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Tallboys, Tony told me, came in dove grey and Chantilly grey and London oak and Rutland oak and more varieties than most people might imagine. If, say, tallboy identification wasn’t a major part of their Friday morning curriculum, as it was now mine. The subject fitted neatly into the gap between the hunt for the latest dictionaries in Waterstones (at no later than quarter to 11 in order to ensure that nice Friday Roxanne was still on the till to smile at him) and the 10:30 am single Americano in Costa with the giant-sized Jammy Dodger biscuit to follow. Indeed, it went beyond mere tallboy identification. Tony was keen on words, and he was keener still on the correct application of said words. Thus, our Friday morning tallboy discussion would inevitably veer towards the controversial non-tallboys to be found on display in the High Street – those that were not the combination chest of drawers and wardrobes, as required by the definition. Was this carelessness on the part of those selling them? Or was this an attempt to strike at the very heart of our collective understanding of reality? After all, if they could get away with calling any old chest of drawers a tallboy, knowing that no one really cared anymore what word was used, then what did that say about all the other words? And what kind of world would that leave us with? An interesting question. And one I could have spent some time musing over ona Friday morning if Tony wasn’t already doing much of the musing himself. Until, that is, he took us to see the tallboy. The one that had started the obsession. “I could have been a tallboy,” Tony said. Not for the first time. We were once again in the community furniture store in the old shopping centre. The only shop worth visiting amongst the boarded-up clothing stores, the chain pubs, and a branch of Poundland in which every other item seemed to cost more than a pound. (I’d had to keep that from Tony in case of a major meltdown). Such was the state of the country now. Tony didn’t share my town centre despond, however. If you didn’t know him – if you just saw him out and about, say, with his newly purchased books or his 1 o’clock doughnut, or in the library browsing the World War II section – you’d recognise the enthusiast in him that lived side-by-side with the pedant. You’d see the joie de vivre which, first time I’d used the phrase, he’d amended to joie de livre (not that he’d ever formally studied French) before determining that joie de libre was maybe more appropriate. And, no, he wasn’t joking. He rarely did. It all came from his love of words. A shame, I thought, because he might have enjoyed a good pun. The first time we’d stopped off at this furniture store, he’d been drawn in by the different hatstands in the window (“coat racks,” he’d corrected me), being especially taken by what he told me was a vintage bentwood. And who was I to disbelieve him? There’d been a moment or two amongst the hatstands (“coat racks,” he’d corrected me again) and some fun, too, with my use of the incorrect name. It was only later that I worked out that hatstand really was a word for pencils up the nose and underpants on the head style mental wibbling. A breakdown, if you need the more formal appellation. As in, “you’ve gone all hatstand”. God alone knew where Tony had found that definition. He wasn’t allowed the internet at home, so there was no way it was the Urban Dictionary. And it wasn’t a gag. I should have learned not to doubt him when he got into definitions. Nor to doubt his choice of words, either. “I could have been a tallboy,” he’d said, clutching his dictionaries, staring up at the item that had attracted his attention. We’d come in that first time for the hatstands (“coat racks”) but we’d stayed for the tallboy. And now it was part of the routine. Because this wasn’t just any old tallboy. This was his tallboy. This it seemed, if you haven’t already spotted it in his always deliberate phrasing, Tony himself in tallboy form. This Friday was no different from any of the other Fridays in recent times. I had hold of Tony’s clammy, moist hand, as he insisted I always did, and I gave my studied unselfconscious, “yeah, you got a problem with this?” smile at the over-interested old ladies with the M & S shopping bags full of meals for one and cat food as they tut-shuffled their way around us. What to say to him in response this time? Yes, perhaps you could, Tony. Perhaps this is the very one your folks would have bought, back when this shop wasn’t the local Community Furniture Store but the local branch of Big Name Furniture or whatever. “Could be the same one,” Tony told me, as he’d told me last time at precisely the point I’d left it too long for any kind of response. “I doubt it, Tony,” I replied this time. Which was wrong, of course, because how would I know? Could I prove it? Could anyone? It wasn’t the kind of thing we could look up on the library computer. When Tony wasn’t watching old episodes of “Grange Hill” on YouTube (other 1980s children’s TV shows were available, and he always knew precisely where to find them, too). He pulled his sticky hand out of mine, reaching out to pull open one of the drawers, placing his palm flat on the bare wood inside and closing his eyes. “Was meant to be underwear,” he said. I was long past the point of worrying what any of the other customers might think. “Good use of a drawer,” I told him. He opened the drawer next to it. “Socks,” he said. “Indeed,” I replied. “Never was,” he said, closing the drawer, hesitating over the wardrobe door before opening that too. “School uniform probably,” he said. “Shirts?” Now, that was a question, and I was ready for it. “Not hoodies,” I said. These days, Tony was keen on his hoodies. Not that he had too much choice in the matter. Today’s was a skull and barbed wire affair. The kind of thing you might have thought was for a heavy metal band or some such, but I knew was, in reality, an ersatz knock-off produced in a sweatshop somewhere for one of the cheap clothing stores. Maybe a decade or two back. Like all Tony’s clothes, it would have come from Oxfam or the British Heart Foundation or any one of the other massed charity shops that now made up the High Street. “Not hoodies,” Tony said. “White, you think?” “Depends on the school,” I told him. “But, yeah, white’s usual.” “Could be blue.” “Could be.” “You think a blazer? School crest on the pocket?” I’d thought this before. He remembered me saying so. Like he remembered everything else I ever said to him. “I think perhaps a blazer.” “With a motto.” “Very likely.” Tony nodded, reassured either by my words or by the colour. It was sometimes hard to tell. What I did know, though, was that he needed his moment, his oneness with the wood. A phrase he would not have found amusing even if I had tried for the euphemism. As I say, a literal chap, Tony. Literal and yet always the same phrasing. “I could have been a tallboy.” And maybe he could, I thought. Why not let him have that belief, I thought. There were worse beliefs to have in the world, I thought. “Home?” I asked him, when we’d been there long enough, when he’d determined today wasn’t the day for the library PC and the kids shows. “The House,” he told me, as he always did. No, it wasn’t for me to tell him that he couldn’t have been a combination chest of drawers and wardrobe. It depended very much on what a combination chest of drawers and wardrobe meant to him. He was, after all, the one with the definitions. I watched him riffling through his dictionaries on the bus on the way back to the House on the edge of town. Where Jan and Dave were on today, at least until shift change, and where his friends Nick and Roger would most likely be playing chess in the communal living room with precisely none of the right pieces. “Can come in,” he told me at the door, because there were minutes left, because Jan and Dave were out back smoking something other than tobacco, because the House was otherwise quiet apart from the sound of the knackered pump on the fish tank and the squeal of the fridge in the kitchen that had seen better decades. This was new, so of course I accepted. Why not accept the offer? There were plenty of reasons why I shouldn’t. There was part of me that wanted to see how many dictionaries equalled a Tony number of dictionaries. Several hundred, it turned out, by the looks of it. And I wanted to know if there’d be any clue as to the tallboy. “Not how they’d have done my room,” Tony told me. Which was a lot in one go for him. He was looking at the dictionaries. He was contemplating the new dictionaries to somehow add to his wall of dictionaries. “Not the furniture they’d have chosen,” Tony told me. And the sadness was, in the House, no one had really chosen any of it. Just as they hadn’t chosen him. And vice versa. “No,” I agreed with him. So here we were, I thought. Heading to tallboy territory, I thought. This might be my only opportunity to find out what it meant to him, I thought. And Tony looked up at the tower of dictionaries again. Several hundred was not an exaggeration. There was no hope of putting today’s purchases at the top without help. “I could have been a tallboy,” he told me, still looking up, his back to me, so it was a moment before I saw his shoulders move. And I thought the emotion had got too much for him. Thinking back to the room he might have had in the house with the parents he had never had. Forty-something years ago now. Maybe longer. It was so difficult to work out his age. Whatever happened had been so very long ago, but how much of it did he still carry with him? I moved towards him, thought of putting a hand out to “there, there” him in precisely the way I shouldn’t do as his supporter. And then his shoulders heaved and what I took to be a Tony brand asthmatic sob was most definitely not a Tony brand asthmatic sob. He was laughing, the bugger. “Yeah, I could have been a tallboy,” he said. They weren’t even shelves. Just books piled as high as physics would allow them to be piled. Which was a hell of a lot higher than anyone might have expected. “But I’d settle for a ladder,” he said. Mike Hickman (@MikeHicWriter) is a writer from York, England. He has written for Off the Rock Productions (stage and audio), including 2018's "Not So Funny Now" about Groucho Marx and Erin Fleming. He has recently been published in EllipsisZine, Dwelling Literary, Bandit Fiction, Nymphs, Flash Fiction Magazine, Brown Bag, and Red Fez. His co-written, completed six-part BBC radio sit com remains frustratingly as unproduced as it was the last time he updated this biography. So here it is, line by line (we're going to be here a while): "What happened to your lovely new uniform, then?" "My robes met with a slight accident, if you must know. In the members' entrance." "Ouch. Nasty."

Clifton Hill is awake and pulsing, moving like a living, breathing thing. A voice radiates from a loudspeaker inviting tourists into the Movieland Wax Museum of the Stars. Couples pull wagon loads of children into the great Canadian Midway, the Guinness World Records Museum, the Rainforest Café. Loud music emanates from a rooftop bar where karaoke singers croon ballads for their friends. It’s early springtime, and Mary-Jane can’t believe how many people are here. It’s still cold enough for a toque and gloves, the sky is a dreary grey. Mary-Jane watches the Maid of the Mist struggle through choppy waves. She’s been on it only once when she was small. She held onto her grandmother for dear life as the boat tossed through the waves in a fury of thunderous noise. Oversized yellow slickers did nothing to protect them from the soaking they endured. When family visited from far away, Mary-Jane and her grandmother took them to see the Horseshoe Falls, to observe them through the famous coin-operated binoculars that line the boulevard. They ate pizza and ice cream and watched fireworks explode in the sky. They bought t-shirts and keychains and fridge magnets and took a thousand photographs. Mary-Ann still doesn’t believe there is a more wonderful place on earth. Extricating herself from the tourists, she wanders into Queen Victoria Park at the base of the Falls. There is a particular bench she wants to sit on, the one where she met Matthew in the eighth grade. Her class had been sent on a weeklong retreat to Loretto Academy, an old convent nestled amongst the trees right next to the Falls. Under the vigilant eyes of the nuns, mentors taught them about God, showed them how to make friendship bracelets, and took them hiking in the gorge. When the nuns granted them free time for sightseeing, Mary-Jane went off on her own, vying to get a better view of her beloved Falls. She sat on the bench watching people enjoying picnics and a group of boys playing hacky sack nearby. After much gawking and huddling, one of them approached her. “The guys dared me to talk to you,” he said. Here with his family for a week, he and his cousins could do whatever they wanted while the adults drank too much and gambled at the casino. Mary-Jane watched the play of shadows and light filter through the trees on the skin of his arms, his face. He promised to sneak out of his hotel and stand outside the convent that night. She agreed to open a window on the third floor and drop a letter down to him. They plotted to see each other every day that week, concocting elaborate schemes for the secret pleasure of waving to each other from some location or another. On the last day, Mary-Jane broke away from the group to say goodbye to Matthew, and they made a pact. “Let’s meet back here in twenty years,” he said. “If we’re both single, we’ll get married. It’s the honeymoon capital of the world, after all.” They set a date and time, and now Mary-Jane is sitting on the bench and Matthew is not here. Of course she knew he wouldn’t travel across the ocean after all these years, he probably doesn’t remember she exists. She sits all afternoon, nonetheless, under the spell of the rolling mist, the dull roar of the waterfall. Thinking about all the people who went over the Falls in a barrel and lived, all the people who jumped and didn’t make it. The best time to see the Falls, she knows, is at midnight in the dead of winter. The stone walkways lining the river will be empty, ghostly compared to the thousands of bodies that fill them in the height of summer. The road, normally jammed with traffic, will be a blank space, so you can park for free. You can lean over the wrought-iron curlicues decorating the wall, to hear the deafening rush of millions of tons of water. Ponder the ten inches of rock that have eroded each year, every year for a millennium. In high school, Mary-Ann had done all these things with a boy who took her there to tell her he didn’t love her anymore. After he said those words, he asked her what she was thinking. “I’m thinking about the Falls,” she said. And she was. She was thinking, in the depth of the vacant night, that this was as close as she could get to understanding how the Falls felt hundreds of years ago. Before the blinking lights of hotels and motels advertising heart-shaped jacuzzis, before the giant caricatures of Dracula and Frankenstein perched atop haunted houses promising thrills and chills. No hot dog vendors or bowling alleys or extreme mini putting. Just lush forests cut through by a wide gash of surging water. Mary-Jane gets up from the bench and walks back to the bottom of the Hill. She knows she will return countless times because the waterfall pulls her with an invisible tether, offering a solace no one else can give. An emotional balm, a restorative treatment, reminding her that nature is more powerful than anything, even her loneliness. She stands in line for the Sky Wheel and purchases one ticket. She glides high into the air inside a fiberglass bubble. At the top, she watches a hawk circle above the rapids, the people below moving like insects around a fathomless wonder of the world.

Fear It isn’t the tumor then but the tumor remembered cut from the breast the breast chiseled from the bone rising in dreams or at the margins of whispered denial when, startled, she feels it how it might, again, pull at her nipple and slip through her ribs like a cat prowling Forgiveness In Santa Fe you find me late afternoon sun at my back hips wider than yours gathering skulls We roam red hills— ocher orange purple earth cracked by hot blowing sand A solitary penitent dark veil over torso trudges near You kiss my scars ghosts of my breasts under the evening bells of St. Francis Scent of Sorrow Grief is something you can smell like the rose petals my mother kept in a blue bowl their essence growing over time attaching to the words she spoke so when she passed her breath gone her voice scattered through the house in particles of fragrance Rose Petals in Your Mouth You spit out love songs only I hear my cochlea hollow bone spiraled waiting for you to slide through your sweet tongue muscular & soft I sing & shriek & sometimes talk in tongues Chella Courington (she/her) is a writer/teacher whose poetry and fiction appear in numerous anthologies and journals including DMQ Review, The Los Angeles Review, and New World Writing.A Pushcart and Best New Poets Nominee, Courington was raised in the Appalachian south and now lives in Central California. She has a recent microchap of poetry, Good Trouble, Origami Poems Project, and a forthcoming microchap, Hell Hath, Maverick Duck Press.

My Grandfather left me three things in his will; a John Wayne-signed movie poster from Rio Bravo, an assortment of low denomination coins from around the world, and his crippling fear of water. I sold off two of those things, but the other has followed me all my life. He was my mother’s father, and an eccentric fellow. Convinced that water would kill him, he was deathly afraid of the ocean and avoided baths at all costs. He wouldn’t leave the house if it was raining, and the very sight of a puddle would entice a nervous breakdown. I never met my mother, so I can’t be certain if she shared his phobia. She drowned whilst giving birth to me. It was a water birth, you see. Floating in a paddling pool of shallow water, the midwife delivered me without complication, until she turned back to my mother – face down and not breathing. I don’t believe the solace in validation provided my grandfather much respite from his grief. Years of therapy have helped me overcome my fears, but everyday is still a struggle. I can’t use ice cubes. I’ve never seen Titanic. And I definitely can’t listen to the rock band Wet Wet Wet. I thought I had my phobia under control, until a recent trip to Japan for work. Lost in thought whilst on the toilet, I was assaulted with a surprise burst of water in a sensitive area hitherto untouched. The shock of the experience sent me spiralling, and I rushed from the hotel like a hurricane unfurled. I had to leave the country, but this tiny island was surrounded by oceans. Stuck between a bidet and a hard place. No justice for those with aquaphobia. Water, water, everywhere… I can’t remember the next line, but it feels prevalent. Samuel Edwards was born and raised in Leeds, England, and no matter how far away he gets, he is always compelled to return to Yorkshire. He has a Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree from the University of Leeds, and enjoys dark coffee, even darker chocolate, and long walks. Samuel writes mainly to impress his pet cat, a feat he will never accomplish. Previously published in Vestal Review, The Birdseed and Fairfield Scribes. Tweets at @Sam_Edwards1990

He kisses me deeply, his cardamom-flavored saliva mingling with mine. Cardamom disgusts me; I like ginger tea. Yet he refuses to add ginger to mine. Is it too much work to make separate cups? How do you feel about the news? I ask, and he repeats the kiss. More passionately this time. A sensation tickles every pore of my skin. And I abandon the idea of leaving him. Maybe soon, if not now. I can eat a whole one-pound plum cake right now. He brushes off my craving, saying I think about plum cakes too often. And that I should have carried apples with me. Apples! To the clinic? He strokes my belly and presses his ear on it, listening to the heartbeats, trying to feel the kicks. Just four months more; so, be careful with the raging sugar levels, the doctor warns us. I drool at the sight of a confectionary shop when he stops our car to pick milk packets, but he’s oblivious to my desire. Despair hooks and squeezes and wrings my heart. I complain to my mother later about him being heartless, and Maa advises not to linger on it because sometimes husbands are indifferent. Maa knows better. And I abandon the idea of leaving him. Maybe soon, if not now. Whenever I propose to watch a late-night movie these days, he makes an excuse. Work call or pending documentation for a client. Else he’s too tired and says, I should sleep better and not invite anything that can erode my erratic sleeping further. But after I half-sleep, he watches the web series I’ve been craving for. All night, all alone. And enjoys the sensual scenes, every second of them. Keeping my eyes shut, I toss and turn and moan, pretending to be waking up soon. The doctor says I should try to rest more for being energetic in the third trimester. So, he complains jokingly (or jokes complainingly?) about how bravely he pampered and curbed my cravings to binge-watch A-rated flicks. Pampered? You deceived me, you traitor. I complain to my mother later about him being a nagger, and Maa advises not to chide because husbands sometimes grumble about nothing. Maa knows better. And I abandon the idea of leaving him. Maybe soon, if not now. As I try to take a turn in the night, my eyes sleepless and throat burning with acid reflux, I ask him to make me something tangy, preferably tomato soup. Instead, he makes me a banana shake and cuts an apple. “Anytime in the next week now,”he says, cuddles with me and drifts to sleep, feeling the occasional kicks. While he snores lightly by my side, I trash the apple slices and flush the half-drunk shake away in the toilet. I message my mother in the morning and ask her for the tomato soup recipe, one of her best. Who cares if the kitchen gives you nausea? Cravings need to be satiated. But I throw up twice and dump tomatoes, chilies, garlic pods, carrots, and vegetable stock in a bin when the chimney makes no effort to digest those peculiar smells. I complain to my mother later about him being uncaring, and Maa advises not to overthink because husbands don’t care unless necessary. Maa knows better. And I abandon the idea of leaving him. Maybe soon, if not now. When the first wave of spasms, just a tiny tickle, hits me, I ask him to take me to the hospital. He says to wait for three hours, and I hate him even more, wanting to leave him after my twins arrive. How can I not go now? I huff and wait and rant and sulk. A while later, he calls me, his voice a clink of coins. Fragrances hit me, a myriad of them, alleviating my throes. Our dining table is loaded with soups, cakes, pastries, and all the food I have been craving for. He plays my favorite movie and asks me to relax for two more hours because the doctor says we can wait and I should eat what I like. Also, the hospital is just ten-minutes afar, he says. Time to worry about your gestational diabetes is over, he adds and pours me a cup of tea. The wafting smell of ginger admonishes my fickle apprehensions. I call my mother to tell her the story, pangs of pain writhing my insides and a nurse consoling me while pushing my wheelchair through the spirit-washed corridor. Maa advises I should enjoy his pampering while it lasts because husbands pamper little beyond honeymoon and pregnancy. Maa knows better. And I abandon the idea of leaving him. Perhaps that’s how marriage is; part denials, part approvals. She has survived it for thirty-three long years. I’ll learn too; maybe soon, if not now.

Former Lives In Last Night’s Dream I follow her through candlelit mazes. I watch her bathe herself in flowers, painting her wings one feather at a time, or all at once. She whirls in purple sheets, saffron ribbons in her hair, touching things that grow, spending whole lives dancing in the buds of spring. There are former lives storied between her lines, patchwork quilts, thick multi-peopled memories. Encyclopedias. There are dry pages and traces of ink within her fingers. Her voice is like a shower of bees escaping my attention. There are violins and otherworldly languages in her xylophones. She is cat mobile, purchases dresses and purses to swing dreamily on garbage streets- the only color. Poetic, all at once artistic. Reposed in pastel rooms, unfolding. These hours are spent in agony, above all else ecstatic. Return to where the years forget themselves. Kite I could know you in a full cup of whiskey. I could know you with bent legs, face painted in the spring picking up the pieces of your lover. I could join you in the southern hills. Together we could slip into a marble pool filled with freckled tears, our outstretched hands learning the surface of the sycamore tree. Hieroglyphs in our eyes, we will plunder your temples, expunge the air of incense and sacrificial doves...I will carve your totem onto the back of my hand, with blood dripping down long porcelain halls, ever deeper beneath the sand, euphoric I will stagger. Daughter of the earth and sky, your hair in knots, you cause the rising tide. The Girl Who Spoke Swords The girl who spoke swords wears blindfolds, stands in air. She scrawls spells that won’t be sung, into piles of spit and dirt. She lays out a table of windows to souls, entrances to eternities. The girl who spoke swords perceives meanings in deft lines. She touches repetitious fissures; futures set in magic, frightened skin over soothed bones, epidermal runes. The girl who spoke swords wanders. She steps on edges. Her balance is pressed with presence. She instructs. Advises. Cautions opportunity with patience. Her very words are burdens. The girl who spoke swords lessens the pain of doubt, for those who would have her. She settles the night in silence. She hangs her hands toward ground and lifts her crown. The girl who spoke swords crosses her heart with Juniper. Tonight, she swallows bold riddles and exhales ill omens. Her stare is one of recognition. She is many open eyes. Tim Moder is an Indigenous poet living in northern Wisconsin. He is a member of Lake Superior Writers. His poems have appeared in Penumbra Online, Paddler Press, Tigermoth Review, Sisyphus, and others.

The news came over social media that Carlton Monroe died. Tragically. Accidentally. But at least while doing something he always wanted to do. Pretty sure he even once joked that he’d been dying to try deep sea diving. The gods answered his prayers in one messy moment. The paradox was lost on nobody who knew him. Retirement from the military at forty-five with still so much life ahead of him. A wife. Two kids. They watched from the boat as Carlton went under the shimmering blue water in one piece then came out of the ruddy water in chunks. The memorial service resembled a pharaonic sendoff for a life once viewed overall as thriving. Edward Weathers, a civilian co-worker, viewed the sum of Carlton’s life as worthy of respect but not so much adulation. By comparison, Edward wondered what his might be worth in the end. With that, Edward felt really old. Not falling apart in body or mind, just the interpretation that most of what occupied his thinking happened in the past. Time for me to do something about THAT, he thought. The first step was more like dipping a toe in a puddle. He first became Eddie then settled on Ed. Plain, old Ed. The few people he encountered seemed to be happy for the one less syllable of his company. The new abbreviation meant nothing to anybody he met after his great transformation into Ed. The novel confidence manifested at times when the new Ed appealed to people in bars who couldn’t see the reality of his age advancing across his face in the form of lines, wrinkles and gray hair. Deep pockets to intoxicate certainly helped. More drinks than necessary and effusive compliments tended to seal the deal. Then the inevitable morning after, filled with expectation turning to disappointment then dismay. A lonely shower washed off the smell and outward evidence but inside Ed felt cold in spite of the scalding water turning his skin beet red. Summer ended with Ed’s more concerted stabs to feel valuable. He needed someone in his life to make him feel important but nobody needed Ed in their life. The time came when more leaves littered the ground than the branches. A chill had yet to maintain its permanence during the day but the evenings hinted at what the following weeks might bring. Out for a walk as the sun began its descent in the west, Ed thought about the fact that he had entered the autumn of his life. More beautiful foliage had fallen and been trampled on several times already while reminiscing. He couldn’t look at anything without feeling old. Dry, crumbling leaves cracked and shuffled along with his feet. The noise and smell carried him back many years since a love of the season remained constant. Usual delight gave way to a feeling more forlorn, wistful about days and times gone by like a morose Romantic poet. The neighborhood stood still, cast in the golden sheen of sunset. But it was fool’s gold. A bitter gust of wind whipped to remind him what nipped at that beauty’s heels. Ed preferred to move about in silence so he took great care in avoiding the dusting of dead leaves on the sidewalks leading to his apartment. Easier said than done, considering the multitude blanketing the concrete. Motion on a balcony across the street stopped him in his tracks and stole concern from quietness. A boy dressed only in a white t-shirt and black running shorts watered plants too green for the season. He himself appeared too sensitive for the oncoming cold, and even too green for Ed. A perfect view of the boy illuminated by a gentle and glowing outdoor light had its rewards. Vivacity radiated from his face, his skin, his movements. Too much life had yet to break his skin with troubles or hunch his back and shoulders with burden. A lithe body hid just under his clothing. Dark hair crowned a head that saw the world through eyes even darker than the oncoming night. Then the boy went inside and the balcony light went out. Ed followed suit and opened his front door to enter but never turned off his porch light. Anytime Ed went outside for any reason, casual regard went in the direction of the boy’s apartment and balcony. The blinds stayed closed day and night. No sign of life showed for an insufferable duration. Ed joked to himself that he must’ve seen a ghost but then one night, lights peeked through half-opened Venetian blinds. He took it to mean that the boy had returned from the dead, a sign of spring in the chill of a fall evening. A miniscule vigil began as Ed hoped to see some other sign of life coming from within the apartment across the street. Nothing happening on either side afforded Ed time to ponder why he obsessed so much over a boy he had only barely seen once. Curious desires conjured many things for this starved imagination: How old was he? Who was he? Why the compulsion to know? Other examinations about personality types, what his voice sounded like, experiences so far, his sexuality, so much possessed his head to keep his gaze fixed on the lit apartment across the street. An answer or two promised to reveal themselves at some point. “See something interesting over there?” a detached voice asked. The accusatory tone held a hint of jest but to the startled Ed it translated into irritation. Quick glimpses right and left detected no one. Sweeping looks slowed down the more confused Ed became. Until the voice spoke again. “Over here,” it said, calling Ed’s attention at last to the source. In the dark, the boy stepped from his expert concealment among the shadows of the trees. “Is there a reason you’re spying on my house?” “What makes you think I’m spying? I’m standing in the open. You’re the one hiding in the dark watching me. See something interesting yourself?” Ed’s attempted swagger cracked along with his voice. Nerves took full responsibility for the uncharacteristic behavior. The boy offered an apology. “I’ve noticed you around the neighborhood,” he continued as he approached Ed’s balcony. More of him came into better view. “I can’t say the same about you,” Ed returned. He instantly regretted the comment. Now proof existed of his espionage. That the boy took notice of, along with Ed’s mortification. “Noted,” was all he said in return. Following an unbearable silence, he offered his name. “I’m Noah.” “I’m Ed. Pleased to meet you.” “Finally, huh?” A coy smile formed on his face as he teased the older man. “So are you gonna come down and talk to me or just stay up there? Don’t be scared. I only bite if I feel threatened. And you don’t scare me so come on down.” Ed smiled, not really knowing why. His apprehension came from fear of that unknown motive, not from a fear of violence. Noah presented a slighter build than Ed’s. The young physique appeared better suited for offering fantasies instead of pain. Once outside, Ed approached Noah, the diminishing space between them awful with energy. A sense of completion came from nowhere. Noah extended his hand as a further greeting. “You’re even more handsome up close.” He delivered the sentence with Ed’s hand still in his. Ed blushed like a schoolboy and thanked Noah for the compliment with a stuttered acceptance. The chill in the air was used as an excuse for the stammer and shaky hands. Noah only smiled back. Small talk went back and forth but within that limited expanse of time, both learned quite a bit about the other. And the back and forth ended with the expectation that both would learn quite a bit from the other. “It’s time I get back inside. My window is that one,” Noah said, pointing to the window directly across from Ed’s “I’ll wave goodnight before I go to bed.” “Okay,” Ed said, not knowing a better response. “It was nice to meet you,” he then said, offering his hand to shake again. Noah looked down at the goodbye gesture presented then back into the face of its owner. “I’d really rather kiss you, instead.” The statement’s deliverance came so matter of fact that it took Ed off guard. Noah’s face moved in and stopped Ed’s lips before they could protest. The taste of respective suppers mingled on their tongues while their mouths moved in uncanny unison. A stupid look remained on Ed’s face after Noah pulled away. Noah smiled and delivered a final peck on the older man’s lips. “Talk to you later,” Noah said over his shoulder before licking his lips. He had already begun walking the few yards home. Ed cursed himself for not getting his number and almost asked, but glaring at Noah’s ass while he walked away hypnotized him. He was lost to other things. Like staring at the window directly across from his anytime it was dark outside and lights indicated Noah was home, for instance. For a week Ed saw no sign of Noah. During the day, all the blinds in the windows remained closed and at night no lights signaled an empty house. Which to Ed meant no contact. And since no new information about Noah flowed in, he had to fill in the blanks himself. Whatever he asked himself needed answers from Noah in order to be truly understood. Ed tried anyway. But only a more incomplete picture formed between the intended introduction and where their friendship might go next. Ed realized he was getting ahead of himself. He always did. Instead his concentration turned to remembering to ask Noah for his number next time. While staring in the mirror Ed asked himself why Noah would find him handsome. Nothing exemplary. Not even anything that he himself as a gay man would grant a doubletake. An assortment of skin care containers dotted the sink and he thanked them for living up to their claims. Regardless, he believed everything about himself could improve. With better exercise, more sleep, and all the other self-preservation routines men his age undertook to regain vitality, Ed knew the possibilities of transformation. Every morning before breakfast he began to bend, pull and mold his body into something more formidable. Blood flowed again with the quick circulation of youth. Soon he might see what Noah did: some handsome man more than twice his age worth kissing. Then one night, as Ed finished his nightly constitutional and last bout of cardio for the day, a whistle brought the attention he focused on breathing towards the apartment across the street. Noah’s light was on, and the window, open. He leaned out of the frame, beautifully backlit and glowing in the middle of the windowsill. He appeared dramatic and spectacular clad only in his underwear. He motioned Ed closer, his finger extended over his lips. “Been a while,” Noah said, barely above a whisper. “Agreed.” Ed replied. “College and stuff,” Noah offered as an explanation. “Can’t really talk like this now, parents are in a mood. Give me your number? I’m bored.” Ed laughed and flashed the digits of his phone number with his hands, observing Noah’s request for silence. After a thumbs up from both parties, Ed turned to walk back to his apartment. Before stepping inside, he turned to look again in the direction of his neighbor’s window. To his surprise, Noah still stood bordered in the soft glow of his bedroom light. His gaze remained locked on Ed, who could only quickly walk inside and lock the door. How stupid to be scared of an eighteen-year-old boy, he thought to himself right before his phone buzzed its notice that a message arrived. What was the best part of your day? the message read. Ed took a moment to reply, careful not to assume an excessive familiarity. It’s been a shitty day so I’ll say talking to you has been the best part so far. Heart emojis responded to Ed’s sappy text. That opened the floodgates for more intimacy to develop. As the conversation veered towards a more delicate nature, Ed began to test the limits. He wanted Noah. He understood that now. But he still had no idea why he found someone so young, so compelling. “Stoopid childrens” Ed called Noah and his useless generation at one point, the deliberate misspelling for emphasis. Then came a series of pics, one after the other, a slow strip tease out of his underwaear that showed off the contours and lines of a body with still so much to learn about itself. For instance, the shots displayed how well Noah’s body looked, but he had no idea the authority it commanded. Taut flesh held fast to muscles under construction. Hairless from the waist up, his legs and ass blanketed with dark fur. And when the last picture came through, Ed’s eyes bulged at seeing one of the most perfect cocks he’d ever seen. Ed followed suit and sent his own sequence of shots. He was delighted that Noah found an older body attractive, let alone worthy of praise. Esteem grew as Ed congratulated himself on the workouts and felt his uselessness slacken. Both saved the series of pics for later, and for inspiration. So close though so far, the rest of Noah’s first semester had to be spent learning remotely from home. All Noah disclosed at first wreaked untruths and new explanations fell through gaping holes in a poorly maintained lie. After only a week of near constant messaging, Ed knew to expect he’d be left in the dark about many things in the boy’s life. Despite living yards apart and an urgent insistence about how Ed rose to a place of prominence thanks to a combination of brains, handsomeness and compassion, any outward displays from the boy had yet to manifest. Ed quickly realized his fate of giving more to their friendship than Noah ever would. But the precociousness of youth only helped Noah get away with so much. Well-timed messages and sexts kept the hook firm in Ed’s cheek. As Noah began to act out, to both their astonishment, so did Ed. Both needed attention and the other sufficed, proximity playing the bigger part. The boy’s dad stayed away due to work while his mom stayed home but in a haze of pills with vodka. Working the rest of the school year from home meant long hours alone, trapped inside and neglected. Ed related to the feeling of isolation. Though this stemmed from self-seclusion, the effect of loneliness reminded Ed to disparage his own while speculating how it should play out for Noah. So much life ahead of the boy and so much behind the older man. Their little shared experience was unimportant. Many other commonalities and interests made for much to discuss and allowed a comprehension to develop and deepen the friendship between the disparate neighbors. Both benefitted from conversations about their views on life and growing up gay in different generations. Noah finally had an adult to talk to and Ed finally had someone who acted interested in what he had to say. They found in one another exactly what each of them needed.. Ed just needed to keep his expectations low after placing Noah on so high a pedestal. Personal information was coaxed in a way Ed employed before, even if unintentional. The method worked. He got upset when the boy refused to see him in person, choosing instead to deflect with an insipid meme. Ed already detested the existence of memes, especially when the joke was on him. Another reason to loathe the internet and its bastard offspring, social media. Flippant responses infuriated Ed further until a meltdown occurred, complete with all the trappings of self-righteous indignation. Stoopid childrens Ed ended those arguments thinking. And Noah ended up reduced to what resembled a whelping Spaniel, head low with remorse and eyes full of desperate forgiveness. But then all these passions came flooding back to a lesser degree on a lower tide with Noah’s refusal to make up in person, a kiss the bare minimum asked. To keep the delicate balance, Ed maintained his push at a minimum to keep Noah in his infectious good spirits. And all the reservations the boy’s excuses promoted remained locked away for another time. Late one night Noah messaged Ed, a picture of him half-naked. Expecting another round of hot pictures and empty promises, he jumped up when instead a request came over to meet Noah outside. Put on clothes, it’s almost winter Ed texted. Within minutes, both of them stood outside under naked tree branches and the harsh glow of a bare overhead streetlight. “You’re not afraid your family might see?” Ed asked. “They’re not home. First time both are gone at the same time in months.” “Then why are we standing outside?” Ed asked with an impish grin. “Because we have cameras. That’s why I have bags of trash. I’m not allowed out otherwise. I only have a few minutes.” “Then let’s go inside my house. The owner won’t care.” Ed felt his attempts to seduce were becoming useless. “Walk with me to the dumpster?” Noah said, a single eyebrow raised. Ed found that affectation irresistible so he complied with what the boy asked. Trash discarded, Noah grabbed Ed’s hand and hurried them both behind the dumpster. A slash of darkness concealed them from the waist down. The boy smiled before placing both hands on Ed’s shoulders to push him down to his knees. Shrouded in darkness, Ed freed the boy’s dick with expert precision. Never had the appeal and the fervor combined to such astounding effect than when Ed sucked Noah off, as if communicable beauty and youthfulness existed in his uncurdled seed. Within five minutes Ed got his wish and waited the rest of the night until early morning wide awake for proof positive he had been restored. The expectation of more physical contact withered along with the properties of Noah’s fresh sap. Flimsy excuses piled mile high but blew away with ease. Ed’s previous method of maintaining dialog fared little. Light slipped from his sky. Energy faded to a melodramatic degree as the older man suffered from the consequences of an abrupt exclusion barring him from confidences and the source of his recent exhilaration. Affected, Ed promised himself that everything must be done to stay in Noah’s good graces, in the light of a sun with well over seven million more years than he had left to burn. If only Ed knew the satisfaction of that need reciprocated. No proof still materialized thus far. Thanksgiving loomed a day away and a bitterness sparked in the gray air of November. Winter nipped at the autumn splendor enough to make Ed stay inside most days. Noah used the excuse as well, but only to echo Ed’s reasons for hibernation. But the boy’s family left their son alone and to his own devices inside the prison of surveillance, mood stabilizers and neglect. But his friend kept him company through text, happy to help and distract despite Noah’s unusually heavy and somber disposition. A threat of anger held impending hostility. Ed was scared enough to mention his discomfort. Noah’s tones and language shifted and turned a sharp right. A new erratic pattern directed the boy’s responses. Intense jabs at Noah’s parents bruised the conversation until Ed signed off. He understood his frustration but tried to remind Noah that he still lived under his parents’ roof and paid zero dollars in rent. Did that give them the right to incarcerate their son? No. And if he really felt like a prisoner, he could always run away. Or, Noah texted, they could just fucking die already. An onslaught of texts first thing in the morning had become commonplace so Ed smiled at seeing all the messages from Noah. Thinking the boy slept off whatever was bothering him the night before, the reality of rage seeping from the blue message bubbles confirmed the opposite. Fury-filled sentences waited to be read and sympathetic replies expected. A question followed every vile accusation from the boy. Can you believe they treat me like this? When he repeated his parents’ request that he stay home for Thanksgiving. Why bother having a kid at all? Noah asked after admitting his parents detested having a gay son. So much already to deal with before the sleep was wiped from Ed’s already tired eyes. Retorts came as the caffeine infiltrated his blood and brain. Easier to think at last, Ed noted a marked difference in the quality of Noah’s messages. The boy had been upset at his parents before but the flagrant frenzy of menace caused concern. Once Ed declared his worry, Noah switched gears and back-pedaled. I’m only kidding, he promised. I’m just angry because I’m tired of being a prisoner in my own home, he assured. And Ed accepted as long as Noah kept his promise to redirect that negative energy into something productive. An hour plus later saw the completion of Noah’s one-hundred and eighty-degree turnabout. Delight filled the effervescent blue bubbles instead of the previous indignation. When asked what changed his mind, Noah replied with a cagey wisecrack about finally leveling out without help from his medication. The boy always had difficulty convincing him since Ed knew the games of an eighteen-year-old boy starved for attention. Noah won in the end by asking for a ride to his aunt and uncle’s house a half-hour away in Great Falls. The assurance of proximity to Noah’s literal fountain of youth, knocked reason from Ed’s thought process. Sweet words and even sweeter promises swept enough concern away for him to cave in to the request. Any harm done wouldn’t be on him, Ed concluded at the thought of Noah starting a food fight during turkey dinner. What a laugh. In person Ed detected a different hazard lurking beneath the surface of Noah’s demeanor from earlier. His hands shook a bit whenever he talked, and an impediment chopped up the fluidity of any sentences he spoke. “I’m just nervous. I owe you for the ride.” Noah said, placing his jittery hand on Ed’s upper thigh. “I’ve never done this before,” he admitted as he undid Ed’s belt, zipper and fly. Another fib, Ed thought as the boy expertly withdrew his dick and eventually his substance. The few minutes between finishing and reaching their destination among the mansions of Great Falls stayed full of conversations about Thanksgiving plans. Ed had none and intended to keep it that way when Noah asked if he wanted to join him. How awkward to show up unannounced as a complete stranger. “I could tell them you’re coming. They’ve been blowing up my phone since we left.” Noah meant what he said about the extended invitation. “Why are they doing that?” Ed asked. “They’re probably worried when I’ll show up. If I show up.” “You told them you were on the way, right?” “Kinda.” The two syllables floated in an air of eerie distrust. Ed rolled the window down to clear the atmosphere but that only made the space in the car colder. One minute away, Ed noted to himself after a glimpse at the phone’s GPS. Parked one house down, Noah thanked Ed for the lift after keeping the man suspended in an insufferable silence. Noah’s goodbye sounded more like a farewell than a “see you later.” Ed agreed to a hug outside of the car with a reluctant tear nearly escaping his eye. Their heights matched so the embrace felt to both like a perfect fit. Something hard poked into Ed’s belly during the tightest part of the embrace. An alarmed look at Noah’s waist provoked him to blame a belt buckle and apologize. Noah said he hated his family’s dedication to dressing for dinner. Then the stutter returned and the trembling took over his hands again. “Well,” Noah began, “one more kiss goodbye?” Without waiting for permission he grabbed Ed’s face and kissed him long and deep. Care was taken to keep their waists from meeting. “See?” Noah said, “you’re not useless like you think. You’ve truly made my day. Twice.” The boy smiled demurely and Ed blushed. “You’re not useless either, even if you’re Stoopid Childrens,” Ed reminded Noah. “Go. I’ll see you later.” “More than likely,” Noah replied without hesitation. Ed watched Noah walk to the gate of the house’s long driveway, type a code or speak into a box, then enter the gates.They closed to swallow him up into a world he truly hated. Forlorn, Ed got in his car and drove home. His head filled with all the matters collected since knowing Noah, their subsequent concerns and wistful regret, and dismissed any forthcoming resolutions as insubstantial without input from Noah. An early bedtime for sure. Unsure of the compulsion, Ed woke up the next day to watch the news. The Black Friday Wal-Mart fights always entertained, this he knew and looked forward to seeing. But the local news only reported on a murder/suicide in an affluent neighborhood in Northern Virginia. Ed recognized the neighborhood and one of the faces flashing across the screen in sickening HD. Breakfast cereal went soggy by the time he had his fill of the morning news. A knock on his door led to an interview with the police that cleared Ed of any knowledge or involvement of the crime. And at the end of the examination he felt glad his possible fifteen minutes of fame got cut in half by not being more than an unwitting driver in the crime of the holiday season. Ed still had seven and a half minutes left and who knows how many useful years ahead to ruin however he deemed acceptable. Though he would always be grateful to Noah and the juvenile infatuation that developed, doomed but certain to provide an aftershock lasting for years. Ed never stopped thinking of all the promise squandered to render Noah so tremendously useless with just six loud and quick flashes of light. A word from the author: "Useless, Useless" is a story about how the feelings of powerlessness experienced by a young gay male and an older gay male, and how they intersect to either inspire or ruin. Jarrod Campbell is an author living in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC. His stories, essays and reviews have appeared online and in print. He is currently working on a new collection of stories, a novel, and a play to be performed in 2023.

I bet I'll forget the clammy shirt collar, sheepskin lined coat and brown angola school jumper, uncle-close to my skin in the September sun. The swapped knee socks that offer brief relief to my weary, stinging soles. The male jogger lunging in jest, almost toppling my heavy load. The cherry red hatchback stopping eight miles in and two men offering a ride to me, a trembling twelve year old who forgot her busfare. I remember thinking when I reach home, eat and rest I bet I'll forget.

She’s the only thing left in the freezer, a chicken, hard as a rock. He calls her Chick-la as an endearment. His ex disappeared one fine evening last week like ice melting in spring, and left a cold puddle on the tiled kitchen floor. Brrr… she was cold, he thinks, she was cold-hearted. He rubs his hands together. They were together for three years and sixteen days. He only knows the number of days because she told him, just before she left. Typical of her, to count days, and yet it was her directness he’d always most admired. Shilly-shallying was his personal talent, as she so often told him. He should have asked her to marry him, he considers. Is that what he did wrong? Underneath that no-nonsense exterior did she secretly long for flowers and heart-shaped chocolates? She might have warmed to him, looked at him differently, had he come home with a dozen red roses held behind his back. “Honey, I’m home!” he might have said and she would have turned from the kitchen sink, and her heart would have jumped and her wide smile at seeing the roses might have made him human, a loved man. But too late now. Chick-la looks at him, or maybe stares at him, he can’t be sure. She’s wrapped in cellophane and has a sell-by date of ten days from now. “Red or white, Chick-La?” He opens a bottle of red wine. “Italian or Indian?” He takes a jar of pesto sauce out of the cupboard. He lays the table with the white tablecloth still stained from the New Year’s Eve dinner. A couple of old bread crumbs are still clinging to the cotton. That night’s argument still not forgotten, he sets the table with two plates, two knives, two forks and two wine glasses which he fills to the brim. “Cheers!” he says and some of the wine spills as he raises the glass to his lips. Clumsy, that’s what she always called him. Chick-la says nothing. She sits on the chair across the table, thawing, slowly but surely becoming softer, fuller and fleshier, white as sorrow. Everything she kept inside oozes from the pores of her skin, a puddle forms. Then something tumbles inside him like great blocks of ice, and he wonders where his ex is now. He keeps looking at the chicken, dazed, filled with terrible disbelief. Nora Nadjarian is a poet and writer based in Cyprus.

Midnight Apple Picking In the harsh despondency of night, When tears have dived into their sepulchers And the mists, heavy with every defeat Have exited the scene, leaving The thick black, which has coated The red apples hung aloft like lost dreams Waiting to be plucked. The floor is coated with the corpses of Eve’s first sin And memories, long anchored, rise like Cumbersome whales of deep-tide sadness For air, For the fresh breath of surface tranquility. This year of grief, of fresh pink screams Has shotgunned through the fragile cadences of hope. But here in the midst of the midnight hour With my girlfriend and dog, I catch The apples doused silver by the moon – Samurai sword sliced in half, expertly With clinical precision With my bucket, frightened I’ll do a Newton and know the concussion of stars. In these moments I know love. Its fragile body of flame Still burns in the dark of the deepest winter And even though the hole left by your premature departure Can never be filled with the notes of soft tears, I hold the hand of childhood promises made flesh Thinking on the always uncertain future. For Amelia Let sorrows ripe and devouring depart with the sun descending below the pigeon smudged rooftops and the children weary, red coated by evening fall, are catapulted through joy’s essence; tumid with the moon’s nameless desires. Lying upon the newly sprung grass of spring, Amelia sits upon my back, and with fake anger I cry ‘I’m not a chair’ but with a disconcerting honesty she looks at me and demands, ‘well what are you then?’ I am silenced; the philosophies collected in my now faltering youth sink into nothingness, and I can only shrug and say simply, ‘I don’t know’, like a teacher she nods sagely and without being told I get onto my hands and knees; she climbs onto my back and we begin to traverse the front garden unexplored during this day of beers and babies and petty parental judgements. She clings to my collar and for the first time in months I reach an equilibrium denied me in the waged hours which dictate even the days unbound by their measurements of worth. As we sojourn across natures domesticated self, the adults drink and talk wearily of joys passed or passing. We find a worm, fat and half sunken into the black earth. We stare and watch, as you wonder in your fractured tongue where it is going, and why it lives in the world below our feet. I tell you that’s its home, it is where it is supposed to be, and without acknowledgment you get off my back, imitate my pose; fixated by its slow movements. I think of Coleridge holding his child in his frosted midnight and try to capture this moment, this wonder seen through the eyes of a child, not burdened by mortality or the price of beer. David Hay is an English Teacher in the Northwest of England. He has written poetry and prose since the age of 18 when he discovered Virginia Woolf's The Waves and the poetry of John Keats. These and other artists encouraged him to seek his own poetic voice. He has currently been accepted for publication in Dreich, Abridged, Acumen, The Honest Ulsterman, The Dawntreader, Versification, The Babel Tower Notice Board, The Stone of Madness Press, The Fortnightly Review, The Lake, Selcouth Station, GreenInk Poetry, Dodging the Rain, Seventh Quarry and Expat-Press. His debut publication is the Brexit-inspired prose-poem Doctor Lazarus published by Alien Buddha Press 2021.

Advice Don’t be stupid he said to her and I saw the cannonball leave him and hit her splintering her sternum and entering the cavern where she stored them all like a clown car full of pain that never unloaded to show off how much it could carry. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to keep it that she could let it pass through and exit out her back leaving a circular blast hole of blown away skin and that it wouldn’t even be a ball anymore when it flew out but four and twenty blackbirds escaping, leaving her weightless. Instead, I filled her coffee even though she had not asked. Chicago Let’s go to Chicago and stay in a hotel where we can see the lake from our room, and do nothing except walk up Michigan and back down Wabash picking out people to practice on. There will be a business student from Columbia turning up her collar in the wind and a fast-moving doctor biking home from Rush. He’ll have a wife at home but will come back here later after the kids are in bed to that weird dirty space that the Tribune forced Macy’s to clean up in the tunnel under the street to meet his former nurse who quit three months ago to get her master’s degree but instead watches cooking shows all day and lives off her dead mother’s money wishing she were in Italy Madagascar Mexico City anywhere but Chicago where everyone can see her.

For Stewart Nestled in the coves of Paris, with amaretto biscuits and an egg cup of espresso, I listen for your call. As the daylight calms, tempering into a blue lull, I tap my foot to the buckling of the sea — honeydew moon. O’ Paris, with your hourglass, lead me to my odyssey. Shipwrecked in your hollowed out torso, starry eyed. Astride in front of the mirror, you flexed your muscles. They bobbed playfully like large pearls on a silver spoon. How long can a memory last? Will I remember the subtle inflections of your candour? Maybe, however slowly. Your decadence colours the Seine —as tart as a strawberry. O’ honey, we had a blast.