By David Margolin

Raindrops ping on the top of my tent. I hear hollow, sloshing footsteps. The moisture liberates the street odors: asphalt, dirt, oil, debris. These molecules are mixed with the scents from the passersby: perfume, pungent reefer, and sweaty trepidation as they approach the tent. The emergence of these smells, coupled with the wind, are energizing–my surroundings are coming alive.

I sleep three feet away from the electrified fence surrounding the lot that stores the vehicles towed away by Vulture Towing. I can feel the vibration and hear the hum of the 7,000 volts that keep would-be trespassers at bay. What if I grabbed the fence with both hands and held on tightly? Would I sizzle and burn or just feel a buzz? Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad way to go—a poor man’s self-execution.

I unzip the tent flap, exit, stretch, and pee. People pass by, look at me out of the corner of their eye. I hear John Lennon’s plaintive, pleading, imperative, “Don’t’ put me down…”

I think, I hope you’re having a nice day.

I shout, “HRACK, I’ll poke your eye out, out, out.”

Why can’t I say what I think?

Around the corner, behind FoodFeast, there is a dumpster. I find a Twinkie, it looks fresh, the ants run away when I reach for it.

Why is everyone so large? All of the women are over 6 feet tall, and powerful. They could easily crush me.

I remember my mother calling me to come in for dinner, “Don’t forget to wash up, Ronnie.”

“OK, Mom.” Her fried chicken was the best.

“How did it make you feel when your mom hit you, Ron?” asked the V.A. therapist.

“It hurt.”

“No, emotionally, how did it feel emotionally?”

“Nothing, it’s like you’re asking me to name colors and I’m color blind, Doc.”

I want to ask a passing man for change, but I glare menacingly instead.

I’d like to be stable, steady, predictable, reliable. I could be a streetcar conductor. It would keep me on track, but there would still be a lot of responsibility. What if I went too fast, or too slow? What if a passenger needed help, or tried to hurt me? I don’t like confrontations, but I would use my hunting knife if I had to.

When did everyone get so small? I step carefully so as not to crush people as they scurry by.

I see lights inside of apartments and homes and think how great it would be if I lived there. I bet it’s warm inside, and that the people are happy, sitting, joking, smiling—making small talk.

I walk, walk, and walk. It makes me feel calmer and it’s good exercise. I have bad thoughts about the people I pass. That guy is walking too close to me, that woman looks threatening, why are those people shouting? Stop it, Ron! You are what you think. For the next ten minutes you must think only positive thoughts.  That woman in the wheelchair, turning the wheels with her hands, she’s tenacious. That guy is wearing a nice jacket. They look like a happy couple. It’s exhausting.

Tap, tap, tap. I like the sound my walking stick makes as I walk towards the river. I don’t like waiting for traffic lights to change so I follow the green lights. I like to keep moving. I think that I have walked about 20 miles today. Eventually I will get to where I need to be—I hope that I like it there.

It was a good day—nothing bad happened. Tomorrow I will probably take another long walk. I can go anywhere I want; I’m a free man.

*   *   *

David, a resident of Portland, Oregon, enjoys writing comedy, as in “Table Manners” (R U Joking?), “Showdown” (Little Old Lady Comedy), and Wishful Thinking (Witcraft). He is often nostalgic, as in “Teabags” (Memoir Magazine), “The Toys of My Youth” (Bewildering Stories), and “Interwoven” (Bright Flash Literary Review), but he can be grim, as in “The Outing” (Children, Churches & Daddies), “Brain Raid” (Freedom Fiction Journal), and “The Audience” (Akpata Magazine). He posts on https://davidmargolin.substack.com/.

 

By Daniel Hagan

Myra’s text message asks if I’ll drive up there, if I’ll confirm what she already suspects: that it’s time. Ginger has reportedly stopped eating, and can barely stand long enough to piddle on the backyard lawn. My heart sinks with ambivalence at the sight of the notification. I want to help, I really do, despite the fact that Myra and I haven’t spoken these last three weeks. Our mutual decision to take a break felt like a precursor for something more permanent – frankly, I’m surprised to be hearing from her this soon. 

Or maybe I just don’t want to admit that Ginger is this sick. At this point, she is my baby every bit as much as she is Myra’s. The three of us have spent practically every weekend of the past half decade together. Ginger has rested her head on the couch while Myra and I nibble on pad Thai, silently pleading for a bite with those big amber eyes. She has chased tennis balls into the depths of the American River, her coat tinged gold as she emerges from the water into late afternoon’s glow. Many winter evenings she has bunkered at the foot of the bed, curled tightly, gleaning the warmth from my feet next to Myra’s. Most recently she has napped on the kitchen floor, occasionally lifting an ear to pick up phrases like “long-term commitment” and “coping mechanisms” and “couples therapy.” I wonder if these concepts feel as foreign to her as they do to me. If she knows she’s the reason I’ve hung around this long. 

Reluctantly, I manage to craft a response to Myra. Without traffic I could be at her door in ninety minutes. 

Myra answers my knock in her pajamas, a sliver of toned tummy peeking from the bottom of her shirt, and I realize how long it’s been since I’ve touched her body. I ask where Ginger is, eventually finding her sprawled in front of the television. Oh how I’ve missed my girl. Her tail wags limply as I crouch beside her, but she does not rise to greet me the way she used to. I notice the bony outline of ribs poking through her skin – Myra wasn’t exaggerating about the lack of appetite. Even her eyes, once soulful and pure, have lost their spark.   

Lumps gather in my throat as I suddenly reflect on a memory from two summers ago. A rare Sacramento rainstorm had blown through Myra’s neighborhood that evening, rattling the windows and walls with thunderous crackle. Ginger sprinted erratically from one end of the house to the other, shrieking her petrified whimpers into the night. I remember Myra laughing, something she did quite often then, as she told me about the “Thunder Shirt”: a product that claimed to quell canine anxiety. Whoever invented it had never met a creature as anxious as Ginger. I hovered over her with my jacket, wrapping her in my embrace until the trembling gradually subsided. That was the night Myra dubbed me Ginger’s “Thunder Daddy.” 

I glance down at my bony baby’s sparkless eyes, then back at Myra. It’s time. We agree we’ll take Ginger to the clinic first thing in the morning. I’m beginning to stand up when I notice a yellow puddle soaking the rug near her hind legs. 

Myra suggests one last bath. This time Ginger can go in the tub, hot water serving as a final luxury following countless weekends of rinsing her with the garden hose. Several minutes of gentle washing soothes her into a trance, the staccato of her panting settles into even rhythm.

Once the bathing is finished, Myra unearths her pink hair dryer from beneath the bathroom sink. Throughout our relationship she has used this tool when getting ready for special occasions: anniversaries, birthday dinners, her cousin’s wedding where she drank too many vodka sodas and vomited on the hotel mattress. Tonight Myra oscillates the hair device over Ginger’s fur until it dries.  

I hoist Ginger out of the tub, laying her down on some couch cushions, trying to cherish every remaining moment. Myra reaches for a blanket and drapes it over our girl, tears swelling in the corners of her eyes. I rest my hand on her back in solidarity; I recognize the impossibility of our situation. Simultaneously, we lean in and place our lips on Ginger’s forehead. We whisper to her, reassuring her the pain will be over soon. That we’ll always love her. 

*

I awake to Myra nudging my shoulder. 

Ginger’s gone. 

Gone? 

Gone. 

I stumble toward the living room in disbelief. 

She lays motionless on the cushions. Never have I seen her look so peaceful.

A parting gift, sparing us that agonizing vet visit.  

I drive back to the Bay now that it’s over. 

Another text from Myra arrives as I park in front of my apartment. How lucky Ginger was to have me as her Thunder Daddy, that I’d sincerely made her golden years so special. And how there was a reason she waited for me before she went to heaven: because she loved and treasured me too. My throat emits a noise I didn’t realize it was capable of producing. 

Many months later we are catching up at a bistro in Midtown. Myra says she has some things to return to me, mostly clothes. We greet each other with a hug; it’s genuinely good to see her. She shares that she has stopped drinking, replacing this habit with morning jogs. I dare not ask if she is seeing someone new – truthfully, I don’t want to know. Over Caesar salads and iced teas we stick to the safe topics. How her folks are doing, how work is going. We are not compelled to dwell on the past. We understand what we’ve been through. 

Five years treading in and out of intimacy have faded. 

The shared meals, the drunken arguments. 

The laughter. 

The time we kissed our beloved pup goodnight and tucked her into the afterlife. 

                                                                     *   *   *

Daniel Hagan grew up in Northern California, and is a graduate of the creative writing program at Marin School of the Arts. Passionate as both a creator and consumer of short, flash, and micro fiction, his stories often focus on finding magic in the mundane. Daniel currently works as a psychotherapist in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lives with his girlfriend, cat, and a community of tropical fish. 

 

By CT Erickson

I watch you from a distance of six and half years, from this empty locker room of my expensive gym in the deepest corner of this exhausting city where I’ve come to hide from the memory of anything that’s ever happened in March and anything that’s ever happened in Long Beach at all. 

I watch you while I’m crawling up the Stairmaster or grunting under dumbbells. 

I watch you in the mirror while I do goblet squats and lunges, and when I sit down in the sauna you sit down next to me. 

I brace the edges of the cold plunge and lower myself in, tamping down the usual shock. I close my eyes and watch your bare toes web out over the frozen, pebbly crosswalks of Connecticut Ave. You walk on the balls of your feet where the tough skin is so well-trained that the cracks, rocks, and icy patches growing on the concrete don’t phase you. The cold barely registers after a night of beers, vodka, and after-hours chicken wings. 

My body stays submerged in the tub, neck deep in water set at fifty-one degrees. I breathe slowly, in and then out. 

You laugh and fumble down the sandy steps at the end of the road, jog quickly across the chilled sand and throw your towel onto the ground. We strip. You run ahead of me taunting, your body a silhouette against the dark horizon. You jump and dive, then pop-up and let loose with a night swimmer’s scream. I chase you, smiling, and plunge head-first into the Atlantic. 

So cold my breathing is dire. I stand up straight and wipe the salt from my eyes and mouth. The waves are stronger than I took them for and the outgoing current rips at the back of my thighs. I stumble, regain myself, see you dive again. You rise quickly and turn to face me. Behind you I see another wave swelling and when it crashes you disappear. I step out farther and the ocean deepens. You reappear, gasping. You’re struggling against the current with no leverage for support. I’m shouting your name, but you don’t hear me. You’re sucked under then fight back to the surface. 

I reach for you and it’s chaos. The ocean beats on me from every crooked angle. The current is merciless and you’re slipping away from me. One wave steals you from my sight and another knocks me off balance, yanks me under, and then I’m rolling, tumbling under the water head-over-heels, my limbs puppeteered in different directions. Then, despite the turmoil and numbing fear, even while my distorted body twists at the mercy of the ocean, all l hear is the pressure of the tide and the weirdly gentle click of sand pebbles knocking against each other. 

I rise up in survival mode fighting for breath, anchoring my feet in the sand below me. I trudge sideways across the current like my mother always taught. On the shore I collapse, coughing up salt. I stare back at the ocean in shock, waiting for you to reappear, ready for the joke. But there’s nothing. Just the waves, rolling and crashing again and again. And again. 

I open my eyes. The dark night in Long Beach vanishes, replaced by the white locker room tiles and too-bright lights. The guilt I’ll never escape. 

I rise from the water. Truly, hauntingly, irreparably cold. 

*   *   *

CT Erickson lives in Boston. He holds a BS in International Business and Journalism from Marist University. He is the youngest of three boys and the only one with red hair. 

By R.K. West

As I drive, I am telling Amy, my granddaughter, about that time I rode my bicycle down to the lake, and how it was late in the day and the light made the water the same muddy color as the bike path, and I couldn’t tell the difference, so I just pedaled right into the water, but before I have said more than five words, she interrupts me and says, “Grandma, you’ve told me this story so many times,” and I realize she’s right, but it’s one of my best stories, so I snap back, “Is hearing my story again any worse than watching reruns of ‘Friends’ all night?” and she presses her lips together in that exasperated way, just like her mother — and that reminds me of how her mother, my darling little girl, when she was five or six would get that look whenever we said no to her, and it made us laugh because she looked so much like Shirley Temple, but nobody today knows who Shirley Temple was, so I suppose I could tell that story using a different name, but I don’t think there is any famous person today who fills the niche that Shirley did, and certainly no one so young and sweet, and I begin a mental inventory of the faces I’ve seen lately on TV, and just as I’m working on the name of that redhead who plays a female Columbo, Amy says, “This is it,” and I realize we’re already at the mall, but the pavement slopes oddly and I can’t tell exactly where the driveway is and I turn just a bit too soon, bumping over the curb and getting a gasping grunt from the grandchild, and I realize this has been happening a lot lately, and maybe I need new glasses.

*   *   *

R.K. West is a former ESL teacher and travel blogger who now lives in the Pacific Northwest and is learning to paint. West’s recent flash fiction has appeared at Six Sentences, Friday Flash Fiction, Sudden Flash, and elsewhere.

By Khadija Rehman

She had been reading Wuthering Heights again, her seventh time, as if everyone spent their evenings inside Ovid or Nabokov. She was curled on the bed, knees close to the chest, not in sorrow but in thought, which, for her, was sometimes the same thing.  

He was half-listening from the other end of the room. He was focused on carbon ratios and lattice defects and the heat signatures of metals—work that never loved him back, but never asked much either.

She said absently, “I was thinking today… what if I laid an egg?”

He looked up. “What?”

“Like, an actual egg. The size of a hen’s. Not poetic, not metaphorical. Real.”

He laughed, finally swivelling his chair toward her. “You’re ridiculous. What’s going on in that little head of yours?”

She didn’t answer immediately. She sat up a little, her arms folding around her shins.

“I mean—what if that’s how it worked? What if, for a woman to lay that egg, she had to be truly in love with a man? And the man had to be in love with her. Not in the way people throw around the word, but like Achilles and Patroclus. You know?”

He watched her now. Not laughing.

“And if they’re not really in love,” she continued, “her body wouldn’t make the egg. It just wouldn’t happen. Biology would know.”

“You mean like a system of checks and balances,” he offered.

“Yes,” she said. “But governed by sincerity.”

“Interesting protocol,” he muttered, clicking his pen shut. “But when does one know they love someone?”

He shook his head almost immediately. “Stupid question. Don’t answer that.”

“I know the answer,” she said, eyes still on the ceiling. “It’s fairly simple.”

He turned toward her. “When is it then?”

“When you feel kindness for them,” she said. “Ridiculous amounts of kindness.”

He let out a small laugh, startled. “That is such a great answer.”

She looked at him then, eyes quiet but bright. “Do you know when to know for sure you’re being loved honestly?”

He leaned in. “When?”

“When you begin to feel kinder toward yourself,” she said. “They teach you a gentler way to say your own name.”

He gasped.

And then he was very still.

She added to the entire blueprint of love: “Also, mutual kindness must override mutual hostility. That’s it.”

She moved closer to the edge of the bed.

“So,” she went on, “let’s say the woman lays this egg. And it’s small. Very fragile. She gives it to the man, the father. And it becomes his job to carry it. All the time. Skin to shell. For nine months.”

He raised a brow but said nothing.

“And during that time, it would need more than just touch. It would need a kind of… nourishing love. A constant love. Not performative, not out of duty. Something cellular. The kind that changes you chemically. Do you know,” she added, turning her head to look at him, “when we long for something, like really long for it, our body releases dopamine. Oxytocin. Sometimes even serotonin. Wanting is its own biological event.”

He didn’t interrupt.

“So I think,” she said, slower now, “that if the man truly loves the child inside that egg… if he wants her so much that his body starts to change, then maybe the egg begins to grow. Bit by bit. Until one day, it’s no longer a tiny thing but a full, human-sized shell. And it hatches.”

She drew in a breath.

“And the baby that comes out… she will know. She will know that she was loved into existence. That she wasn’t an accident or a byproduct of lust or boredom. But that she was wanted. She was willed.”

He looked down at his hands now. His screen dimmed behind him.

“She would never have to wonder if she was a mistake. She’d never flinch at the word bastard, because the world would forget that word even existed. It would be impossible to be born without love.”

There was a long pause.

Then he said, quietly, “What if humans really evolved that way?”

She tilted her head, a tired kind of smile just beginning around her mouth. “Then each of us would know… someone once loved us enough to give us life.”

He got up, walked to her, and sat beside her without touching.

“I’ll love you for a very long time, okay?” he said.

“Okay.”

                                                                 *   *   *

Khadija Rehman (she/her) is an Indian writer who was selected for the 2021 International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in the IWP anthologies Crosswalks and The Heartworm, and is forthcoming in Eunoia Review. She often writes about love, violence, longing, and despair.

By David Henson

You sit up in bed and entwine your arms behind your back, joints whispering beneath your skin, the impression of your legs under the sheet like creases in paper. I say your arms resemble the necks of swans in love. You tell me that’s a myth. When I say I didn’t know you were double-jointed, you say swans don’t have joints. I chuckle and say that’s not even a myth. Sunlight traces the curve of your breasts as if it’s memorizing something I’ll forget.

—

The quiet of your absence wakes me. Your car is gone. I hope you’re getting doughnuts, the ones dusted with sugar and weekend joy. I’m drinking coffee in the kitchen when you walk in and drop your keys on the table. You say you’ve been at yoga. I ask since when. You say about an hour ago. I say that’s not what I meant. As you pour yourself a cup, steam curling into a smile, you tell me your instructor said you were the most flexible student he’s ever had.

—

I find you in the armchair reading a book with paper cranes on the cover. You tell me yoga is human origami. I ask if that’s from your instructor. You stand on one leg and touch your elbows together behind your head. When I say that’s impossible, you say nothing is.

—

I learn your instructor’s name is Origami. Suddenly it all makes sense. When I wake up, it doesn’t. Over breakfast, I ask you the name of your yoga instructor. You pause mid-bite and say you forgot. I ask you where the studio is. You say you know the way. That evening you practice poses, angling in ways that make me look away.

—

The next Saturday, I intend to follow you, but you don’t leave. Instead, you announce you don’t need lessons anymore—your body has learned what it needs to know. You spend the entire weekend making origami roses, each blossom a secret in your hands. When I ask you to create a bird, you say you haven’t learned to fly yet, your grin stinging like a paper cut.

—

I linger after you’ve left for work and search through your dresser for a version of you that hasn’t folded out of my reach. I discover a drawer full of origami birds.

—

I’m surprised to see your car in the driveway. You usually get home after me. I creep into the house and hear moaning from our bedroom. When I look in, you’re standing at the window, folded like a closed flower. It takes you a few seconds to open. You frown and say someone has been going through your things. When I ask how you know, you nod toward the dresser and say a little bird told you. Neither of us laughs.

—

Hearing the water in the shower, I sneak a peek at your origami book and create a peace offering. It’ll never fly, you say over the roar of the hair blower. You touch the condensation on the mirror and outline a bird, your breath quickly blurring its wings. I say it’ll never fly. You frown at my echo and say you know things I don’t.

—

One evening, I try creasing along new lines. You discover me stuck, unable to move. As you help me unfold, I say you’re blossoming into something I can’t be. You smile and say nothing is impossible. Then you announce that you’ve set the stars to music.

—

The next morning, while you sleep, I fold a piece of paper — once, twice, again. Not a star, but a bird. I set it on the windowsill. Nothing is impossible. 

*    *    *

David Henson and his wife have lived in Brussels and Hong Kong and now reside in Illinois. His work has been selected for Best Microfictions 2025, nominated for four Pushcart Prizes, Best of the Net, and two Best Small Fictions. His writings have appeared in various journals including Bright Flash Literary Journal, Literally Stories, Ghost Parachute,, Moonpark Review, and Maudlin House. His website is http://writings217.wordpress.com. His X handle is @annalou8. 

By Olivia Brochu 

Spill your water and you won’t get another one the rest of the day – she can hear the words coming out of his mouth but she can’t see his face while he says it, she can only see the faces of her friends with widened eyes or raised eyebrows, subtle reactions except that she has known them for 25 years now and they made the same faces when she stopped eating when she was 15 and they noticed how she wouldn’t order fries at the diner after school anymore and would let her milkshake melt in the tall glass, the whipped cream spilling over the side so that it no longer looked delicious but instead made her feel kind of sick to her stomach, like she felt now, under the scratchy blue and white striped comforter at their beach rental, which made her itch even through the Egyptian cotton sheets she brought from home because beach rentals never include the linens and that’s the main reason she hates getting one, that and having to be in a bikini all day long, but every summer her childhood friends, changed now by wrinkles and stretch marks and sun damage, convince her to spend a week at the Jersey shore, so here she is, wide awake in the middle of the night, her older boyfriend snoring softly next to her, sleeping without shame while she lies there unable to rest because he threatened forced dehydration upon his own child, and what’s worse – he did it in front of an audience, an audience of women who always find her to be inferior in some way, ever since she succumbed so publicly to the anorexia they all secretly suffered from but hers was somehow worse because she lost so much weight and occasionally passed out, which she knew in theory was a big deal but even now, after decades of therapy and general recovery, she thinks got an overblown reaction, much like the reaction to her boyfriend’s comments, which he probably didn’t even really mean, but she would never ask him because they didn’t talk about things like that, they didn’t talk about much at all, they just went out for dinners and took his girls for ice cream and fucked, frequently and savagely, unlike any other fucking she had done before, and that’s why he was here, next to her in this scratchy bed, because sex with him had finally freed her from a lifelong desire to never, ever be touched – and no man had been able to do it before him, not even her husband, who was perhaps asexual, and equally interested in avoiding pressing their naked bodies against each other, but for different reasons, so when she wanted to fuck this man, she felt no shame in following those instincts even if she was married and had been for four years and did want to have babies with her husband even if that meant actually having sex sometimes, but she put all of that aside to have desire roll through her deprived body from her groin to her nipples, and it was so wildly freeing to feel deeply rooted in her body for the first time ever after years and years of truly hating her physical form, that she could never look back, could never go without that feeling again, so she left her husband and kept sleeping with this man even if he was gruff to his daughters and she saw him kick a dog once and he didn’t read books or like to see any of the movies that she preferred – her friends would call it a sex haze, something they outgrew years before meeting their husbands and settling into suburbia to raise their perfect children in their perfect McMansions, and they will lecture her to end the whole thing, all while using soft tones and gentle words, like she’s a child falling for the oldest trick in the book, but that will only make her want to stay in it even more, because maybe it was just a sex haze, but it was the kind of fog she could happily stumble through for the rest of her forties, because living life with no blinders, nothing to block the unbridled pain of existence, hadn’t proved that fortunate for her either, and if it meant she had to do things like check on whimpering dogs and make sure his daughters get a water refill even if they accidentally knock their glass over at breakfast while reaching for the cereal, then so be it, so she climbs out from under that cheap Ikea bedspread and uses her hands as a guide against the wall and down the stairs to the kitchen, sandy tiles under her feet while she fills the girl’s bottle with fresh filtered water, screws the lid on, and plants it silently on her bedside table, gently tucking the girl’s bangs behind her ear before tiptoeing out of the room and back to her own to finally, finally fall asleep.

                                                                   *   *   *

Olivia Brochu’s work has been featured by Flash Flood Journal, Pithead Chapel, Anti-Heroin Chic, and more. Two of her essays were finalists in WOW Women on Writing contests. She lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania with her husband and their four children. If you’re wondering what it’s like to have four kids – it’s loud. You can read more of her work at oliviabrochuwrites.com.

By Wendy K. Mages

He’s never showered with his wife. Not when they first met. Not when they were newlyweds. Not ever. So, last night, when the stranger in the hotel bar invited him up and wanted to slather and lather with verbena-scented gel, temptation triumphed. Now, he showers incessantly, but is never cleansed.

                                                                        *   *   *

Wendy K. Mages, a Mercy University Professor, is a Pushcart Prize nominee and an award-winning poet and author. She earned her doctorate in Human Development and Psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and her master’s in Theatre at Northwestern University. As a complement to her research on the effect of the arts on learning and development, she performs at storytelling events and festivals in the US and abroad. To learn more about her and her work, and to find links to her published stories and poetry, please visit her Mercy University Faculty page https://www.mercy.edu/directory/wendy-mages and her website, Wendy Mages: Storyteller 

Instagram: @WendyMages_Storyteller; Threads: @WendyMages_Storyteller

BlueSky: @wendymages.bsky.social; LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/wendy-mages

 

By Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi

The body grows thick with silence, its branches heavy with things unseen. Trauma happens this way, quietly, like a tree, growing layer by layer, ring by ring, marking time in the body. A year passes, another autumn comes, and the tree stands in the same place, but never the same. Bark thickens, leaves fall, the body remembers. Trauma doesn’t speak loudly, at first. It lives in the creases of skin, in the small scars that no one sees. It is a slow burn, a fire long before the wood. A silent ember lodged deep inside the trunk, hidden from view but alive, smoldering.

Some trees never grow leaves again. They become twisted in their waiting, holding the shape of themselves but without the life they once carried. Old and gnarled, they become the memory of what they were. The bark splits, the roots dry, and the sun casts shadows through branches that no longer offer shade. This is how trauma takes shape—by turning life into an echo, a desperate labor of survival, where the body holds the weight of what has been lost.

It is easy to forget the beginning. The first cut is always small, barely noticeable. A crack in the bark, a tiny tear where the sap bleeds. But over time, the wounds multiply, and the tree becomes a map of itself, scarred and broken. Trauma is held this way, in the layers of bark and bone, until the body itself becomes a monument to pain.

When the axe comes, it strikes clean, splitting the wood open. The tree falls, but the memory remains. Each ring tells a story—of seasons passed, of winds endured, of rains that never came. The body holds these stories too, in muscles and sinew, in the curve of a spine, the bend of a knee. Trauma becomes part of the architecture, built into the very structure of being.

The brambles shake. Seed tears fall with every strike of the axe, each one carrying the weight of what was left behind. Trauma is never just about the one body. It is transmitted, passed down like an inheritance. A parent’s fall plants itself in the child, a scar growing on the graves of those who came before. The body holds not only its own pain, but the pain of generations, buried deep in the roots, waiting to surface.

There is a strange comfort in the way trees hold trauma. They never move, but they grow. Slowly, quietly, they adapt to the scars, the missing branches, the hollow spaces where once there was life. Some trees are cut down and turned into paper, their bodies split and mulched, spread thin and smooth. But even then, the memory of the tree remains. The paper holds the mark of the axe, the weight of the fall. Trauma, like the tree, is transformed but never erased.

The body is no different. It bears the signature of every wound, every loss. Skin wrinkles and dries, bones grow brittle, but the memory remains. Trauma lives in the bones, in the muscles, in the way the body moves through the world. It is held in the tension of shoulders, in the tightness of a jaw, in the way breath catches in the chest. The body remembers, even when the mind forgets.

But trauma is not the end. It is a beginning, too. A scar is a mark of survival, a testament to what has been endured. The body grows around it, like a tree growing around a fallen branch, twisting itself into new shapes. Life continues, even when it feels impossible. The sun rises, and the dew rests on the leaves. Tomorrow comes, bringing with it the promise of something new.

The tree that was once split by the axe now sends out roots, digging deep into the earth. New leaves sprout from old branches, small and fragile but full of life. The body, too, heals in its own way. The scars remain, but they are no longer the whole story. Trauma is held, but it is also transformed. It becomes part of the body’s architecture, a reminder of what was lost, but also of what was gained.

In the end, everything that grows hard toward the sun is reaching for the stars. The body, like the tree, strives upward, always searching for light. Even in the darkest moments, when the weight of trauma feels unbearable, there is a small spark of hope. The tree stands, even in its brokenness. The body endures, even in its pain. Tomorrow will come, and with it, the dew will rest on the open hands of new leaves, a quiet reminder that life continues, that healing is possible.

*.  *   *

Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi, a black writer, won SEARCH Magazine’s 4th Annual Poetry Contest and received commendation at the 2024 HART Prize for Human Rights. His work appears in POETRY, Strange Horizons, Blue Earth Review, and elsewhere.

By Asif Raheel

It was a quiet village once. A slow place, where the sun touched the earth with softness, and laughter rose like smoke from the courtyards. People lived by the seasons — sowing, reaping, cooking, singing. There were arguments, yes, but they ended by dusk. No one stayed angry long.

Then the boy returned from the forest. He held something strange in his hands. A smooth object that blinked and hummed and obeyed.

At first, they laughed.

“What is it?” the old barber asked.

“It does what I tell it,” the boy said. “Faster than I can.”

They watched him feed grain into it, and it came out ground, fine as dust, within minutes. He spoke to it, and it played songs they had never heard. Women clapped. Children danced. The elders frowned but said nothing.

Soon, the village changed. More machines came — things that milked cows, cleaned homes, cooked meals, told stories, did sums, remembered things no one asked them to.

People no longer met at the well or under the neem tree. Why would they? They had no need to borrow sugar, no reason to gossip or share grief. The machines had answers.

Fathers stopped telling stories to their sons. Mothers stopped humming while cooking. Children learned to speak less — the toys spoke for them.

No one noticed when the baker stopped singing at dawn. Or when the potter stopped greeting neighbors. They were all busy — efficiently, constantly busy.

But there was a silence growing, heavy and unfamiliar.

One evening, the old barber packed his blades. He went to the boy, now a man surrounded by blinking, murmuring things.

“You brought a ghost into this village,” the barber said. “And it’s eating us from the inside.”

The man didn’t look up. His eyes were fixed on a glowing square.

“I don’t feel anything anymore,” he whispered.

Outside, the sky was unusually dark. The neem tree stood still. No wind, no voice.

The toy hadn’t just made their lives easier. It had taken something too. Time. Touch. Tenderness.

They hadn’t known.

But now it was too late.

*   *   *

Asif Raheel is a short story writer and poet from Pakistan whose work explores themes of silence, identity, and modern disconnection. He is passionate about existential literature and postcolonial narratives.