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Biting Back When I was five I bit a boy / he had followed me down the slide / pinned my arms / and tried to kiss me / the teacher seeing the bloody marks / never asked for my words / she just gave me the ruler / and as it was picture day / my mother had to pay for a photo of me scowling / and missing the bow from my hair / the boy was cooed over and consoled / but at least my resistance was branded on his cheek  When I was thirteen a boy bit me / and called it love / we danced to Chanson D’Amour / and he told me / everything sounded better in French / then he sucked my neck / a would be vampire / before they were sexy / my frenemies seeing the bruise / soft and harsh as muslin / shook me with bullets / slut / tart / skank / the bite disappeared / but the scars from the words never faded When I was twenty-one I bit my lip / as I followed my mother’s coffin / through the fug of white lilies / and purple shrugs / the taste of blood / clung to my words / why her / it’s not fair / and there is no God / still the sunflowers / in the garden of remembrance / coddled hope / so I rinsed my words / over and over again / trying to get rid of the stains When I was thirty I bit my tongue / as another prince turned into a frog / the blood bubbled up / but this time I gaged as I tried to swallow / and in the swirl I tasted all my rage / what else was there to do / but spit out all those red globby words / and as I walked away / as free as the day moon / my last words—bite me / fell like cherry blossoms  / or a long forgotten truth The Nature of a Wall Slipping into Stop and Shop / slush in the groove of me / I am greeted by an orange pyramid / a sunshine triangle / in which to lose any lingering winter blues / arranged like a puzzle / it dazzles / and dares me to take just one  I am reminded of a book / from my library years / when all it took to banish the season / was an afternoon gulping down words / well before my thighs resembled dimpled peel / and when I was still sweet enough to think / most people were good Oranges are Not the Only Fruit / a book squashed full / of pips and pith / about a lesbian / in a religious family / the mother wanted to exorcise the gay out of her / so she starved her daughter / in their best parlor / it’s the sort of book that might be banned here  But in Britain it was put on the school syllabus / so we got to discuss / the juicy symbolism / of an orange demon / or the power of a pebble / to guide you home / and one idea wound its way around me / the nature of a wall / is to fall Leaving the supermarket / I find it difficult to balance my plastic bag / on my arm / it swings back and forth / like a worry  / and then barring my way / a perky Big City Big Dreams Barbie / brought to life / in Wilton Connecticut  She wants me to donate / to the Republican candidate for President / that orange fruitcake / I tell her that orange is not the only fruit / as I take one out / and drop it in her bucket / suddenly she becomes undone / calling me a name I’m surprised she knows Other people / skirt around her / as if it’s 2021 and she’s not wearing a mask / a woman with a child / even tells her she’s a disgrace / like her candidate / and weird Barbie snarls about how he built a wall / to make America great again I tell her about the nature of a wall / and as she packs her stuff to leave / people cheer / and I feel a ray of warmth / maybe next election / we will realize / America was always a fruit salad / and that’s what makes her great  Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who now lives in America. You can find her poetry and prose in Grey Sparrow Journal, Anti Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, Janus Lit, and many other places. Adele has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for poetry and short fiction and Best of the Net for poetry. Finishing Line Press published her first poetry chapbook, Turbulence in Small Places. Her second collection, The Brink of Silence is available from Bottlecap Press. Her first novella-in-flash, Wannabe, was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2023 and her short story collection Suffer/Rage (Dark Myth Publisher) has just been published after Adele won the Open Contract Challenge.

CW: Cancer When you wait for your estranged sister’s surgery update, on April Fool’s Day, it feels like The way skydiving must feel (I’m too scared to fall into sunsets; I crave stability of ocean’s motions, of vertebrae under the skin): all encompassing, a void, the moment you pull the chord and come out laughing that she’s still real. You’re still here. A cosmic joke, Or a sunset run backwards. We haven’t spoken since she uninvited Me to her wedding. A union we were not. If you want to pick apart the petals at the root: I’m hard to love; she loves my mom too much. They checked her neck and found a swell That shouldn’t be there. I rub my neck –  my muscles – in Colorado, wondering what it feels like to be Her. All I feel is tender skin, and pick-pocked scratch marks, A flare. We are swans, not geese, I swear. We want to belong together. I’m guessing repairing, and learning if she’s okay,   is akin to  the distance between  you two,  which seems unbearably vast. Yet,  earth and sky are actually Just a leap/faith/jump away. Her arms could be a ripcord; I could be the one holding the welcome sign, When she lands in another place– Wherever the belly And the wings And the humming takes her. I could be there. Leslie Cairns holds an MA degree in English Rhetoric and has upcoming poetry in various journals. She enjoys writing about mental health, community, and identity.

Marta stares into the fissure, flinching as the heat blisters her cheeks. Her boy, Kristjan, has been missing for eleven days now, ever since the first eruption.  All across the village, their houses are charred carapaces, resting on the snow like steamed mussel shells. Mothers tell their children, it is only Dreki , a dragon, waking from slumber. A story meant to soothe, but young eyes widen like startled fawns.   The preacher herds them into the scorched church-house. He beseeches the heavens, Guð blessi okkur . But God does not listen. A fog of sulphur seethes overhead and the livestock withers in the fields, hooves raw with yellowing sores.  The land is sliced. Lava simmers and rolls from the mountainside, searing welts into the ground. Red blood bursts from hissing pools like Devil’s breath. When they wake the next morning, the preacher has gone, leaving only his bible pages fluttering in the wind. They group by the ice lake. They cannot cross. The darkness beneath would swallow them whole. The elders say they must go around, travel south to the shore. But these are people of the land, they know only harvest and pelt, not tide and hook.  That night, they huddle in the empty cattle barn watching Aurora dance above them like an emerald flame. Fyrirboði, they whisper. An omen.  Dawn breaks. They tether the dogs.  Those on foot shudder when shadowed wolf-breath howls across the valley. Mothers tell their children, halda í, keep up, keep up! Marta drives the sled onward, tears flecking her face, still keening for her lost boy. Behind them, Dreki rumbles. When they finally reach the shore - stomachs raw with hunger - a snarling blizzard whips away the last of their hope.  There is nothing before them.  Nothing but merciless ocean and a wide, aching sky.  Kathy’s work is published in litmags such as The Forge, Lunate, Emerge literary journal, The South Florida Poetry Journal and Fictive Dream. She has won The Bath Flash Fiction Award, the Retreat West Flash Award and  The Hammond House Origins Competition. Other stories can be found in a variety of anthologies. She was recently longlisted for The Wigleaf Top 50 and her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions and The Pushcart Prize. She is a PhD student at The university of Leicester.

Everyone was purely jazzed about the sun disappearing for three minutes. In her absence, the day went completely saturnine. Nobody’s hearts were lackadaisical, and abandoned cruise ships capsized meaninglessly in the harbor. If we weren’t so indifferent, this would have spelled out bad news in plain English. Everyone was perfectly chuffed about local sports, over which we shot death threats at our enemies in adjacent townships. We celebrated the solstice with the burning of antique furniture and the inhalation of fumes that allowed us to look into the past and realize that marriage was never in the cards, that the riverbanks would overflow and wash our homes into the sea, where we would learn, in time, to swim, and look beautiful while doing so. Sebastian Hunter is a writer and musician from Seattle. He makes maps for a living and reads books the rest of the time. He is published or forthcoming in Bombfire  and Boats Against the Current .

She makes him feel 'late' early. He has drunken three white liquid crystals and sits on the shards of a mirror called time. Now the lady saunters into the lobby. She complains about her roommate who has transferred the ownership of her necklace. She complains about the traffic. In the room no. 470 they mess up  the bed, round shaped, under  an oculus on the ceiling. Why are the mosquitoes in  an air-conditioned room? Why do they perish as if  they have lived the high and regret not paying the price sooner? The author of 'Postmarked Quarantine' and 'How To Burn Memories Using a Pocket Torch' has nine books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of 'Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe. Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

When heavy rains come, the driveways and sidewalks flood with earthworms. Long, skinny, pink ones; fat, short brown ones. Together but alone, they evacuate the sodden dirt under our lawns to seek refuge on hard concrete. There they will die – smashed under tires or shoes, plucked up by predators, or slowly dehydrated to a brittle curl under the eventual sun. I want to rescue them. Tiptoeing across the driveway, I pick up a writhing earthworm the width of cooked spaghetti and drop it in my dry jacket pocket for safekeeping. Then another, no longer than my pinkie and just as meaty, goes into the opposite pocket. It squirms and fights against the absorbent cottony lining. Moving deftly down the drive, I deposit a third worm in the waterproof hood hanging like an open mouth at my back. I stare down the cement sidewalk. There are so many at risk. Suddenly frantic, high on salvation, I run through the rain, scooping them up in fistfuls wherever I can find them. Wet knuckles scrape and bleed. Soggy dirt lodges under nails. Soon dozens of worms flail and undulate in my barren pockets, the arid trap of my hood, the moisture-less sleeves of my coat. Save me , I hear them cry, save me . Still, they die. Megan Hanlon is a podcast producer who sometimes writes. Her words have appeared in Raw Lit, Variant Literature, Gordon Square Review, and other publications both online and print. Her blog, Sugar Pig, is known for relentlessly honest essays that are equal parts tragedy and comedy.

Shades of blue and purple light reflected off the disco ball, and a raindrop pattern splattered across Linda’s face, drenching her in iridescent hues. She threw down her vodka soda with purpose and high-fived other patrons as she moved through the crowd and onto the dance floor.  "Screw it!" she proclaimed as she spun in thoughtless abandon around the center of the floor, defying her thirty-three years. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. Linda's cell phone rang all night in her car's console. Her mother's warnings of the approaching storm went to voicemail while Linda drank and danced, saturating her worries in beats and booze in hopes she’d forget. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. Loud booms reverberated off the club’s walls, and the spastic bass chugged along, growing louder and faster, like a stampede of horses or a speeding train while Linda’s troubles sloshed around in her brain, and she continued spinning until a vortex opened up on the dancefloor and sucked out Linda’s burdens one after another. First, the backseat of an old Chevy Impala flew out of her head, a ripped prom dress and torn panties got yanked from her ear, and a sticky sweat-stained men’s undershirt shot out from her pocket.     BOOM, BOOM, BOOM Unphased, Linda danced and spun until finally, she threw back her head and let out a high-pitched wail that would stay with the club's nearby patrons for a while, like the resounding cries from Hendrix's guitar strings or the cries of pulled heartstrings lingering years after one regretful night. Buried pleas of 'I can't,' 'please,' and 'stop' let loose, pushed-down wielded accusations like 'sinful' and 'whore' released from her lungs until, finally, a two-minute memory of innocence with its ten tiny fingers and toes surrendered from her gut. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. Cold, wet pellets whipped against Linda's cheeks as she twirled across the room and tucked herself under a booth against the wall, watching the disco ball and her worries spin into the iridescent-colored funnel cloud above.   Margo has worked in public education for over thirty years and is the mother of two daughters and to the best rescue dog ever, Harley. Margo's work has appeared in places such as, Bending Genres, MER, Wild Roof Journal, Maudlin House and Roi Fainéant Press. You can find her on Twitter @67MGriffin .

Look to the Skies The red glare shines against my face, bright in the quiet of morning. My eyes glaze over at the monotony, everyone inching forward, making the lights strobe. Slow clicking sounds just above the buzz of the radio in the background. I turn the wheel when I reach the front, my eyes following the car ahead, ready for a repeat of the last half-hour. I glance above and my breath catches.   Peach-colored clouds pillow the sky, layering as if whipped cream swirled on top of the earth. Each puff so stark and vivid, I can picture the strokes someone might lovingly paint, trying to capture an echo of its beauty.   My hand slips on the wheel, and a thought crosses my mind; if this were to be my end, to be lost in admiring one of natures most simple yet breathtaking sights, I would be okay with that. I soak in the image for a few more moments, longing for it last, then lower my gaze back to grey pavement. I shouldn’t drive at night The sky and pavement  mix together in my vision  and the rain streaking my windshield sets my car to warp.  I’m zipping by bright stars, goosebumps littering my arms. I chase the adrenaline before the panic can set in.  Before the loss of control  turns deadly.  Thoughts become more invasive when the light isn’t there to burn them away.  A quick flick of my hand can have me hurtling towards one of the bright stars to explore a world that humanity has always had  a curiosity for. Luck (they/them) is a queer poet, writer, baker, and beginner herbalist. They have a self-published poetry collection entitled,  MAJOR , and are an editor for Skeleton Flowers Press. They aspire to have a Frog and Toad lifestyle and can be found under @luckslibrary / luckzytowski.wordpress.com  (or under a toadstool).

A very large drainage pipe was in the process of being installed in a particular location in the neighborhood in order to mitigate chronic flooding issues.       “Look at that thing,” the neighbors all said.       Or: “That’s the biggest goddamn drainage pipe I’ve ever seen.”       All of them, that is, except Mickey McFarland, who said, “Bah, I’ve seen bigger drainage pipes than that. The problem with you homebodies is that you’ve never been out west. Everything  is bigger out west. Compared to out west, we live in Puny-ville around here. Puny little mountains, puny little valleys that are more like divots. Our rivers are so puny, they’re basically the size of the marker lines you would use to draw one of those big ass rivers from out west on a map.”       Well, no one really took what Mickey McFarland had to say seriously since he was the type of clown who was never impressed by anything. For example, when he went to a museum displaying the art of American photorealist painter Norman Rockwell, all he said was, “The only reason anyone liked this stuff is probably because cameras hadn’t been invented yet.” And when the museum docent on duty pointed out to him that in fact cameras had been invented during Rockwell’s era, and furthermore Rockwell often made his paintings by working from photographs taken with cameras, McFarland shook his head in a manner meant to display befuddlement and disdain and said, “In that case, it seems like all he did was take a perfectly good photograph and make it look a little less realistic, which, to be honest, anyone with a pad of paper and a pile of markers would be equally as capable of doing.”       Getting back to the occasion at hand, that is, the installation of the very large drainage pipe, even though nobody took what McFarland had to say seriously, that doesn’t mean they weren’t annoyed by it. After all, there had never been a lot to distinguish this neighborhood from any other neighborhood until this huge fucking drainage pipe came along, and now Mickey had to be a total buzzkill by running his mouth off and minimizing the whole thing. On this account, Michael Sproat, the organist at the local Lutheran chapel, piped up (as it were) and said: “I’ll bet if a massive asteroid was about to bash into the earth and kill us all, McFarland would probably just be like, oh yeah, whatever, it’s really not even that big.”       No one thought they’d actually get a chance to find out whether or not this was true, but as luck would have it, not too long after that, a massive asteroid did bash into the earth, and in the moment prior to impact when, blotting out the sun, it suddenly became visible, Mickey McFarland just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Pfft, I’m sure the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was a lot bigger than th–”       “–at,” he continued, when everyone who had just been killed by the asteroid (which was everyone) reunited in the sweet hereafter.       Then he paused to look around. In every direction, there were mountains that sparkled in the bright yet soft sunlight as though fashioned from gold and silver, and endless green meadows stretching like soft carpets between forests in which the patches of moss were as thick as down pillows, and speaking of dinosaurs, there were dinosaurs milling about, along with examples of every other imaginable animal species, both those that had been extinct already at the time the massive asteroid struck and those that had still been living, and every dog that had ever lived was there, too, and they bounded about in the high grass and yipped and yapped and were both hungry and full at the same time, and as for the humans, there were billions of them, infinite billions, for there was every human that had ever lived, but somehow the whole situation did not feel overcrowded like a New York City subway car at rush hour, not even close, and everyone’s flesh was youthful and dewy and unblemished and for anyone who wanted to make love there was another who at that very moment also wanted to make love and everyone spoke and understood the same language notwithstanding the fact that it was a language no one could recall having known or even heard before, and in spite of this mysterious common language they all spoke and understood no one was talking about politics.       “Pretty nice,” said Mickey McFarland, at last, “but in terms of a wide variety of creatures living in peace and harmony in a super cool location, it doesn’t hold a candle to the circus.”       Which might seem like a weird thing to say if you didn’t realize that when I earlier referred to him as a clown, I wasn’t speaking figuratively – for though he was long since retired at the time of his death via massive global catastrophe, McFarland had indeed earned his living performing under the name Dingleberry Slapwhacker as a gagman in a traveling circus.

Suppose Gertrude, instead of saying yes, answers no. Oh, she thinks it through, in a long silence that go-between Polonius fills with blather. It’s a tricky situation, and any choice is a gamble. As she deliberates, her son hurries from Wittenberg, following highways toward home and an assumed assumption. Yet the countryside is treacherous, mildly so at the best of times, particularly so when thrones are unoccupied. No one would be surprised if he came to a Banquo at the hands of two or three murderers along the way.  Nevertheless, her son is clever. Capable. What if he reaches Elsinore? He’ll expect the throne to be available.  So this Gertrude makes a decision that ours never did. Polonius blinks at her refusal, massy caterpillar eyebrows twitching in surprise. Doubtless, he promised results.  Convey to Claudius my answer , she nudges. Polonius scrapes his way out the door.  She wonders how much preamble he'll use to lubricate her reply.  # Suppose Gertrude prays fiercely, but oblivious to her orisons, the gods return her son in two unfortunate conditions:     1) late  2) perforated Brigands , the courtiers say.  Of cours e, she says.  A tragedy , says her suitor.  Yes , she says. Her son a corpse, no one having a better claim, election lights on the man she rejected.  # Suppose Gertrude's mourning is scandalously brief.  Summoning Polonius, she tenders a new answer to the man he serves. Her response is well received. With two unexpected deaths, first father then son, there have been whispers. The new arrangement may quiet them, spruce up appearances. Wedding and coronation are planned for the same day.  At the reception, she interrupts Polonius's endless speech, brandishing a goblet for a toast of her own. No one objects. With a stammer, Polonius fumbles into his seat. Dignitaries from Norway and Venice exchange bemused smiles. An apothecary she invited chews a fingernail.  Raising cup and voice, she toasts  the man she loves,  the man she joins today, a man both kin and kind  (how naughty giggles erupt from those who misunderstand).  With her other hand, she displays her wedding gift, lambent and milky and round. She faces Claudius and the smile as she drops the pearl into the chalice never reaches her eyes.  # Suppose Gertrude, to ease suspicions, drinks first.                                                                                   Graham Robert Scott grew up in California, resides in Texas, owns neither surfboard nor cowboy hat. His stories have appeared in Barrelhouse, Necessary Fiction, JMWW, and others.

It was dark and rainy on the highway. Raindrops trickled on the windshield. Ma periodically put the wipers on. The roads were filled with puddles. Ma drove slowly. Her shoulders were tensed, and her eyes never left the road. She did not play music as she usually did when we drove. I was in the back seat, buckled up, with light fever, staring at the little idol of the golden-colored Lord Ganesha Ma had placed near the steering wheel.  **** Ma always prayed to a photo of Lord Ganesha in our living room before leaving the house. She said it helped remove obstacles and tried to make me pray, too.  "Will God bail me out of trouble?" I asked. "Of course," she replied.  I wondered why God never came to my aid when I was having trouble in math, and the rest of my fourth-grade class laughed at me, ridiculing my accent or brown skin. I tried praying to the elephant-faced God. But the math problems continued to swarm inside my head, and my fourth-grade class still called me a brownie. I eventually gave up.  "One day, you will realize the existence of God," Ma said.  I would sulk and retreat to my room, where I played Roblox, thriving in a virtual world with more accepting friends.  **** We were going to a dinner organized at Ma's boss's house. Her name was Jenny. I didn’t want to go. But Pa was traveling, and Ma could not find a babysitter. Besides, Ma couldn't miss this dinner, as it involved an important client deal.  There was a rumble of thunder. Suddenly, the car swirled. It felt like that ride in Disney Land - Alice's tea party where we would sit inside large cups that would go round and round. I heard Ma gasp as she clutched the steering wheel. The car continued to rotate, and Ma tried to press the brake hard. I began to scream. Ma started to chant the mantra I often heard her say.  Om gan ganpathaye namaha.  Then, all of a sudden, our car stopped rotating. The other cars on the highway slammed their brakes and stopped, too. It was a miracle none of them rammed into us. Ma steered the vehicle to the curb. A sudden burning smell wafted into my nostrils. Ma got out, examined the wheels, and returned dripping wet to her driver's seat. "What happened, Ma?"  "The rear tire burst," she began to dial 911.  I heard Ma explain breathlessly how she was stuck on the highway, gave directions to our location, and hung up after being told help would arrive. The sound of pelting rain reverberated into the ghostly silence in the car. We waited for a long time. Ma began to chant the mantra again while I glared at the golden idol. We could have been killed. Then, there was a tap on the window. Ma rolled her window down and was greeted by a kind-faced police officer. "Are you alright?" he flashed his torchlight inside the car.  He happened to be patrolling the highway when he spotted our car. Ma explained the situation and said she'd called 911. He examined our car’s tires and made a few calls.  He turned to us and said, "I have called for a tow truck. It'll take you back home. I'll be behind you in my jeep until the truck arrives."  Ma thanked him, glanced at her watch, and frowned. Then she dialed a number on her phone.  "I hope Jenny will understand," she muttered. The number kept going to voicemail.  I shuffled in my seat, feeling suddenly dizzy. All I wanted was to go home and lie down on my bed. I wondered if Jenny would be angry and whether Ma would lose her job. I cursed the Golden Ganesha for putting Ma and me in trouble. Suddenly, Ma's phone rang. I could hear her apologizing. Then she heaved a sigh of relief.  "Are you serious? He's not coming?"  My head began to pound.  "Thank you, Jenny. Appreciate it."  Ma literally kissed the Golden Ganesha idol. She turned to me and said the client had an accident and decided to reschedule the dinner meeting. I was relieved we were going home.  The policeman's jeep was still behind us. His headlights were on, and it almost felt like having a guardian angel. Then, a truck pulled over in front of us after a few minutes. The driver asked Ma for our address, instructed us to lock our doors, and hurled our car at the back of his truck, saying we'd reach home safely. The policeman waved and continued on his patrol.  It was a bumpy ride. Our car shook and wobbled while the truck navigated through the slush on the roads. My tummy swirled. I felt like throwing up. After thirty minutes, we were home. Ma parked the car on the side street instead of our garage. She paid the truck driver and thanked him. Then she opened the front door, and I plonked myself on the couch.  "We were lucky even to be alive," she said. "It's a miracle that policeman showed up. Apparently, 911 was attending to several accidents on that highway tonight."  The following day, Ma had a mechanic come to replace the tires. I was in the living room watching an episode of Young Sheldon, empathizing with his oddities and inability to fit in. My fever had come down. A photo of Lord Ganesha, the one Ma would pray to every morning, was placed above the television. It was hanging crooked. I continued sitting on the couch and stared at the crooked photo for a long time, replaying last night’s events. I could almost see a slight smile on the elephant God's face. I sighed and reluctantly muttered a thank you. Outside, the sky was clearing up. Soon, there would be sunlight, and the roads would dry from the puddles.  Swetha is an Indian author based in California and an MFA graduate from the University of San Francisco. Her works across genres appear in Atticus Review, Had, Flash Fiction Magazine, Maudlin House, and Oyez Review. ( https://swethaamit.com ). She has received three Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations. Her debut chapbook, Cotton Candy From The Sky, is published by Bottlecap Press.

My grandfather went on a fishing trip in the country around New Paltz. “He caught nine rainbow trout!” There was pride and a vestige of fear in my mother’s voice as she relayed the news from the kitchen telephone. The day after he returned to the city, my grandfather picked me up at school and took me out for a grilled cheese. Once the order was placed, he settled into the booth and sized me up with weary eyes.  “Morris,” he said at length, “I met a visitor at my hotel.”  “What kind of visitor?” I asked. A gust of yellow leaves skittered past the diner window. He leaned in, damp and smoky. “A visitor,” he whispered, “from the beyond.” Late one night, he told me, he was wandering through the hotel looking for ice when he saw an old woman pass through the wall. She had a blue halo around her body, the color of a lake in February. She sat in a rocking chair and began to knit.  My grandfather asked her who she was, and she told him she used to live in the house where the hotel now sat. She could walk through walls — it felt natural to her. Where she lived, there were visitors that she couldn’t comprehend. They were enveloped in exotic colors and passed through dimensions she couldn’t access.  “The beyond has a beyond,” my grandfather told me. “There’s an endless beyond.” The food arrived: a greasy sandwich, sizzling bacon. A chocolate shake appeared too. My grandfather winked at me. Earlier that month, a boy in my class had suffered a brain aneurysm and collapsed right in front of me, knocking over my bottle of Elmer’s Glue. That was when my grandfather started picking me up from school. Every Monday. After we finished eating, we walked down Columbus Avenue. Winter was a breath away. The sun fell low, the Manhattan shadows grew long. “You know what the visitor’s story reminded me of, Morris?” He pointed to a high-rise across the street. “They built that in the 50s. All of those apartments are the same. Each of those narrow windows is a bathroom. In each bathroom, there’s a toilet. Next to each toilet is a litter box with a cat squatting in it. Stacks upon stacks of toilets and cats, toilets and cats, all the way to space.” “Did you really see a visitor?” I asked. “I did. I swear I did.” He lit a cigar. His long, beige trench coat swayed in the wind. It had been his coat since World War II. He had scavenged it in France, I would one day learn.  I leaned into him, inhaling his cigar smoke. He drew the coat around me, wrapping me up like a newborn, and I closed my eyes. I was eight years old. “Do you need to be getting home?” he said. “Maybe your mother won’t be angry if we stay out a little while longer.”