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Discovering that most supermarket, free-range turkeys primarily congregate in overcrowded, dirty sheds, Evie bought herself a free-range bird from a local organic turkey farmer, who she believed provided her turkey with a few good daily meals and a hygienic semi-private coop. After mentally patting herself on the back for a more humane purchase, Evie moved her turkey to her kitchen sink. The bird’s featherless body, covered in pink pimply skin, filled up the entire basin. As she opened the wrapping, Evie smelled raw turkey, and she started to gag. Stored in the turkey’s cavity were its neck and giblets, wrapped up in a disturbing-looking parchment package that she struggled to yank out. Finding all of the dead parts nauseating, Evie felt the acid churning in her stomach, rising up into her throat. Evie quickly pulled herself together and moved the turkey to the countertop, where she began the process of dominating its headless body, tying together its lifeless legs and tucking back its wings. She grew increasingly hysterical from the sadistic nature of her task as she molested the bird further, stuffing crumbled bread, sausage, sage, and mushroom through what was once its ass and up into its throat. Finally, the job completed, Evie got quiet as she stared at her turkey display, trying to recall how she had ended up wrestling this bird in her kitchen. But then she reminded herself, her mother had traveled across the country to visit her sick, elderly aunt. So, it was up to Evie to prepare a Thanksgiving meal for her dying father. Evie assumed the local organic farmer provided a balanced diet of high-quality feed, full of protein and nutrients to ensure his turkeys were healthy. But, up until this moment, Evie never considered that the farmer’s delicate treatment of his flock was intended solely for high-end consumption. Evie wondered if the farmer succumbed to industry pressure and debeaked this turkey, a barbaric attempt at decreasing acts of cannibalism among his feathered gang. But Evie guessed that bit of irony was lost on the farmer as he held her bird upside down by its wiry legs, waiting for blood to flow to its head, leaving the turkey weak and defenseless, ready for the farmer’s chopping block. Finally, Evie speculated whether or not the farmer experienced regret as he stared into this turkey’s tiny black pupils, knowingly selecting him for her table. Probably not, Evie thought sadly and then felt a slight pang of shame bubbling up as she continued her preparations for what might be her ailing father’s last Thanksgiving dinner. The smell of death surrounded her, and Evie began feeling queasy. But then, thinking of her father in the next room, whose cancer had insidiously spread, Evie took a deep breath and began vigorously rubbing butter all over the body of her bird, ensuring a tasty, crispy coat. Finished, Evie placed her fully dressed bird into the oven and closed the door. And soon after, she walked into the living room and took her father’s hand, helping him into the bathroom. Evie’s mother had left her with clear instructions and ample supplies for her to help her weakening father complete his business. After returning from the bathroom, Evie and her father sat quietly in the living room, watching football while they awaited their bird slowly roasting in the nearby room. The doctor said it could be months, perhaps a year; there was no way to know for sure. Evie’s father, once a round-bellied, broad-shouldered man with a loud voice who was always ready for a laugh, was now but a shell of his former self. Cancer pecked away at him, slowly eating away little pieces of his mind and body until eventually there would be nothing left of him but hanging flesh and bones. Evie’s mouth watered as the smell of roasted turkey filled up the room; her earlier repulsion and nausea were suddenly forgotten. Evie’s father still managed small meals, but only if the food was cut up into little pieces and the texture soft for chewing. So, Evie lovingly prepared her father two side dishes, consisting of mashed potatoes and a sweet yam casserole. And then, thinking of the dead parts around her, Evie made a mental note to slow boil the picked apart turkey carcass after dinner for her father’s soup. Margo Griffin is a Boston, MA area public school educator and has worked in urban education for over thirty years. She is the mother of two amazing daughters and to the love of her life and best rescue dog ever, Harley.

I feel like Pluto. That is to say I feel for it. Amidst days that have been like a sore, numb limb, I have only experienced a sensation of sympathy for an outcast planet. Only because I happened to read a poem about it. Although I am afraid my relatability to it may just be an exercise in self-pity. I have been wishing for an asteroid to strike this dinner table at this very moment and wipe all of us lunatics out in an instant. They’re not bad people, it’s only because I am tired and I need a permanent occasion of rest. Plus, dear god, this is getting boring. Here’s how I am. Body discomfort incarnate, but the hair looks neat. Nails are chipped. My hands are fidgeting, acting on the constant need to scratch my neck. My stomach’s a little upset but that’s because I didn’t shit well in the morning. I look at the guy sitting across from me to confirm if I look nice. It makes me sick. I think I need more ice in my drink. Nobody has asked me a question about the particulars of my life yet, I hope they don’t. Meanwhile I am thinking about writing a note for the instance of my sudden death, just in celebration of its unpredictability. Something nice to leave behind because there can be no possible relics to my life. Last night, I dreamt of a graveyard underwater. I was breathlessly submerged by engraved proofs of endings. I wasn’t afraid when I woke up. I had been reading the suicide letters of famous people before going to bed. In an effort to make myself feel things, I tried to imagine how broken her letter must have left Leonard Woolf, as he held the final remnant of her departure. I don’t imagine the tenants of this table would like to hear how I didn’t cry at the thought of the rocks that she put in her pockets. Or my dream, in which I too was drowning. They didn’t appreciate the joke I made about my best friend’s funeral either. It’s been three months now, unclench a little. Jesus. The chair beside me has just gotten empty. And there it is. Another reminder of absence. Listen, listen, listen… but all echoes are left in vacuum. The table, like my life with one chair now vacant, emptied after contacting a life and a burial. It’s fine, I am telling myself again. It’s just like we’ve had one big fight and we won’t be talking for weeks. Which is why I remember her contact but have removed it from my phone. I have put all her things in my bedside drawer, except my sadness which refused to fit in. I beg it, please let me forget. But memory’s persistence is frustrating. When she had lost her pet, bawling she had said, “the evidence of love has to always turn into grief, at least once and sometimes twice and many times over. The universe demands it.” There is no other explanation of death except the universe's sadism. It feeds off the love we have nowhere left to give. I’m thinking of adopting a cat and calling it Fish. She would have found it amusing. The asteroid has kept me waiting, but that betrayal isn’t new. I am feeling a little fuzzy, so the night doesn’t feel half bad now. Maybe I’ll ask that guy to drive me home. Listen, listen, listen… Tonight, like so many others, again became about you. But all these thoughts are just to say that I am looking at the empty space you’ve left behind, trying to fill it up, only to find it staring right back at me. It makes me miss your kindness.

My neck aches from gazing at the clear glass ceiling in the Grand Gallery but I don’t know what else to do. I’ve studied every detail of every painting on the teal walls and still I wait. The smell changes from antique polish to vanilla-musk, heralding the entrance of the cutting-edge make-up team. Futuristic goddesses with angled hairstyles, straight faces and clean monochrome lines, they are alien to anything I’ve seen. Walking straight by me to the foot of the stairs, they begin the liberation of their cosmetics from their Tardis-like Samsonite cases. A carnival of dresses enters from the left, wheeled by four animated women, who laugh and chat. I’m relieved to see embroidered screens being erected and hope I can change behind them. This is my first time. The theme for today’s photoshoot is Vintage Hollywood, and every colour, shape and fabric of dress is here, along with a myriad of underskirts, shoes and bags. As the hairstylists join us and search for sockets for their equipment, I think how different this is from my everyday life - a life where sales assistants grimace when I ask for a garment in my size, or point me to dull clothing designed to cover and never to dazzle. I thought decent plus-size fashion didn’t exist, but it does and with the average Irish woman taking a size 16, here they call it real-size. I like that. A young man approaches me with intent, his jet-black eyebrows and beard manicured, his velvet purple suit moulded to his narrow physique. He click-clicks across the mosaic floor, his Lego-hairdo firmly fixed. “Well, hello beautiful! I’m Marc with a C and you must be my lady from Real Agency?” He’s already walking so I follow him. He turns and examines my face too closely. I feel myself reddening and divert my gaze but he raises my chin so I have no choice but to look into his dark eyes. “Stunning,” he declares. “What is your name, mysterious one?” Orla Maguire, I tell Marc with a C and he clicks his fingers. A tall ice-blonde instantly appears at his side. “Look at her, Tegan babes. Can you see it? Tell me you can see it,” he pleads and she studies me through the fringe of her sharp bob. “Jane Russell?” she asks. He claps and smiles widely, displaying perfect teeth. I run my tongue over my own. Summoning the beauty team, Tegan directs in a language I don’t understand. I’m crowd-surfed into a high chair and plonked in front of a mirror surrounded by bulbs. Then, I’m turned 180 degrees to face a painting of an ample woman with a young girl on her lap. Lady and Child by Stephen Slaughter, the description says. I drift into the painting as the team work away, wondering when a fuller figure stopped being sexy. I remember my last weight-loss class. The leader, Shirley, put a grey plastic chair in the centre of the room and invited us to think back to when we first felt ashamed of our weight. After a few moments, she asked how many of us were children. We all raised our hands. “Imagine that child is sitting in this chair,” she said. The lady in the painting has a dour expression and reminds me of Aunt Eithne’s face when she first saw me after Mammy died. “You’re awful fat. We’ll have to get you on a diet before you burst,” she’d exclaimed, hauling me off to a seamstress to let out my school uniform. Standing in my cotton vest and knickers, I tried to hide my thighs and little pot belly as they whispered about me. I was nine years old. “What terrible things do we say to ourselves?” Shirley asked. Orla the Orca, the size of Majorca. “Now, say those things to the child in the chair.” I jolted. “You can’t, can you? If you wouldn’t say it to a child, you shouldn’t say it to yourself. Now, travel back in time to meet your younger selves. Go to the chair and tell that little girl what you wish you’d been told back then.” Women approached the chair, some crying silently while others hugged. I didn’t move. I remember myself, a child who never knew her father and had just lost her beloved mother. A child, confused and alone, in need of love, not judgment. My heart breaks for the life that followed and the innocence that was lost forever. “Hon, are you alright?” Tegan asks, dabbing my eye. “I’m so sorry I’m probably ruining your make-up,” I say, wiping a tear. “Not at all love, we’re just finished anyway. Take a look.” She spins me around to face the mirror and my mouth falls open. The whole team surrounds me and claps. I feel the tears coming again and Tegan smiles, squeezing my hand and I cherish her touch. “Thank you,'' I say. “Thank you for making me look like this.” “Our job was easy Hon, sure you’re stunning,” she replies and I look for hidden cameras. That’s twice I’ve been called stunning since I arrived, a word I’m not used to hearing. But she’s not joking. I stare at my reflection. I am stunning. I look back at the painting and see the child is holding the hands of the woman and I feel my mother with me, embracing me. It’s time to love myself as I am, as I was - Lady and child. A word from the author: I live in Mullingar, Co. Westmeath. Wife to Brendan, mother to Eva, Ben and Anna and committee member of Our New Ears charity group. I have written three novels and countless published articles. I am working with a publisher on my last novel Listen, which I hope will be published this year.

HOSPICE CONFERENCE Remember second grade on the field for gym and you saw your mother’s car drive by on Brown Street? She was running an errand, but the thought that she was in a place you were not prepared to see her made you feel like you would never see her again? So you did the worst thing possible, you broke away from kickball and ran crying to the chain link fence after her receding car which turned a corner and disappeared and a teacher had to restrain you and make you collect yourself on the concrete steps. You don’t know how this non-encounter could possibly end or help but erase the feeling you’d have later when you got off the bus played for an hour then she came home from her job at the hospital still herself in the L-shaped kitchen still a cloud of maternal molecules. Now at the four-star hotel where you work, in the wing where all the conference rooms are, you wonder if you might see her again, thinking it’s possible you might. These adult days it never gets clarified, the moments the family will all see each other again. Somehow the thought of her— not necessarily seeing her or speaking about her with other hospice nurses in attendance at the conference, possibly co-workers— makes you want to transcend the typical corner-cutting you do with these conferences you’ve come to hate. Today you bring extra ice water and coffee, check the microphone’s batteries twice. You search in the hallway for some outlet to plug in the lamp for more light. Today you can’t turn away a single person, not a single soul. But there are close to a hundred nurses, her same age, hers might be one in that long wave of women’s faces coming in from the dining room. They have the whiff of the afterlife on them, a little daffy, but they are full of some wisdom of the life-force no other hotel staff seems to recognize. Halfway through the hospice conference you get a glimpse of what it all means. About ushering souls to their next destination, being that person standing still and pointing “that way” while a torrent of souls pours down a never-ending dimly lit corridor. If heaven has job openings, this is the one you want. Reading the puzzled faces of new arrivals, approaching them: “Can I help you?” “I’m not sure where I’m supposed to go.” “Which group are you with?” This is part of the crippling significance, the gnosticism you see, the profound machinery behind the mundane curtain. Flimsy evidence of God but in your spirit’s secret court it seems the smoking gun. THE ME-BOMB 1. Here’s the stolen hospital scrubs I wore To her C-section. I never took them off, I had them on The rest of my life, And no one seemed to notice. The sentimental kleptomania was there At her first breath. “What a glue-pot I have acquired in you!” Paraphrasing Byron at his daughter’s birth. “No idea that job and family Would extract such life-force from me.” Paraphrasing someone at the give-up point. The me-bomb was set off by a triggering device I left on the coffee table for anybody to stumble upon. I have had to shield my daughter From my character arc. I wonder, when we are tranquil. And observe our tiny daughter play Or select the next crayon by her system, Will I fear her? Will I one day Never have liked her? 2. In the backseat, she’s humiliated, furious She made all those mistakes at the concert. Although her xylophone just got lost Among the din of other students. There’s no way anyone would have noticed. But she’s convinced she was awful. Maybe. And I’m in the driver’s seat, bald and paunchy, In a sad unhip jacket, mulling over whether To leap into this latest hero-sized gap. I just have to speak the right enzyme of words To act on adolescent substrate, Never moving from behind the wheel. Or, do the dictates of dad drama make me pull her out And hug her standing in the flood Of other dads’ departing headlights. (At age six she hid from the TV in the dark, Whimpering, “Hold Me For The Shere Khan Parts!”) The high school parking lot in as a frozen still-point, The soundtrack shatters and crests Like it did in those John Hughes movies I rented twenty years ago. I studied the bored Chicago ‘burbs, the white teen angst. I was so taken with the smart-aleck oddball drummer girl. She cried and pined and got the earrings in the end. Everything past and future with my daughter Is seared and flared In an instantaneous flash of memory paper. Three times this weeping girl rescued me From myself. And when I embrace her, I’m playing tug of war with time.

Edge We will run prints in the sand down to the rock pools come up jagged with emptiness. We will walk the rounded wall of lobster pots, post a stone through every hole incanting hopes. We will toe the water where it’s coldest, testing the blueness of veins until we are pale with regret. We will smooth our path home by attrition, leaning into the swell. How not to stargaze That long summer month when the sky caught alight I bit dense black cake from the mouth of a bad lad but did not fly. His dreams screeched past on flaming tails but my bare soles stayed grounded. I dug my toes into powdered peanut brittle nights rolled back my eyes tasted sweet dark nuggets of midnight sparked up a poem rolled tight. Of Trees I grew from the apple tree sometimes clinging like mistletoe sometimes waiting for the right gravity like a bitter Eater. Shaped by the holly my whole life tangled forwards into many places I couldn’t breathe: no footholds no nests so I borrowed others’ pushed children ahead of me through sticky leaves full emersion like regression therapy backwards. Someone's little sister with a weak name always reached the fir tree top me down below planning my angle of catch. At the end of the garden laburnum fascination hung with poisonous bridesmaids little girls’ ponytails I would rub along its bench lick your finger hope to die. I will scrub school bark with crayon stubs lash a tyre swing to the public trunk my children smile from for photos I will smooth the knot in me that betrays my many rings. I grew from the apple tree sometimes clinging like mistletoe sometimes waiting. Marie Little lives near fields and writes in the shed. She has poetry featured in: Ink Sweat and Tears, Cool Rock Repository, Full House Lit Mag, Fevers of the Mind, Anti-Heroin Chic, Honeyfire, Zero Readers and more. She also writes and publishes short fiction. Marie is part of Team Sledge at Sledgehammer Lit and is on Twitter @jamsaucer. www.marielittlewords.co.uk

There was no light in the sky. True, scientists never expected the pole star to go supernova, and yet it so unceremoniously blinking out of existence seemed anticlimactic. One minute it was there; the next minute, it wasn’t. “Does this mean we are no longer meant to find a purpose?” wondered a woman. “Of course not; it means a new north awaits,” assured her friend, but her voice wavered. Fallen autumn leaves skipped in loops across the quiet street. To the onlooker, Umeed was stirring his coffee and pondering on their fate. But his eyes never left the shapeless stain on the glass and the world outside the window remained a passive blur. Sitting on an isolated mahogany stool, he heard the women but thought nothing of it. The words flitted past his ears; they bumped into him and hung around a little while, hoping to solicit a nod if not a response. Little did they know of Umeed having to bury his north beside an old oak the year before. Umeed didn’t need to muse over the fallen autumn leaves; he was them, drifting aimlessly, waiting to be erased by time. Coffee, from anywhere but his home or office brewer, was his therapist’s idea, as was the journal that lay blank, gathering dust on his cluttered desk at home. Leaving a ring of espresso at the bottom of his cup, he stepped outside the quiet little café. He longed to go home, his demon by his side, to the cold arms of the ghost of Nora, his Nora. At the square, where the town road met a wishing well and forked in two, there was a delicate yet firm tap on Umeed’s shoulder. He stopped. A woman, cheery and made of curves, stood before him. “Not interested,” he said, irritated, and turned to leave. “But I’ve been following you since you left your apartment this morning,” she pleaded. Umeed stared at her. The universe was playing a cruel joke if it thought a stalker would strip him of his wounds and kiss away his scars. He loved Nora. He would always love Nora. And his demon was witness to that love. “It is not what you think,” she smiled. “I would’ve gotten hold of you before work, but you looked busy. I would’ve joined you at the coffee shop; it looked warm, but you were in need of solitude.” Jaw hard and lips a line, Umeed scrunched his brows. “I just wanted to tell you that I love the music you make,” she said. Brows still knit, his jaw relaxed and his thin lips came undone. Umeed wanted to think, but his mind groaned and snapped. “What music?” he finally asked. She tittered, “Oh, come on!” Umeed shook his head, his lips still parted and brows slightly raised. “Hmmm,” she hummed, gazing into the deep brown of his eyes. “Troubled lover, come lie by my side; troubled lover, don’t you give up your light. Troubled lover, come lie by my side; troubled lover, I promise, it’ll be alright.” She sang in base, snapping her fingers, her shoulders alternating in rise and fall, and her heels clicking the pavement. She sang until a wisp of life appeared under Umeed’s skin, until his soul peered through his dull eyes, and until a smile started to linger on the inside of his lips. “That was fifteen years ago,” he said. “I was twenty and it was at a college fest.” It was before Nora too, but he didn’t say that. “Really?” she contended; her eyes narrowed. “Feels like yesterday to me.” A smile bled through his eyes. It was strange, that feeling bubbling in his heart, but he didn’t mind. Having been submerged for so long in a sea of regular, he liked the irregular, for after all, there wasn’t pity in her eyes or an apology on her tongue. The church bells rang seven. “It’s late and I’ve been gone a long time,” she said with sudden urgency, taking a step back. “I should go.” “Wait, at least tell me your name,” urged Umeed, taking a step forward. She puckered her lips. “There are many, I like Stella the best.” “Stella, it’s pretty,” mused Umeed. “Are you going to be following me again?” Stella beamed. “I don’t think I need to!” Umeed hesitated. He thought of Nora. As ink invades the water, guilt unfurled its ugly claws and perforated his veins, its cold dark essence consuming his blood. He wanted to ask if he’d ever see her again, but struggled to spit the words out of his mouth. “If you know where to look, you’ll find me,” she offered, and he nodded, grateful. Stella smiled and started running away from him, her yellow satin dress flowing behind her, and her hair, dark auburn curls, bouncing away. As Umeed watched her disappear into the crowd, his demon crept back to him. “Hello, old friend,” he muttered, and together, they walked back to his apartment. Umeed kicked away his shoes and turned on the television while the demon climbed off his shoulder and nested himself in the musty sun-deprived walls. The newscaster couldn’t contain his excitement. “In a surprising and extraordinary turn of events, the north star or Polaris, presumed to have died earlier today, has reappeared in the sky at 7:07 PM EST, after almost an eleven-hour disappearance. Scientists are unable to explain the phenomenon, but we certainly are relieved. Jillian, what is—” Umeed had stopped listening. “Polaris,” he muttered. “Stella… Stella… Star. Polaris. Polar star!” The demon screeched in contempt at Umeed’s burst of laughter, and fled the apartment to the sound of him humming ‘Troubled Lover’ through the evening. Tejaswinee Roychowdhury is an emerging Indian writer and lawyer. Her words are published/forthcoming in Gutslut Press, Dollar Store Mag, Bullshit Lit, Storyteller's Refrain, The Birdseed, Third Lane, Kitaab, Borderless Journal, Active Muse, Funny Pearls, and elsewhere. She has also been featured and interviewed in Issue 2 of Alphabet Box. Find her tweeting at @TejaswineeRC and her list of works at linktr.ee/tejaswinee.

sometimes i think of you & what it feels like to be so far away we used to read on the bookstore floor, escaping from eating lunch in the bathroom to a kingdom which we could rule & sometimes i think of you & how we used to flip through your favorite books, the "choose your own adventure" kind of books, trying to change our endings we used to run across the schoolyard in search of each other, but maybe we are moving on or shutting the book but i want to believe, i need to believe, that it is just one chapter of many. Ilana Drake (she/her) is a freshman at Vanderbilt University, and she is a student activist and writer. Her work has been published in Ms. Magazine, YR Media, and The 74 among others. She is also the recipient of multiple Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. She can be found on Twitter @IlanaDrake_ and her website is https://ilanadrake.wixsite.com/mysite/projects

Midnight Clad It is late. The night sky is a cool blue, its air carries to us whispers of jazz threading the needle of a secondhand vinyl player. "What do you think happens to us when we die?" I ask the night, or maybe you; a man whom I love, and your blue eyes Crackle with all the majesty of God, or a storm over an ocean, and maybe I am a ship And we are in the eye of a storm looking out at walls of water crashing up and down defying gravity, or God Or destiny or fate because there is an intensity in your face that falls away - "I think the people who love us will miss us," you murmur and jazz carries us back into the night air, and memory. Refuge We take refuge from the world in a dive bar made out of the parts of trains that never left stations; you and I are the same - Built out of parts that no one knew how to weld, so we drilled holes in the walls and tried to hold on to the pieces of sanity someone else left us; Tonight, we take refuge in tall glasses of brown poison, and the space in each other's eyes where there is space even though we promise ourselves that we are enough - Maybe we are. Maybe I am. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see you walk barefoot on the hardwood floors of a house we made out of parts of the world left by the train tracks; It doesn't mean I wouldn't want you and I to take refuge from the world in each other, to hold worlds between our interlocked fingers, I want to see you wear an oversized hoody of mine when you wake up hungover from your last shift of a long week, I want to see you wake up when you realise there is already coffee in the air, and you do not have to do everything alone; anymore. I want to see you come home to a platter full of pasta served on plates made of cogs coughed up by belching beasts hunkering for railroads reminiscent of the first time that I met you, When we took refuge in a dive bar, and you looked down into a tall glass of brown poison, and looked up into my eyes; and smiled. 84 Charing Cross By accident, I lend you a book your mother loved; wrap it in brown paper, and pass it to you beneath a table on a date like we are in school, and the words on the pages are too important to wait for recess; worth the risk of being caught by a teacher, a ruler; worth having my note read aloud in class, or being kept back afterwards because I need you to know that I see you, and I need you to know that now, and not later, so I pass you a note under our desks; brush your leg lightly with my hand, hold you for a moment and I do not know a lifetime ago your mother held this book like I want to hold you; gently, passionately and well, but you tell me afterwards; smiling.

The blood moon eclipse revealed its power on a Thursday night in November. I took the letters journals and stationery that plagued the last few decades of my life. This opportunity was unexpected. But I was desperate to find the right moment. One that has been deferred for long enough. The night was unseasonably mild despite the crisp of the fall. I grabbed the lighter and gripped it tightly in my hand. The back door swiveled behind me as I navigated my way towards the backyard. I could hear the crackling of the leaves in the distance. The soft gallops of the land that primarily belonged to nature. I glanced at the sky and searched between the trees. The full moon hid behind the clouds. There was kindling gathered by the fire pit. The straps of my tote bag slumped onto the ground Weighted as heavy as my heart. This is why the time has arrived to burn. Burn it all. The first to go were the letters. The promises. The lies. The apologies. The prison. The dead. Next were the journals. Pages torn by the dozen. Reaching every year of my childhood. Penned to remember the pain anguish triumph and guilt. 1993 Burn 1994 Burn 1995 Burn 1996 Burn 1997 Burn 1998 Burn 1999 Burn 2000 Burn 2001 Burn Lastly were the notes. of love. of romance. of sleepless nights. Notes of the blade. The abuse. The suicide. The medical documents. Burn Burn Burn. Burn. An additional light appeared above the flames. The moon peeked through the clouds to shine its own blood but then quickly disappeared. The flames recaptured my eyes discovering the sketch of a heart that melted the words Just for you. Underneath it displayed the return address to the correctional facility. Unlocking the bars to my mental prison. I followed the ashes floating by my side. This was it. The action I was frightened to take cannot be undone. I retreated back inside. Stared out the back window to Watch the fire subside. Minutes had passed before hearing The clatter of raindrops Fall against the house. Was the sky shedding its own tears on my collection? Cleansing the toxic fumes from the air. The people who love me will never know the stories that burned. But soon I will reveal those stories to strangers And introduce who I was Before you met me. Agatha Sicil is a full-time special education teacher and a part-time writer. She was born in New York City, but has lived all over the state. She is the author of many works including “Burn,” the prologue to her creative nonfiction piece, “Before You Met Me.” She lives in the New England region with her husband and children. You can visit Agatha Sicil at https://agathasicil.onuniverse.com and follow her on Twitter @agathasicil and on Instagram @read_agathasicil

“Cracked Hands and Frost Heaves” Cracked hands and frost heaves, bookends to the winter season. Snow etching its way onto the map means the wood stove, if it wasn’t popping and glowing already. The cold weather and the heat play tricks on skin, it’s a size smaller than it was a few months ago and wearing through here and there like old jeans. The roads are slick, spinouts on morning commutes and snowbanks burying stop signs at times, but those get chased away by warming spring temps– sometimes false hope in the form of dripping icicles and receding snowbanks. Ground water loosens, but winter sometimes has a different plan and brings another hard freeze forming wrinkles and fissures in the once perfect pavement. The maintenance continues with fresh asphalt and Working Man’s Hands well into spring. “The Wood Stack” The temperature is dropping to the 30s tonight and there’s wood to be collected from the neat piles, all stacked in sections, cords upon cords seasoned grey like stone or still holding their reddish or blondish hue, clinging to a youth of sorts. The basement is dark, dusty and dry, but the outside air etches speech bubbles as I exit the house. I stare at the wood stack, it’s menacing for some reason, not because there’s some animal behind it breathing white puffs into the night or because I’m afraid of diving splinters, but I read somewhere black widows like seasoned wood-- the kind we have and the kind I need to warm the house on nights like these. I’ve heard they’re the most venomous spider with that blood filled hourglass to signal their poison, a shout of warning even into a night this dark. The eight legs working between splintered rings of wood or carving out a home in a missing knot. I know we need the wood, but in a way I’m wondering if the oil will hold out or if I can go buzz down that ash tree in the middle of the night. I’m sure the neighbors wouldn’t mind a roaring chainsaw in the dead black of winter. I settle on burning a few pallets in the basement and figure I’ll deal with the problem tomorrow when the blushing light has kissed the stack and chased off any spiders. "Frozen But Still Thawing" I reached down and swept off a thin layer of snow, just a dusting from the night before. The ice showed thinner than it would in January’s deep freeze, more mirror and less opaque fog. The sheen of the sun hadn’t come from behind the clouds, but it reflected me, at least as I know me at this moment in time. There’s small fissures in the layer of ice, something that’s there, cracked but just a little. Something that will harden over once January hits and the temperatures don’t rise above freezing, there’s something to consistency even in the harshest of times. Those cracks are something that might be remembered, but could easily pass when the ice refortifies, gathering strength. After the hard freezes cover the cracks, there’s a sense of safety, stability, a sense of ease that you’ve made it through the dangerous times. How long before the ice thins again, forming little cracks along the surface, weakening what was once strong? How long before treading on this ice in early spring becomes a thing of danger as it was the previous one? How many times can you make the same mistake? “Stored Memories” The house was clean, staged and ready to go. It was the kid in me or maybe the historian that wanted to see the attic before waving goodbye to the realtor and placing our offer at 15% above listing. The stairs creaked, as old stairs do; cobwebs and dust collected in a film as is the case with forgotten spaces; light hid from darkness and sounds always struck wrong chords with bad acoustics. It was all boxes, were they always there, stuffed with things from lives forgotten or misremembered? Photo albums in this one, childrens’ toys in that one, old china sets from when china sets were a thing and family dinners were a thing. All captured in those cardboard boxes or stuffed in corners. Who knew decades could fit in 12’’x18’’ spaces? “Lyrics Lost In Time” The backseat of a car is good for a lot of things, but commutes are long, even for processing the day. Flicks of my mind to normal backseat actions from days old pulling at clothes that fit a little tight, eager for something not yet experienced. Songs drown out silence, like rain quiets traffic when you’re stuck on some interstate. I’d never song heard the first, echoing through, something about the sea. My mind runs in waves to footsteps in hot sand, asking to run down to the arcade on the pier because it really isn’t that far. Name scrawled across the back of my shirt causing a couple quick words from someone in French and a confused conversation to follow. “Turn the stations, please.” A rap song about drinking and instantly I’m in a smoke-filled basement of a frat house, somewhere in my late teens or early 20s, before bars were legal and when freedom was the most important thing. “Next, please.” My mind cycling with Beck, the number of friends I had back then, relationships withering like petals from a flower. Where’d they all go…are we all outsiders like him? “Can you cut the radio?” I knew that sometimes silence is better, a little time to lose myself in the moments of the day and not for lyrics to lose me in time. Matt McGuirk teaches and lives with his family in New Hampshire. BOTN 2021 nominee with words in various lit mags and a debut collection with Alien Buddha Press called Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities available on Amazon and linked on his website. Website: http://linktr.ee/McGuirkMatthew Twitter: @McguirkMatthew Instagram: @mcguirk_matthew.

They get drenched between the cab and the front door. Quick Daddy! The twins laugh-scream, wetter by the second as he fumbles for his keys in the darkness. Sorry guys, the porch light is off, it doesn’t help. They burst in and immediately peel off their coats and remove their shoes and he turns on the heater and the lights and she wraps the kids in a large towel and dries their hair, changes them into warm pyjamas. She lets them not brush their teeth, reads them stories and kisses them a hundred times and they fall asleep in a minute, they’re so tired. She’s tired too, and squiffy. She looks at their chubby cheeks and soft skin under the dimmed light, she wonders what they dream about after falling asleep so quickly, she envies their carelessness, their joy at the downpour when all she can think of is mudslides and flooding, and what future for them? She envies their obliviousness of their aunt’s wig, of the new vacant look in their grandmother’s eyes, of the mutism of their increasingly gaunt cousin. She strokes their blonde curls, stays one more minute, whispers I love you, I love you, I love you and walks out quietly, leaving the door ajar. They sit in the kitchen, he hands her a beer, and she takes long sips straight from the can, she’s thirsty, the gravy was quite salty she says, she’s matter-of-fact but can see in his eyes he finds her judgemental. Difficult. Lovely afternoon she adds, resting her hand on his for a moment. 50 years. Great gathering. I can’t believe they’ve been together 50 years. That’s quite something. And they talk about all the weddings they’ve been to through the years, that one year in particular where everyone got married which was unfortunate because it was also the year she had her “Joan of Arc” haircut and they have a little laugh. They reminisce about theirs, that bright rainy day a decade ago; they leave out the painful bits, how long it’s been since they’ve seen all those friends they used to meet every Thursday for drinks back then, and how some they will never see again, and she doesn’t want to cry right now so she says she feels cold from getting soaked and she’s going to get a sweater and why don’t they have a drop of Grand Marnier to warm themselves up. He pours them a shot glass each and they turn on the speaker, play some tunes and the evening lightens up as the liquor warms them up and they talk about their kids, who they look like, what they reckon they will grow up to be; she wonders how she’ll sleep at night when they’re grown up and leaving the nest and living their own lives, not sound asleep dribbling on pillows, she wonders if they will miss her after she’s gone and she doesn’t know when that will be it could be tomorrow it could be in 53 years but one day they won’t be together and she feels like she’s been punched in the stomach and he looks at her, you okay? Yeah, yeah I’m fine, and she refills the glasses and takes a large sip swallowing her anguish and tears with the syrupy liquid that’s not bitter enough, but they all come back up after the third drink and she clings to him like a drowning swimmer cradling a buoy in shallow waters and she wonders at what stage she became so needy, how long ago she lost her strength, her footing, her desire to swim further just to feel the depth of the unknown behind. She used to swim far, too far, relish at all the water around her, all the depth beneath. She would plug her nose and torpedo her body down, as low as possible to see if her feet would touch the ground but they never did. Too deep. She’d take her swimming costume off and enjoy the cold water lapping her naked body and she’d swim back slowly, coming back to the beach drained and happy and rosy-cheeked and the world was this wonderful place. Now she never goes too far out, she swims alongside the shore so that she can always feel the sand under her feet. The water isn’t as clear as it used to be, or as cold, it doesn’t take her breath away when she goes in, she can just walk in until it reaches her chest and start swimming without her heart doing that stop-start thing and her making that loud joyous exhaling sound. She never swims as long, and she never takes her swimming costume off anymore. B F Jones is French and lives in the UK. She writes poetry and flash fiction. Her poetry collections Five Years and The Only Sounds Left as well as her flash fiction collection, Artifice, were all released in 2021 and published by the Alien Buddha. This piece is a part of her upcoming collection of Interconnected stories, Something Happened at 2am, out 2/18/22!

Andrew Martin looked out at the post-New Year’s snow and thought of all the New Year’s he had passed happily: first with family, then friends, then girlfriends, then a wife (who had just died five years or so back of unalarming natural causes), then friends again at his local bar. A woman or two had indicated interest after his wife had passed, but as he was already sixty-five when she went unexpectedly in her sleep, and they had been a congenial couple, if not a passionate one (since their children had reached ages of discretion a little late—the girl at twenty-five and the boy at twenty-eight)—he didn’t really warm up to their courtships. Those were things he didn’t expect the young of this age to understand: first of all why he wasn’t haring off after another fast lay the minute the previous one was cold in the ground (and to give her her due, his wife had never been a “fast” lay, always requiring his utmost attention); secondly, what “the age of discretion” was supposed to be about. He had once heard a minister from a church he had attended when young insist that the true age of discretion was at twelve or 1 thirteen, the age of baptism in his previous faith. But that didn’t hold water when he looked at the droopy pants and the chains and dog collars and earrings everywhere in every blessed place, and the ear buds always in so that no one of them could hear a thing you said to them, as if they had somehow aged with him. Now, his own children had been comfortably placed growing up, since he had been a copy editor for a national newspaper until he retired, and they well-provided for. He and his wife Becca had kept the strange manifestations of adolescence and struggling independence to a minimum. He thought now that perhaps it only stood to reason that their offspring had to do their rebelling against someone at some time, and roughly ten years ago, as if they were acting on cue, they did so. The girl, Tabitha, had gone to live in something called a yurt and grow cabbages and mung beans, among other things. It lasted for two years before she’d sensibly married and settled down with an academic woman who, though Becca and Andrew were a bit taken aback at the abrupt change of sexual preference—which their daughter denied was 2 abrupt—was a matter-of-fact teacher of writers and editors, and gave Andrew someone in his own area of expertise to “chew the fat with,” as she didn’t seem to mind hearing him put it. Andrew’s and Becca’s son, David, had at twenty-eight started investing all the money he had made in sensible real estate deals in bitcoin and video game developments which, always puzzling to him, never worked out. Whether it was because it was “the nature of the beast,” Andrew told himself and Becca, or whether it was just that his son had no talent in those fields (if one could call them that), it was sad and a little touching to notice his hurt face at his own failure. Nothing had prepared him to fail, and he seemed a little aggrieved with persons unspecified, since he never seemed to blame the “crooks and vagabonds,” as Becca put it, who led him into these ventures. When Andrew finally put it to him once that he credited his own parents with his bad luck (which was all he outwardly called it), he protested that that wasn’t the case, but he avoided them for a year and a half, only to return with a woman and two tiny kids in tow, whom he’d taken on as a “partner in crime” (an expression which raised anxiety in his parents 3 until it was explained to them that there was no actual crime being committed, and that while the woman and Andrew were consorting as an ordinary married couple “without the benefit of wedlock, the way they do these days,” as Becca put it, they were also business partners in a bed-and-breakfast chain which Andrew had actually heard of before he knew his son was involved). Becca and Andrew had both breathed more easily and felt that they’d gotten off lightly: no suicides, no murders, no drugs or rehabs, no obvious mental illness, no prison sentences, barely even a speeding ticket, though Shirles, Tabitha’s wife, had complained that Tabitha kept getting cautions for bad parking maneuvers. And so, ages of discretion duly reached, even if late, Andrew and Becca relaxed with each other, only to find that they now preferred discussing things to fucking, though neither of them wanted to cheat or split up, and both felt that they had a good thing in the other. Still, Andrew had definitely gotten the sense that the two kids expected him to cut loose after a certain interval for grieving Becca. David had even patiently shown a patiently unwilling Andrew how to use a dating site, but it hadn’t taken. The only 4 two responses he’d gotten had been from a female truck driver and a potter, and he had his reasons (a prejudice against long-distance relationships, and a desire not to have the house bunged up with clay and mess). Now, though, Andrew’s children were turning their sights on him in ways that made him mostly uncomfortable. On the one hand, he felt it was a tribute to their upbringing that they had ready empathy with him, which he’d earlier doubted. On the other, it was a considerable nuisance, at the mere age of seventy, to be considered senile, or at the very least in need of being checked upon, as if having declined to participate in the human search for a partner, he’d also somehow forfeited his chance to be considered independently strong. He didn’t quite know how it had happened, actually, but he found himself attending a day program for seniors in the Good Days Weekly Meeting Program. His surly rejoinder to one of the attendants when she addressed him in a condescending fashion was “Look here, missy, this may be a place for good days, but I don’t have good days and bad days, right now all my days are good days, and I don’t need you talking down 5 to me to make that happen.” It had shocked her out of her momentary stupidity, but the next second, while she was still staring at him, undecided how to respond, she was summoned by a woman who flirted with the men in an imprecise fashion, and fawned on the attendants in a way the characters on the show “Golden Girls” would only have done as a ploy. Andrew tried to believe the attendees were capable of this, but saw no real evidence of it. The platinum blonde waggled a wrist at her to summon her over. The attendant, Jo Ellen, as her name tag stated in sprightly dark, large italics, gave him a magnificent, totally insincere smile and said, “Now, Mr. Martin, let’s not be rude. I was just trying to make sure you were comfortably seated. When we get old, sometimes we don’t seat ourselves properly, and we fall. I know you don’t want that to happen, do you, sweetie?” Before he could reproach her for her too-familiar form of address, she called to the beckoning diva across the sitting room, “Right there, Mrs. Cavenish!” and whisked off. The thing is, it didn’t sort well with him, as he didn’t feel in hindsight that he had come off looking down on her, too. To have 6 remained sitting instead of facing her eye-to-eye was weak, though standing would have been taken as a sign of senile aggression and grounds for further interference. It wasn’t entirely unaccountable, but he felt depressed as he first thought of the long, hard road of somewhat unacknowledged grief he’d traveled since Becca’s death; then, this led to an unwelcome reminder of the other long, hard thing he’d once been able to count on in his person that people now would probably find laughable. He caught himself looking at his reflection in the mirror more often: had he really aged so much that women, except for ones his own age who were only looking for less than what he and Becca had had, didn’t find him the least bit threatening in an attractive way? An even more offensive thought to him, though he felt it was unfair to consider it so, but couldn’t help it, was the thought that one of those ominously haggard older women did desire him as a man. That, to a man who’d had a beautiful wife like Becca, with her long, curly brown hair and green eyes, her winsome figure, oh, he just couldn’t bear the thought! 7 He looked first to make sure that Jo Ellen was employed with his fellow attendees, and that no other attendants were close at hand or watching. Then, he stood up and walked over closer to the picture window, and found himself a chair there, just by the drapes and in that manner half-hidden from the rest of the room, as well as above the baseboard heating that ran at the bottom of the huge pane of glass to keep things from freezing. An antiquated setup in some respects, but still in good repair. That made him smile: that’s what he was, an antiquated setup sometimes, but still in good repair. He’d show them. They weren’t going to load him down with some old biddy ready for the grave. Andrew sat and grew dreamy and peaceful, watching the snow fall on all things, like a forgiveness, like a thought of love, like a long time coming for every person on the earth, sooner or later. The flakes were the kinds he’d always preferred, the big, fluffy, heavy ones, full of water and melting on your cheek when they landed there, almost as if you could hear a tiny voice sizzling into nothingness, but not really, he knew. Not like the small, tiny frozen pelts of half-ice there’d been around 8 Christmas time. Those were for misers and people who hoarded their love and contentment and didn’t share feelings. He and Becca, of course, hadn’t talked much of feelings past the first few years, they’d been too busy with raising their kids, and they hadn’t married early, so they were both a bit settled down. Their marriage was based more on resemblances than it was on passion, he told himself half-regretfully now. The snow, drifting in the softly whirling breeze to and from the window at several different moments, seemed to agree with him, to induce a slight feeling of melancholy. Why hadn’t he been better loved? He tried to think if anyone had ever loved him to distraction, had ever wanted to die for the threat of the lack of him. It wasn’t an entirely pleasant topic, as it didn’t present him in the best light, the “leaver” in the equation of leaving or being left, but just as if on cue, the watered down version of the song playing over the sitting room speakers, overcoming the droning and blaring of the two side-by-side TVs at the wall farthest away, caught his attention. One of the TVs was tuned to a game and the other to a game show, and the two circles of chairs seemed from a distance to interlock the men and women in a sort of Venn 9 diagram, with a few from each group staring at the opposite tv. But even over that distraction, his hearing was still good enough to catch the melody that seemed to have come along just in time to his thoughts: who was the artist now? Paul somebody. It was Paul Simon, wasn’t it? Something about whether it was better to be a hammer or a nail. Was it that he had decided to be the hammer and not the nail? Was it that simple? Was he that callous and calculating? He felt the memories come up to him unbidden, flooding him, filling his stolid, sensible, comfortable old heart with an unfamiliar and now nearly forgotten pounding, a swift tango-beat, a mournful, wingeing, wincing, cry on the air that the next second caused him to clap a hand to his mouth and hold it for fear of what was coming out of it! He looked around. No one was looking at him. The three male attendants were at the TVs with the circle of men watching the game, and the few circling female attendants were still helping to clean up the remains of the lunch trays from the tables so that in a half hour or so, bingo could go on. He hated it here, but he had bigger problems now. 10 He didn’t want to remember the girl, the girl, the girl, no, she had been a woman, a young woman, he now admitted to himself, fully cognizant of what he was to her and what she had been to him. She had been a lover, a lover he had deserted who said she loved him truly, couldn’t get on without him, who had braved the fact that he was only two years married himself, and to Becca, of all people, who’d never had an idea. And that long, wailing cry—that cry that he had once thought might have been like the Romantic idea of a demon lover driven to hunt at night, but always in deep despair for the lost love— that had come from her lips; he had heard her crying out for him as he had rushed out the door that last night in a frenzy of nervous cowardice, and it had just now burst from his memory and threatened, still threatened, to come in echo from his own lips. And he had heard through the newsman’s grapevine that she, a talented photojournalist, had after that traveled madly across Eastern Europe, going wherever, it seemed, there was risk, and had died there in an attack on her hotel one summer night while he was peacefully reading a scary ghost story to his two young children, who 11 had begged for the treat. It after all hadn’t been that scary, had just been the latest kitschy thing for kids, but he had chilled to the core when his friend Sam Dreyfus had called to tell him the news, just as he had bid his children a final goodnight. Becca had taken one look at his pale face, and said “What’s wrong? What in the whole world is the matter with you?” “The whole world is it,” he responded, “the whole world.” He had put a hand through what had been at the time a full head of hair, and had sat on his bed, saying nothing. So marked was his silence that Becca had sat in the rocker opposite and just waited patiently for him to say more, but he couldn’t summon up the words for what he knew he should have told her long before. Or should he? he had thought. Was it really his responsibility to set all right that was wrong this far after the fact, when he was well-embarked on being indispensable to another woman? He had just muttered under his breath, “Some journalists and photographers killed again, another time, in the Caucasus or somewhere near there. Some people we all sort of knew.” Unbidden at that time, a story he had then recently read popped into his head. It was Joyce’s story, “The 12 Dead,” about a man who’d been to a winter party with his wife, had been in the midst of a snow fall and found it emotionally provocative, and who had planned to make passionate love to her until he discovered by accident that she’d been deeply and seriously in love with a man when she was young; a man who had died of love for her, she thought. A sad, morose story at the end, though the Christmas party had seemed like a fair amount of early 20th century sentimentality and nonsense, to Andrew’s mind. But now, it seemed as grotesque a long preface to the short ending as his reading of the ghost story to his children also seemed, homeopathic magic, a calling up of a thing by a similar thing. Ghosts. A ghost. He had been more silent than not for a few days after that, but no one among his friends had known of the affair, and so he was allowed by circumstances and his own circumspection to forget it himself, and the years passed peacefully and uneventfully. Now he was old, and his wife was dead, and he was being visited by a ghost in this totally unlikely setting, where he could already hear people getting ready for the bingo, in the back of his awareness. 13 He was also suddenly aware of someone approaching, so he turned more firmly to the window, but there the snow was now accusing him again, as the memory of “The Dead” and a winter scene had long years ago, that heart-frozen day in summer, and in his frustration and double grief, for his love, his long ago love whom he had so cavalierly deserted and for his placid, undemanding wife, he threw a hand up and away, only to strike against something warm and soft. In confusion, he made an attempt to move his hand away without turning around, but as he was forced to turn anyway, he saw that his hand was making contact with the crotch and flowery pastel scrubs of his old enemy, Jo Ellen, whose shocked “Eep! What the hell! What do you think you’re doing?” “Oh, I, what are you doing over here?” He felt helpless, as she had possessed herself of his wrist, and was still holding it accusingly. He saw now that one of the male attendants had heard her loud, brassy exclamation, so overdone for what had actually happened, and was on his way over in a meaningful manner. “Is this old bastard bothering you, Jo Ellen?” He didn’t mince words. Andrew now saw that it was Larry, who had a thing for Jo Ellen in 14 particular, according to all the gossips, which Andrew had in the short time he’d been coming here already heard, but affected not to hear or be interested in. “No!” Andrew protested. “Yes, he did!” Jo Ellen insisted. “Always giving me grief, and then the first time he has me off by himself in a corner, he grabs my hoohah. And he took a swipe at my boobs, too!” The only thing that Andrew could be thankful for was that in this modern ridiculousness and trial by combat with Jo Ellen, his ghosts had quickly turned and taken their leave, back out into the snow, and he had a momentary thought that maybe he was better off with a few bad memories back in his own home during the days than he was allowing his children to bully him into this gross day school playpen for the elderly. Jo Ellen said to Larry, thrusting Andrew’s wrist back at him in a violent way that made his now thinner arm bruise itself painfully against his chair, “Here I noticed him sitting sadly all alone over here by himself, and then I saw him cover his mouth like he had to vomit, and so 15 I came over to see how he was, regardless of how hateful he always is to me. And now this!” “You just sit tight there, you,” Larry was threatening him. “I’ll go get the book, and we’ll write him up. He won’t watch tv, he won’t play bingo, he complains about the food, he’s rude to everybody who tries to be nice to him, it’s high time he got written up.” With a sudden spurt of energy, Andrew stood up erect and said quite loudly for him, “Nobody does try to be nice to me, everybody’s just always talking down to me the same way they do to these old fools here, and I don’t want to watch these stupid shows, and I don’t play bingo, and the food here is awful, sheerly awful, I don’t eat white bread, for one thing. And I wasn’t trying to grab your twat, you foolish, rude, abrasive young bitch, I was distracted by some old thoughts and memories, and thinking of a story I once read. I don’t suppose either of you even know how to read stories properly, do you? Well, if you ever learn, sometime read James Joyce’s story ‘The Dead,’ it’s in a book of his stories called Dubliners. As in, the capital city in Ireland. As in, a major Irish writer who was also a world literary figure. You need to be exposed to 16 something beyond your own limited little corner of the world where everybody has your same motives.” “My motives? What were you doing over here in the corner all by yourself? And why were you throwing your arm right around at me like that when I approached? You must’ve seen me coming. Were you trying to hit me, or what?” “No, I didn’t see you! I sort of heard someone coming, but my mind was taken up with old things and I was watching the snow, if you must know. Far more pleasant than sitting around with all these old farts.” “You’re an old fart too, buddy, and you shouldn’t be so high and mighty,” said Larry. “Jo Ellen, I’m going to go get the book. He shouldn’t be sitting around brooding to himself all the time, anyway. This is just what happens when people stay to themselves too much, they start to get weird. Grabbing for a feel is only the half of it. I’ll be back.” But Andrew knew he had to stand up for the young woman’s ghost now: for his remembered young love, and even for the calm platitudinous waters of his marriage, he had to defend his right to be with his ghosts, however they might tear and rend him. “Don’t bother!” 17 he said. “I’m leaving. You can’t stop me, I don’t come with the bus crew, and I’m not under the protection of my children. You can write your life story in that damned book if you want, but be sure you charge me off it; there’s no point in my children paying for this kindergarten for the senile anymore. I’m not crazy or demented or crippled, whatever the proper words are that we’re all supposed to use now, and I’m getting the hell out of here.” He was quite definite, and he left the area before they could recover from his having taken them off their guard with his tirade. As a proper newspaperman, he actually knew what the correct words to use were, but his ire had rescued him from his terror at the approach of his shades from the past, and even a little from the fear of his own death to come. He had some trouble making the cloakroom woman understand that he was leaving, but at fifty-five herself, she had been the nicest person there to him. When he gave her a brief explanation, equal to equal, and she was reassured that he wasn’t under care of any kind, she delivered up his things to him: his coat and gloves, his toboggan and 18 scarf, and he strode with re-assumed vigor out the front door, where the snow greeted him. The snow blew with the wind, and the wind blew with the course of the world, on and on, the shadows and thicknesses of flurries and even the patches of light through some strange heavenly break of cloud from time to time as Andrew walked home, eschewing a bus or a taxi, thanking his own form of gods that he was possessed of a comfortable income and apartment, and that he was on good terms with humanity, except for his one faulted lapse. He felt even a little fond, now, now that the ghost had reminded him, after this time, of her reality. For she was very, very real to him now, he knew, and he felt warmed by that knowledge, by not having to repress the memory of their love anymore, though his own last role had been so ignominious. He even thought, crazily, as he went along the way so familiar to him from other walks, that she must have forgiven him, still loved him, because she had come today, when he just couldn’t take that hellhole anymore. He said to her, “Amie, you’re welcome,” and with this, he accepted her again, and felt that she must’ve accepted him. He couldn’t bear it, otherwise. Victoria Leigh Bennett. Born W.Va. B.A. Cornell University, M.A. & Ph.D. University of Toronto. Degrees: English & Theater. Since 2012 website at creative-shadows.com, mostly literary articles/reviews. August 2021 first print book pub'd., Poems from the Northeast, 334 pp. Poem from book repub'd. September 2021 Winning Writers newsletter. January 2022, CNF pub'd. Roi Faineant Press. Acc'd for pub. January/February 2022 poem, Cult of Clio. Has written 8 novels & 1 collection short stories, all in search of publisher. Current WIP 9th novel, new poems, new CNF. Regularly on Twitter @vicklbennett, occasionally on Facebook at Victoria Leigh Bennett. Victoria is a member of the disabled community. (She/her).