By Rainer Zhang

A bridge running over the highway. A razor blade in a bush of dried moss, covered with white, fuzzy mold. 

I was telling you about the crafting knives in the dollar store and how I’ve thought of cutting with these. You almost started crying. It’s funny how I can just buy something like that for three dollars. 

Don’t say that. 

It’s what I think. If it’d make you stop worrying I can lie about it. I’d do anything to make you okay. 

That’s cowardly. I’m sorry. 

Now I think of all the times I walked past the arts and crafts aisle without knowing you. Now I lay in bed starving myself so I would get to hurt just as much as you do. There’s no reason for me to be okay if you’re not. 

There’s no reason for me to be okay. 

—But the security guard at the dollar store is so nice. She’s in her eighties and insists on holding the door open for you. 

One day we will both be okay. One day I would grow a pot of basil in our apartment and make pizza with you; One day we stroll past walls and walls of roses in our backyard, and this dreadful mid July sun glistening off of razor blades wouldn’t be so dreadful anymore. One day we will, but not now. 

I lay down and think I’ll wait for you now. It’s an axiomatic thing. I wait for you the same way I wait for my own heartbeat. 

                                                                *   *   *

Rainer is a writer based in Canada, forever waiting to go home to sunny California. For most of their lives they’ve written to find the words for what we don’t have words for. 

By Melissa Ostrom

At the end of November, a week after her husband’s funeral, Olive Phillips packed up Pete’s neckties and drove them over to her friend’s house. 

Meredith opened the front door with a heavy hello. 

Olive sensed a poor you in the greeting, and this irked her, though she tried not to show it. How else was her friend supposed to sound? Cheerful? The box of ties prevented a hug, so Meredith prodded Olive’s shoulder and shifted the pat to the head. The touches were searching, like a physical examination. Olive hoisted the box higher. 

Meredith briefly sucked in her upper lip. Her eyes narrowed. “Come on in.”  

“Wish I could.” Olive put a sigh in the words to make like she meant them. Which she didn’t. She didn’t want to visit. She didn’t want to talk to anybody, not even Meredith, who’d lost Frank last year and thought she knew how Olive was feeling. Olive and Meredith: They were members of a club now. “There’s so much to do.”

Meredith mentioned the coffeecake from D’Angelo’s (“still warm”), the pot of coffee (“fresh decaf”), and the quilt books Olive could look through to pick out a pattern (“and you’ll have to think about the background and decide what size you want this thing”). Then she said, “Speaking of size,” and went on to describe the growth of her bunion. 

Meanwhile, Olive shuffled in place and impatiently jiggled the box. From the loose fold of the cardboard flaps, the end of a tie escaped. The diamonded satin slithered toward Olive’s chin. “I have to clean the bathroom,” Olive interrupted and flinched from the fabric that had scrunched up and poked her mouth. She added something vague about a grocery list. Her arms trembled. Who knew ties could weigh so much? 

Meredith accepted the box reluctantly. “Want to take some crumb cake home with you?”

Olive shook her head. “Thanks for making the quilt. Just tell me how much I owe you.” She retreated a step.

“Any particular pattern you’re thinking about…?” Meredith frowned down at the stuffed box. There were enough ties inside to cover a king-sized bed.

“Whatever.” Olive half-turned toward the porch stairs. “Maybe something with stars.” 

“Oooh. The hunter’s star would be nice.”

“Perfect,” she said, as if she knew what this pattern looked like. “Jack and Susan will love it.”

Meredith started. “The quilt’s going to Jack?”

Olive nodded, delivered a hasty “thanks-so-much-Merry-appreciate-it-talk-to-you-soon-take-care-now-bye-bye,” and left. In the car, she thought defensively, Jack would want this reminder of his dad, and another, less comfortable thought: I couldn’t sleep under that thing. She pictured the pieced-together pinstripes, dots, plaids, and solids pinning her to the bed and shuddered.   

At home, she scrubbed a bathroom that didn’t need to be cleaned.  

She opened the fridge but couldn’t decide what to buy at the store. Milk, lunchmeat, lettuce, coffee: She had plenty. 

She drifted into the living room, gave the recliner a wide berth, and perched on the edge of the couch. After turning on the television, she kept the remote pointed at the screen but lowered her hand when she realized she didn’t need to change the channel. It was still on the Food Network, that show with the skinny cook. 

Doesn’t she eat her own food? Olive wondered sadly, watching the woman layer ingredients into a roasting pan. She was fixing a lasagna, the biggest one Olive had ever seen. 

Her stomach rumbled. Maybe she’d go online and print out the recipe…

Maybe she’d head to the store, after all. 

She could make that lasagna. Why not? And if she wanted, she could eat the whole goddamn thing herself.         

                                                                  *   *   *

Melissa Ostrom is the author of The Beloved Wild (Feiwel & Friends, 2018), a Junior Library Guild book and an Amelia Bloomer Award selection, and Unleaving (Feiwel & Friends, 2019). Her stories have appeared in many journals and been selected for Best Small Fictions 2019 and 2021, Best Microfiction 2020 and 2021, and Wigleaf Top 50 2022. She lives with her husband, children, and dog Mocha in Holley, New York. Learn more at http://www.melissaostrom.com or find her on Twitter @melostrom.  

By Dan Crawley

Edina and I partnered up for a dance routine in the Spring choir show. She was thorough, demonstrating all the right moves for me. She’d taken lessons; she’d competed in pageants early on. I’d thought we rehearsed with an appetency I haven’t experienced since. Later, our bare arms and necks gleamed under the bright lights.

That summer my family planned to move away. So my choir friends threw a party for me at Edina’s house. In no time at all she led me out to her backyard and positioned me across a chaise lounge by a curtain of flowers.

Edina counted off. We performed a slow-slow-quick-quick-slow, slow-slow-quick-quick-slow. She paused, gazing deep into my eyes.

“You’re not joking, right?” Edina wanted to know. “You are really moving away? I mean, it’s not like you’ll show up for school next year, surprising everyone? You’re gone for good, right?”

“Yep, for good.”

Edina dipped me off the lawn furniture. She clipped a nearby rose and placed it between my teeth, thorns and all.

                                                                 *   *  *

Dan Crawley’s writing appears or is forthcoming in Lost Balloon, JMWW, Best Small Fictions 2023 & 2024, Variant Literature, Atticus Review, and elsewhere. His recent collection is Blur (Cowboy Jamboree Press).

By James Stuart Nolte

Both Victoria and Chase loved bad weather and loved to walk in its wild beauty. One winter day, looking out the window, they saw the storm warnings broadcast all day coming true. There was a curtain of snow approaching so thick it seemed like a huge white blanket was being pulled over their heads. Although mid-afternoon, it became dark enough that the streetlights blinked on. Since they lived in town and were well supplied with food, and wood for the fire, they decided to go out and wade in the snow and watch the town react to what would soon become an emergency. 

As their walk progressed, they popped into the stores along Main Street, when necessary to warm themselves. There, the uneasy looks on the faces of the store clerks intensified as the weather outside their frosted windows got worse and finally store owners began calling to release their employees early. It was during a brief lull in the storm that they encountered outside on the sidewalk, dressed in clothes suitable for a spring day, an Amish youth, with his broad brimmed black hat, white shirt, and black coat. He seemed to be wandering around town totally unconcerned about the weather. With his hands deep in his pockets, he walked in an old fashioned, awkward way, the way teenagers might have carried themselves long ago, before the video mirror, and the studied emotional equilibrium that children exhibit today. This fellow rolled along like he had walked on uneven ground all his life. Victoria and Chase ducked the blast of weather by going into the sporting goods store. The Amish boy wandered in after them, very at ease, and saying, to no one in particular, “just staying out of trouble,” but, once inside the store he became rooted and anxious, would start to say something and then stop, and would stare around himself in seeming amazement. It made them so uncomfortable they went back out into the storm. Chase felt even more uncomfortable when the boy followed them into the street like a stray dog. 

“I hope you have less distance to travel than that I be facing.” He shouted through the wind which whipped any answer away in the snow now blowing so hard that, at times, it obscured the light of the street lamps. The boy came into and out of focus like the wind was moving his very substance, as though it were blowing straight through his white shirt front which had disappeared into the background. 

Chase nodded and tried again to say something, but Victoria began to tow him across the road. Chase turned and shouted back, “How far have you got to go?”

“Oh, up to the hospital is all,” They both heard him shout, then he vanished in a blast of wind and snow. 

Chase’ heart beat spasmodically, and he went cold inside, as though the wind had snuffed out the last ember of warmth in him. 

Victoria shouted, “There is no hospital in this town and has not been for a hundred years.” But the boy, a ghost amongst a million swirling ghosts, was gone.

                                                                 *   *   *

A graduate of Syracuse University, James Stuart Nolte was the recipient of the Undergraduate Prize for Poetry in 1975. His writing includes short fiction in The Chicago Quarterly Review, White Crow, and Unlikely Stories Mark V, poetry in The Climbing Arts Magazine and Illya’s Honey, humor in Defenestration, and arts criticism in The Washington Review. A retired librarian, he lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

By Ann Yihyang Kim

I place the test on the flattest part of the bathroom floor. Yes, I checked that it’s the flattest, and yes, I used a level. Am I paranoid? Of course I am. You’d be too if this were your thirteenth pregnancy test and the instructions said to “put test on flat surface with result window up.” 

Flat surface. 

Window up. 

Okay. 

I glance at my phone. One minute has passed. Which means I have one more to go. Or maybe it would be better to wait longer. Maybe the floor isn’t flat enough, and my pee isn’t spreading the right way on the test. Or maybe the fact that it’s already been a full minute and there isn’t even a ghost of a second line is a divine sign that there won’t be a second line at all. That this is the thirteenth failure. No, no. The instructions said to wait two minutes. Forty-five seconds to go…. 

Is it dumb to hope? I don’t think it is. Not when I’ve been showing signs. I’ve had bloating. And cramps. And fatigue. And this is definitely the most swollen my boobs have ever been! There was even a smidgen of blood on my underwear yesterday, and according to my ovulation app, I’m technically within the window of time when implantation bleeding is possible. But according to the internet, these are all signs of my period coming. But also according to the internet, early signs of pregnancy are all similar to signs of my period coming!

I grip the rim of the sink and bow my head as I inhale deeply then exhale slowly. I look at myself in the mirror and try to focus on my reflection instead of the usual memories that haunt me at the fifteen-seconds-left mark. I try not to think about the first time my husband told me that it’s always been his dream to have a big family. I try not to think about my mother-in-law sliding a printout across the table and how the printout had all the fertility clinics in the greater area of Los Angeles in order of how qualified she thought they were. I try not to think about my divorced parents and how I’ve always nursed the hope that I would one day have a family to call my own. A whole, unbroken family to replace the one that was broken. 

I try not to think about the panic that would flood me if the second line did appear on the test. Don’t get me wrong. I’d feel happy first. I’d be elated, ecstatic. “The thirteenth time was the final time! I always knew thirteen was actually a lucky number!” That’s what I’d tell myself.

But then I’d think about my drug-addicted brother and how he ended up that way even though I know my parents tried their best. I’d think about my job and the pathetic few weeks they call “maternity leave.” I’d think about the money. I’d think about the years of work I’d lose and how the child we had hoped and hoped for would become the ball and chain that would pull me back down to entry-level jobs.

I’d think of how it’d all be worth it because we’d have a child. 

My eyes fall on my phone, and I realize that it’s been three whole minutes already. A tsunami of dread and hope floods me. 

Will the thirteenth time be the final time?

I look at the pregnancy test.

One line. 

There’s only one line. One.

Damn. Thirteen really is unlucky after all. 

I start sniffing. Then shaking. Then crying. You’d think you’d be used to all this by now. That you’d be strong enough to face the truth headlong, the truth that there is no little peanut growing inside of you and that you had tricked yourself into hoping yet again. 

My husband opens the door, stares, then hugs me without another word. I hug him back, and we stand there like that for minutes on end. 

“Do you want to stop trying?” he asks.

I’m silent as the hollowness inside my chest continues to spread. But then the determination comes. It’s a seed, a spark. It’s so small, but it’s there, and I fan the flames desperately and then methodically. This is the determination that I’ll pass down to my children someday.

“I want to try again.”

                                                                     *   *   *

Ann Yihyang Kim graduated with a B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley. She climbed the corporate ladder for several years before realizing that writing was her true passion. She recently finished the manuscript of her first novel, Eyes of Awakening, an adult dark fantasy work that explores trauma, abuse, and the importance of friendship, and will soon begin the querying process. She lives in San Diego, CA with her loving husband and their rambunctious dogs, Max and Volk.

By James M. Maskell

The rain started some time before dawn, big drops pelting the tin roof of the shed in the back yard, while an occasional surge mimicked a passing truck too large to traverse their suburban neighborhood. She’d have given anything for it not to rain, not today, but she wore her mother’s gown to please her father—tailoring the fit on her mother’s dressmaker stand in the short time she had—and was a beautiful bride, nonetheless. She had met her groom on an expedition to the North Pacific while studying environmental science at U-Dub. Her parents, nervous about her going, knew trying to talk her out of it would have been selfish on their part. The groom, a Seaman in the Coast Guard, stationed in Anchorage, was off-duty one evening, playing darts at the Pioneer Bar when he noticed her in the crowd, and said hello. They sat at the bar. He bought the first round. She spoke of her studies, he of his training, and by the end of the night, the world around them had become a blur. She was on her way back from the expedition a few months later, already hastily engaged when she got the call from her father, mishearing him through the bad signal. “You’re breaking up, Dad. All I heard was ‘Mum said.’ What did she say?” He hated having to say it again. She sounded irritated enough by his interrupting her trip home, but when he said it the second time, the signal was clear, and his gut twisted in sorrow for having to deliver such news to his daughter. Heavy rain, slick pavement, and a tight corner had taken her mother from the world in a twisted, one-car wreck, and the burial took place just days after she arrived home. This afternoon, she married her groom in a short, tasteful, backyard ceremony, with no military splendor nor magnificent rose woven arches. Negotiating the rapids of wedding prep without her mother by her side simply held no appeal for her. The heavens were kind enough to lighten the rainfall as the ceremony began, and her father stood by her side in the drizzle, glassy eyed at the recent loss of his wife and the approaching departure of his daughter. Afterward, she rehung the dress on her mother’s stand to dry from the rain. Within days she will be off to her new life, her bedroom strewn with remnants of childhood: the board games, the beaded bracelets, her favorite doll, all left behind as if she were to escape even the memories of her youth. She won’t see her father break down days later when he sees the dress, doesn’t know that he will keep it on the stand, and that on days of heavy rain, position it in the center of the room, and sit beside it, spending time with his wife and daughter the only way he can.

                                                               *   *   *

James M. Maskell has taught high school English in Massachusetts for over twenty years and writes in the early mornings before heading off to class. His poetry and fiction has been featured in Loud Coffee Press, Lucky Jefferson, the Dance Cry Dance Break podcast, Crow and Cross Keys, and Vita and the Woolf. His non-fiction has been featured in recent issues of Waccamaw, Windmill, and Paper Dragon. You can read his other work at jamesmmaskell.com.

A Memoir by Alison Watson

     During my college years at NYU, I always thought my friends had a drinking problem, not me. They were the ones who puked on frat house floors. They were the ones who needed their hair held back while they leaned over the toilet. They were the ones I had to drag home from dive bars and put into bed. 

     I could “handle” my liquor.

     One night during my junior year, my friends from swim team and I were at a party on campus. Jennifer and Melanie were freshmen, and looked up to me. They followed my lead as I chugged down over a dozen red plastic cups of lukewarm keg beer.

     “Want to party at our place?” a good-looking guy yelled at me over the Talking Heads blaring on the sound system. He looked older than the rest of the boys at the party. But I didn’t question what he was doing at an NYU frat house.

     “Sure!” I yelled back, and I found Jennifer and Melanie in the crowd and informed them we were going to Brooklyn with some cute guys. 

     “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Jennifer said cautiously.

     “C’mon!” I said. “Live a little!”

     And so, my friends reluctantly followed me outside and climbed into a jeep with three adult men. Melanie and I had to sit on guys’ laps so we could all squeeze in. The wind whipped through the car; the window controls were broken and they couldn’t be shut.

     I remember feeling, as the jeep sped through the deserted East Village and over the Williamsburg Bridge, that I was falling through space, my tether to the Mother Ship unleashed. I was falling, falling. There was no place to land. 

     When we arrived at a row house in Brooklyn, we all trudged up three flights of stairs and found ourselves in a filthy apartment with pizza boxes and beer cans all over the floor. 

     “You go with him, you go with him,” one of the men told us, divvying my friends and me up between them and pointing toward three separate bedrooms.

     Jennifer and Melanie looked at me, fear clearly showing on their faces. 

     But I followed my designated partner into his room, and my girlfriends slowly disappeared into the other rooms.

     In bed, the guy I was paired with couldn’t get it up, and we wound up falling asleep. 

     When I woke up, with dry mouth and a raging headache, I stumbled into the living room, where Melanie sat with the three men. Jennifer was nowhere to be found.

     In the light of day, the apartment seemed even more disgusting. 

     “I don’t have any money for the subway,” Melanie said. I didn’t either.

     And so, one of the guys reached into a jar and pulled out pennies and nickels, and threw them onto the floor. They laughed as Melanie and I scurried around trying to gather up the change.

     I took a really long shower when I got home.

     The next week, Jennifer didn’t show up for swim team practice. After a while, Melanie informed me that she had dropped out of school. 

     She had been raped that night at the Brooklyn apartment. She had been a virgin.

     I’m sober now. I see now that I was the one with the drinking problem.

     In my 12-step recovery program, the 9^th step involves making amends to persons we had harmed. I wish I could make amends to Jennifer, for getting her drunk, for convincing her to follow me to Brooklyn with those sleazy men. For abandoning her in that horrible apartment.

     But I have no idea where she is, and I don’t remember her last name.

     I wish it had been me who was assaulted that night. It would be easier to get over my own trauma than to live the rest of my life knowing that she was collateral damage of my raging alcoholism.

     Jennifer, if you’re reading this, I’m so sorry.

*   *   *

Alison Watson is a memoirist who writes about overcoming mental illness, addiction, and being an adoptee. She is currently shopping her full-length manuscript, “A Psychotic’s Journey Through Eastern Seaboard Psych Wards,” with publishers. Alison’s work has been published in The Sun Magazine, Please See Me, and MoonPark Review. In addition to writing, Alison feeds her soul by working in an animal shelter. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband of 22 years and their shelter mutt, Cindy Loo Who. To read more of her writing, please visit her website, alisonmorriswatson.com.     

     

 

By Kip Knott

“. . . hear me? I’m . . . home . . .” Jenny’s voice keeps dropping in and out during her weekly call from Spain. Fragments of her words crackle in my ear like the electricity that flows through the power lines looming over our apartment. She’ll be home in little more than two days after spending a whole semester studying abroad. And in less than a month, we’ll finally be married.

 “What are you saying?” I ask when the silence goes on too long. “You keep breaking up.”

“That’s what . . . to say,” she says between the inference.

“I’m trying to understand . . .” I say, stopping short when I hear my own words reverberate back to me.

“Hello? Are you there?” I hear her ask, her words and mine tangling in the delay that comes with distance.

“I’m here!” I yell into the phone. “I’m not going anywhere!”

“I have to tell . . .” I think I can hear her crying somewhere in the spaces between her words and the static.

“Jenny, what is it?”

“I met . . .”

“Who did you meet?”

“He’s studying . . .”

“Who? Studying what?”

“We need . . . the wedding.”

“I’m going to hang . . .” I begin to say before she interrupts.

“Don’t hang up! I . . .”

“I’ll call right back,” I try to explain, hoping a new connection will clear everything up.

“No!” she yells. “Just listen to me.”

“Ok,” I say, taking a deep breath and holding it.

“I’m staying . . . I’m sorry . . .” Jenny says before the call drops.

After a moment of listening to her words echo farther and farther away from me into a bottomless silence, I finally say, “I hear you.” 

*   *   *

Kip Knott is a writer, poet, teacher, photographer, and part-time art dealer living in Ohio. His writing has recently appeared in Best Microfiction 2024 and The Wigleaf Top 50. His most recent book of poetry, The Misanthrope in Moonlight, is available from Bottlecap Press. You can follow him on Instagram at @kip.knott and read more of his work at http://www.kipknott.com.

 

 

By Caroline Reed

Have you ever fallen in between worlds? 

As a frequent traveler, I would not recommend it. The silent, jarring journey always leaves me with a pounding headache and a raging nosebleed upon my return. 

I’m starting to believe I’m the first high school sophomore to vanish and reemerge from an Algebra class, returning with half a pant leg and blood trickling from my nose. 

Imagine you’re being squished between two cold slabs of rock, until you feel as though your lungs are going to collapse in on themselves. The pressure builds and builds and builds like a volcano about to burst, and then suddenly, you’re pushed to the other side– a cork popping from of a bottle. 

A truly terrible feeling. 

And I haven’t even told you what’s on the other side yet. 

None of my friends believe the tales of my travels, as you could assume, and I need both hands to count the number of therapists my mother has sent me to over the years. 

Sometimes I wonder if she truly doesn’t believe me, or if she’s too scared to believe it is actually a possibility. 

Most of my slips last no longer than a minute. The world squeezes me like a ketchup bottle, spitting me out to the other side, and I abruptly emerge. The foreign air is metallic and tacky, like I just licked a cold, metal pipe. 

I am smushed and squeezed and pushed out to the same icy, cold room every time. Staring at the same man. Stuck in the same foreign planet. 

Four concrete walls. A window ceiling. The purple sky and silver sun shining above. 

My first slip left me sleeping with the lights on for weeks, but I’ve grown to tolerate my interactions with the strange man. In fact, I’d grown fond of him. 

I just wish I could unlock his chains and set him free. 

“Hello, my boy,” he says when I appear. “Nice to see you again.”

Most times he’s slumped against the concrete with rusted metal wound tightly around his wrists. His lips barely separated to form words. The look in his eyes sends a shiver down my back. 

“Hi,” I say. “Are you doing okay today?”

But the moment he opens his chapped lips to speak, the world sucks me back up again, like a bug into a vacuum. SWOOSH!

Sometimes, he attempts to tell me things in our brief moments together.

“September 1st, 2031,” he says. “Havemeyer, my boy.”

“What does that-” SWOOSH!

“We defy space and time, my boy,” he says. “Find me.”

“Huh?” SWOOSH!

Sometimes, I start marching towards him, determined to unshackle him before I fall back. 

“Save me,” he repeats. “Save me. Save me. Save me.” His eyes are pleading and bloodshot, like the foreign air had dried them into two decaying spheres.

“But how?” I would ask, running across the cell towards him. “Tell me how!” SWOOSH!

And the world would suck me back up before I can receive an answer.

My dreams are consumed by the shackled man. His dark eyes. His scared, sagging skin. Like a ghost in the glow of the lavender sky above. 

SWOOSH! I blink as I land, wiping bright red blood from my nose. This time, his head doesn’t move when I appear. The man’s eyes fixed to the ground.

“September 1, 2031, my boy.”

“I don’t-”
“Find me and save me.”

“But-”

“Don’t let me die.” SWOOSH!

#

I hadn’t fallen in years. It was like the cracks in the universe had been filled with cement. My heart stung like a papercut in saltwater when I thought about that place. Sometimes at night, I would wake up, covered in sweat, imagining a metallic taste spreading across my tongue. I blocked the mental pictures of him waiting, freezing, and sitting in that cell. 

St. David’s Medical Center. Austin, Texas. September 1, 2031.

The crisp air smells of hand sanitizer and antiseptic. I waltz past the front desk– I already know exactly where to go, even though it is my first time in the building. Gee, my first time south of Chicago.

Barely catching the elevator, I slip through the metal doors. I tap my foot, arms crossed in front of me, as I silently ride upwards. 

My mom didn’t even know I left the state. But then again, she never even cared when left the planet.

The numbers on the elevator quickly climbed.  

Ding! The doors opened as I walked onto the floor. My heart was beating as fast as hummingbird wings.

I slow as I approach the nursery window, the room filled with newborns squirming in cribs, wrapped in tiny blankets. As I scan the room, my eyes land on a pink, plump baby. 

The name plate read: Neo Oliver Havemeyer

I grin, as I rest my hand on the glass of the window. His eyes fixed on mine.

“Hi, Neo,” I whisper. “It’s nice to see you again.” 

I stare at him a moment longer. “My name is Silas,” I whisper into the hospital air. “You don’t know me yet, but I’m going to save you.” 

                                                                  *   *   *

Caroline Reed is a graduate student at Baylor University with an undergraduate degree in Communications. A Tennessee native, she now resides in Texas, where she enjoys running, writing, and reading in her spare time.

By Nia Mahmud

I will remember this precipice for the rest of my life. The ledge we stumbled upon. Woods full of movement; us steady in comparison. So unprepared there was mud in my loafers and a blister on my heel. I’d never felt an ache so compelling. Your hands on the plastic piano keys while I’m on the phone call, the voice on the other end saying that’s such pretty music. I stepped in the creek. The birds were a witness. We heard every note to their tune. The voice on the other end asks where is that? I look down and I am teetering into gray carpet, backpedaling into pine trees. I say, I don’t know. I say, I’ve never been here before.

*   *   *

Nia Mahmud (she/her) is a writer in her third year of college. She has been published by The Citron Review, Five Minutes, Pomona Valley Review, and others. She’s passionate about reading, storytelling, and Taco Bell runs with friends. You can find her on Instagram at @nia.m.writer .