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I don’t exactly know where my dreams end and my memories begin, but I’m pretty sure that most of this is true.  The summer I turned five. Ma and Pop are not up yet. I walk to the big thing in the parlor. I twist the knob. Click. The screen makes a crackly sound. Out of the dark, a man’s face appears. He says, “American authorities in Saigon today report the loss of six more American aircraft…” I don’t know what that means. I twist a different knob. Another man’s face. “The mystery is over. Those flashing lights in the sky…” I twist the knob one more time.  A cartoon monkey wearing a pilot’s cap and scarf climbs into the cockpit of a cartoon propeller airplane. As the plane taxis, picks up speed, leaves the ground, and rises, rises into the morning sky, a voice — not a mope like those other TV voices, this guy sounds like he knows what it means to be alive — says, “… and remember, young friends, unlike most breakfast cereals, delicious, nutritious Miracle Missiles are made with real cane sugar.” Music swells, and our little parlor throbs with song. Miracle Missiles Tumble and fall Into you cereal bowl The cartoon monkey, whose name is Captain Bananas, pulls a lever that opens a hatch. Box after box after box of delicious, nutritious Miracle Missiles drop from the sky. Spoon after spoonful Shovel them all Into your cereal hole  Now cartoon girls and boys are shoveling up their Miracle Missiles. Every bite is a miracle  Like sugar raining from the sky Every mouthful’s a miracle  So tell your mommy Tell your daddy The miracle cereal  They better buy They better buy They better buy Now all those cartoon girls and boys are pouring into the supermarket, nabbing box after box after box of delicious, nutritious… Miracle Missiles Tumble and fall Into you cereal booooowl From your cereal bowl Into your cereal hole From your cereal bowl Into your cereal hole Into your cereal hole Miracle Missiles! I have just learned something is missing from my life.  *** I’m at the supermarket. Box after box after box of delicious, nutritious Miracle Missiles. “Ma! Ma! Ma!” I’m honking like I got bitten by a radioactive goose. “Ma! Can I have Miracle Missiles?” Ma says maybe. Maybe . Maybe  if I finally remember to feed my pet turtle, Doctor Smith. Yes, I named my pet turtle after a character on Lost in Space. But as Ma pays for our groceries, I spy with my little eye Katie Daugherty’s grandma buying not one… not two… Mrs. Daugherty is buying three  family size boxes of Miracle Missiles. *** Back home. “Ma! Ma! Am I allowed to cross the street to Katie Daugherty’s house?” Ma says… Yes. If  I remember to feed my pet turtle,  Doctor Smith. I grab my bag of little green army men. I take a whiff of that plastic army men smell that will probably someday give me a tumor the size of a Spaldeen. Then I cross the street to Katie Daugherty’s house, where I happen to know there are not one, not two, but three  family size boxes of Miracle Missiles.  I’m pretty sure my tinkle  just moved all by itself. ***  Katie Daugherty’s grandma is rocking in the parlor, deep in conversation with a painting on the wall. Blessed Saint Anthony holding a shiny little baby Jesus. I go, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Daugherty. Would you happen to have any Miracle Missiles?” Katie Daugherty’s grandma says, “Hush now, Robert. Blessed Saint Anthony’s giving me the weather.” This is perfectly normal. I stomp up the stairs to Katie’s room. Katie’s still in her jammies, fuzzy pink slippers, setting up her dollhouse.  I go, “Katie? Have you had your bowl of delicious, nutritious Miracle Missiles?” Katie goes, “I am not hungry . I am playing .” My little green army men line up along the carpet next to her dollhouse.   Tiny little tables and chairs, tiny little lamps. Tiny little plastic mommy and daddy and baby. And here comes Bobby’s invincible green army. Katie goes, “No! No! Nooooo! You are a hineyhead !” Like all great military strategists, Colonel Hineyhead displays tenacity. My paratroopers take to the sky. But in an unexpected maneuver, Katie takes off one of her fuzzy pink slippers and launches it. The slipper rises in the air, descends in a fuzzy pink arc. My army men scatter to every corner of her room. Katie goes, “ You  are a cockyface !” I go, “ You!  Do not. Have . A . TINKLE!” As if to punctuate this assertion, Commander Cockyface removes one of his black-and-white saddle shoes and launches it at her dollhouse. My shoe hits the tiny little supper table like a runaway subway car. Tiny little plastic daddy flies out of his chair and out the dollhouse window.  Now Katie is screaming out of her room and I am extremely uninvited.  Katie’s grandma drags me down the stairs, drags down the front stoop. Something comes whizzing out the front door, smacks me on the back of the head. My recently weaponized black-and-white saddle shoe. Ow. Old Mrs. Daugherty drags me across the street, drags me up our front stoop and sits me down on our milk box. She says, “Listen, Robert. Listen to me good.” I’m listening. “There’s three  rules in our house you’ve got to obey. I’m going to tell you the three rules, and rule number three is the most important. Rule number one. Don’t be attacking young ladies’ dollhouses.” “I know.” “Don’t be telling me you know. You just attacked a young lady’s dollhouse.” “What’s rule number two?” “Rule number two. Don’t be throwing shoes at young ladies.” “I didn’t.” “Don’t be telling me you didn’t. You just did.” “No. I threw my shoe at a young lady’s dollhouse. That’s really just rule number one all over again.” “Well be off with you, then. if you’re gonna be arguing rules.” “You said there were three  rules.” “Never mind.” “But you said rule number three was the most important.” “Well. If you must know. Rule number three. When you’re talking to young ladies don’t be mentioning tinkles .” “I know !” “You don’t  know.” “I do !” “I just heard you talking to a young lady.  And you were mentioning tinkles !” Katie’s Grandma gives me a look. I know that look. She’s disappointed. She says, “Now be off with you. And tell your mother  what you’ve done.” *** Only it’s not Ma. It’s Pop. Back from downtown. Wearing his suit and tie. The shame of looking Pop in the face and confessing that, yes, I threw my shoe at a girl’s dollhouse and, much worse, Pop says I refused to take no  for an answer.  I refused to take no  for an answer.  Pop looks sad. Tired.  Pop says that’s not how a man  behaves. Pop says also I forgot to feed Doctor Smith again. Pop says also Doctor Smith is dead. Pop says no TV.  Pop says sit on the landing and do not say a word. I sit on the landing. Hands folded in my lap. I sit there for at least a minute before the fidgeting begins. “Pop?” No response. “Pop!” No response. “Pop!! I’m hungry. Can I have Miracle Missiles?” Pop gives me a look just like old Mrs. Daugherty.  Pop says, “Bobby, I come home from work and what do I find? Shoe throwing? Turtle killing?” I could throw in tinkle  mentioning, but I don’t. “Bobby, what can you do to make things right?” What can  I do to make things right? I have an idea.  Ma and Pop say yes. *** I’m holding the phone receiver to my ear. My palm is sweaty. “Katie? I’m sorry I broke rule number one?” “What are you talking about?”  “I threw a shoe at your dollhouse?” “Yeah. My grandma says you’re an ass.” “I just said I was sorry. Are you allowed to help me bury Doctor Smith in the backyard?” Silence. After a while, she says, “Bobby, I think burying turtles in the backyard is mean.” “No, no, no… Doctor Smith is dead .” Long silence. “Why is he dead?” “I think it was old age.” “But you just got him.” “How am I supposed to know how long turtles live? You wanna help me bury him or not?” She’s allowed. She actually sounds surprisingly enthusiastic.  She shows up with a pink shoebox. We go around back. Katie Daugherty opens the shoebox. It’s filled with plastic Easter basket grass. She says, “Can I put him in the box?” I let her. I figure it’s the least I can do. She lifts Doctor Smith into the shoebox. She tries him on his back but Doctor Smith looks uncomfortable upside down in all that plastic Easter basket grass. She turns him rightside up.  We take one last look at him. We close the shoebox. Then it’s shovel, hole. Years later, standing in the principal’s office at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows, I will remember this afternoon and Katie Daugherty saying a prayer for my dead turtle. She crosses herself and says, “Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To you do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To you do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, your eyes of mercy towards us, and after this exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” Then I cross myself and say, “Goodbye, Doctor Smith. You were a good turtle, and always very quiet. I still remember the day I got you. And believe me I had a hard time talking Ma and Pop into walking me to the pet store on Bruckner Boulevard to buy you. And I hope you can understand that it’s easier than you might think for a person to forget they even have  a turtle living in their house.” *** At the kitchen sink, we wash our hands.  Ma and Pop say they got a surprise for us. Ma sits us down at the kitchen table. And there it is…  … a family size box of Miracle Missiles. Ma opens the box.  Miracle Missiles tumble and fall into my cereal bowl. Pop is about to pour the milk into my bowl of delicious, nutritious Miracle Missiles when he sees I got a funny look on my face. “Bobby, what’s the matter?” I look at Ma. I look at Katie. “Pop, my Miracle Missiles look a little like…” I look at Ma. I look at Katie. “My Miracle Missiles look a little like…” Pop says, “Bobby what do your Miracle Missiles look like?” I go, “Miracle Missiles look like… tinkles ?” *** From your cereal bowl Into your cereal hole From your cereal bowl Into your cereal hole Into your cereal hole Miracle missiles! Robert Firpo-Cappiello (@RobFirpCapp) is a two-time Emmy nominee (for Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction and Composition for a Drama Series) and a Folio-award-winning magazine editor focusing on travel, hospitality, and health. His creative writing has appeared in Roi Fainéant and Cowboy Jamboree Press, and he has performed his short stories, novels, and songs at Rockwood Music Hall, St Lou Fringe, Dixon Place, Irvington Theater, Spark Theatre Festival NYC, Urban Stages, and Bad Theater Fest. Robert holds a Master of Music degree in composition from the San Francisco Conservatory, a BA in English from Colgate University (where his mentor was novelist Frederick Busch), and he made his show-business debut at the age of five on WOR-TV’s Romper Room. Robert is represented by Jill Marr, at Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.

The title of Joni Karen Caggiano’s powerful poetry collection,  One Petal at a Time , makes me recall what I used to say as a child while plucking petals off a flower, “He loves me; he loves me not.” Ironically, we would destroy a beautiful bloom petal by petal while seeking clarification on a value of utmost beauty: Love. In  this garden of verses, Caggiano explores her life at its worst and its best. The crux of her journey is love. How it is misunderstood and abused. How it is held in passion. How it blooms in fidelity. The love she describes is painful, lush, and ultimately trusting. Her start in life is unpropitious, yet she thrives because the love of God cradles her throughout her life, fostering her deep faith. An Overview of Caggiano’s Tormented Life One Petal at a Time  has three parts. The book is a memoir in chronological order covering three stages of her life: childhood, adolescence (first love), and adulthood (mature love). Each section of the book and the cover design display stunning abstract line drawings of Francisco Bravo Cabrera. These images outline the petals of a woman’s soul as it emerges from chaos into wholeness. The images contain the shadow of despair peeking from behind an aspect of self. We can’t rid ourselves of this darkness. Caggiano’s poems show how a woman who faced terror daily as a child survives and forgives. Love is loss and regeneration, petal by petal. Part One: Beginning In childhood, Caggiano faces fear in a dysfunctional family. Like many children with dysfunctional parents, Caggiano must act as an adult. In “Primrose in Winter”, the prologue poem, she empathizes with abused and emotionally abandoned children. She writes, “…we exist to fail // take care of parents at age six / jumbled, frightened, a defective mix / worn away and far-flung, / we ARE the angry bricks.” Caggiano’s family dynamic surpasses what many may think is dysfunctional; it’s terrifying. Some poems allude to unwelcome visits to her room at night, alcoholism, beatings, neglect, and suicide. These horrific experiences are expressed in sharp imagery as these selections form the prose poems from the Prologue and Part One reveal. Fear, an unwelcome bedfellow, slithers beside her at age five, making peaceful slumber impossible (Prologue). Within are monsters, wounds, and violations incarcerated….I am the watcher of monsters slumbering with lit cigarettes, abandoning hot iron, stove, and oven….   The Red Brick House is frightening with monsters and notes of the dead who skulk. Like an embracing vine covering my tiny body, I am the voice of fear enclosed in nature’s dress (“The Beginning”). She is misled to think her uncles’ abuse is love, but the men act like “vipers striking at innocence” and “secrets like hairy figs grow wild” Caggiano must be the “great pretender”, wearing “Smiles, make-believe faces” (“The Beginning”). Caggiano reveals these events through the eyes of her inner child, who finds comfort in nature and communes with fairies, mermaids, and angels. These poems reveal magical escapes which may have saved her. In “Reflection-Prose”, she realizes a stranger with gifts who has been visiting for years is an angel. I perceive the wonder of the gift and grasp the stranger’s identity. Such a beautiful thing I had never seen. Her face was an alluring light, blazing like the sun, for she was an angel. Caggiano is transformed. “My slip is now a glowing covering of layer upon layer of silk worthy of a queen.” Her visions are interrupted by her mother’s physical abuse. In “Silent Cry”, she must be vigilant in “the house of horrors”, where she always fears “drunken monsters who linger here / lightning cracks, a lariat bellows / God hears silent cries of innocents”. Despite the unspeakable abuse, Caggiano shows compassion and love for her mother, whom she cooked with. In “Southern Rising”, she writes, “aromas dance in air like magic / dough rising in twin wood bowls / along with smiles of my expectations / beams of love given as a meal”. Throughout her childhood, Caggiano prays for God’s help. In “Where Are You God”, she writes that her parents were “swapped as robots” who failed to care for her. “I ball up in a fetal position, I can feel God / yet I also feel my anger and wonder why / must you leave me here, JUST let me die”. During the beatings and other forms of abuse, she says, “God spoke to me often / during these times” (“Painful”). In “March Day”, “God nourishes, all creatures fed”. Nature is a sanctuary for Caggiano. In “Waiting Still”, “moonflower open at dusk to heat my plea / the face of God while holding me”. Part Two: Seeding In this part of the book, Caggiano is becoming a young woman using whatever tools she was taught to attract love: Low self-esteem grew like weeds in an unkempt garden. The desire to compete with every woman in a room became the norm. Any stranger her loved one stared at extensively brought out the lioness in her. She would don brass armor to shine like an army of soldiers or wear a skimpy dress that grasped her slight curves firmly, like bark from an iron oak. Exhaustion was the enemy as there were not enough hours to make her lists (of what she must do) to make her life calculable. Her needs were unimportant. The only thing that mattered was that everyone approved of her and that the boat never got lost at sea. She must always steer the ship to perfection. The problem was she wasn’t a sailor, and she knew she needed a lifeline! (Prologue). She is at the age when young women are attracted to love. She writes, “I realize I need a river of love with which to link”. God brings her “Valiant, prince of my dreams”, and “Love felt like a wonderment, and my shield melting like chocolate in my youthful mouth in front of your gazing eyes” (“Prologue Poem-Seedling”). However, … Even love, Mom made into something foul, letting me know she inspected my panties now, … a warning of such harsh sorrow, one to let me know she was watching me and my first boyfriend….She is the snake…. Existence was a gift for the first time…until it wasn’t. Despite the sorrow, the language in this section lifts. The imagery is romantic, yet metaphors of past trauma are braided in. This is a transitional period. A young woman seeks love and agency, power, and autonomy. To do that she must, like all adolescents, separate from her parents. In “Forks of Ivy”, … the ivy threads enlace through patterned, worn, and tattered pieces of my youth its blood a mixture of punctures that weave circles of skin and bone into forgotten stories tucked in corners where candy corn and ice cream drips dried, like ink on memoirs now drawn into dust devils “Counting Clouds” has stunning imagery depicting young passion with phrases like “I lay my head upon new tulips / once worth the same as a diamond” and “honey that leaves a path / of lover’s unwritten prose / past my chin’s quiver.” Trauma still haunts her. In “Woods and Beasts” she relives her parents’ past abuse and the fear that stalked her. …. how I yearn to die fear swells like a black prickly thorn monsters lurk close where I lie their diet, liquid, one calling forth beasts fear howls…. Some poems are disturbing. In “Our Pond”, she is tied with a belt to a bed. She feels like a spider caught up in a web and prays that her father doesn’t do the same thing to her. However, God is with her: “God smiles within a brow of a bright star / this will not always be my sad tale; “only those that won sight will see my scar” (“Woods and Beasts”). In “Lady of Strength”, she writes, “…my chariot flies to the echo / of prayers going skyward”. In adolescence, young love is often betrayed. In “Us My Love”, love Is “not forever / God never did / forsake me / when you left me / for another.” In “Silence”, she warns, “…don’t touch me without a note or invitation” and … You think I do not feel your betrayal, my winter’s cold silence slices pieces of me, an icicle, the lies you told. The betrayal resounds with the abandonment by her parents she endures in her house of horrors: “…betrayal, love for years gone without a trace / my heart stops, a gust pulls me to an abandoned place” (“What If”). Grief arises in many poems in this section. Caggiano still endures trauma at home and additional loss of grace in her first love. In “No Longer Two”, at seventeen glorious he was earthly salvation, my safe place but now I hang cocooning wrapping me in silk the spider always gets his prey not lovable, my tombstone will say Caggiano can still find strength in suffering. In “Waiting”, she writes, “Agony is a reminder of our existence, / not unlike the cavity that cannot be / filled so it lays in wait, until it dawns a / purpose.” Until her “ancient soul is finally free” (“Memories Buried in a Box”). Part Three: Blooming The prologue in this part summarizes the abuse and betrayal explored in Parts One and Two and reaffirms God’s protection and grace. Caggiano is in touch with her inner child: Legacies come with God’s Holy Grace. An old-wise soul at twenty-two, I spent six glorious months getting to know this child, while she swam without her floaties on her arms. She took my nourishment and grew into a gift of breezes floating gently with the smells of magnolia, gardenia, and jasmine. Like seasons in a rushing hourglass, she grew and flourished. Beautiful were her ways of watching out for those who spent a whiff of sadness or pain. Aligned with her answered prayers is finding her new love: Her husband. With mature love, she feels whole and protected. In “Growth” she feels safe, “I feel love / my heart blooms / in all directions / safety settles…making tender peace / with myself at last / white doves / sing”. In this part of the book, she explores her feelings about her parents’ suicides. Witnessing her pain is a way to recover from her parents’ ultimate form of abandonment of her. Imagine the release of pain and power of forgiveness in “Open Casket”: …my heart can see your soul as it gracefully flies meeting God in His fluffy home in the skies we will hold each other, and I will love you you will tell me you’re sorry, and I will smile I know, mommy, we found Grace, I am sorry too She is free to open to a new love. In Melding into You”, she writes, we are one as our heartbeat is a blue velvet petal which floats into moments that are giving birth to that which has no name my morning, evening, and in between may your love for me never cease my beautiful, green-eyed husband without you, I could never breathe For Caggiano, love is kind, faithful, trusting, and lasting. Her love for her daughter is not abusive. She guides and supports her daughter. In “Dips of Life”, she advises her daughter that a man who deserts her on prom night is not a good choice. one of many challenges in the life of a daughter tiny dips that will make her a strong woman someday, the pansies come back too just like she does when she’s feeling blue Ultimately, Caggiano’s faith in God kept her alive throughout her life. “...rocking to the rhythm of my beating heart’s joyful song / God didn’t take me then…I am exactly where I / belong”. One Petal at a Time  by Joni Karen Caggiano is a profound collection of poems. The poems and prose poems are masterful in content and design. I highly recommend this book, but you should have a box of tissues handy. You will weep and pray with the suffering soul that prevails in a journey of strength, hope, love, and faith. This book is endorsed by  Claudia Black Ph.D.  and other mental health professionals. One Petal at a Time  (Prolific Pulse Press, 2024) is available in Kindle and paperback formats on Amazon . Joni Karen Caggiano is an Amazon best-selling author for, One Petal At A Time. She is an internationally published author, poet, and photographer.  She is a 2022 Pushcart Nominee for her poem, “Old News is Not Old News,” published by “The Short of It Publishing.”  She was privileged to write the Forward for the Best Seller, “I Am in Itself Poetry In The Dark,” by the five-time Amazon Best Selling Author Michelle Ayon Navajas.  On Spillwords Press NYC, Joni won Publication of the Month in November 2022 and Co-Winner of Socialite of the Year 2023 and 2024.   Joni was a Co-Author of both # 1 Amazon Bestselling books, Hidden In Childhood and Wounds I Healed.  She is also in six additional Poetry Anthologies.  Her first book of poetry, “One Petal at a Time,” will be released by Prolific Pulse Press, LLC in 2024, featuring Valencian artist Francisco Bravo Cabrera.  Joni is also proud to be included in the upcoming Poetry Anthology, “A Safe and Brave Space,” published by, “Garden of Neuro Publishing, to be released in the Spring of 2024.  She is currently a writer for Hotel Masticadores.  Joni formerly contributed four combined pieces a month for one year to Masticadores India and Masticadores USA.  You can find a complete list of Joni’s works here . Joni’s website is here . You can find her on Twitter @theinnerchild1  and Instagram @jonicaggiano .  Joni is a retired nurse, ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) survivor, and environmental advocate. Barbara Harris Leonhard is an internationally-known prize-winning poet and Pushcart nominee (2022, 2023). She is especially indebted to Well Versed 2021: A Collection of Poetry and Prose  and Spillwords Press for past honors. Her debut poetry collection, Three-Penny Memories: A Poetic Memoir  (Experiments in Fiction, 2022), which is about her relationship with her mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s, is a best seller on Amazon. Barbara is also the Editor for MasticadoresUSA . You can follow her at https://extraordinarysunshineweaver.blog/ .

The metal door slams behind me, shutting out the last bit of the day’s light, leaving the fluorescent bulb to its dreary work. My shoes scrape against the concrete steps as I make the long climb. Trudy is nearly at the top, the pink ribbon dangling from her bun bobs up and down with every step. “You’re so slow, Dad.” “Getting old,” I mutter. But the longer I stay in the stairwell, the less time I spend trapped in Miss Natasha’s dance studio.  She needs your support.  My wife, Lorraine, likes to say this often.But how does sitting outside Trudy’s dance class ease her fears that our family is breaking apart? Trudy glances over her shoulder and waves at me before tugging open the door to what I call Hell’s waiting room – where hovering dance moms gather, competing even though they are no longer in the running for anything. I imagine them eyeballing my daughter as she flits past them, blissfully unaware of their scrutiny. Once she disappears into the changing room, the silent communication of lifted eyebrows and tilting heads will start as they assess whether my daughter is still as graceful and lithe as she was last week. I blame Miss Natasha – who decided to publicly score and rank the girls weekly to avoid drama when she assigns solos. Being consistently among the top three, (and first in her age category) Trudy is an easy target.  The mothers’ mouths snap shut when I enter. I don’t make eye contact with any of them. I nod my chin, slide into a seat, and pray these forty-five minutes pass quickly. My earbuds have lost their charge, but that doesn’t stop me from shoving them in place. Swallowed up in a sea of black leotards, powder pink tights and high buns, Trudy is indistinguishable from the rest of her classmates. They move like a graceful militia – uniform stride, arms swinging by the same measure, chins jut forward like the Degas ballerina statue knock-off on the office desk.  While the moms jostle for space by the observatory window, watching the barre exercises, I ponder getting Trudy to consider lacrosse, soccer, or field hockey as an extracurricular activity. While sports parents may not be less annoying than these mothers, at least I can guide Trudy on the art of being on a team. But the trouble is eleven is already too old to study a new sport. Parents have been priming their kids since kindergarten. She needs your support, too. When I said that to Lorraine, her eyes narrowed.  Lorraine doesn’t appreciate my dispassion for the dance school making Trudy obsess about things she can’t control – like whether her bones are developed enough to let her start dancing on pointe. When I tell Lorraine that only we know what’s best for Trudy, she waves me off as if my vote counts for nothing. And so began our passive-aggressive routine that only intensified when I stayed out with the guys from work on my birthday.  My promise of just one drink  turned into an Uber ride home at 2 a.m. Greeting me were drooping balloons, and a sagging cake heaved onto the center of the table. Lorraine sat in the recliner, her feet crossed at the ankles.  Things have to change around here. They had changed. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Mother and daughter in their own secret sorority while the goofy, laughable klutz of a dad whose only usefulness is serving as a chauffeur.  The same loop of Tchaikovsky plays over and over to the whack of Miss Natasha’s pointer stick against the floor. She calls out instructions in her affected Russian accent, which I suspect is put on. Maybe she’s really Nancy from Levittown. Besides, if she really studied at the Bolshoi, why teach on Long Island when she could travel 30 minutes into New York City?  Suddenly, the music stops. “Lily, that was sloppy. Watch Trudy. She is in front of you for a reason. Follow her.”I stare at my phone, pretending I can’t hear what’s going on around me. I don’t look up and acknowledge the exasperated sigh from Lily’s mother or the heads that briefly turn in my direction. I suppose I have Lorraine to thank for helping me hone my ability to disappear in plain sight. “No, no, no! Do it again.” Miss Natasha bangs the stick for emphasis. “Again.” Bang. “Again.” Bang. “Yes, finally. Thank you, God!” “She’s been breaking out in hives,” Lily’s mother hisses. “We thought it was an allergic reaction, but I think it’s stress.” “Kyra is worried about her weight. She talks about it non-stop, especially after Natasha told them she noticed who ate too much over the holidays and that heavy girls aren’t going on pointe.”  Another mother mimics Natasha. “That fat will turn to big, ugly muscle!” They all share humorless laughter. My gut tightens. Is this what’s in store for Trudy? Up until now, her weight has never been an issue. Her metabolism burns everything up before she even swallows her food. But she is a late-bloomer. No telling what might happen when puberty hits.  Another mother rasps, “The small ones think they’re immune to her criticism. But no one is safe around Natasha. It’s just a matter of time before they fall out of favor.”  The grumbling continues, back and forth, but I notice no one threatening to stop the madness. Not even me, as I delete my junk email. “Remember poor Isabella! Star pupil two years in a row and bulimic the next.” The mothers nod their heads in agreement. “They had to send her away. I still don’t think she’s right. She was down to 68 pounds at one point.” “That’s terrible!” A chorus of agreement swells until there are no more adjectives to throw around.  I’m not sure who Isabella is and I’ve never seen anyone remotely overweight at the school, which turns my stomach. What is considered a healthy weight with this crowd? “Not to change the subject, but did you see the new sweatshirts Natasha ordered? They’re adorable.” Soon the conversation shifts to whether they should have their own sweatshirt made proclaiming Natasha Academy Dance Mom . I barely survived Natasha’s waiting room  would get my vote. “Let’s take the girls to Talon Salon for mani-pedis this weekend. Their pink paradise shade is a perfect match to the academy color.” “That would be fun!” When the girls finally finish their lesson, they file out precisely as they had marched in. Trudy looks straight ahead, focused on the head in front of her as if she is leaving the stage and must remain professional until she is completely out of sight. The mothers flock around Miss Natasha as she emerges, still holding her pointer stick. Shoulders back, feet turned out, she walks as if taking center stage, waiting for the spotlight to close in and the music to queue up. All the complaints and whisperings from earlier have been abandoned in favor of availing themselves to help Miss Natasha get a better deal on the new HVAC system the studio desperately needs. Lily’s father has a contact and Kyra’s mother offers to start a fundraising campaign.  I stand, hoping my daughter will somehow be ready to leave any second. But all I accomplish is catching the eye of Miss Natasha, who raises her index finger to the women before walking over to me. “Trudy is progressing very nicely. She is a hard worker.” “Yes, she is.” My eyes shift to the changing room door. Open. Come on Trudy, hurry up.   But willing it doesn’t make it so. “She is ready for private pointe lessons. We can start next week, after this class.” Her bony hand rests on her wisp of a waist. “We have to meet with her pediatrician.” Natasha scoffs, “Pediatricians know nothing about ballet.” “But he does know about bone development.” I glance to the mothers, who look back wide-eyed and gape-mouthed. No one challenges Miss Natasha, apparently. Or maybe they think I’m crazy for turning her down. “Your wife never mentioned the pediatrician. She calls every week asking when Trudy will be ready. Perhaps you are confused.” Things have to change around here. Lorraine’s condescension crawls up my back. “My wife and I are in agreement.” But are we? Heat rises from my collar when Miss Natasha tilts her head, as if to say we’ll see . I grind my teeth together to hold back the curses building in my head, leaving me grimacing when Trudy approaches. “I was just telling your father the good news.” Miss Natasha holds eye contact with me for a beat too long, and I roll my shoulder, wishing that would get her to step off. Trudy beams. “Isn’t it great, Dad?”   The best I can give her is a tight smile. “Honey, we’ll discuss this with your mother. We have to run now. I have an important call.” I nod to dismiss myself, but I suppose Miss Natasha has already done that for me.   I head for the door, aware that the mothers are staring past me, their mouths twisting with envy. And when I look back, I find Miss Natasha lovingly cupping Trudy’s chin, anointing her the chosen one. *** I sit in the driveway and watch the house light up as Trudy moves from the kitchen to the living room and finally to her bedroom. Lorraine doesn’t see me when she pulls in nor when she steps out of the car. I pop my door and motion for her to join me. “Why are you sitting here? You scared me!”  I step out and lean against the car. “Trudy texted you the news?”  “She’s thrilled!” Lorraine’s wide smile is there to coax me into forgetting our agreement. “I’m not,” I say. “I spoke with the pediatrician.” She waves her hand as if that settles the matter. “She hasn’t been to the doctor once this year.” I smirk, pleased that I thought to ask Trudy this on the way home. “He should examine her, that’s what we agreed to.” “You’re making too much of this.” “When something is important to you, you never think you’re making too much of it. But when I have an issue, I’m overreacting?” “Just leave this to me. What do you know about eleven-year-old girls and ballet?” “Enough to know that place is toxic. You tell me to be there for her but dismiss me when I look out for her. You say things have to change, but you get to do whatever the hell you want, while you pick me apart every chance you get.” “That’s not fair.” “No, Lorraine. You’re not fair. And you lied to me.” “You lie, too. You lost track of time on your birthday? Liar!”  “You want the truth? I’m invisible in my own house. At least when I was out with friends, they were happy to be with me. I never feel that way here. And unless we’re prepared to  live, not as roommates, but as partners and parents making decisions together, then there is no point to being married.”  “You want to divorce me over a dance class? Unbelievable!”  When her eyes fill, something cracks in me. This isn’t our usual stand-off of who will get the last word. This isn’t about pointe shoes or a missed birthday dinner but the great disconnect that grows wider with each passing day.  When did she stop looking at me with soft eyes? When was the last time I confided in her? I don’t know how we got here; I only know that this coldness cuts us both. As long as we feel this loss, apathy hasn’t won. Not yet.   “I don’t want a divorce. I want a better life for all of us. Aren’t we worth a shot?” My voice cracks. Does she even notice? She stares at her feet, sniffling. The longer we remain in silence, the more I fear she is giving up on us.  Finally, she whispers, “Okay.” I release a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.  She straightens herself and brushes away the traces of her tears. “We can call the pediatrician tomorrow.” I slide my arm around her shoulder and when she doesn’t stiffen, I pull her close. We lean into one another; slowly the warmth of our bodies fills the gap. And perhaps, like me, she offers a silent wish that this is enough to pull us back from the edge. Dinamarie Isola is actively engaged in exploring the craft of storytelling. Through poetry and prose, she strives to tear down the isolation that comes from silently bearing internal struggles. She received her BA in English/Writing and Communications from Fairfield University. In addition to her work as an investment advisor, Dinamarie has a blog, “RealSmartica,” to help others better understand personal finance. She is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in  A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Appalachian Review, Across the Margin, Apricity Magazine, Avalon Literary Review, borrowed solace, Coachella Review, Courtship of Winds, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Evening Street Review, FictionWeek Literary Review, Five on the Fifth, Mixed Mag, MORIA Literary Magazine, Nixes Mate Review, No Distance Between Us, Penumbra Literary and Art Journal, Perceptions Magazine, Potato Soup Journal, Remington Review, Summerset Review, and Tulsa Review. Visit  www.DinamarieIsola.com  to view her portfolio. prose, she strives to tear down the isolation that comes from silently bearing internal struggles. She received her BA in English/Writing and Communications from Fairfield University. In addition to her work as an investment advisor, Dinamarie has a blog, “RealSmartica,” to help others better understand personal finance. She is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Appalachian Review, Across the Margin, Apricity Magazine, Avalon Literary Review, borrowed solace, Coachella Review, Courtship of Winds, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Evening Street Review, FictionWeek Literary Review, Five on the Fifth, Mixed Mag, MORIA Literary Magazine, Nixes Mate Review, No Distance Between Us, Penumbra Literary and Art Journal, Perceptions Magazine, Potato Soup Journal, Remington Review, Summerset Review,  and  Tulsa Review . Visit  www.DinamarieIsola.com  to view her portfolio.

Today I met a man who calls himself a pediatric surgeon; his area of expertise is decapitations. He assured me he does not do decapitations. He fixes them. Intrigued, I visited his office – more of a warehouse space on the outskirts of town. A woman escorted me to the back, where the heads of children were submerged in see-through vats of yellow-green goo. There were rows upon rows of them, neatly aligned from wall to wall. They looked to be arranged by age: infant, toddler, tween, and so on. The pediatric surgeon welcomed me from across the expanse with a wide, veneer smile. He spread out his arms and took a spin, telling me to take it all in. I spread my arms and spun too, but slower than him, looking around again to indicate I had indeed seen it all.   “I can reattach your child’s head!” he called out. His voice echoed, and I worried it would disturb the floating faces. “My child still has her head!” I called back. He sauntered down the aisle of vats; his voice approached a normal tone as he came closer. “But you’re worried that, one day, she may not, am I right? From a grisly accident or an axe attack, like the one in the news yesterday?” I nodded, stepping closer to one of the vats, tapping on it for a reaction. The heads had their eyes closed, their lips slightly parted. A few strands of stringy matter hung from the stumps of their necks. He told me their faces reanimate once attached, and showed me a video on his phone to prove it. “If I am contacted in time, I can reattach her own head,” he explained. “But if it is mutilated in some way during the decapitation, you can choose from any of these.” I nodded. “Can I take one home with me? Just in case.” “Of course, of course! But please understand that your insurance will not cover this service.” I went up and down the aisles, browsing the submerged faces in the toddler section for one that best resembled my daughter. It was difficult to tell the color of their skin and hair, on account of the regenerative goo. But this information was listed on a placard at the bottom of each vat, along with their eye color, presumed gender, race and ethnicity. Eventually, I settled on one with brown hair and brown eyes whose skin swatch on display looked the same as my daughter’s. “I fathered that one myself,” he said with a wink. I did not bother to ask how or why, or where the rest of her was.  * I place the large jar containing the inanimate toddler head on the mantle above the fireplace. My daughter gives it the name Floaty. She wants to feed Floaty and give Floaty one of her old pacifiers or a popsicle. We read to Floaty and carry her with us to the grocery store and the bowling alley. Sometimes, I remind my daughter Floaty is not alive yet, and she is sad to hear it. I won’t tell her that in order for Floaty to live she will have to suffer a horrible accident, maybe even die for a bit. The thought of having a replacement lined up might not comfort her the way it comforts me.  Yve Chairez is a Chicana writer of mainly speculative fiction, and a scholar in the studies of writing, rhetoric, and Latinx literature and art, with a focus on the subversive and the uncanny. Her research and work has recently been featured in VoidSpace, The Brazos River Review, and The Society of Ink Slingers' Writing the Occult: The Fae series. Her travel column for Horror Tree will debut in late summer 2024. Chairez lives in the Hill Country with her family and their Sphynx, and teaches English at Texas A&M University - San Antonio.

(June 27) P angry with me. Says all I want do is hang around with scummy  friends. Play video games. Not make something of self. Like Charlie. Hotshot lawyer. Brother of hers. Dickwad, I say. And friends = good. And fun! Except Ralph. Who likes take out willy and balls. Place them on head. Often mine! While playing Donkey Kong. Asteroids. Jet Set Willy. ☺.  Or Eric. Who last week stabbed man. Due to drug debt. And now man in hospital. Possibly going to lose arm. Or leg! Eric sketchy on details. Thanks to drug. And debt. Which can’t pay. Having no job. Like rest of us. Deadbeats.      P & I argue. Then make ❤️ after muggins (me) promise be better person. Man! Get job. Shower. Change pants. Whole kit + caboodle. Love P. So awesome. Won’t fuck up no more.  (June 29) Oh man. Fucked up.      Last night messed around  with Ralph. Again. Back in college Ralph and I had thing. P knows. Says like man who has feminine side. Ha! Anyways. Last night during all night Galaxian binge started with him – Ralph - putting willy on head (mine). One thing led to another and Ralph willy ended up bum (mine).      😳     Nice while lasted [3 hours!] but. You know? Guilty conscience + feelings of worthlessness + sore bum.      Fretted all day then told P. If can’t be honest what can be? Goddam liar. Like mum. Like dad. Promised self not be like them. Ever.     P angry. Threw plate which narrowly missed head (mine). Spaghetti on plate didn’t. We better than this I said P, violence, us? And she called me scumbag which accepted although thought low especially when last year found out her and Susan from make up counter had thing. Did I throw plate? Or spaghetti!? I did not.      P and I long heart to heart. Do want be together? Yes do. Do love each other? Yes do. Then go bed. Although can’t sleep. Thanks to still sore bum. Ralph is DOM TOP / BDSM. Fucked me bent over kitchen table. Smelly pants (his) shoved in mouth (mine). While called me dirty little whore.     This diary private. No need P know intimate details. But important to record for personal well-being. Look back years to come. This is man was. This is man now. Look how far come! Pat self on back. Well done.  (June 30) Not well done. Left diary open on kitchen table. P read diary. Has given yours truly ultimatum. Get job. Stop fucking around with Ralph. Make her proud of me. Make me proud of me! Have 48 hrs. Etc. Etc. Slammed door. Left.      Dear diary. So have 48hrs. Or one week. Two weeks tops! P is woman of word but sometimes word easy to get around.      After P gone take long hard look at self in mirror.      Do want to lose P? ask self.      Answer is not, says self. P = awesome2.      Therefore don best jacket/shirt. Pants! Walk Job Centre. Great intentions! Am go-getter in making! Watch go! Watch get! But find JC (Job Centre) has notice on door – CLOSED . Fire? Outbreak of dysentery amongst staff? Staff attend work party, get shit-faced, fuck each other senseless and too sore to come to work?     Must sort out potty mind!     On way home go get lock for diary.  (June 30. Part 2.) Dear diary. At Job Centre! Different JC. Hold horses! Explain.      While writing above entry P came back through slammed door. With brother. Dickwad lawyer. Charlie. Asshole.      P, like, aren’t looking for job? Me, like, look best pants, trudge to JC, sign. Charlie. Dickwad. Smarmy look on face pipes up. Why not bring to alternative Job Centre? In next town. In fast sports car.      Show off. Dickwad. Asshole.      Upon arrival at JC say need shit. Not caring uncouth nature of verbiage. Who do Charlie think is? Who I am? Chattel? Cattle? Object to be carted around. Like goods. Told what to do. Brought to alternative JCs on whim.      Better be with Ralph. At least consensual. Although still catch a whiff of Ralph dick / ass / balls. Where Ralph rubbed dirty pants on moustache (mine).      But am doing this for P. Who I love. Because awesome. So take a deep breath.      Act.  (July 2) Today = interview. Was second card found in JC. New museum. Security staff & exhibitors x 25. No experience needed. Full training given. Uniform included.      Could see self doing that. Arse sat all day on chair. Minding exhibits. Go for wank in toilet when quiet. Think of P. Whilst wanking. Breasts, long thighs, soft wavy hair etc. Not Ralph. Toned butt cheeks, tiny pink nipples, tattoo across pecs. DIRTY BUGGER-FUCKER .     P excited. About job. About future money from job. Talked about moving in together. Plants on windowsill. Curtains. Getting cat. Car one day. Had car once. Some scumbag poured petrol on. Set fire. Insurance money, when came, P blew with Susan from make up counter. Took trip to Paris. Ate in fancy restaurant. Went up Eiffel Tower. I said hope worth it. She said car heap of shit anyway. Best get something good out of it. That’s it with P. Defends by attacking. Then sweet. Like now. Talking of life together. Getting cat.      Bloke who interviewed, museum boss, was big, like side of shed. Like ex-forces in Action Movie. What kind of museum is this thought. But must have spoke loud. Because ex-forces guy says, Numbnuts, it’s body part museum. Then tells me go through door. Get naked. It’s audition, he says. If pass audition, I’m in.      Naked? WTF! Throw hands in air. Naked!?      Then big man makes speech. If don’t want get naked. Plenty other young schmucks waiting for opportunity.      What can say? Through door go – huge space – many people already naked, getting naked. And think whoa, outta here. Then think hourly rate for 40 hour week + overtime available. Then think of P wanting cat, little flat above store, flowers in window, and bed in flat where P and I have just made love, which is meeting of 2 bodies in perfect unison, not drunken degrading buggering over table due to lack of self-worth / esteem etc. And so in room – huge – full of naked people – remove Adidas battered trainers, sole coming off left one - remove jeans with left knee worn through - remove Top Gun t-shirt - remove pants. Hole in crotch where shouldn’t be hole. P joking when sees these pants, That so you can get fucked up ass more easily big boy. P is potty-mouth sometimes. And maybe not joking.      As stand in queue of naked people ponder what body part museum is. Think of own body parts. Look down. Give score.      Toes 8/10.      Calves 9/10 (no car = cycling / walking / running for f-ing bus.)     Belly 5/10. (Note to self. Cut down on McDonalds. Beer. Chocolate biscuits. Pizza. Etc.)         Chest 9/10. (Have big chest thanks to Summer worked ice factory. Lugging big blocks ice around. 8 hours day. 5 days week. So result = big chest. Also result. Aversion to ice. Cold rooms. P screaming where’s the fucking cubes in my gin?)     Face 4/10. (Father called me ugly son-of-a-bitch. Turned pictures of me to wall. Said why couldn’t I look like brother? Brother is handsome. Like big-shot actor Telly Savalas. Me not so handsome. Nickname at school. Big nose. Ralph says nose perfect wedge for butt cheeks. When reverse up to me with ass. Park self. Mime putting coin in meter. 50p an hour!)     Finally. Saving best til last. Ha! Willy / penis cock.     Would like to give willy/penis/cock 10/10, 11/10 (haha!) but in reality more like 3/10.      Always hated school showers. Taunts of big nose + little dick. Jesus. Boys are cruel. Hate self. Which is why go with Ralph. Internalised hated made physical.      When reach front of naked queue asked to stand under bright light. In front of panel of four people. Am asked turn ¼. Turn ¼. Turn ¼. Turn ¼. At each quarter take picture. Then told get dressed. Will let know. By letter. Jeez. Who sends letters these days? (July 3) No letter.  (July 4) No letter.  (July 7) No letter.  (July 8) No letter. Hate self. Feel failure + worthless shit. So have relapse. Tell Ralph sit on wedge. i.e. my nose. i.e. with butt crack. Afterwards, feeling guilt buy present for P. Box of chocolates and movie from Videorama . Legend . Which makes P hot. Seeing Tom Cruise with long hair + scales outfit. After, still hot, make love and P calls me Jack O’ The Green - Cruise character in film - and I tell her have good feeling. That in morning letter will arrive. That it will be yes. That we will have flat. Future etc. with cat.  (July 9) Letter arrives! Good news. But…      So much for chest 9/10. Calves 9/10. Toes 8/10. Willy 11/10. (Ha! Only dreaming!)     8 hours a day will wear special trousers. No arse. Stick bum through slot in wall so only arse visible. To punters. With card under it. Anatomical description of posterior. Place in history. Purpose. Development from pre-Neolithic man. Etc etc.      Put down letter. Consider telling to shove it. Up proverbial. But then remember ultimatum. From P. They have me pants down. Literally! So ring P. Tell her have job. But when asks what doing tell her museum office. Boring admin. Money good. Chance to go up ladder. Etc. Etc.     We talk about future. Cat. Flat. Little car. Etc. Etc. (July 20) Sorry about absence. Work tiring. But good news. Re job. Love it. Each day place bum in slot, sit eight hours, go home. Easy money. And while sitting, face not audience-fronting, can read.     Reading = self-improvement = not being degrading sex object (with Ralph).      So far. Have read, 20,000 Leagues Under Sea, White Fang, Riddle of Sands. Next up is Man in Iron Mask . Which is huge. Person who write that, Alexandre Dumas, must have plenty of time on hands. Maybe Alexandre Dumas worked as ass in museum too!       Sometimes when too tired read, having spent all night on phone talk P re future, listen punters on other side of slot.      My favourite kids. When faced via-à-vis my ass. Dare each other to touch despite sign: DO NOT TOUCH.       Kids are cool. Want one of own. One day. With P. To take to museums. Look at bums. Laugh.     The worst punters are those that DO touch. Despite sign. One guy tried to force finger right up butthole. Security guard, Dan [hero], on him like shot. In canteen later, ‘I’ll give him asshole.’      And have made work friends. Breast Brenda used to have mascara shop. Lost all when customer poked eye out with mascara. Went to press – sued. ‘20 years of my life down the Swanee. Now shove breast through slot. Could be worse.’      Carl the Calf was former professional cyclist. Then lost all in drug scandal. Except huge calves. Still has huge calves. Therefore job. As calf.      Not everyone perfect. Charles and Caroline Feet, wearing no shoes & socks, go on + on about not leaving stuff on floor. Get it but blah blah blah et-fucking-cetera. One day George the Cock brought in piece of Lego. Dropped casually in Feets’ path. He funny guy. George the Cock. And could be arrogant having huge cock but is not. Actually quite humble. Like regular small-cock person.      Stars of show = Hugo and Lisa Face. You’d think they’d both be beautiful but isn’t that. It’s aura. When come in canteen we all go quiet. In presence body part royalty.  (August 18) P and I moved in together today. And turning over leaf text Ralph ass no longer available . He respond text ass is on view whole world at museum so don’t be asshole.  Wtf! In panic text don’t tell P. P doesn’t know . Still thinks work office admin. Then text Ralph, how know my ass?  and he text recognise that ass mile off.  Then he text, seen that gr8 cute ass bent over kitchen table nuff times.  Didn’t know whether to take as insult or compliment. But took as  compliment. Happy days.  (August 25) More happy days. Today cat arrived. P so excited. Like child. Said should give it name and then said Jean. Hello Jean I said and went to stroke and Jean grabbed onto finger and wouldn’t let go. Hurt like hell but because man didn’t show. Hard sometimes being man. Starting not sleep at night. Like insomnia. Thinking vis-à-vis bum in slot. Am I becoming sex object? Like Bridget Bardo? Marilyn Monroe? Like bent over table with Ralph? Don’t want be sex object but then think of money from bum in slot + all it buys. Little flat with P. New underpants with zero hole in crotch. Scented candles. Cat. 😬 (September 1) Oh shit, shit , shit .      All staff called to meeting after work. Big boss there. Face grim. Made speech. Punters down. Novelty factor of living body parts wearing thin. Radical plan needed. Luckily, says, am big boss. With big bollocks. (Put them through slot for punters, wanted to say. But didn’t. Ass already being on line. Literally.) Didn’t successfully launch hair bunches with solar panels to recharge mobile phones? Didn’t get backing from Kuwaiti royal family for sweat-free under-crackers? So have come up with plan. Museum will go on tour. And in each new place museum will be new novelty. Talk of town. What’s this? Body Part Museum? That sounds fab! Must go! Etc etc. Punters come flooding in. Cash registers ring! Beep of contactless payments ring. Etc etc. One week only. Then move on again. To new town. Repeat. Ad infinitum.      What about home? someone called out.      Home will be road, said big boss. Home equals road only. To save asses. This is plan. You have one week to decide in or out. In or out. You choose.      End of speech.      And so. Big choice. Do want to haul ass around planet? Do want to leave P, only to see her on designated holidays from BPM (Body Part Museum)? Do want to abandon Jean? [Every cloud!]     So have decided.      I’m out.  (September 2) I’m in.      P hit roof when said about giving up BPM. What about flat? said. Cannot pay rent on own. Or other bills. Gas. Water. Electric. Food. And Jean. She needs things. Food too. And little toy mice to play with. Litter for poops + wees. And what is wrong with being on tour? Chance to see world. Experience new things.      My ass will be in slot, I said. Will see fuck all. Then realised put foot in it. Never told P about ass being in slot. Thinks works in office. Doing boring admin. So then have no choice but to spill all beans. Actually feels good to get off chest. Hated being like superhero living double life.       Sorry, I said. Should have told. About ass.      Thought P would hit roof. Again. For all lies. But instead tear came to eye, said, I’m sorry too. That I’m kind of gf can’t tell about ass. Come here. And came here and we made love on kitchen table. Only wasn’t like kitchen table incident with DOM TOP / BDSM Ralph. This loving and beautiful + bum not sore. P tells me best lover ever had. So good with hands. And tongue. What lack in penis make up in tongue. Which could have gone either way as compliment. But confident with penis today. P moaning etc. And Jean looking on all jealous. Like I don’t like what you’re doing with that huge penis. Well. Not huge. But to cat guess looks huge. Because they small. So. Huge penis. And after come I tell P will take tour offer. If she happy. I happy.  (September 10) On tour! Amsterdam!     After work went with Breast Brenda, Carl the Calf and George the Cock to Sex Museum. Charles and Caroline Feet stayed in hotel. As did Hugo and Lisa Face. Saying needed beauty sleep. Which understand for face. But not feet. No amount of sleep going to make feet beautiful. Except P has beautiful feet. Miss P. My love.  (September 17) Brussels!     After work Rang P. Someone answered. Not P. Another woman. Said, is P there? Woman laughed. Then hung up. Rang back and this time P answered. Told her about woman. And laugh. Said must’ve got wrong number. We talked for 5 minutes before P said had to go. Jean need feeding. Bye. Love you. Etc.  (September 24) Oslo!     Bum in slot.  (October 1) Copenhagen!     Bum in slot. (October 8) Helsinki!     Bum in slot. (October 15) Rostock!     Bum in slot.      Life on road not all cracked up to be.      Haha! Bum. Crack. Funny guy.      Thinking of writing metaphysical novel. Will call Bum in Slot . Will be hit initially in UK then translated into many languages. At author events will be asked how thought of such novel. So deep and profound. Many intellectual woman with glasses will throw themselves at me. I will say, whoa there, watch with the throwing. Might break glasses. And I am taken. With P.      Although P being weird on phone. Which doesn’t always answer. Here’s me working ass off, sending money home for bills etc and she barely has time to speak to me.      Perhaps missing me too much?      Painful to talk? Etc.  (October 17) Rostock!     Surprise letter from Ralph. He got hotel list and itinerary from Big Boss. Wants to meet up in Berlin. He there for big DOM / TOP & SUB BDSM SEXATHON PARTY / ANYTHING GOES. Got something to tell me. VERY IMPORTANT. NEED TO TELL IN PERSON. NOT ON PHONE.      Why all the capitals, Ralph?     Intrigued.  (October 18) Rostock! And two smoking barrels!     Fuck. Lots to tell.      Night before last out with George the Cock and Breast Brenda. Breast Brenda told long story about Oregon childhood. Kept in cage by father. Fed scraps of food from floor. Only let out for work in field. Picking potatoes 14 hours every goddam day. Etc. George took out huge cock and helicoptered it. To lighten mood. Could have gone either way but Breast Brenda laughed said so happy to have met you guys. Said we would grow old together. Live in Old Folks Home. Or pool resources and get cranky old bus. Travel around like Cliff Richard in film  Summer Holiday . We drank to that. Too much. So woke up head in toilet + pants on head. Because of massive hangover feeling rough when put bum in slot. Why drink so much? Tell self never again. Then fall asleep. When wake up. See time. Shit. Should have finished hours ago. Why no one wake me, let me sleep here like baby? Then hear voices behind me. In BPM (Body Part Museum). Shouldn’t be closed? Then recognise one voice. It Big Boss – what he doing here? - and someone don’t recognise. French. They are talking about something going down. In Paris. How Paris BPM is to set up for business in Louvre. This is chance they waiting for.      Biggest heist in history.      Holy shit.  (October 25) Berlin Tonight met Ralph in leather / naked bar, CRANK. Like says on tin, in CRANK men = either leather / naked. Except yours truly. Got AC/DC Back in Black  t-shirt on. P bought me. For bday. My P. Whose little face I see when close eyes each night. Say, night P, love you little face. Not that face is  little. Is normal sized face. Say little as endearment. Only no more. Ralph big news / must be told in person = P and Susan from make up counter now live together. In our flat. Except no longer our flat. Flat now = lesbian love nest. Oh P. My P. Fall to knees heartbroken + still crying in utter anguish of jilted lover when bouncer from CRANK come over. Says must be leather / naked or get out. So, get naked. Relapse. Relapse. Relapse.  (October 26) Berlin Goodbye to Ralph. Tells me should consider DOM/TOP BDSM life. But tell him want moonlight walks along beach. Rose petals on bed. Violins playing at wedding. While cat comes up aisle. Rings attached to little collar. Ralph says conflicted. I say we all conflicted. That human nature. To love but to have dark side. Like moon.     Put bum in slot.  (October 27) Berlin Brest Brenda / George the Cock ask where was last night. Tell about P. About Ralph. About relapse. Then about other night. Which haven’t said yet. About Big Boss. And Frenchman. And heist! Jesus, says Breast Brenda. You’ve been busy. And dark horse, says George the Cock. Nudges me. Grimaces. Can person swallow gallon of cum in one night?     After work go Checkpoint Charlie. It Tourist Trap now but once gateway to life & death situations. George the Cock says father in army. Died in Battle of Khafji. Brought up by mum in trailer park. Has to share bed with three brothers. All older than him. Who beat him if didn’t do all chores. Mom kind but pulling hair out having to manage 4 boys on own and job in fish gutting factory which barely puts food on table.      So. Another shit life.      Feel bereft over P but life not so bad when have friends.  (November 1) Paris Have no friends.      Ha! Just trick. Defo have friends. Yesterday BB & GtC (Breast Brenda and George the Cock) pulled me from bed which = pit of despair & said we going out to paint town red. And so we drank wine from bottle like hobos while visit famous sites like Eiffel Tower, Champs-Élysées, Père Lachaise cemetery. So many dead people! Puts life in perspective. i.e. life only once! Going to die! So use time wisely!     BB GtC & I have big ❤️ to ❤️ and decide will foil Big Boss and Frenchman’s plan. Become National French Heroes . Live in Paris sharing attic apartment + drinking French wine and eating French cheese every day. Read complete works of Marcel Proust. Watch complete works of Jean Luc Godard. Etc. Etc.      Ring P and she answers & not Lesbian Love-Nest Lover (LLNL). Tell her know everything vis-à-vis her & LLNL & she replies knows everything about me. Ralph sent video made – WITHOUT CONSENT - in CRANK. So we are both living best lives, she said and I thought of BB and GtC and our plan to foil heist and become  National French Heroes  and thought she might be right and didn’t hate her.     Truly.    (November 2) First night Paris Body Part Museum. After ushers usher out last visitors for night Breast Brenda, George the Cock + I only pretend to pack up & leave. Instead stay hidden in handy large cupboard. Wait for heist so can foil it.       No heist.  (November 3) No heist.  (November 4) No heist.  (November 5) No heist.      But tired after so many nights in large handy cupboard. Which no longer seems so large. Or handy.      And why are we going spend another night in cupboard?     If heist. So what?      What the heist anyway?      Then heist happens.  (December 2) So what about heist? Ha! Hang on.      And who are you anyway? Reading diary. Diary private thing. Like putting thumb up bum in bath.      Are you putter up of thumb in bath?     Ha! (December 5)      Christmas in Paris! Well, not Christmas because December 5 but yesterday heavy snowfall and BB GtC and I descended many stairs from our attic apartment in Montmartre and had snowball fight until got told to stop by gendarme. Asshole. Paris is full of asshole but also many nice people like Gillette who runs small bar near apartment / gives 10% off wine because saw our picture in  Le Figaro  and always say to us, You save Mona Lisa, you save Mona Lisa. Heroes!     Well, not quite.      It happened 5th November. While sat bum in slot heard fireworks outside and felt sad because even though forgive P for LLNL, [[[ and self for all DOM TOP / BDSM carryings-on! ]]] still imagine me and P together, holding hands, watching big fireworks explode above heads, eat jacket potato from bonfire. Then think. Hang on. This France and therefore no firework night so took bum out of slot and put head in slot and this is what see.      Chaos in Body Part Museum.      Charles and Caroline Feet slot turned to ash, feet gone, & Carl the Calf lying on ground, blood pouring from calf.      Then another explosion. Then Breast Brenda & George the Cock rush up. In rush still have breast & cock out. Respectively. Likewise bum (mine).      Think this is heist, say. No shit, says GtC. Then Torso Trev runs past. He screaming Brian Back is dead, head blown off, and we better get fuck out.     We had talked of this. Similar this. Night before. In cupboard. November 4. Three of us. BB GtC and yours truly. How sad life is. How chance to become hero happens rarely. But even if hero would it make difference to daily life? Even shit happens to heroes. Divorce. Death. Cancer. Just last week man who discovered wonder drug, saved million plus lives found out had bum cancer. Said in interview wished had not spent so much time in lab. Looking at slides. While kids grew up without him. And wife left him. Went off with bodybuilder, Choose Life tattooed on penis. If had time again, said, would treat wife Italian restaurant once week, read books, take kids Disneyland Florida and not comment on capitalism indoctrinating bullshit.      So if Big Boss wanted to do Heist why should we stop him? Might get killed. Or injured. Spend rest of life with no legs. Or bum.      And would stop heist = happy.      No.      Had revelation.      Root of all pain = suppressing innermost desire.      BB wanted volunteer in sanctuary for disabled animals, three-legged donkeys, cats with no eyes, dogs with no noses (how do they smell?!). GtC wanted to explore his childhood obsession of stamp collecting. Loved smell of stamps. Stamp shops. Wanted to do book. Where travelled world. Interviewed owners of stamp shops and then write biographies. Not just in relation to stamps but whole lives. A collection of biographies of all these people with a single obsession. And I wanted to have DOM/TOP BDSM life but also romantic love. Find way of marrying two.      So when explosions happened had already decided not flummox heist. Leave to professionals. Men & women with guns. Training in advanced martial arts.     But life has funny ways.      Rushing to exit, escape, when there is another explosion, rubble flies through air, hitting me on head which = me out like light.      When come around lying on floor. Head on Breast Brenda’s lap. Can you walk? says BB. I think so, I say although wasn’t sure. This way, says George the Cock.      Difficult to see. Dust everywhere. Like in Carry On  movie Carry On Up The Kyber .      Go through one room + another + then GtC says wtf, trips, and when is standing again has something in hands which is none other than Mona Lisa. Wtf GtC says again and dust clearing we see two bodies. One is Big Boss. One is someone else. Probably mysterious Frenchman. Both covered in rubble and obviously in some distress. Even dead.      That is how we saved Mona Lisa. The very next day our picture was in all papers. Brenda’s naked breasts and George’s cock covered by concealing square. No square needed for bum (mine) as picture taken from front and bum not hanging out. Which led to lots of questions from journalists. And what did you do in Body Part Museum?     I turned around. I turned around.  (December 7) Sad day. Went train station with GtC. He going Nice then Peru. Those first two stops on his tour of stamp shops around world. GtC mentioned dream in interview in French newspaper Le Figaro and then next day was contacted by old rich French guy who said loved idea of stamp book and would fund it.      After seeing off GtC went with Brenda (has dropped Breast now) to new job at animal sanctuary. Wanted to introduce me to Horace. Horace is duck with no feet. Instead has these little rollerblades. Brenda said it is cutest thing and it is. I watch Horace rollerblade until I have to go to work and then I go to work.      I have job in French Gay Sex Club. As speak very little French job is just cleaning. But suits in DOM/TOP BDSM fantasy way. I wear leather puppy mask and Speedos arse cut out. (Ha!) Spend working hours picking up used condoms, crumpled tissues, wiping cum splatter off walls. Some regulars know me and have nice words to say. Although difficult to speak back. Wearing puppy mask. And not speaking lingo. i.e. French.      Ha!     Writing this entry late night. Candle flickers. Out window are lights of Paris. Happy.      On table next to me I have letter from P. It was in slot when come home from Paris Gay Sex Club. Not bum slot! Letter slot.      P is coming Paris. To see me. She misses me and wants see if can work things out. If I can accept her LLNL then she can accept my DOM/TOP BDSM side. There are new ways of thinking these days, she said. New ways of being. And we have to adapt. Find new ways around. Or will grow old alone.      And so I imagine P here in Paris avec moi . We walk hand in hand along Champs-Elysées, under Eiffel Tower, along quaint cobbled streets of Montmartre. We drink cheap French wine, read to each other the works of Marcel Proust. Make love in a fleapit hotel. It will be beautiful beautiful beautiful. Drew Gummerson is a Lambda Award Finalist. He is the author of The Lodger, Me and Mickie James, Seven Nights at the Flamingo Hotel. Saltburn will be published Spring 2025.

HIGH DESERT Dusk, and the moon is three-quarters full and bright as a harpsichord note in the sky. And lightning flashes on both horizons and the sagebrush is high and the yarrow is like a mirror for the moon, and a bird sings, and then a human voice rises singing from the hilltop, and I don’t know whose voice it is and also I do: it’s my voice and the bird’s and the lightning’s and the yarrow’s. It grows darker. Clouds float over the moon, glowing. The human voice stops, and also it keeps going. LOVE POEM ON A GLACIER It’s how your hair is a river in the wind, or it’s how the cold air freezes us starkly into this moment and only this moment; no other moments are possible in this kind of cold, just here, just now. It’s how your eyes see like mine, open wide, moved by streaks of color in a pale sky; it’s how we both hear the same something in the wind and turn to look at each other, wide-eyed. Today we will stand in the spray of a waterfall, awake, thrilled, and later we will  dip our bodies into cold water then hot water, skin prickling in the heat, and then later, steamed, relaxed, freshened, we will discover each other like it’s the first time. Every time the first time. Your eyes the color of this glacier. Your hair the shape of water. FIFTH WATER In October, when the leaves were flames and the sky burned brightest blue, I climbed a trail with my children—teenagers, now, and much faster at climbing than me— to mountain hot springs. Neon blue creek water, steam hovering. hot clouds in cold air. Stones rust-slick, trees, grasping. At the top of the boiling creek, a cold waterfall. My son went straight to it, hid behind the curtain of water. He jumped from cold to hot to cold to hot, his face bright, his skin pinkening. Two little-big hearts, flush and happy in the pools,  both neither child nor adult, both adult and child, balanced on the edges of the rocks and on the cusp of the rest of their lives. These liminal spaces between the extremes, I tell them, are, ecologically,  where new things most love to flare into existence. Hot and cold. Dry and wet. Red and blue and orange and yellow spilling into and over each other, colors running like water and becoming,  always, who they are. The air crisp, the pine needles sharp. Buckets of golden light. Melissa Jean is a mindfulness studies professor, forest bathing guide, and creative writing teacher. She currently lives in Nashville.

supermoon aubade   before the iron sky turns amaranth & the morning star peeks through the blinds  i watch you sleep/follow the fall and rise of your breath’s cymbal jazz crash to the drip  of the corroded faucet/trace the rift in the sheet falling between our bodies/  touch your cheek the path from bottom lip  to scar to cleft/this wine bed pleasure dome  simulacrum of us/you are my blind spot & i free fall for you at will & will this dirty weekend habit hail the decrescendo of tonic interludes/ hear birdsong blue notes of thrushes/ their dawn chorus of woe  unraveling   this morning a coyote appeared out of nowhere or in the middle of somewhere between a rock hard place and the deep blue sea over the hill as the crows fly not far but a stone’s throw thataway from it all buff and no bite of the cherry with sugar on top dog in the knock down drag out fight tooth and claw against the nick of time to run like  the wind blows the hand that rocks the cradle to the grave rules  the world on fire where there’s smoke blowing rings running on empty in vicious circles around the bend over backwards and forwards and one step up to the plates spinning out of control freak of nature of the beast of burden of proof is in  the pudding is in the pie eating grin and bear by the tail end of the tunnel vision of love to the moon and the lucky star in the wee small hours of the red sky and isn’t it my night to howl  eucalyptus   after the storms subside i feel a mad urge to shed excess baggage with reckless  abandon. it has rained for three days straight & i’m about to shake my puddled roots to the core. how memory can build you up for the breaking, grind you ragged— leave you weakened & shaggy, your limbs thrown  akimbo, layers peeling slow & perilous, sloughed  snakeskin dangling in the wreckage. how long can you nurture a viper in your wearied heartwood  before you call it a snake in the grass. i’m rough & ready to break the bough, to bare my better  wilder version, an incendiary girl, all the rage, my bark every bit as fierce as my bite. Elle Cantwell is a graduate of the MFA in Writing program at the University of San Francisco. Her poems have appeared in Ponder Review, December, Welter, Barrelhouse  and Roi Fainéant , among other publications. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and is a winner of the Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize. A freelance theatre director and educator, she lives in Santa Monica, California.

The first night we met,  we lay under your freshly laundered bed sheets,  and you showed me your yearbook, named all the strangers  for me by first and last name;  when you met my four-year-old son,  he cut your throat  with an invisible cutlass:  you fell—clutched at your throat,  and let the laugh spill;  for your birthday,  I drew my right ear and framed it; remember?;  how when we made dinner, our mouths?; how there could be no seam found  in the flesh of them, how you said, I know one day I won’t want to do this constantly,  but I’m not there yet ,  how the Brussels Sprouts  you drenched with honey burned, how we ate them anyway  knowing the inside meat was good?; Terri Linn Davis is the co-editor of Icebreakers Lit, a chaotic, loving home featuring collaborative writing. You can find some of her work in Taco Bell Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, The Penn Review, Cultural Daily, Five South, and elsewhere. She lives in Connecticut in a 190-year-old haunted farmhouse with her co-habby and their three children. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @TerriLinnDavis and on her website www.terrilinndavis.com

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” My daughter Rogan was standing in our kitchen carrying a Size 8 sneaker full of Rachael Ray Chicken and Veggie kibble for small dogs. She’d found it in her bedroom closet. Her understandable reaction was provoked by my bombshell revelation: “Sorry to break it to you, but this was the work of a rodent. A mouse probably stole the kibble piece by piece from Winnie's bowl in the middle of the night, and stashed it in your sneaker.” “While I was sleeping in my bed four feet away?” she demanded. “I’m afraid so, kiddo.”  Our home is a suburban architectural mutt on a few acres of rocky, treed property. It was built in 1927 on a long-gone dairy farm, and has been added onto in every possible direction by weekend carpenters ever since. I figure that 4 generations of people and 600 generations of mice have called it home.   “Well, it’s gross!” said Rogan. “It’s nowhere near the grossest mouse offense that’s happened in this place,” I point out. “Did I ever tell you about the time I discovered poop pellets and a shredded oven mitt in that drawer beside the stove?”  Rogan glanced suspiciously at the drawer.  I continued: “Another time, I put my hand into a humongous box of Costco microwave popcorn in the basement and pulled out a nasty clump of shredded foil, pulverized kernels, and more poop.” “Stop!” begged Rogan.  My position on mice has always been PCWR (Peaceful Coexistence Within Reason).  I believe that complete control is unattainable.  But when the mouse community crosses the threshold and becomes complete assholes, action is justified and necessary, and the sneaker/kibble incident fits squarely into that category.  During the kitchen drawer and popcorn episodes, I was commuting by car to work, so I used enlightened, hippy dippy, “humane” traps - the ones that catch the mice unharmed. Then I’d drive the captives a few miles away and release them in a wooded park.  But these days I’m working from home, and daily trips to the rodent penal colony in the woods are unrealistic. So I opted for some old-fashioned snap traps - the kind that break their necks with one merciful thwack. This decision marked the beginning of a week-long journey through a tangled web of decency, civility, and the moral gray area that is modern pest control. A journal of the highlights: Sunday. I set eight traps using peanut butter as bait. Two are near the scene of the incident (Rogan’s closet), two are in the kitchen, two in the hall bathroom, and two in the basement. Monday.  No action. Tuesday.  One trap in the kitchen has snapped. No mouse.  Wednesday.  No action. Thursday.  No action.  Friday.  Significant action! One basement trap has snapped. It’s empty, but a mouse is lying about six inches from the trap in the shadows next to the water tank. Grabbing a flashlight, I study the mouse from above. There are no noticeable signs of life. Then comes the shocker. The tiny critter erupts in a single shuddering spasm. He/she is alive. I sprint upstairs and turn out the basement lights. I consider the options. I could kill the mouse. A fast boot-stomp would be fast and painless, but I’m emotionally incapable of administering that kind of justice. Plus, what if he/she is just in shock or a mouse coma? I decide to let nature take its course. Besides, I don’t even know if the mouse downstairs is the actual kibble culprit. Friday Night. At first, I sense closure. The mouse is gone.  A moment later, I’m back to square one. He/she is lying motionless about a foot from where it was this morning, but further behind the water tank. It’s covered in little dust bunnies from its arduous crawl. I tiptoe back upstairs, telling nobody. I’m starting to feel like Hannibal Lechter, with a potentially dying creature in the basement of my family's home.  Saturday Morning.   Before the coffee’s even done dripping, I’m down in the basement hovering over the mouse. It’s in the exact same spot. At least twenty seconds go by. Just as I’m about to declare him/her dead, it takes a single breath. I retreat. Saturday Afternoon. I slowly descend the stairs and gaze at the tiny and motionless being on the floor. I take a small stick and give him/her a little poke. No response. I turn the little body over. No visible injuries from head to toe. (And for the life of me, I still can’t settle the he/she question.) Confident that the end has come, I transfer the corpse to a piece of cardboard with the stick. Outside, I dig a little grave one shovel deep, and bury the mouse. I pause. I ask forgiveness.   I hope you were unaware of what was happening and not in pain. I hope you weren’t pregnant or nursing babies. I stop myself, go inside, and wash my hands .  I’m not a religious guy, but I do know that in the Book of Genesis, God grants humanity dominion over “every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” And so started the hunting, killing, cooking, eating, and enslaving of every animal within our sacred grasp. I don’t even  want  that kind of power, and if the Almighty is out there listening, I hope You consider rescinding it.  At best, we’re poor stewards. At worst, we’re perpetual and hypocritical fuckups. I’m not at peace with what happened in my basement, but in the end, I was just trying to keep my family safe and healthy. On the other hand, that’s all the little gray kibble thief was trying to do that fateful night in Rogan’s closet.  John McCally is an Emmy and Grammy nominated TV Producer and Director living in Connecticut.  He’s always wanted to explore writing in more depth, and this is one of his first accepted submissions.   He really hopes you enjoy it!

“We can call this a ‘Literary Documentary’.” “But, this has to be a Horror tale. It's in our contract. It's in our rules and regulations.” “Yes, we will give the audience the most bloodcurdling images imaginable through our dialogue. These images should prove more satisfying than the usual blood and guts and stalk and slash that come from a Horror story told in a more conventional manner.” “If you say so. If the audience ends up falling asleep, that’s on you.” “Trust me. People want something different. Once we get to the main details of our story, the minds of the audience will run off in directions that are far more personal and horrific to them than we could ever conjure.” “So, about this story. We have men, all of whom are healthy fathers with no known health issues, dropping dead suddenly from a heart attack.” “Yes. We put in our dialogue that this has happened recently to people around the author, who is an extension of the yet unnamed main character, and is a way for him to express his fears of mortality.” “Since, he too, is a family man who is in his 40s?” “Exactly. I mean, he just entered his 40s. But these heart attacks don’t seem to care about age. The victim just have to be a healthy male in those 10-years.” “But, you also want to connect it to current social issues?” “Yes, as the best Horror tales are apt to do.” “You’re thinking along the lines of a classic George A. Romero story?” “Yes. The best Romero genre pictures, like Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead , were able to articulate the fears of the time without being preachy or sacrificing entertainment value. And since we are supposed to be united here to work on a Horror script in the form of a dialogue-driven prose tale, Romero would be a great comparative point.” “Ok. But, what’s the connective tissue?” “The recent fear of Covid-19 and the shots that many of us, especially those who worked in the healthcare field at the time, were mandated to keep their jobs.” “So, the heart attacks were caused by the shot?” “Yes, or we could flip it and make the culprit the lack of a shot from the Covid-19-like disease in the story. We will have to create a similar, but fictional, disease to avoid sensationalism and not seem insensitive to those who passed away from Covid during its years- long, and still ongoing, reign. My only thought here is that having the heart attacks caused by a lack of a shot for our fictional disease is a little too political.” “So is the reverse end. But, the reverse end, the shot itself and the mystery of not knowing what was in it and the long- term effects of what it would do to an individual, especially one who had it forced on him or her to keep their job during the height of our fictional disease, adds infinite layers of intrigue to the project. It also helps pad the piece and make it more substantial. We can even add a subplot where our lead breaks into the place where they make these shots or kidnaps someone who knows what is in the shot, possibly an agent of the government, who is sworn to secrecy to never disclose what is in the shot. In so doing, our lead scares the information out of him or her. The options are endless with the corrupt government angle.” “Isn’t that option also sensationalism?” “It most certainly is. But, it makes for a more intriguing story.” “Intriguing in a conventional manner. For example, extended scenes of paranoia-infused suspense and governmental corruption and conspiracy. I thought we were trying to avoid these routine genre gimmicks. What do you want to happen? Have those heart attack victims come back as zombies? Maybe as part of something that was put in the shot?” “The governmental aspects are forever relevant. It has been overused, yes. But, it is still true. We saw how certain American citizens reacted when the Covid shots were administered. The governmental and the zombie angle are still very Romero, too. So it could work as well in keeping in that vein.” “Very is also a very unnecessary word. Writing 101.” “As long as it never hits the page it has never happened. Right?” “Writer’s Code 101.” “So, what do we want the film to look like?” “A blank page. Two people talking. A ton of brackets.” “It’s an arbitrary detail.” “What happens to our lead? Does he drop dead from a heart attack? Does he spend the rest of his 40’s in fear of the heart attack happening to find out nothing will happen? Does he find a cure?” “All arbitrary details.” “Life isn’t an arbitrary detail. Fate isn’t an arbitrary detail.” “An open ending seems to be the only option.” “Let’s just see where the story takes us.” “Maybe once our lead thinks he has an answer on how to stop the men from dying, the women in his life who are in their 40s find themselves in a similar situation. Is a twist like that too conventional?” “Let’s see where the story takes us. The beauty in telling a tale is becoming both audience and author and letting our unhinged imagination guide and surprise us as the plot moves forward.” “How will we develop our lead so that he is relatable?” “Don’t. Make him an enigma. The audience can come up with the backstory.” “Isn’t that also too conventional?” “Man has been telling tales since the dawn of time. There is nothing wholly new.” “The author is now the critic.” “My greatest one.” “The author now has a headache.” “My greatest one.” “Talk about a conventional ending.” “My greatest and also my most honest one.”                          END Andrew Buckner is a multi award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter. A noted poet, critic, author, actor, and experimental musician, he runs and writes for the review site AWordofDreams.com .

We Were Twisted Ladders DNA Stores memory; I wonder what my body thinks of me. A molecular blueprint– Find me where the veins meet prairie, And you’ll find the way I held my fingers, intertwined With the dying. The way I held my sister’s lap and sang to her  A Bushel & A Peck, a hug around the neck, As my ribs concave– And I knew I’d have to leave her, eventually. We are double helixes, a spiral curve, Like the vertebrae that hurt  Before the storms cross from your state to mine, across highways Mowed down by water. The water that made us, I suppose. Or, I suppose, the order doesn’t matter. The spiral curves of fingerprints Remind me of ice skaters twisting with their frozen bodies Around the archways of the pond On a winter day, learning how to do a triple Axle. Learning how to fall to fly, Learning how to hold their ankle way up high– learning that They bend And do not break. I pass down my heritage Even if my heritage forgets me. A string, a shape that molds Before we understood the meaning behind our names. Before we understood That the way my body was formed Came from my Mom But not what she gave me. We are twisted ladders Of cells we cannot see, name from a lens Of looking that we don’t fully understand. The microscope tells us we’re all the same, yet unique. So, when I cry Do you hear me? When I change, do you feel that I lost What made me? If I could, I’d go in & pluck Out weary, violin strings Of meaning. Make me more compassionate here, Make the brain forget that day she told me I didn’t matter, There. I close my eyes and I almost feel the way she whispered me into existence, And then forgot to hold the rest in her hand, forgot the path to find What makes me, me. Telling me to stop writing Stop dreaming And to stand with two feet The feet she made And I should, I should, Be grateful for that . The Hollows for the [Motherless] Stars I would pop popcorn, even though it wasn’t a safe food. I’d say the word mother and hear all the vowels. “Why do you watch that filth?” She’d say from the corner. But for an hour, it didn’t matter where I was. For an hour, she would braid my hair and tell me that boys don’t matter – shopping does – and that when we fight we look cute after, and make up. Sure there’s that season where they go adrift too – but everything repairs itself again – with a burger and a coffee. I can repair myself, in only a man – if someone – asks me to coffee. If someone – anyone – makes me a Santa burger. If someone – anyone – tells me I look like Rory, but act like her in season one. And I pop my poptarts and laugh in strawberry– And I braid my own hair, the crumbles falling on the floor. I don’t pick them up right away, and laugh about sugar toes and dreams aplenty. Pretend it’s lint instead of moms on screens, pretend I’m made of air and eat carbs and no one will make fun of me – Pretend there are worlds where women are strong, And mothers wrap their arms around them, and only miss a beat for a season, And swing around again. (And, yes, I’m not a Dean). A Note from the Author: I enjoy writing about random pop/medical culture, and trying to extrapolate on those ideas into feelings.

I find little to be hopeful about, and yet, I tire of writing stories that suggest everything is just as bad as I think it is. Billy-Ray Belcourt tells me, “The creative drive, the artistic impulse, is above all a thunderous yes to life.”(1) It’s hard to believe. I drift closer to Clarice Lispector’s narrator in The Hour of the Star, whom I imagine chewing his fingernails off in an empty room. He tells me, “Let those who read me get punched in the stomach to see if it’s good.”(2) It’s satisfying, in a world that beats up queers in back alleys, to punch a reader in the stomach. Violence begets violence, and I am not immune to it. I have written a novel, and it ends without hope. I finished the first draft a year ago, and in every iteration it’s been through, the ending remains the same, a deep loneliness and cliff’s edge uncertainty defining the last scenes. I wanted my reader to feel   like the ending is hard on everyone. I wanted to punch my reader in the stomach. I’m tempted to say that this is what the story demands. This ending came to me, a carving of pain, and I can’t change it just because I want to. Well, says who? Am I not in charge here? A novel isn’t a beast to tame, it doesn’t claw at my door. I create it, and the arc of it is in my hands. So if the tragedy is not inevitable, not an immutable feature of the story, I get to decide what happens. To make that decision, I need to know what questions I want my reader to wrestle, what emotion I hope to paint behind their eyelids. I made of my ending a void. Is that the best I can do?  Clarice Lispector again: “What can you do with the truth that everyone’s a little sad and a little alone?”(3) Amitava Kumar: “What is the truth but the story we tell about it?”(4) I write fiction to create truth. Hold a question in your heart and it scalds you. Thread the question through a needle and embroider words on paper, and it transforms. Questions like what do we owe each other? and what does love look like, really? are ones that I can consider in fiction in a way I can’t elsewhere, because fiction is an experiment. I control some variables—plot, character, language—but the final result will be an explosion of the questions I choose to ask. And when the smoke clears, there is a truth. My novel is about the limits of love, and the result of my experiment was that those limits are hard and unkind. You won’t end up with everyone you want in your arms. And it was so satisfying, a confirmation that the cruelties I see all around me are real and that the pain I feel seeing them is just as sharp as I know it is. But if I say that I create truth with this book, then I have to reckon with that tremendous responsibility. Do I choose to put into the world a truth that asserts hopelessness, despair, and loneliness? I don’t think I should write happy endings for their own sake, but I do think cruelty for its own sake is worse. I used to be an optimist battling against pessimism, and now I’m a pessimist battling against pessimism. I sink my heels into the sand and the tide rises: pain is incalculable in this world.  The 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health tells me that half of trans youth have considered suicide. A girl I almost dated tells me, “I like going places where people died and I like going places where people think about dying.” I write about gender and I look all around me. Is the graveyard real or created by endless narrative loops, the same story repeated and transmuted until it manifests in granite headstones? If I shut my eyes, I can imagine another world, the world I dream about, the world I don’t really hope for anymore. Give me an instruction manual and I will build that world. Show me what to nail together. Please, tell me there’s a way. Enough abstraction. If someone reads my novel, they are giving me their time and attention, and I am using that time and attention to make them feel empty. Hank Green tells me, “I feel as if my life is about constructing the right sort of armor, the right sort of strength, that lets the light through.”(5) Why can’t I change that ending to let the light through?  I seldom hope, but I am often joyful. Finding a future on this dying planet is impossible, but right now, I live. Hope asks me to ignore certain realities, but joy lets me stand in the moment and hold contradictions. Contradictions like: the world is cruel and people are cruel in it, and: I encounter care in every corner I take the time to dust. Contradictions like: I think we are all doomed, and: I am in love with almost everyone I meet. I am in love with everything that prolongs queer life. I want my art to prolong queer life. My novel ends without hope. Would it kill me to infuse it with a little joy? Sasha Fletcher tells me, “What do I do about being in love, he asks, and Sam says, only cowards do something about being in love, buddy. Everyone else, they’re just in love.”(6) Sick of death, I will write life. I will not write hope, but I will write joy, because it is as close as I can get. Let the world know that I am in love with it, and let it respond how it will. Seas still rise, cops still kill, and I am at heart a nihilist. If nothing matters, then nothing matters, and I am free to dance at midnight with a room full of queers. Death hangs over us, and we live anyway. It’s all we can do, really.  (1)  Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of my Brief Body, 2020. (2) Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star, trans. Benjamin Moser, 2011. (3)  Ibid. (4)  Amitava Kumar, A Time Outside This Time, 2021. (5)   Dear Hank and John, 2020. (6)  Sasha Fletcher, Be Here to Love me at the End of the World, 2022. C.M. Green is a Boston-based writer with a focus on history, memory, gender, and religion. Their work has been published by Barren Magazine, Full House Literary, and elsewhere, and their debut chapbook, I Am Never Leaving Williamsburg , is forthcoming in 2025 with fifth wheel press. You can find their work at cmgreenwrites.com .