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I’ll Be There for You When the Rain Starts to Pour A few days before Halloween we’re getting high in an Ellicottville Airbnb when the Internet tells me Matthew Perry was found dead in a hot tub. I need to clear my head so I leap up from the couch grab a blueberry sour from the fridge and step outside to the back deck where our hot tub for the weekend has been covered up against the rain. Down the road there’s a farm full of alpacas. I saw them on the drive here grazing in a field. They looked so happy being together like that. Until Lust Comes Around Again Back in 2005, Regina is behind the wheel of her mom’s blue Kia Spectra and Charlie is holding his harmonica out the window letting the wind play something sweet when we hit a skunk on the 190 and the mouth organ goes flying into the dark seemingly gone forever. Years later I’m driving way over the speed limit along that same stretch of road with all four windows rolled down and the snow blowing into my face. Because going through a divorce while sick with COVID makes you a little desperate for any kind of physical affection. Suddenly I recall the lost harmonica and the music of happier times. So I slow down adhere to the speed limit and imagine a skunk full of life burrowing in its den. It’s going to be a long winter. Slumlords a Thousand Miles Away Out on the snowy street Sean shuffles up to me and shows me a strange-looking bag of weed. He found it at the end of a gasoline rainbow in the parking lot of the Jim’s Steakout. “It’s magical,” he tells me. Later in the night we’re high out of our minds knocking on doors of abandoned apartment buildings. Our friends used to live here. New Shit When someone reads a poem for the first time at an open mic it sounds like a pair of scissors cutting a fresh piece of construction paper. This is our operating room where we send more love out into the world. You have to start with yourself and hope the sound carries. Justin Karcher (Twitter: @justin_karcher, Bluesky: justinkarcher.bsky.social) is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright born and raised in Buffalo, NY. He is the author of several books, including Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015). Recent playwriting credits include The Birth of Santa (American Repertory Theater of WNY) and “The Trick Is to Spill Your Guts Faster Than the Snow Falls” (Alleyway Theatre).

And so I lay. Off lively path. Driftin' in et out of day, Last and lonely sound, my laugh, Come the Raven, blackest of wings Claws cave, dig through cornea Flags of lost kings Rip, rip, rip the retina Claws cave, dig through cornea Cut away the colours, Rip, rip, rip the retina Embrace new cold, dark Mother Cut away the colours, Come the Raven, blackest of wings Embrace new cold, dark Mother Flags of lost kings And so I lay. Off lively path. Driftin' in et out of day, Last and lonely sound, my laugh, Ah a guest, royal beetle, Travel across the skin, In et out the leg quickly needle Lay the ground for its kin, Travel across the skin, Map the strach and wound Lay the ground for its kin, Awake the haunted tune Map the strach and wound Ah a guest, royal beetle, Awake the haunted tune In et out the leg quickly needle Last and lonely sound, my laugh, Driftin' in et out of day, Off lively path. And so I lay. Degrade, degrade, degrade Consciousness gone, Deepest sea of which to fade, Now the restless song, Degrade, degrade, degrade, Consciousness leaving, mind gone, Deepest sea of which to fade, Now the restless song, Consciousness leaving, mind gone, The dirt the only warmth, Now the restless song, Fall, fall, fall The dirt my only warmth, Degrade, degrade, degrade, Fall, fall, fall Deepest sea of which to fade Last and lonely sound, my laugh, Driftin' in et out of day, Off lively path. And so I lay. David Henderson is a young poet, currently a junior in high school. Born in Santa Fe, NM, and raised in Flint, MI, David has been published in the Paramanu Pentaquark VII and the Quilted Voices collection. His work often draws from a passion for folklore, film, and fantasies of nature.

Things You Have To Do Throw rocks in the river, even if you don’t have kids along. Not the small, flat stones meant for skipping: find a fist-sized rock and chuck it hard. Hear the hollow gulp as it hits. Whenever you arrive anywhere, open the car door, stretch your arms, and sample the air. Touch the keys of pianos you do not own. Touch velvet. Touch silk. Close your eyes and turn toward the sun. Sniff the crumbling bindings of old books: paper or leather. Run the tap as cold as it gets. Splash water in your face. Do it again. (Imagine changing nothing about yourself but having to run away from a war. Hold yourself hostage with that thought. Who would come with you and what five things would you bring?) Taste all the toothpick- speared cheese samples in the fancy shop. Don’t buy any. Find twenty bucks in last year’s overcoat pocket. Drive home past your neighbor’s house. His whole living room wall has become a TV screen full of one newscaster’s impassive face. No one is watching it. Sit at your kitchen table. Cry. Opposite, The Same The way a sunset grabs your attention when it’s still a sober grey dam with yellow light spilling over it, but then something amps up the neon, so you have to sift through your too-big purse for your phone and try to crop out the car window after you grab a picture of a thing that’s like an argument—more and more intense by the second. Except there’s no disagreement here. Someone else is even standing, holding her phone sideways and just over her head (now you’ve both parked your cars and gotten out). Cloud banks—ruby, purple, a whole tide of molten gold. I have read about the exact amount of shaking in earthquakes that makes people flee buildings inside which they’re ducking under tables and into doorways. This is the opposite, but it’s also the same. We’re all outside singing Whoa, fixed on an event we can’t control or stop watching. Some of us are even using our phones to call people we love: Go outside— right now! Today’s last words, writ in harmless flame.

Trixie had been writing for 10 years before she finally got published. It was a long slog, with dozens and dozens of bad short stories, a handful of good ones, and what felt like millions of rejections from journals, residencies, and MFA programs. It was brutal. Eventually, she stopped trying to write Lorrie Moore stories and just wrote what came naturally — auto-fiction with absurdist embellishments. Then she started getting published and it was magical. As she hit a publishing stride, she did what another writer friend suggested — use her Instagram for silly non-writing related stuff. Create a brand that says I don’t care about promoting my work, but get this, you actually do. She changed her handle to @highfashiongabagool and photoshopped Italian cured meats onto models’ faces at high-end fashion shows. Within a year she had 15k followers. She used this attention to help get an agent, who then got her a publishing deal for her first novel. Two books later and she’d finally arrived at the writing life she’d been working toward, but there was still a void of some kind. A nagging absence. This led to the next logical step in her life — an ayahuasca trip in Peru. She’d been on that track for a while. Trixie didn’t believe in God, as such, but in the last year or so had started to wonder if this might be less an issue of faith and more an issue of definition. After her girlfriend Veronica died of an overdose two years ago, she’d been shattered. In the years since, she’d cobbled herself back into some kind of recognizable form, though she still felt moments of cavernous loss — a little helpless balloon floating up-up-up into the sky. Lately, these moments were followed by a grounding warmth and an urgent need to express gratitude to something for not having to feel like the little balloon anymore. She had to put this gratitude somewhere, but she couldn’t say God with a capital “G” yet. Not some man in the sky, but something bigger. Something our 3-dimensional brains could never really understand. 4th dimension or greater. Who knows. The only thing that she did know was she didn’t have the ability to wrap her mind around whatever this God was. Not without some help. Her agent Tino did it last Spring, the ayahuasca ceremony. He cried for three days straight and swore he felt the presence of God in his blood. He hadn’t been quite the same since he returned, in a good way. The only annoying thing was he kept talking about the ayahuasca ceremony all the time, but he’d successfully convinced Trixie that it was the thing to do. She booked the flight and made all the arrangements with Tino’s connection. Peru was beautiful. She spent the first two days in a rainforest treehouse and didn’t even turn on her phone. Monkeys would come to her window and grab plantain chips right out of her hand. It was expensive, but she could already feel the warmth of the divine before the ceremony even happened. This is going to change her life, she thought. The shaman was an elderly woman named Yeimi. There were nine Americans taking part in the ceremony. The sun had gone down, and Yeimi blew tobacco smoke into all of their faces and sang the Icaros songs. She brought Trixie to a table and on that table was a hollowed gourd that contained the ayahuasca tea. A little nervous, Trixie brought the gourd to her lips and sipped it gradually, as Yeimi had instructed. The tea was thick and bitter, almost like a coffee syrup of some kind. Trixie finished the tea and then went back to her bamboo mat as the next person went up to drink theirs. Trixie had been given a bucket to puke, and if necessary, shit into. She only did the former. Half the Americans puked as well. Yeimi walked around as everyone lay back on their bamboo mats and she sang more Icaros songs. It was the most beautiful experience of Trixie’s life. As the trip came on, she closed her eyes and tears started to stream down her face. She saw herself standing naked in the jungle and within her body, she could also see herself as a little girl, and also an old woman. All at once, but visible in only her current form. All thought became like that image — layered in a way that it wasn’t before the ayahuasca had kicked in. Like the world was made up of single letters before, and now it made whole sentences. Her body sank into the rainforest floor as she wept and laughed at the same time. Veronica came to her vision and it was very scary for a little while. Trixie felt like the balloon again, but instead of the sky, she floated up into deep-deep space. As Yeimi had advised, she tried to let it pass over her, like a rain shower on a summer afternoon. It felt a bit like trying to meditate through a category four hurricane, but it did eventually pass. When the next wave came, Veronica was not a part of it, though the residue of her presence in this form would linger, Trixie felt. Maybe forever. The strangest part of her trip occurred near the end. A familiar face appeared. A man. The man’s mouth was moving but no sound came out. At first, he was mouthing the Icaros song Yeimi was chanting nearby. Then it started to change. He was saying something to Trixie. She tried to read his lips, but it was as if the man were speaking another language. His lips and tongue were doing unfamiliar things with one another. Trixie tried to understand but couldn’t. The man’s face got nearer and nearer and nearer until it was all she could see. Then it slowly started receding. Just before the face vanished into oblivion, she recognized the man. Teddy Rousseau from Townsend Pizza House — a small pizza shop in her hometown. This man, whom she’d never spoken to outside of ordering subs, was trying to send her a message. To tell her something about God. And she needed to receive that message. /// Trixie visited her father’s house in Townsend a week after the ceremony. She lay in her old bed, remembering the first time she brought Veronica to her hometown just after they started getting serious. They just drove through on their way to Maine for the weekend. How many shitty teenage hand jobs did you give in this place? Veronica asked. 84, Trixie answered, as quickly as possible. This made Veronica laugh with that sudden and goofy snort. She used to live for that snort. Trixie smiled at the memory and closed her eyes. It was a great trip. Since the ceremony, she’d had an easy time generating some light hallucinatory experiences in her mind. It was as if the ayahuasca had opened a door in her brain that made the images come more freely. An enduring gift of the experience. As she lay, she saw in her mind a giant dark wall. And high up on the wall, way-way over her head was a small hole. Through that hole shone the most beautiful light. Gold and amber and silver. That hole was the God-Hole, through which you could catch a glimpse of the divine. But it was so high up and so small. Trixie believed everyone had a God-hole in their mind. She also believed that Teddy Rousseau’s was bigger and closer to the ground. She believed that Teddy could see through his God-hole. And she needed to find out what it was he saw. Every day after high school in her Senior year, Trixie and her friends would go to Townsend Pizza House and order subs. Trixie always got a small Italian, extra pickles/extra hots. She’d wash it down with a Cherry Coke, belch loudly, then blow her burpy-sub-breath into peoples’ faces to the delight and disgust of her friends. Teddy Rousseau worked there and always made her the small Italian extra pickles/extra hots. He was older, maybe in his late twenties, and had gone to Townsend High school himself. Though she couldn’t remember how it came up, Mrs. Torres once talked about how Teddy was a student of hers that did poorly in her Spanish class. The story concluded with her raising her eyebrows insinuating that if you failed Spanish you would probably have to go work in a sub shop too. The next day, Trixie stood in Townsend Pizza House for the first time in fifteen years looking at a middle-aged Teddy Rousseau. He was bald now and wore an old Patriots jersey covered in flour. Trixie was dumbstruck when she walked through the door. It seemed impossible that he’d still be there after all those years. Unable to speak, she spent a few moments pretending to stare at the menu. Teddy didn’t seem to recognize her. His eyes seemed fixed in a “what do you want” type gaze. She stepped closer to the register. “Hi,” she said. “Can I get a small Italian, extra pickles/extra hots?” Teddy punched some numbers in the register. She was hoping the order might jog his memory. Then they could get down to the business of the divine message he was trying to relay in her trip. But it was important not to spook him, she thought. “Drink?” Teddy asked. Trixie turned and looked at the cooler. All Pepsi products now. She opened the cooler door and grabbed an Aquafina. Teddy rang her up and she handed him her card. She rifled around in her purse for a cash tip. “Sorry no Cherry Coke,” he said, as he pressed a few more buttons on the machine. “You remember me?” she asked, looking up at him enthusiastically. “Yep,” Teddy said. “Wow, I’m so glad you remember. I missed this place,” she said. “Really?” Trixie nodded. Teddy leaned against the counter and waited for her to say something. She’d thought carefully on the drive up about how she might get him to talk. “I’m a writer now,” she said after a few moments. “I was wondering if I might interview you for a book I’m working on?” Teddy frowned and stood up straight. “I’m going across the country writing about small-town pizza shops. Like this one,” she said. Teddy slowly shook his head. “It’ll be easy. Do you have a few minutes?” Teddy stood still and didn’t reply for a moment. He waited for her to continue. “It’s not shitty, I swear. I’m interested in finding out about the lives of people. And I want to start with you, Teddy.” Teddy looked back towards the ovens. “Alright, but only for a few minutes. I got a dozen cheeses cooking for the middle school.” Teddy stepped down from behind the counter and walked into the seating area. Trixie didn’t know that the counter was elevated and had always thought that Teddy was five inches taller than he actually was. They sat at the nearest booth. She pulled out her laptop and opened up a Pages file. “Tell me about how you got started working here?” she asked. Teddy told her about getting the job in high school. And that he’d worked there since then. He told her about Richard Caparelli who owned the pizza shop and how he bought the business from Richard after he was diagnosed with throat cancer. He’d owned the place for the last ten years and now lives just over the border in New Hampshire with his family. He told her all of these things in a few brief sentences, each containing no more than 6 or 7 words. Trixie felt closer to him now. She loved that he owned the pizza shop and had a family. It felt good to have him humanized after all these years of Teddy being some kind of low-wage neanderthal in her memory. She felt ashamed of how she’d held him there for all those years. From that point onward, Trixie decided that she would always try to find everyone’s full humanity instead of truncating them into stunted caricatures. At least she would try to. They’d been talking for five minutes or so when Trixie noticed Teddy starting to get fidgety. He would have to finish the pizzas for the middle school soon. Her window of opportunity was closing. “What do you think happens after you die?” she asked. Teddy sat up straight. He looked at Trixie’s computer and then back at her. “Serious?” he asked. She nodded and leaned in. Teddy relaxed and looked directly into her eyes, which he’d been largely avoiding since the start of the interview. It was coming, she thought. “Nothing,” he said. Trixie cocked her head and backed away slightly. “What do you mean ‘nothing?’ Like, Nothing?” Teddy nodded and remained silent. “Really?” He continued to nod and folded his arms over his chest. “Can you elaborate on that a little?” He took a deep breath and looked over Trixie’s shoulder to the store windows. “This is all a big mistake,” he said, waving his hand across the restaurant. The lighting seemed to increase a half a lumen as he spoke. She waited for him to continue. “Humans are a fuck-up. A wrong turn in evolution. We’re not special and when we die, that’s it. The end.” Trixie shook her head a little, trying to process what was being said. It didn’t compute. Not with the vision, not with her beliefs, not with any of it. “You don’t think there’s anything more to this? You think we’re just scrambling along for 80 or 90 years then boom — lights out?” “If we’re lucky.” Teddy let the slightest smile come across his face. It seemed like a betrayal of her vision of him. A cruel trick of some kind. And this enraged Trixie. “I don’t buy it. I don’t buy that at all. It seems so… so egotistical if I’m being honest. Like our human experience is the apex of all consciousness. There has to be something more. Something bigger.” “You believe what you gotta believe. I made my peace with it.” Teddy leaned back and folded his arms – a gesture of finality. Trixie leaned in towards him a little. “You don’t see any light at all?” she asked. A tinge of desperation laced her voice. Teddy got up from the booth and stood at the end of the table. “If you’re asking me, then you probably don’t either,” he said. Trixie felt flushed. Her skin prickled and the little hairs on her arms flared out. “Dude, don’t tell me what I believe,” she said, getting up from the booth herself. “You don’t know anything about what I’ve seen or what I’ve been through.” Teddy laughed and raised his hands. “Okay, okay. There’s a nice little cloud up in the sky, and when we’re all done here, we get to go up and be happy forever and ever,” he said, his voice adopting a fairytale cadence. “Oh, fuck you, man,” Trixie said. Teddy laughed as if she were a silly child and she felt a hot rage take her. She looked over his shoulder and into the prep area for Townsend Pizza House. In an instant, she darted past Teddy, beneath the flip-top counter, and made her way into the kitchen area. “What the fuck are you doing?” Teddy asked, flipping up the countertop and following her. Trixie looked to the right and saw the sandwich prep table. All of the meats and cheeses were wrapped up in cellophane. She grabbed a package of mortadella and ripped open the plastic. “This is it, right Teddy? Little pieces of meat?” She started to lob slices of the mortadella at Teddy, who deflected as best he could. The meat slices landed against his raised forearm, slapping against his skin. “What the fuck is wrong with you,” Teddy said, trying to move towards her. Trixie grabbed fistfuls of turkey and bologna and salami, hurling all of it at Teddy as he made his way closer. “What do you know, anyway? Meat slinger… Meat man,” said Trixie. She reached down into a vat of hot pepper relish and started pitching handfuls at Teddy and all over his restaurant. A glob exploded against his cheek, and some got into his left eye. He winced then lunged forward, grabbing Trixie with both of his arms. He restrained her in a bear hug and lifted her up off the floor. Trixie screamed and laughed as he carried her out of his kitchen area and out to the sidewalk. He dropped her on the ground outside and slammed the door shut. “Psycho-bitch,” he shouted from behind the glass windows, rubbing the hot pepper relish from his eye with the collar of his Patriots jersey. Trixie sat on the sidewalk and laughed until she started to cry a little. She still felt the little hairs on her arm standing up. Eventually, she calmed down. Five minutes later a minivan pulled up out front. A middle-aged man wearing a turquoise windbreaker got out and stopped in front of her. His face scrunched in helpless confusion. “From the middle school?” Trixie asked, still sitting on the sidewalk where she’d been dropped — her hand sticky from the hot pepper relish. The man nodded. “It’ll be right up,” she said. Teddy opened the door and looked down at Trixie. He reached his arm out and dropped her laptop bag next to her on the sidewalk. “Just another couple minutes,” Teddy said to the man from the middle school. He opened the door and motioned for him to come inside. She heard Teddy explain to the man from the middle school what had just happened in his restaurant. He sounded small and angry. Trixie closed her eyes and in her mind saw the God-Hole again. She saw the beautiful light coming from the other side of the giant dark wall. She imagined floating up-up-up and looking into her God-Hole. Going through it. She imagined the other side of the wall and it looked a lot like that beautiful summer day in Maine with Veronica. Riding around trying to find the next beautiful place to stop and take some Polaroids. On this side of the wall, the God-Hole was just a black dot in the sky. A point of Darkness, distant and unremarkable. Some people look up at the wall, and this was what they see, she thought. “That is not what I see,” she told herself. Dave McNamara is a writer and community college staff member living in coastal North Carolina. His fiction has been published in Maudlin House, Whiskey Tit Journal, Nonconformist Magazine, and elsewhere. His satire has appeared in the Hard Times and McSweeney's Internet Tendency. Prior to his work in higher education, he spent over 15 years as a live sound engineer for concert venues and touring punk bands.

Spent Sunday morning fucking a hot guy and we were exhausted by sex and uppers and all-night drinking, and he said, ‘what’ll we do?’ so we mooched to the ABC to see Groundhog Day, just released, and what I recall is not the film, but a guy called Dan from work, sitting alone on the front row and me thinking, awww, poor Dan, all alone like that, not knowing that within days I’d be a curled furry ball in a tree stump of, it’s not you, it’s me and all that schtick I’ve heard a gazillion times, again and again, like time-looping Bill Murray looming huge and ass-holey in front of Dan’s blue-lit face, right there on the first row – I mean, why sit so close to the screen? Basic premise is that dead-pan Bill, beyond the initial confusion, sardonicises his way into a reckless hedonism of one-night stands and eat-drink to excess, because time’s standing still with no consequence, so you can take a shot at banging Andi MacDowell night after night, you can take that slap in the face again and again and then some, because even if at first you don’t succeed, you’ve got forever for her to think you a through and through jerk, until you spiral into a depression whereby you know all the answers on Double Jeopardy, but repeatedly fail at ending your static, meaningless life. You always wake up. And it’s always the same. I discuss this with Dan over curly fries in the work canteen. He’s a film buff, bookish too, and really, okay; kind of wry, despite splinter-bitten nails and a glancing away when I meet his eyes. Brown eyes. We go on a date but Dan’s tee-total. His pockets rattle pills but he doesn’t share, and he claims he can’t dance, so we walk through the snow of our own Punxatawnie, and I teach him some steps to a faraway sax as the slow stars waltz overhead. I lean in to kiss, but Dan pulls back. He doesn’t have long. Months, a few years. He can’t say. In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s journey out of fuckwittedness manifests itself in carving angels from ice and playing bluesy piano in a late-night bar. He can catch an ingrate kid falling from a tree, but learns that no amount of hot soup and CPR can save a man destined to die. I taught Dan that if you sit further back from the screen, you don’t have to feel so small. We went back to the future, busted ghosts, got ourselves a bigger boat over popcorn, and he learned how to tango, but no amount of hot soup and CPR… We only ever had today. It seems a while to the thaw. I’m frozen in my burrow and there’s a chutzpah of small-town folk at my door, saying Are you okay? Not yet. I need to recall brown eyes, a wry smile, and when I’m done watching reruns of Groundhog, I might go outside. Might meet myself moving forward. Tomorrow, maybe. Mairead Robinson writes and teaches in the South West, UK. Her recent work has been placed in the Bath FFA and Shortlisted for Bridport, and other stories can be found in The Molotov Cocktail, Voidspace, Ellipsis Zine, Free Flash Fiction, Crow and Cross Keys, and other groovy places. When not writing, she is talking about writing to her dog, and anyone else who'll listen.

Residual feelings The day before Eden ended, she spent mostly staring out of windows, observing stretch marks scar the sky, trees hunker down in dusky, unconvinced gravel, a litter of leaves grow in the stubble of their shade. You had to delve deep for moisture here, or hope to extract it from the damp. Other Eves paraded their Adams in tow, perfecting obliviousness to termites working just under the bark. She would wish them better luck, leave them furniture that couldn’t fit: chewed chairs, wardrobes, their doors hanging slack, shrugging even against that memory-testing, first spurt of Ikea enthusiasm; kitchen units contriving to belong better in a holiday flat in Benidorm than her best attempt at a proper home—background to arguments played out before imaginary juries, children yawning from sheer discomfort. Little to divide, a lot to abandon, this Eden was an empty tube of toothpaste, disconcerting only because, through the habit of squeezing, there had always seemed to be that little bit more, something residual. A terrier in his Eden Workmen came. He watched them measure out grass with abstract, hairy curiosity. Their leader stretched his body around imaginary trunks to demonstrate how six, maybe seven could fit, parked sensibly. The others sloped, semi-convinced. This was a job to do so that other jobs could get done — covering contingencies. Then they bedded the lawn with a carpet of tar. He waited for the last ribbed wheel to labour away for a first, formal sniff. Caustic, simian trickery, this — he nosed out quickly where corners curled, revealing suppressed life: offered it a preliminary scratch. Not easy, but with that canine certainty that the surface is something to be worked through, mere clusters of matter clinging together, desperate bonds begging to be simplified: specific, obdurate, volatile, he sensed tiny spaces cede into gaps, snuffed turgid fibres relaxing, webbing the fabric of a wound; he would worry at its scab, scent where its ridges peeled away from flesh, tenuous tissues unravelling into reluctant filaments, blending nails into hair. By the time the police arrived, unhitched themselves from official upholstery with uniformed parsimony, the prophet was up to his wrists in truth.

I see her in my bed, her body a few inches away from mine. Almost as tall as me, but not quite yet. She is fast asleep. Hands clasped under her face, turned towards me, tucked under a two-layered cocoon of warm brown flannel. A pause. A beat. And a rush of relief. Not a toddler that kept me on my toes the whole day. A battery-operated machine that went amma amma all day. A tween who can get her own water. Eyes closed, lips slightly apart, breathing rhythmically, A little warm, and deep in sleep. I see her in my bed, Where I can reach out and touch her left eyelid which twitches ever so slightly under the weight of childhood dreams. I see her in my bed, where I know her exact coordinates in this world. If there was to be a fire or a gunman or a pandemic, she would be right next to me for me to protect. I see her in my bed. A stillness and silence fills the room. Only the shield of our shared breaths, far away from chaos. I see her in my bed. I don’t have to worry about fires and floods and lightning and choking and intruders and perverts and aliens and earthquakes and tsunamis and volcanoes and bombs and roofs caving in. I see her in my bed. I can be less vigilant. I can sleep soundly, — at least for tonight. Shikha Valsalan grew up in Dubai and India and currently lives in Atlanta, USA. She works as a digital product manager in her day job and writes in her free time.

Inspired by the painting Beklemek (meaning: to wait), by Müfide Kadri (Turkey), 1890-1912 we feel it on our skin / the silvery powder beneath our bare feet / we sit across a tiny secluded strip of beach, further afield from prying eyes / the tall coniferous canopy offering much-needed shade / it’s like walking on silky blankets of spongy moss / the rock formation protruding through the iridescent dunes of sand / we breathe the poignant air enriched with the smell of salt as the tide kisses the shore / observing the rollers of aquamarine showing off their force / enjoying the quiet in our favourite sequestered nook / Remember when I first caught glimpses of you!? / all kitted out in a SCUBA gear unit / emerging from the depths of this Neptunian world you admire so much / our eyes briefly met and you smiled / the mystical smile of contentment with life / you taught me to love the sea / the terrifying power of it / even when it took you away from me / and how do I not / it’s where I feel closest to you / Nautilus you bequeathed to me, ohh… the beautiful pearly shell you found half buried in this sheltered alcove I call by your name now / it helps me on the days like these / on the days when memories of you are too overwhelming to bear / when sounds of the ocean grow too familiar to tolerate / the weight of their reign too heavy to carry / when saline air burns cilia at the back of my nose… and once silky sand grains wedge themselves in the creases of my skin / an aide-mémoire to the love once lived / when all my senses scream for you / I put Nautilus up to my ear and the world gets quiet… shhh…. just the gentle hum of your breath caressing my soul / and I feel at peace / if only for a minuscule moment in time Andrea Damic, born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, lives and works in Sydney, Australia. She’s an amateur photographer and author of prose and poetry. She writes at night when everyone is asleep; when she lacks words to express herself, she uses photography to speak for her. Her literary art appears or is forthcoming in Roi Fainéant Press, The Ekphrastic Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Sky Island Journal, The Dribble Drabble Review, Five on the Fifth, and elsewhere. She spends many an hour fiddling around with her website damicandrea.wordpress.com. You can also find her on X @DamicAndrea, Instagram @damicandrea and FB @AndreaDamic

Decades later they’re still coming. Disaster tourists, la-di-da. Please, sir, may I have your gloves? Trade you for a picture with my crystallized sister. They love it when you shiver and beg. Makes them feel like they’re winning. I’ve been on the hunt since I turned twelve. That was ninety-eight days ago. It’s taking so long because they’re too well-fed. Don’t forget I have to carry my tourist all the way home myself. Can’t exactly become a man if someone’s holding my hand. The sky’s a smudge of melancholy. The cold’s a bowl of revenge. That hasn’t stopped the tourists, though, who roam through the market, louder than ever. God forbid a second elapses where nobody says or buys a thing. Suddenly, I see him: The One That I’ve Been Looking For. He’s sipping on a slushie at a neighboring kiosk, a middle-aged guy with gunmetal hair, studying trinkets fashioned from bone. His gloves are off and his coat’s undone, as if to say the weather’s no biggie, what is all the fuss about? The ignorance. The disrespect. That unzipped fucking coat. I bet he laughed when the blizzards hit, when half the world froze over. Now he’s here on holiday, watching us starve at favorable rates. A pale young girl, about my age, shuffles into view. You can tell she was pretty once, before the frostbite claimed her ears. The Unzipped Prick looks up from his slushie and offers the girl a wink. Not money or food or a sense of worth. A brazen wink. A flutter of lashes. Flirting like a dirty old butterfly. I make for him like chaos theory, daddy’s knife hot in my hand, ready to plunge into manhood. Sonny Rane lives in Prague. You can find him at the corner of Lightness and Unbearable, or leave him a message at sonnyrane.com.

If I ever have a wife, there’s no way I’ll buy another hunting jacket over fixing the leaky toilet and the broken backdoor lock and if I have a family, I won’t drag them from one dirty rental in Jacksonville to another when the rent is late because I spent my paycheck at the dog track and on handles of Jim Beam and if I have kids, I’ll go to their band concerts, Cub Scout derbies, and high school graduations, not just football games and the annual Rod ‘n Reel competition and I’ll make sure my kids have more than one dirty pair of jeans to wear to school instead of buying another fishing rod and I’ll never criticize my kids for getting a “C” in Biology when they tried their best and if I have a kid who says he wants to be an accountant, I won’t tell him to talk to Archie the CPA nextdoor while never looking up from the Jacksonville Independent and if I have a son who says he is moving to California for a different life, I won’t tell him that’s a stupid idea and to be happy with a job at the local aluminum foil factory and if I am suffering from PTSD, I’ll remain at the hospital and attend every group therapy session and try every treatment because my family loves me despite my flaws and today here I am sitting in this room drinking shitty coffee in rehab for the fifth time because I have no self-control and when I make a promise I find a way to sabotage myself and I wonder where I learned this, but I will kick this beast because I know it’s what I gotta do. Jeff Harvey lives in San Diego and grows avocados and lemons.

Seventh-Inning Stretch Horn-rimmed glasses and pants pressed free of creases. My arms around your middle, chin cradled by your shoulder. I am too fond of you. Our image in the mirror. My nudity. How you spit. That frisson of control. And Don’t you dare stain my pants. I’d crease myself down the middle if you wanted. Wear myself inside out. You’re late for work, but I kiss you; consider cigarettes. I’ve never smoked in my life. Gin my vice, though you drink vermouth to honor your dad. I dance with myself and hope you’re as fond of me. There are many mirrors, and I’m only in my underwear. I’m too thin, too flabby, too caught up in our dishwater. Because it’s ours. Our apartment one floor above the Polish man who sells vacuums. Spring has come to Earth with its light. Flowers and loose ties. I don’t know the first thing about baseball. Home Run Peanut dust and bent scorecards. Pencils worn to nubs. You lean forward, expectant. And who wears a dress shirt to a baseball game? Linen chinos. God. My dad would die first. But I love it. How the blue of the sky reflects in your eyes. The crack of the bat like a dream landing on the upper deck. I lean into you. You talk about RBIs and batting averages. Shifts and the pitch clock. I eat a hotdog. Nod. Make sure my mustard falls away from you, onto my jeans. And that is what love is, I think: the windup, the pitch, the swing and every lingering moment of flight. Spring Ball You’re watching the Yankees on TV, and You do remember my brother is a diehard Mets fan, right? You laugh and pull me onto the couch. I pretend I’m aggrieved: Traitor! It’s April, raining outside, and our lasagna is in the oven. Mom’s recipe. No béchamel, but mozzarella. Crushed meatballs between the layers. The scent brings me home. Nostalgia, like how you used to take the train from Connecticut to see the Yankees with your dad before the stroke. The two of you smiling at a disposable camera. The grainy photos we still keep in a shoebox labeled < 1999. Your tiny face unknots my heart. You smile like he smiled. The oven timer dings. I don’t want to move from your side. Though the whole apartment smells of tomatoes. I kiss your cheek, relish the rough stubble beneath my lips, and the Yankees bring in a run. What my brother doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Jared Povanda is a writer, poet, and editor from New York. He doesn't know much about baseball, but he thought writing these poems would be a good idea anyway.

milo lathers me in faux bravery as if it won’t flake from my epidermis the moment they turn their head. for them, i will wad up my dread and swallow it dry. even if exploring these derelict buildings might get us arrested. lost. injured, even. this multi-story warehouse, gutted and stripped of all functional elements, perches alon in a private lot. milo and i do a quick perimeter sweep before advancing upwards, seeking higher ground to scope out our industrial playground. my fingers and palms blister from groping rusted ladders and crevices in the walls. chunks of graffitied concrete break loose and crumble in my grip—rotting teeth falling off the gums. navigating feeble structures is challenging under white sheets, but milo insists we trade our identities for ghosts. because spirits get away with anything, milo reasons. because everyone’s in costumes this time of year. because you go along with anything i say, frankie, you ass-kisser. when milo says that last part, i vanish a little. to sell the act, maybe. our ascent brings us to an open floor overlooking the stories below. milo snaps film photos of the view. of me—ghost-imposter plunged in sunset hues. of themself grinning under that white sheet of theirs. tucking the camera away in its case, milo turns to face me. race you to the other end, frankie, they propose. loser has to walk home. i regard the boarded-up holes in the cement. although apprehension creeps up my throat, i accept milo’s challenge. anything to impress them. to prove myself worthy of their company. milo counts down from five and bursts into a sprint, flat-soled sneakers slapping the concrete. i take off after them, holding a hand to my head to keep my sheet in place. we dodge low-hanging wires and intruding foliage. weave around corners and beams. leap over gaping cavities unintended for parkour endeavors. just as i make up the distance between us, a board of rotting wood caves in under my weight and i fall through. out of reflex, my arms shoot out and catch me in time before crashing to the floor below. i kick open air, gasping, squirming for stability. although my eyeholes aren’t aligned, i notice milo’s figure disappearing around the corner. it takes scraped skin and all of my strength to pull myself out of there alone. milo isn’t fazed by the spots of red seeping through my white fabric. once i limp to their improvised finish line, they declare me loser and present our next obstacle. a flat slab of metal closes the gap between stable surfaces—a makeshift bridge. my pulse still thrashes through my temples. i shake my head, but milo trusts infrastructure over warning. they aren’t afraid of anything. maybe that’s why i hate them. why i adore them. the material warps to their weight, creaking, creaking. i hold my breath until their shoe touch solid concrete. then it’s my turn. fear reduces me to mere particles. more ghost than person. i swear i float across that stretch of risk. once reunited, milo sweeps a fabric-draped arm across my chest. someone’s here. cops? i mouth, which is essentially useless with covered lips. we strain our ears for soles crunching gravel beyond our own strained breathing. the sheet ghost beside me is mannequin-rigid. those black-hole eyes fixate on overgrown vegetation below. i catch a flick of their hand: crouch. we duck behind a column and face one another, knees touching. listen, frankie, milo whispers, barely audible above hard consonants. you stay here while i find another way out of here. whatever you do, don’t leave this spot. i’ll come back for you. i trust you. sinking to all fours, milo crawls across the bridge, creaking, creaking, and descends from my line of view. i wait. a draft seeps through shattered windows and curls around my ankles. light footsteps echo through the property, either milo’s or the stranger’s. then nothing but evening birdsong. crickets. absence. the fabric around my lips dampens from open-mouth exhales. i blot at my wounds, wincing at the post-adrenaline sting. curling onto my side accentuates my heartbeat thrumming against damp concrete. i’ll come back for you. will you, milo? shadows bleed around the corner. eventually, my scrapes lose their painful tingle. my legs fall asleep. then my arms. all somatic sensations wane to static, transcending to the spirit realm. just as i pronounce myself forgotten, solid footsteps stir me back into relevance. i jolt upright and reel from the black spots hijacking my vision. someone’s crossing the bridge. fatigued metal moans under their weight, creaking, creaking. i clench my jaw, waiting for some telltale sign to recognize. milo’s teasing chuckle. an officer’s radio signal. anything. what i get instead is a crash—our trusted structure splitting. a shriek. a wet, crunching thud below. i leap to my feet and scream out to my visitor. the nauseating silence that follows is a ghost in itself. Bethany Cutkomp is a writer from St. Louis, Missouri. She enjoys catching chaotic vibes and bees with her bare hands. Her work appears in or will appear in Alternative Milk Magazine, Hearth & Coffin, Wireworm Magazine, Exposed Bone, The Hooghly Review, Bullshit Lit, and more. Find her on social media at @bdcutkomp.