memorial Prize. His words have appeared in publications around the world, including most recently: New Writing Scotland, Sans. PRESS, Coffin Bell Journal, The Ignatian Literary Magazine, and Rock Salt Journal. He lives with his dog, Rosie, who sits beside him for each word he writes.

By Victoria Melekian

I was turning left toward the diner when I saw my friend, Louise, limping out of the corner market carrying a brown paper bag, what looked like one of their sturdy ones, the kind with twine handles, and I noticed the flex in her upper arm so I assumed it must be heavy, so I drove into the grocery lot instead, parked and walked over to Louise and offered to help her to her car, but she took a quick step back, pulled the bag to her chest with both arms like she was holding a couch pillow or like a schoolgirl might clutch a notebook against new breasts, and she seemed startled, kind of protective of this bag, and I could hear bottles clinking against each other—we both heard them, and I looked at Louise, it had been a while since I’d seen her, and she seemed frail—pale face, thinning hair, kind of bowed over, which scared me because we’re pretty much the same age, and her eyes, well, hard to say because Louise was looking down at the ground, and I looked down too, at a sprig of bright green weed pushing through a crack in the gray asphalt, and when I looked up, Louise was staring at me and I could see her eyes and the tired underneath them and she saw me see, and she took another step back, turned toward her car, and said, “Well, I better go, it sure was nice of you to offer to help” and I reached out to pat her hand, the right one, the one now holding the bottom of the bag as though she knew the weight of whatever was in there could push through the bag, and she wasn’t going to let that happen, no, that was clear, but she also wasn’t going to let me touch her, not her right hand holding the bottom of that bag nor her left which had moved up to pull the handles together so I wouldn’t be able to see inside so I let her go, I let her just take that extra step back away from me, and I took one myself to provide a buffer, a barrier from me—I wanted her to be comfortable, not leery, and when it all comes down to it, whatever was in that bag was her business, not mine, so I dropped it, just said, “Hope to see you soon, Louise,” and I turned and walked away, and I know she just stood there and watched me because if she’d moved or shifted her body even the tiniest bit, I would have heard those bottles knocking against each other.

*   *   *

Victoria Melekian writes poetry, short fiction and, on occasion, a novella-in-flash. Her work has appeared in print and online and has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She lives with her husband in Carlsbad, California, where the weather is almost always perfect. For more, visit her website https://victoriamelekian.com