‘

By Sarah Burton

AS A NEWBORN

Theo cried with an insistence and tenacity that wore Lila to a stub. He only slept when draped across her chest and even after he slept so soundly she wondered if he was dead, any movement away from the heat and softness of her body elicited screams so loud they woke the rest of the household. Call it colic, call it whatever, the experts at Night Mothers Agency exhausted their resources, threw up their hands, and told Lila to do what she could, so she did. She committed the cardinal sin of the agency. She co-slept.

The agency caught her on the nanny-cam, but by then Cara didn’t care as long as her son slept, which he did if Lila was next to him. We can support any method except this, the agency said. You will have to hire Lila privately if you wish for this to continue, they said. And since Cara had Zoom meetings at 7:30 a.m. three times a week with clients in Germany, she did. 

THE ROUTINE

Was then established that Lila arrived at the house at 6:00 p.m.; bathed Theo; fed him his bottle; rocked him in the chair by the window and read him stories as he blinked languidly at the green leaves quivering on the oak; laid him in his crib and sang to him and waited to see if he would cry, which he always did; climbed into the absurdly large crib and lay down next to him, singing until he fell asleep with his head resting against her arm, his lips slightly parted, eyelids fluttering like butterfly wings; removed herself to the trundle she had moved from the side room and placed next to his bed and waited until his next cry, which always came just as she was drifting to sleep.

AN EXAM

Revealed that Theo had anal stenosis, a condition that resolved as he grew and with its resolution his sleep improved. Lila moved the trundle to the side room.

AT AGE ONE

The excruciating pain of gas and bowel movements had been replaced by the need for maternal attention, which grasped his small body just as violently. By the time he was able to walk, his attachment to Lila was so strong that he could not be separated from her even for a moment during her twelve-hour shift. He followed her to the bathroom, the closet, the side room where she kept her original agency-issued overnight bag emblazoned with a logo of a baby resting on a cloud and the initials “NM” held lazily in the baby’s chubby fists.

He seemed to understand that after 6:00 a.m., Lila would not be there for him and he managed the morning transition to his Day Mother without much fuss, but when she arrived back in the evening, his affection and joy were extravagant. 

NIGHT TERRORS

Began at age two.

The sunset was a wonder to him: the deepening plum and orange of the sky, the dark green of the large oak tree as the light faded and the stars glimmered between its branches. 

But once the light was gone from the sky, the shadows seemed to settle in his soul. He often woke, his eyes wide open, unseeing, dark as though inhabited by the night itself and filled with terror. It took nearly an hour of rocking and singing for him to fall back asleep and then he clutched her with such ferocity that she could not set him down for another hour. 

Lila moved the trundle back beside his bed. She rarely slept in it.

EVERY NIGHT

They lay down next to each other, foreheads touching. Sometimes he turned his back toward her so that his whole body rested in the curve of hers. Then he stared out the window into the growing darkness at the oak tree stretching its branches toward him until his eyelids grew heavy.

GRADUATE DEGREES

In early childhood development and education should have prepared her not to develop an improper attachment. Should have prepared her for the intense bonding that occurs between a caregiver and child, especially during the night hours.

WHEN

She crossed the line was impossible to say. She had been inching toward it since the first night she soothed him to sleep, his new, wrinkled fingers grasping her thumb. Perhaps it was when he fell asleep with his palm against her cheek. Or when she started singing and he stopped crying. Or when he clung to her after a night terror. 

Perhaps it was the first time he called her “Ny-Ma,” Night Mother.

MY

Little Boy, was how she referred to him to her friends. “My Theo.”

ON HER WALK

To the house every evening, she passed a lilac bush where a pair of rabbits, one big and one small, grazed by the path. They lifted their heads, noses twitching, and watched her walk by. She made up stories for Theo about them—Bunky and Hop—and how they lived in their snug home under the lilac bush and drank hot chocolate and made cookies for their friends and ate carrots left for them by a mysterious little boy who had a secret garden that could be entered only by flying over the wall with a gigantic kite.

What about on days when there’s no wind? He asked, now three and wise about things like how kites need wind to fly. She said the little boy’s mother blew and blew until she made a great wind and he could fly the kite. Theo turned away from her and lay still for a long time. Finally, he whispered that Cara didn’t like flying kites. I wish . . . he said, but left the wish suspended.

CARA

Saw how devoted Theo was to Lila and decided it was time for him to sleep on his own. In December, a few days after his fourth birthday, Cara informed Lila that it would be her last night with him. 

Lila cried as she turned down Theo’s bed, wiping the tears on the forest green lounge shirt she wore because it was his favorite color. 

HE CAME 

Into the room like a tornado after his mother broke the news, anger and fear and sadness propelling his small body with a furious energy. He refused to cooperate with Lila’s bath time instructions, throwing himself on the floor, his limbs a windmill beating the ground. Once she got him into the bath, more water exited the tub than remained inside. When his energy was exhausted, he resorted to going limp, forcing her to hold his arm straight while pulling one sleeve on, then the other. One pant leg, then the other.

At story time he pulled all the books off the shelf and lay on top of them and refused to move so she lay down next to him and they stayed there until he began to sob quietly and then flung himself into her arms and they cried together.

He clung to the stuffed rabbits she had given him for his birthday (one big and one small) and stared at the bare old oak and the snow sparkling on the lawn like sugar crystals while she struggled through his bedtime story and tears dripped onto his sandy brown hair.

LILA 

Slept during the daytime. At night she sat awake, watching the sun set, the stars glimmer, the moon rise, the darkness deepen. 

She thought about Theo in his big bed. How she should have sleep trained him. Should have been firm and rational when the nightmares came instead of rocking him back to sleep. Should have let him learn to comfort himself. Shouldn’t have gotten so attached to him. Shouldn’t have loved him.

FEBRUARY

Began with a snowstorm that knocked out the power for several days. When it was restored, Lila’s phone had several missed calls from Cara. She called back immediately.

Cara said Theo’s preschool teachers were concerned about his daytime fatigue, clinginess, tantrums, lack of interest in playing with others. The preschool therapist suggested that Theo be allowed to stay home with a nanny. It might suit his temperament better, she said. She said it needed to be with someone to whom he could develop a healthy attachment. 

The blood in Lila’s ears pounded so hard she almost didn’t hear Cara’s question. Would Lila be interested in being a live-in nanny? At least through preschool and Kindergarten, maybe longer? There was a guest house on the property, just behind the house, she would get weekends and vacation time, could she start next week? Lila said yes and kept saying yes and finally stopped listening. Her mind wandered to a lilac bush; two rabbits, one big and one small; a little boy running with a kite string in his hand; and a kite soaring up up up. 

*   *   *

Sarah Gane Burton is a freelance writer living in Michigan with her husband, two children, and a dog. Her work has appeared in Medical Literary Messenger and Third Wednesday.

A Memoir by Crystal Pillifant

The teller wrote in my savings book and scrunched up her blue eyes into a fake smile. “Thanks, Miss ….”  

“It’s pronounced HOW-ra-gy’,” I explained. People often stared at my married surname—Jáuregui—perplexed with how to pronounce it. In college that semester when professors took roll, they stopped dead in their tracks when they got to the ‘J’s’. After the first few times, I anticipated the problem, raised my hand, and helped them out. They’d smile gratefully, then continue without repeating it.

With the savings booklet in my purse, I walked out feeling pleased for being frugal. I had plans and was determined to be penny-wise. I’d opened the account as soon as I received my first paycheck from the Bank of America where I was a teller.

Living in Los Angeles was exciting for a girl from Portland, Oregon. The student body at my college in L.A. was mostly white, but it was surrounded by an all-Black neighborhood—a change from white-bread Portland. 

Reaching the parking lot, I climbed in my car, and pulled on the door. It didn’t budge. I raised my head and saw a young Black man holding the door and pointing a gun at my head. He shifted on his feet and waved the gun. “Give me all your money, lady.”

Perhaps it was my youthful naïveté, but I wasn’t frightened. The gun was so small, I thought it was a toy. Of course, I’d never seen a real handgun except on television, but I thought sure he was bluffing. I let out a chuckle, “That’s not a real gun.”

“Oh, it’s real, lady. Don’t make me prove it to you.”

After considering it briefly, I decided the smart thing was to give him the little money I had, so I emptied my wallet of its eight dollars. He pocketed the money then waved the gun again. “And what you have in your bra, too.”

I raised my eyebrows.  “I don’t carry money in my bra. That’s all I have.”

He must have believed me because he didn’t press for more. He stepped back and looked me in the eye. Sweat beads ran down his temple and dripped onto his Black History T-shirt. He resembled Malcom X without the glasses. Waving the gun, he asked. “What police station are you going to?”

At that point, I realized he was more frightened than me. I shook my head. “I’m not going to the police. I haven’t a clue where a police station is.”  I paused and thought for a moment. “What an awful world we live in that you feel the only way to get help is to rob someone. You know, if you had just come to me and asked for money, I could have shared the little I had with you.”  

His eyes were fixed on me as he shook his head slowly. “No way.” He tucked his gun into the back of his tight jeans, then glanced around and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. After a long pause, he said, “Damn lady, I feel like I should give you your money back.” He reached into his pocket and took out the money.

 “No,” I said waving my hands, “You look like you need it more than me. Keep it.”

He glanced down at his feet, then looked up the road. “Could you give me a ride?” 

“I’m sorry, my husband wouldn’t want me to give a ride to a man I don’t know.”

He nodded, then turned and strode across the parking lot, glancing over his shoulder several times. I sat there watching him, suddenly aware of my heart pounding in my chest, and I felt light-headed. 

Looking back, I wonder where is that young man now?  Did he survive into adulthood? Did he live a full life like me—with kids, maybe grandkids? Was his gun real, and if it was, did he ever use it again?

In my memory, I can still see him walking away in the blazing heat, that little pistol heavy in the back of his jeans, my cash—his cash—folded neatly in his front pocket. I picture him swiveling his head at every car, expecting the police, but only seeing people going about their days. 

*   *   *

Crystal W. Pillifant has a master’s degree in elementary education and taught for nearly twenty years in a bilingual school in the Beaverton School District near Portland, Oregon. After retiring, she returned to her love of writing and has written a novel based on her experiences as a bilingual teacher. Other published works of hers have appeared in Persimmon Tree online and the Midsummer Literary Journal. She resides in Port Townsend, Washington with her husband and two cats.

By Jacqueline Ruddell

You say your sleeve of tattoos has nothing to do with your heart—no, you’re not sad or angry. You yell at me, call me a dinosaur, say I don’t understand.

    I throw your age at you, but you are stubborn.

    Sixteen is basically an adult. I can do what I like, you say. You tug at the tufts of your pixie hair; the red dye has faded to a needy shade of pink.   

    I need you, I want to say.

    Instead, I take your phone. Ground you. Because you can’t, you can’t just…

    Your feet attack the stairs. I hear your bedroom door slam. Familiar. You rage in your room. My head is swirling, so I turn to Netflix and crisps. I lift my phone to text your dad, but he is offshore and consumed by someone else.

    I flick on an art documentary with Bob Ross. His voice and brush strokes feel like a lullaby, and I drift off to sleep. 

     I wake with a crick in my neck and the television off. The stark digits of my smartwatch read 01:01. I think about the kitchen and the deserted dinners; the spices of my chicken curry soured by the five hours I lost to sleep. Yet I can’t face opening the kitchen door to a tsunami of dishes, just like I can’t face checking in on you when my feet reach the top of the stairs.

    I wonder about the passcode on your phone. Then, a weight in my gut stops me from typing, and I tuck the cracked screen safely under my pillow. Too exhausted to fully straighten up in bed, I fumble for my own mobile in my jeans pocket, the fabric scraping my skin. With a red hand, I post a picture of you from when you were three years old on Facebook.    

    It reads, Where did my baby go?

    I wake early, my eyes crusty from sleep and sadness. I sit on the edge of my bed and glance in the mirror—I see a middle-aged woman I don’t want to recognis=ze. Her hair is tired and brittle, her face lined and grey. Still on the bed, I swivel my body to face the door. The paint has yellowed over time. I stare at it for a while, wishing it were white. My body is weary with guilt; I must check if you are okay. I am coming to you now, my baby.

    Your room chills more than just my skin. I close the window before turning to a messy bed, empty of you. My legs trample through the room. Checking. Half expecting you to pop out of a drawer or a closet rammed full of clothes and unkempt schoolbooks. You never wake up this early; 05:30 is the dead of night to you. Perhaps you couldn’t sleep and decided to go for a walk. Not likely. You never go anywhere without your phone. Why didn’t I check on you sooner? 

    Alarm bells ring in my chest. I tell myself to wait until lunchtime to take action. You’re sixteen, if I call the police now would they even take me seriously? I pace the house, cleaning and re-cleaning the kitchen. The letterbox rattles. It’s 08:42. I scurry into the hall. My heart falls as I pick up the mail and curse the heavens for sending the post instead of you. Time taunts me with its sluggish progress while my heart darts and my stomach heaves. My resolve is withering. Something is wrong. Where are you? I cling to the phone that I took from you. How can I reach you now?

    Please call, I whisper with my eyes to the ceiling, holding your phone to my chest.   

     At noon, I run outside onto the main street, calling for help; the wind and the loud traffic are thieves. An elderly lady looks at me with haunted eyes before crossing the road to avoid me. What am I doing? I phone your Aunty Sandra. She says my Double Dutch is untranslatable, but she’s my sister and comes straight away. The police drag their feet. You’re not missing long enough for them to worry yet. They scan the house and the garden for clues with their hearts asleep. There is a sudden downpour of rain. They overlook the rosebush …

   There, among the thorns, Sandra finds a black hair claw and, in its teeth, a soiled letter from you. 

   An intangible maze of pain and what-ifs is etched into my heart. The rain has washed away most of your handwriting. Ink bleeds across the page. I squint to see, but all I can read are the words: I’m sorry, mum.  

*   *   *

Jacqueline is a fiction writer from County Down. She won the Flash Fiction Armagh competition and was longlisted in the Flash 500 competition in spring 2024. Jacqueline received a bursary for The John Hewitt International Summer School 2024 and is pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at Queen’s University, Belfast.

By Alex Miller

My girlfriend Elizabeth sleeps over in my dorm room. It’s late and she’s curled up in the sheets, while I sit at a small desk, finishing a story for my creative writing class. Elizabeth is a math major and extremely logical. She says creative writing has no practical value in the job market. She says the glow from my laptop is keeping her awake. As usual, I can find no flaw in her reasoning. I shut the laptop and slide into bed beside her. To maximize space in the twin bed, I slip my arm beneath her, and she rests her head on my shoulder. We’ve developed this technique to avoid either of us having to prop our backs against the cinderblock wall. Before we fade into sleep, Elizabeth admits she sometimes has ideas she would like to write about, but she doesn’t know how to turn them into stories. I chuckle. I tell her it’s something all writers struggle with. How does anyone transform the stupid details of life into a coherent narrative? Something with a point? Something that makes sense? Elizabeth says writing is hard. I agree with her, like I always do. But I have a secret. Something I’m not ready to share with her yet. My secret is that writing is easy. Especially now that Elizabeth is part of my life. Every time I put fingers to the keyboard, I’m just finding new words to say I love you.

                                                               *   *   *

Alex Miller is the author of the novel White People on Vacation (Malarkey Books, 2022) and story collection How to Write an Emotionally Resonant Werewolf Novel (Unsolicited Press, 2019). His stories have been published in literary magazines including Flyway Journal, Bullshit Lit, and MoonPark Review. He lives in Denver.

 

 

By Chris Callard

“I’ve never believed that story,” Louise said. “Why bring it up?”

We were at the kitchen table. I was relating that, as a summer job in my 20s, I’d played the bearded lady in a carnival sideshow, a story I sometimes told after a second glass of wine when conversation lagged. To me it was a running gag, presented with an arched eyebrow, hoping it would tickle her. Tonight she was not amused. She hadn’t been amused for months. Repetition, admittedly, was not charming. But sometimes it was tough to find new material.

“Did they even have sideshows 20 years ago? You’re just lying.” She went and splashed her drink in the sink.

I stared sadly at my drink, then glanced around the kitchen. It was mostly yellow, with orange curtains covering the windows. The refrigerator was studded with a forest of magnets,  varied images. Vacations, gifts, crap. Just magnets that held no photos or anything else in place.

She looked at the orange curtains. “Such a schmuck.” 

I surveyed the profile of her nose; straight and long with dried skin at the base of the nostrils. 

“I don’t know why I make you so angry,” I said.

She turned, studied my face, ears, chest, legs. “I’m taking my walk.”

“I’ll go with you.”

She started to say one thing but shifted gears. “You don’t need to.”

“I want to. Let me get my shoes.”

We lived in a large condominium complex and often walked its perimeter, along the road that fed the carports and parking spaces and garages. She was waiting, barely, outside in the chilly air. The bottom of my right foot itched terribly. I stamped it to try and stop the tingling. 

“What are you doing?” Louise asked. 

“My arch itches. The walk’ll help.”

We made two circles of the place at a pretty good pace without conversation. I was sweating to keep up, watching the crows that seemed to be following us, flying from tree to tree. 

Back inside, Louise put a Lean Cuisine in the microwave while I poured another glass of wine and found an Audie Murphy western from the 1960s on cable. 

Carrying the lasagna, she passed the living room, then stopped to say “good night” while Audie clomped along a wooden sidewalk. 

“Are you really watching this?” she asked, disappointed.

I nodded like a bobble-head. She might’ve thought I was saying yes, but I was simply moving my head. “This stuff is classic.”

She left. I poured another glass from the bottle on the TV tray. It hit me out of the blue that the itch in my foot had stopped some time ago. I removed both shoes and socks, lifted and laid my right leg over my left, and grasped the foot. Held onto it, in fact, for dear life.

                                                                 *   *   *

Chris Callard lives in Long Beach, CA, and has never blocked his number. Wouldn’t, in fact, even know how to. His poems have appeared in Ariel Chart, Cadence Collective, One Sentence Poems. His short fiction has been published in Gemini Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, A Story in 100 Words, and ZZyZxWriterZ. He has had work nominated for Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions.

By Sarah R. New

Laika, how did it feel on that tantalizingly long ascent to the stars? Were you bright eyed, bushy tailed, electricity collecting in your fur and sparking with excitement? Did you think about the places you’d go, the things you’d see, how important and respected and loved you would become? Were you excited for the adventures to come, the long road ahead, the glass ceilings you’d shatter as you leapt to touch the unknown?

Laika, did it hurt to find out why you were chosen? To find out they had fallen in love with another dog, which led you to your fatal flight? Did you ever wonder what would have happened if you were the cuter one, the more lovable one, the one who had become a mother to the fragile puppies who couldn’t yet be separated? Would you have been saved as well?

Laika, is this what you would have wanted? When the scientist took you home, to play with his children, did you think you would stay there? Did you hope that? Did you realize what was happening, the next day when he put you back in the car? Did you think you were home, only for all your hopes and dreams to be ripped apart, unable to ever be fixed?

Laika, did it hurt you to hear of Félicette? Did you feel relief to hear that they had done that awful act to another girl too? Or did you just feel sadness, grief, relief? Did you dream of flying together betwixt the stars? Did you resent her, for being allowed to return to Earth? For not dying alone, scared, overheating, in a tiny metal box spinning miles above the horizon? For being allowed to come home? Or did you feel like she had been tricked, to triumphantly return but then to be used in experiments, scrapped for parts? Did you realize you’d both been used?

Laika, cosmonaut, do you know that we mourn you? Do you know that we tell tales of the brave girl who was let down by so many? Are you glad that you remain in the sky, flying and free, able to travel and explore forever, with no one left to hurt you? Are you aware that you’ve passed into myth and constellation, inspiring us to venture to the stars? Do you play in the stars forever? 

*   *   *

Sarah R. New (she/her) has recently been published in journals including Wishbone Words, Gastropoda, and in Broken Olive Branches, a Palestinian charity anthology. Her Gothic horror novella, Amissis Liberis, was published by Alien Buddha Press in May 2024. Her travel memoir, The Great European Escape is available for free from https://sarahrnew.wordpress.com/.

By Michael Minassian

My neighbor Bob believes in UFO’s. After a few beers, he talks about how the government was hiding information. “They have a flying saucer just outside Roswell, New Mexico. And everyone knows about Area 51,” he whispers. He paid $3000.00 for a high powered telescope and set it up in his attic. Last year, he and his wife Sara went to a UFO convention in Miami and came back wearing matching tie-dyed t-shirts with a little green man driving a beach buggy on the front. 

A few days ago, Bob banged on my door at 6 AM. He said Sara was missing, probably abducted by aliens. “Her purse is still there and her phone. She never goes anywhere without her phone. She must have been levitated right out of our bed while I was sleeping.” Bob bent over at the waist and sucked in big gulps of breath.

“Take it easy, Bob. You don’t want to hyperventilate.”

“What am I gonna do? I can’t go to the cops. They won’t believe me.”

“Wait until she comes home. You can stay with me.”

“No, no, thanks. I better stay home in case she comes back. I mean, when she comes back.”

She was gone for two days. Bob told me she came home in an Uber, stumbled out of the car with torn stockings, minus her shoes, and wearing a red dress two sizes too small. “And her hair was cut short,” Bob whined. “She loved her long hair, spent hours brushing it. Now it’s chopped around her ears, like, what you call it, a pixie cut.”

At first, I thought his story about alien abduction was a cover for a case of infidelity or some other domestic issue. But Sara seemed different. I’d see her wandering around looking up at the sky. When I said good morning, she smiled and stared at me as if we had never met. I never heard her say another word again except for the night she looked up at the top branches of the tree on the corner and screeched at the green parrots that had built a nest there. No words, really, just a steady squawk that quieted the parrots. 

The next day, Bob knocked on my door again and asked me if I had seen, Jonah, their black lab. Bob’s theory was that the same aliens that had abducted Sara had come back for their dog. A couple of days later,  Jonah showed up in the middle of the night, howling at the full moon and waking up half the neighborhood.

In the morning as I was leaving for my run, Bob sprinted over. “You gotta come see this,” he blurted. “Come on, follow me.” We walked into his house into the small den where he had a desk, computer, and a built-in shelves crammed with books.

“You see that? Do you see?” pointing at the shelves.

“Jeez, Bob, you finally organized your library.” The last time I had been here, the shelves were a hopeless jumble of books. Now they were neatly arranged.

“It wasn’t me…it was Jonah.”

“C’mon, Bob. How could a dog? Are you sure Sara didn’t sneak in here while you were asleep?”

“I saw him. I came in here and saw him put the last few books on the shelf. Spilled my damn coffee all over myself. He had a book in his mouth, put it on the shelf, then another, then another.”

“Did Sara see this?”

“Sara? Sara hasn’t been the same since she came back. Do you know where she is now? In the backyard, watching the sky. Do you want to see what she did in our bedroom?”

I followed him and stopped short in the doorway. The bed was unmade, Sara’s bras and panties were strewn all over the floor, and one wall was covered in a mathematical formula.

“What do you make of that?” Bob asked.

I looked at the numbers scrawled on the wall and shook my head. “I don’t know Bob, I’m no math genius.” I took another look and pointed. “See that on the left, E = mc², Einstein’s theory of relativity. I don’t know what Sara is doing with it. Maybe she’s proving it. Or maybe she’s deconstructing it?”

Bob sobbed. “She always said she was never any good at Math and Science. She teaches French at Broward College, you know that.” 

I didn’t know what to say. If Sara wasn’t capable of these complicated formulas, I didn’t think Bob had done it. He sold cars at the Mazda dealer on State Road 7.

That night, I woke up to a low pitched humming sound. It felt like the whole house was vibrating. Then it stopped and everything was quiet. In the morning, it was a typical summer day in South Florida: hot and humid. The only thing that seemed odd was that the green parrots had moved from the tree in front of Bob and Sara’s house to the palm tree on my front lawn. I could hear them squawking and complaining to each other right outside my window. 

I wondered what was going on at Bob’s. After lunch, I knocked on the door, and it swung open. I walked around, then checked the bedrooms upstairs. It looked the same as it had the day before, but there was no sign of anyone. When I left, I shut the door tight. The parrots in front of my house were strangely quiet until I got back to my house. 

A few days later, I went back, knocked, waited, then opened the door and went inside. Still no one. I found my way up to the attic and carried Bob’s telescope to my house. Most nights now I spend a couple of hours looking through the telescope, searching and waiting, watching for someone or something to show up. The humming in my ear gets a little louder every day.

  *   *   *

Michael Minassisan is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal. His short stories have appeared recently in Impspired, Flash Boulevard, and 10 by 10. He is the author of three poetry collections as well as a chapbook of poems Jack Pays a Visit, released in 2022. For more information: https://michaelminassian.com

 

By Lynne Curry

I broke…and discovered I could bend. 

The ground beneath my feet crumbled…I was born to fly.

I drowned in fear…and learned to breathe under water.

I fell apart…when I put the pieces together in a new way they mirrored my heart.

I hit bottom…and danced.

Her words cut me…until I learned they described her.

I lost everything…and discovered the freedom in starting over.

Silence swallowed me…until I heard my own voice.

I walked away…and found my way to something much better.

They shut the door…so I built my own house.

I hit the wall…and decided to paint it lavender. I’ve always loved lavender.

Others forgot me…I discovered myself.

*   *   *

Alaska/Washington author Lynne Curry founded “Real-life Writing,” https://bit.ly/45lNbVo (Lynnecurryauthor.com) and publishes a weekly “dear Abby of the workplace” newspaper column and a monthly “Writing from the Cabin” blog, https://bit.ly/3tazJpW. Curry has published seven short stories; three poems; one article on writing craft, and six books, including Navigating Conflict, Managing for Accountability, Beating the Workplace Bully, and Solutions. She posts articles weekly on http://www.workplacecoachblog http://www.workplacecoachblog .

 

By Brett Pribble

This is Sal, strapped to a bed to keep from falling. This diapered war veteran whose words drip onto a napkin while feeding, who used to have savings, a wife, memories, who now finds himself in a room with a stranger who howls all night on the cot next to him. 

The VA wouldn’t pay for a private room, his home already sold to pay for his wife’s chemo. After three military tours and fifty years of work at the factory, here lies our hero, the nurses putting a tiny flag in a vase to commemorate him. They float up to him dressed as elves for the holiday, force food into his mouth, and change him, their faces the apparitions that haunt his days, their arms the cranes that lift him off the floor—following hours unattended and face down after falling off the sack. Merry Christmas! Happy Veteran’s Day! Please don’t make me hurt you when I change your dirty diaper! 

Here is our hero blinking in and out of existence as the TV meant to subdue him flashes with football teams he doesn’t remember, scores he loses track of—young men in uniforms grunting and growling in the mud as he once did across the ocean—himself a young man. 

When Sal departs this earth, he’ll be cremated and unclaimed, his ashes dumped in a collective grave, mixing with the ashes of many who lived the same, somewhere in the distance a flag waving.

                                                                   *   *   *

Brett Pribble’s work has appeared in Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, decomP, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Saw Palm, The Molotov Cocktail, Five on the Fifth, Maudlin House, Bending Genres, Bright Flash Literary Review, and other places. He is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Ghost Parachute. Follow him on Instagram/X/Bluesky @brettpribble.

By David Larsen

     Trent Conover couldn’t believe his luck, bad as it was. What next? he asked himself as the dozen or so customers at the tables around him buzzed amicably about this or that—nothing, he assumed, of any importance. How much worse can things get? Really? 

     And bad, things were. That was for sure. First, there was the matter of the dissolution of his marriage. After three years of living with Willa, followed by two not-so-great, but not-really-all-that-terribly-bad years of marriage, Willa had convinced him that they should forego having children, what with the world being such as it was. And since it would be easier, far less costly, less of a fuss, for Trent to get a vasectomy than for Willa to have her tubes tied, he agreed to undergo the “simple” procedure. 

     For some reason Willa detested condoms. Why? Trent hadn’t a clue. She just did, and she was more than happy to let her feelings be known. Trent wasn’t all that crazy about rubbers himself. They seemed bothersome, a nuisance. The pill? Well, Willa had told him rather emphatically that they made her queasy.

     Second, there was his getting sacked at work. 

     Then, to top it all off, not more than a month after his appointment with the urologist, of all things, on a Tuesday, before he and Willa turned in for the night after watching Jimmy Kimmel and putting Clyde, their schnauzer, out to take care of his business, Willa announced, calmly, matter-of-factly, as if she was discussing the next day’s itinerary, that she was leaving him—for someone she’d met at Gold’s Gym—and then, holy cow, she had the temerity to suggest that “just for the hell of it” they could make love one last time. 

     Surprisingly, that final tussle had turned out better than any of their recent episodes, as few and far between as they had been. Trent, of course, had always blamed himself for their failure to perform all that theatrically in bed. She had been his second, preceded by a brief fiasco with a holier-than-thou, generously-endowed blond he’d met at the First Presbyterian Church where his mother attended without fail every Sunday morning. Also, Trent had suspected right from the get-go that Willa was already frightfully experienced and that she therefore found her husband, not merely somewhat of a novice, but, even worse, a bit of a dud. 

     Before that night, and certainly not since the night when they had been introduced at the home of the Shanks, Tom and Evelyn, a decadently funky couple, mutual friends of both of them, had he and Willa really been all that spectacular in the sack. That initial encounter, on the very night they met, was pretty extraordinary, or so Trent thought at the time. But, after that night, their lovemaking seemed to somehow lack pizzazz, and, sadly, he sensed that Willa had lost interest in him, sexually, if not completely.  

     Unaccustomed to Starbucks, not much of a coffee drinker, let alone a connoisseur when it came to caffeine, Trent sat, fiddling with a troublesome hangnail, at a table smack dab in the middle of the downtown coffee shop while Willa argued with the young woman behind the counter about the inadequacy of her latte, whatever a latte was. In her purse his soon-to-be ex-wife had papers for Trent to deliver to Bill Gaither, his lawyer, a fraternity brother from fifteen years earlier. It’s bad enough, thought Trent, that I’m getting dumped, but to add insult to my grievous injury I have to go to Bill in the hopes that he can give me a break on his normally exorbitant fees. Layoffs due to Covid hit the Sparks Book Store hard, my job. Whatever happened to last hired, first fired? he wondered as everyone around him guzzled down their expensive drinks and guffawed as if everything was just hunky-dory in the world, which, any fool could plainly see, it wasn’t.

     “That nitwit,” said Willa when she plopped down across the table from Trent, “she wouldn’t know a latte from an espresso. I told her to use half-and-half. I don’t think she’s ever heard of half-and-half.”

     Trent smiled, then shrugged. What could he say? He didn’t know the difference.

     Willa glared at him for the longest moment. Finally, she asked, “What are you drinking? Is that iced tea?”

     Trent nodded.

     “For God’s sake, we’re in Starbucks. And all you can do is sip a stupid iced tea.” She paused. “I’ll give you the papers, then I’m out of here. I’m meeting Raoul for lunch.”

     “How is Mr. Muscles?”

     Willa laughed. “Do you really care? I’m sorry, Trent, but Raoul makes me happy. You and I were never quite right together.” She chuckled. “Except for that last night.”

     Trent blinked. “That was the only time?”

     Willa grinned. “You did your best.”

     Trent sighed. Was anyone eavesdropping? “I tried.”

     Willa took a sip, then grimaced. “I guess you should hear it from me, before someone else lets the cat out of the bag.” She glanced suspiciously at the couple at the nearest table, young people, obviously content with each other. “Trent, I’m pregnant.” She glared at him, then continued. “It’s a good thing. I think. Raoul’s happy.”

     “What about your principles? You didn’t want to bring a child into this screwed-up world.”

     Willa nodded. “I know. But we’ve made it, this far. So will the kid.”

     His wife gone, Trent thought about it. What are the odds? Just what are my responsibilities in this? Shouldn’t I have told Willa about my low sperm count? About faking it with the bag of frozen peas on my balls to prevent the swelling from the vasectomy that I chickened out of? About Dr. Taylor telling me that the likelihood of my knocking someone up was slight, but not impossible? I guess I can just play it by ear. Who knows? Things have a way of working out. Even in this God-forsaken world.

*   *   *

David Larsen is a writer who lives in El Paso, Texas. His stories and poems have been published in numerous literary journals and magazines including Cholla Needles, The Heartland Review, Floyd County Moonshine, The Mantelpiece, Oakwood, Nude Bruce Review, Canyon Voices, Change Seven, Literary Heist, Coneflower Café, The Raven Review, Voices, Sand Canyon Review, The Rush, El Portal, Bright Flash Literary Review, and Cowboy Jamboree.