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The bookbag is a ruse, makes me look competent like I know where I’m going or what I’m doing. I don’t think anyone suspects I’m moving around with contraband: a stolen bundle of bed sheets that used to be white. By dawn, they were blotchy—red, yellow, orange—splotched pell-mell like a 500-thread Pollock with crusty bits of half-digested who-knows-what that was in my stomach a few hours ago. At least I missed the pillows. Thank God for that marching band that passed by at six in the morning. It was the only thing to muffle my retching. I need a laundromat. Slip in, sort these sheets out, and get them back on my bed before their owner finds out. If confronted, I’ll use one of those marketing words, like ‘festive,’ to describe them. They have a pop to them. Against a blank canvas, their new colors are vibrant, like the Hogueras I’ve come to watch—or squint at, given my current state. I should be much more upbeat, it’s just that a four-day festival to commemorate the single longest day of the year seems gratuitous. It’s a miracle this festival even exists. There was a time when all of this was illegal here. When setting off fireworks or lighting bonfires would get you fined. But these days, money talks—tourism has seen to that. Burning things in the street, it seems, makes tourists burn through money—laundromat coins included. All that said, the only thing not burning is my desire to be out and about. My head feels like a Rube Goldberg machine and this mid-afternoon sun needs to take a few steps back. Festival or not, I don’t need any reminders of how long this day is going to be. I start on Avenida Alfonso el Sabio. I figure it’s as good a place as any to begin, plus its proximity to my flat makes things easier. It’s a yawning avenue that bisects Alicante hamburger-style, separating the touristy center to the south from the university and residential areas in the north. Lined with shops and department stores, it’s the main artery running through the Mercado Central area where I’m staying. Today it’s a zoo. Stores are closed in honor of the festivities, and the street is almost entirely blocked off. Yesterday was worse. A large stretch was transformed into a makeshift catwalk, either side lined with a phalanx of black and white plastic chairs from which spectators watched parading orchestras and troupes of minueting dancers pay homage to the region’s folklore. Today, pedestrian traffic is still at a standstill. Every corner from here to Plaza Luceros, a posh roundabout and popular meeting place replete with fountains, statues, and palms, is a morass of idling humans. Shortly, there will be a mascletá (mah-skleh-ta), a series of rhythmic explosions that crescendo in force, climaxing in a bone-rattling boom. I just can’t right now. In 12 hours, this place will look like a post-skirmish conflict zone. The remains of pyres will smolder and cloudy trails of water and ash will slake an otherwise parched street. Here and there, firemen will stand by—absent-mindedly pointing hoses in the direction of embers—while tractors scoop up small piles of debris. The pop of an occasional firework a few hundred meters from where I’m standing will feel stale, a callback to four days of festivities that are fizzling out like the fireworks that marked them. For now, I don’t like my odds of getting through this crowd. I think about turning back when I spot what looks like an opening. I swim for it, ducking onto Carrer Navas. Off-streets like this one are empty, a welcome respite when it gets too people-y. Others are pocked with groups clustered outside of taverns and cervecerías. They chat and sip beer, occasionally letting out the odd “jolín!” or “madremía!”—those exclamations Spaniards love to blurt when expressing surprise among raconteuring friends. In extreme cases, streets stop being streets altogether. Those that verge on being too narrow for motorist traffic under normal circumstances morph during the holiday season—the gaunt Calle Periodista Pirula Arderius, for example—transformed into a series of street-side patio tables where parties of two and three sip aperitifs and larger groups divvy up pitchers of tinto de verano. Cloistered between five-to-six-story apartment buildings on either side, it’s a shaded pedestrian street sheltered from the late afternoon sun. It’s exactly what I need. I crane my neck at each intersection, looking down either end of whatever street runs perpendicular for signs of a laundromat. I’d rather be among those seated. What I wouldn’t give for a little hair of the dog to wash away the cobwebs from last night instead of having to rinse the remnants of this morning. I don’t know if they’d even seat me in my state—wan and sweat-drenched. I feel like a fish out of water, though that’s probably just the dehydration talking. Bleary-eyed, I switch to sonar. The corner of San Illdefonso and Carrer Castaños is an auditory estuary. Glasses clink, and chatter normally no more than a low murmur, swells to a sharp roar. Somewhere nearby, fireworks sound with metronomic frequency, a far cry from a mascletá. They don’t pop, it’s more like a cough, clearing the phlegm of last night’s debauchery. Later on, just a few blocks down, they’ll be more resounding. A lit fuse—seemingly innocuous—triggering a round of crackling, rapid-fire like a cloudburst on a tin roof. There will be a pause, an intermission of near-nothingness save for the fizz of sparklers and the arhythmic clap of a few fireworks behind it. In the moment, it will feel like a tease, but in retrospect, it will probably have been just the pause I needed to watch myself burn. A few blocks west, Carrer del Teatro spits me out at Placa de la Muntanyeta, a staging area for all things festive—nativity scenes, Christmas lights, all that jazz. As an exchange student, I’d come here in the winter to gawk. In late June, it becomes a public gallery of award-winning ninots (knee-notes), doll-like papier mache effigies, the very same that’ll be burned later on. Aesthetically, they’re somewhere between Pixar and Candy Crush. Svelte, ruddy-faced Victorian characters in waistcoats and crinoline dresses, a portly family of four frolicking at the beach, ignorant of the havoc they’re wreaking on its ecosystem. It’s this, rather than the art alone, that draws people in. Sardonic social commentary just playful enough to avoid offense. In a way, the subject matter is immaterial, just a pasquinade destined to be destroyed. Still, it offers a window into how Spaniards see themselves, or perhaps how they wish to be seen. Plastered on the faces of the ninots is a certain brightness—an unwillingness to take things too seriously; a non-negotiable proviso in their social contract: life will be enjoyed. I used to think they were just lazy. *** I was, for all intents and purposes, still a kid the first time I came here, probably more scared than I was willing to admit. My worldview was insular, I thought I had everything I needed back home. I only went abroad because it’s what my friends were doing. I didn’t want to be left behind. My language ability was limited to words and phrases used less than you’d think in real life, and I lived with a 70-year-old Argentinian woman who spoke less English than I spoke Spanish. Operating hours made no sense. A three-hour closure in the middle of the day to eat and take a nap seemed like something gleaned from a focus group of 7-year-olds. Not sitting down to dinner until ten each night felt like fasting. The magic of abruptly being able to drink legally fizzled almost instantly when I realized that no one around me was doing so to get fucked up. What I wanted, like so many Americans the first time they go abroad, was the comfort and convenience of the United States, just along the shores of the Mediterranean. At least half of what got me through that adaptation period were those around me. I was lucky to have as crutches friends and a girlfriend that were locals. When you get to see a place through the eyes of someone who knows it well, it gives you a different appreciation for it—makes you hungry for access to the things and places off limits to outsiders. The other half of the equation was probably more existential. I didn’t want to look back on my time abroad, whatever its duration, thinking I hadn’t made the most of it. That meant forcing myself to watch hours of electoral debates I barely understood, trying to figure out who PP and PSOE were and what they wanted—turning a blind eye to Obama’s upcoming title defense. It meant getting acquainted with Pedro Almodovár—Tacones Lejanos, Volver, Mujeres al Borde—instead of cozying up to Seinfeld or  The Office after a rough day. I’d tell you it meant growing to like David Bisbal, but not all cultural novelties stick. But it did mean egg tortilla sandwiches instead of burgers, 2-euro Don Simon instead of Rubinoff, and a handful of pilgrimages to Estadio Mestalla to watch Valencia play. Being forced to change the way you live, the way you speak, the way you think about things changes you. In a semester, I went from being bolted to the idea of job security and never wanting to leave the States to craving discomfort, eschewing whatever felt safe, and yearning to get out and never come back. All that cultural novelty became a drug—living abroad, an ongoing bender—fixes coming in under-the-table corporate stints in Asia, then Latin America. In the early days, after a stretch spent working in Korea, I succumbed to pressure from family, friends, and interested employers—I figured America and I could work things out. I spent nine months living in my parents’ house, getting ghosted by the HR reps who encouraged me to come back for interviews, and working a temp job for which I was overqualified. Somehow, I still managed to get fired. Going from a world of opportunities to seemingly none will fuck with you. But I think that on a deeper level, trying to reprogram yourself to a way of being that no longer suits you, especially after going to such great lengths to adopt something new, is usually too much to ask. To paraphrase from The Shawshank Redemption, you come to depend on a new set of walls; new surroundings. It’s cultural institutionalization. I weighed suicide in those few months more than I have in the near-decade since, convinced that my moment had gone and that the best was behind me. My strength came from letting go—realizing I’d been trying to keep up in a race not meant for me. When I finally got out, when I gave up on the American dream, I ran. It’s funny, in retrospect, that everything I’ve done since then has felt like one long sprint—maybe toward the life I wanted or perhaps, away from the one I didn’t. There’s an instinct to Monday-morning quarterback those choices, sort of an existential accounting exercise. In each moment, each leg of whatever this race is, things that now seem like steep sacrifices just felt like the cost of doing business. I think that at the time, in the face of so much novelty, I thought more about what I stood to gain than whatever I might lose. So, for all my gallivanting and global experience, what I also accrued were more missed family gatherings than I can remember; a turned-down six-figure offer when I was 25; and the abrupt ending of a handful of promising relationships, one of which I tell myself to this day would have ended up in a proposal. All of those were my choices, one self-inflicted wound after another. But the toll that took on friendships has been the toughest. I've systematically watched any remnants of meaningful social life evaporate, I lost touch with a friend I’d had since I was four when it became clear I wasn’t coming back to the States, and each time I moved—from Korea, from Malaysia, from Colombia, and from Spain—I went through the repeated dance of saying goodbye to some of the most amazing people I've ever met, a minuet I learned when I left America. Walking away from that involves a kind of purging because though you tell yourself you'll stay in touch, you're forced to rid yourself of the coziness that being there physically ensconces you in—knowing you can meet for drinks or dinner, or whatever at the drop of a hat. The flip side is that wherever you end up isn’t a like-for-like swap. In bouncing around, you never fully let one culture, or group of friends, or set of sensibilities replace another. You just pick up pieces, constantly forging new identities with the parts. It’s a great way to make yourself adaptable; impervious to change. You appreciate the present in ways you never did before, observing your surroundings through a lens that’s removed, non-judgmental. But you never feel at home. Your social skills suffer, largely because of all of the walls you’ve put up in expectation of friendships and relationships ending abruptly, and you question your values and allegiances, having seen things from both sides. You become whatever the adult version is of a third-culture kid. For whatever little time I’m in the States these days, I’m not me, not really. I’m a version of myself that I think is most compatible with the people I’m around.  A sort of pastiche of what I maybe would have become had I stayed; a sardonic satire on the way I see American culture. When I leave, I burn it to the ground, just like I do wherever else in the world I end up. I envy everyone I know that gets to be themselves without giving a thought to cultural faux pax because they don’t know any other way to be. They don’t need to wander around trying to avoid suspicion by rinsing the remnants of whatever they just purged. Maybe they don’t need to purge at all. Time has a funny way of leaping forward in Spain, it’s always later than it seems. Maybe that’s why I didn’t wake up til late afternoon, or wash my sheets til night, or find myself back in this city for a decade. In the morning, when this is over, when the embers have died out, I’ll leave—the city and this version of myself—again. Sooner or later, I always do. Running towards the life I want, or away. I’ll say goodbye to those people I haven’t seen in years, each of us stumbling through some version of “we should do this more often,” knowing we can’t, and won’t. Then, as our paths diverge and I hand back the keys, I’ll sneak a final glance before they shut the door—a peak at where their life took them, where mine might’ve taken me. Familiarity. Coziness. Stability. Things I used to associate with complacency—laziness—all those years ago. *** On the verge of giving up, I find what I spent all afternoon looking for just a few blocks north of where my search began. That’s the kind of day it’s been. It’s gotten dark. There’s barely enough time to get everything washed and dried before the fireworks start. Somehow, this day hasn’t been long enough. Around two in the morning, I find myself leaning against a light post across the street from a kebab shop, struggling to keep my eyes open. Thousands of spectators watch firemen blast gushing streams near a ninot engulfed in flames. I have a front-row seat to my own immolation. In the fire, I see version whatever of me that I'll torch when I leave, the same ritual of naive hope that I’ll someday be flame-resistant, that I won’t need to pick up the recycled bits smoldering in ash to forge something new. But if I’m honest, whatever it is—however I wish to be seen—is just a ruse. It makes it look like I know where I'm going or what I'm doing. Note from the author: In Hogueras, I reckon with ghosts from my past and the specters they created. I use a POV approach to narration to connect the things I see while walking through a city I once called home during its peak holiday season over a decade later. In reflecting, I examine how the things we expect to be of little consequence often end up being the most formative, and meander to the sobering realization that the pursuit of fulfillment often leaves us empty.

He turned into the lot and parked in the back where the trees offered privacy and he backed in so the view to the building’s entrance was clear. He engaged the emergency brake and cut the motor and he turned to her but said nothing. She looked forward. The entrance doors spread open and a man emerged from the darkness pushing a woman in a wheelchair to a car that was already waiting at the curb. “She looks like hell,” she said. “She’s alive.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and ran her hands through her hair and pulled a band from her wrist and pulled her hair through the band. She put her head in her hands and slumped forward. Her ribs quivered as if a sob might come or was already there but suppressed but she shot up and exposed her face. Thin tears streaked shallow grooves around her eyes, rounding over her cheeks. She belted out a laugh. “At least this way maybe I get to keep this!” She whipped her ponytail back and forth then stopped to wipe her nose. “They said this is your best chance,” he said. She propped her elbow on the window frame. With her fingertips, she massaged her forehead. The windows were beginning to frost. She made a fist and pressed the side of her hand to the glass then put three dots above the print. “Dog,” she said. She contemplated then added another dot. “There,” she said. “Dog.” She settled against the headrest. The man stiffened. “You’re going to be okay,” he said. “I’ll be with you the whole time.” “Not the whole time.” “I’ll be there when you wake up, is what I mean. I’ll stay with you as long as you need.” She leaned over the center console and shimmied to the backseat. “Come sit with me .” He unbuckled. He climbed into the back. She straddled his legs. “Do you remember the first time I let you touch them?” “Of course,” he said. The words had a different way of coming out now that he was smiling. “I can’t remember if it was the first or second date.” “Excuse me!” she said and she slapped his shoulder. “It was at least the third. We might’ve been dating a month by then. Didn’t even let you do it yet.” “But you let me touch them by the front steps to your apartment,” he said. He slid his hands under her shirt. She jumped. “Sorry,” he said. “They’re freezing.” He cupped his hands to his lips and blew. He rubbed his hands as if washing them at the sink. Then he placed them back under her shirt. “Better,” she said. His hands rose and stopped on her breasts. He paused a moment, gave a light squeeze, then lifted her bra and smiled as they fell out. She reached behind and unclipped the bra herself. She unbuttoned her shirt and opened the front. “Kiss them goodbye,” she said. The pleather flexed beneath them and with it time, when life was young like the seasons, like spring when the world is blooming with hope and color and the sun is there to shine on it all and bring you out of the darkness and help you feel safe and warm but the seasons had changed, the sky was gray and the sun would not warm today. He looked up. Hair clung to her cheeks. He made to move his hands to clear away her hair but she stopped him, pressed his hands to her one last time. “Will this change anything? How you feel?” “Of course not.” “It will,” she said. “Of course it will change everything.” He searched for something to say. She climbed off him and fixed her clothes. “We’ll be all right,” he said. “We’ll get through it.” She reset her ponytail. She put her hand on the doorlatch. Her chest expanded. Her nostril whined.She held her breath and closed her eyes and opened the door. The air was full of sound.

Claire was Chris’s new roommate. Chris was after me to try dating her. Chris and I had been friends for about 12 years by then. We were both veterans of working in the book business. In years past, we’d hustled in various indie book shops, ultimately in management capacities, in the major Northeastern city where we lived. Now, with all the mom-and-pop stores long gone, I was an Assistant Manager at a downtown Barnes & Noble and Chris had an office job with B&N, serving as an assistant to a group of buyers. I’d never met Claire, and when Chris described her look to me, I swore to him I’d never seen her. Or I had and she hadn’t made an impression. He said she knew who I was and that she was interested in me. “She thinks you’re hot. And she likes power pop and bourbon. You two’re probably soul mates. What’re you waiting for?” I wasn’t all that eager to date then. I’d been divorced for around four months, after a two-year separation. Sure, that’s enough time to be ready. But getting over a broken marriage (we’d been wedded for 14 years) is a process of grieving, at least it was for me. The decision to split was mutual and I knew it was the right move for both my ex and me, but there was still a lot of pain to absorb, along with regret and guilt. There were certain albums I loved that I could never listen to anymore, because they were ones she and I especially liked to hear while together. I still couldn’t look at pictures of her pregnant with our daughter without breaking down and sobbing. But I knew I needed to try. I forced myself to get on two dating apps and had been on a handful of dates that were pleasant enough but that didn’t lead to anything lasting. I still had my profiles up, but I rarely took the time to swipe, look at my likes, or respond to any messages I got. One Saturday night, I went to bed before 8:00 because there was nothing in particular that I wanted to do and I was tired of my own thoughts. I’d dropped my daughter with my ex earlier that afternoon and wouldn’t see her again until Wednesday evening. I was off from work both Saturday and Sunday. When I woke up that Sunday, I knew something needed to change. I was fully rested and slurping my second cup of coffee by 5:30 a.m. At around 9:00, I called Chris. “Is your roomy still up for meeting me? I might have time for that today.” “She’s asleep. Like I was before your call. Like any sane person this time on a Sunday. I’ll give her your number and tell her to call you later.” The call came at around 11:20. “Hey hottie!” Her voice was loud and scratchy. “I hafta work from noon to six. I sell overpriced shoes at a ridiculous store in a crappy strip mall. Why don’t you come over at 7? I have the first two Big Star albums on vinyl, the original Ardent ones. They were my dad’s. You hafta bring over some bourbon and some kinda mixer.” Chris sent me a text that read, “I’ll find something to do tonight to give you two the pad to yourselves. Don’t fall in love too hard.” Claire stands around 5’8 (one inch taller than me) and is fair-skinned and willowy. That night, her peroxide blond hair was cut short in a pixie style, and she wore barrettes on either side of her head. She had on oversized, horn-rimmed glasses. When she smiled widely, as she did the second I walked into the apartment, I noticed she was missing a tooth, about two spaces to the left of her front teeth. At 42 (making her six years my junior), she looked like an overaged indie girl, possibly a future bag lady. I thought she was the cutest thing I’d seen in a long while. I can’t recall what Claire and I talked about during the initial part of my visit. We drank glasses of the Wild Turkey and Schweppe’s ginger ale I brought over as Big Star’s #1 Record spun on their turntable. I know I said something about a few of the songs on that album being too sappy for me although I loved most of it, and her telling me about an experience she and two friends recently had panhandling in front of a train station. By the time the second side of the album was on, Claire and I were sprawled across their ratty, thrift shop-purchased living room sofa. The skin on her forearms was coarse and scaly, qualities I’d never come across before on a human. I remember thinking Crocodile Girl and picturing her as a half-human/half-reptile being in some kind of fantasy movie. As Chris Bell cried/sang “Try Again,” I swirled my tongue around the gap in Claire’s mouth where her missing tooth should’ve been. Later, we were naked and Claire got up to replay #1 Record. She put her scaly arms back around my neck and sighed deeply. After Bell sang the words, “I feel like I’m dying” on the album’s opener, Claire asked me, “What do you think the afterlife is?” “Hmm. I don’t have any particular religious beliefs. If you’d asked me before my daughter was born, I would’ve said there won’t be one and that’s how it should be. We’ll just die and that’s that, we won’t go anywhere else and we won’t know or feel anything. But now I want an afterlife. I need there to be one. I’ve seen my daughter suffer. That changed me. Her counselor - she’s been in therapy for three years now, diagnosed with severe depression and acute anxiety - says she feels like she has nothing to offer the world. I know she hurts inside. I need to be with her in a place where she can’t be hurt anymore.” Alex Chilton sang, “It gets so hard in times like now to hold on,” and I asked Claire for her take on what happens after we die. “Do you know about this guy John Lilly? No? Oh, wow. You should. He was a doctor and scientist who did all these far-out experiments with consciousness expansion. Like with dolphins and isolation tanks, sometimes while tripping on Special K. That movie Altered States with William Hurt? That’s based on him. Anyway, I read this interview with him from really late in his life where the interviewer asked him what he thought the afterlife would be. He said he had no idea but he hoped he would be reincarnated with five other people in the brain of a sperm whale. I could go for something like that.” We were quiet for a stretch. Then, when “Watch the Sunrise” played this time through the album, I cried. I didn’t know if it was about my ex-wife, my daughter, or what. Through my tears I said to Claire, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what this is. I’m having a great time with you.” Alex Chilton sang the words, “It’s okay to look outside/your love, it will abide” and Crocodile Girl pulled me closer to her. Brian writes short stories, personal essays, and journalism pieces on various arts. His work has appeared in 33 publications since 2008. He lives in Durham, NC.

Meagan couldn't slam the phone down to disconnect, because it was a cell phone, which was the whole problem with cell phones. She had to settle for flinging it across the room. (Fortunately, it landed on the recliner.) Stupid jerk. It wasn't enough that he didn't give her the job—he had to make an Irish joke while he wasn't giving it to her. Meagan promised herself that she would murder the next person she heard making an Irish joke, no matter who it was. She needed a drink. She'd never asked to be Irish. Maybe she should change her name? Meagan Flaherty was an open invitation to the humor impaired. On her way to the liquor cabinet, she glanced in the mirror and winced. Perhaps if she dyed her hair black? Except she'd still have freckles. She sighed and grabbed the bottle of Jameson's. It didn't take much of the Jameson’s to reduce her to a puddle of resentment. Bigots everywhere—why did everybody look down on the Irish? She'd have gotten that job if she wasn't Irish. Not fair. She didn't know or care anything about Ireland. She'd never been there—even her grandparents had never been there. Her entire Irish legacy was her great-grandmother's box of 'Irish luck', which she hadn't even looked at since she was twelve when grandma died. Mom had nearly thrown it out then, but. . . Mom had always been a little sentimental about the old country. Meagan snorted. She wasn't sentimental. To hell with the old country—she was getting rid of the box. It took some finding, because it was inside another box, underneath her old college textbooks, still unpacked from when she'd moved into the apartment three years ago. Once she had it on the coffee table, she began to wonder. It wasn't an ordinary box but rather a small wooden chest with brass-work. It was obviously old, so maybe it was worth something. It was locked, but great-grandmother had—with classic Irish logic—carefully tied the key onto the box with a piece of string. Inside, she found a jumble of papers: a marriage license, immigration papers, an army discharge (Meagan giggled to see that her great-grandfather, a notorious Anglophobe, had served in the British army), stacks of old letters, and an elaborate Valentine. There were a couple of painted miniatures and a few pieces of jewelry (bracelets, a locket that wouldn't open, and a rather handsome pocket watch), a porcelain teacup (now broken), two pairs of lace gloves, and some unidentifiable bits. And a half-burned candle. Meagan fell back. What possible reason could her great-grandmother have had to save a used candle for a hundred years? Dumb. But her resentment was fading into a warm glow (which surely had nothing to do with the Jameson’s), a glow not lessened by the possibility that the bracelets might be valuable and the watch almost certainly was. Maybe even the miniatures, too—you never knew. So she waved a Bic over the bottom of the candle until it was soft enough to mush down on a coaster and lit it. She poured one last shot of the Jameson's (it had better be her last—her head was already swimming) and raised a toast to dear old great-grandmother Flaherty. "Téigh le Dia!" which was pretty much all the Gaelic she knew, and then added, "Póg mo thóin," which was the rest of the Gaelic she knew, "Whichever." Go with God or kiss my ass. Not a bad choice. She smiled as the candle glowed brighter and brighter, and cocked her head sideways as the flame flared up as bright as a sunset. Lord, she was drunk. Then the candle blazed blinding and went out. She blinked at it. It was out. She turned away, shaking her head as if she could shake off the phosphors exploding inside her dazzled eyes. And there he was. He was definitely Irish. Short. Redheaded. Freckled.Snub-nosed. But basically normal. He was wearing an ordinary pair of dark green cargo pants and a green-on-green camo jacket over a bright green T-shirt. If he hadn't just materialized out of nowhere, she wouldn't have looked at him twice. Except he had. He smiled and bowed and started to talk. She didn't understand a word. It sounded like Gaelic, but since he never said anything about going with God or kissing his ass, she couldn't be sure. She listened for a while, and finally said, "Huh?" He stopped talking. He stood very still, looking at her. Finally he said, "You want me to talk in the English?" His Irish accent was thick and his tone utterly bewildered, as if he had never heard of anything so peculiar as talking in English. "Yeah," she nodded. "Who are you?" After a half second's thought she added, "What'cha doin' here?" Only belatedly did it occur to her that he might be there to rob her or murder her, but as soon as she thought it, she chuckled. What nonsense. This little guy meant no harm to anybody, and even if he did, there was nothing he could do about it. Not big enough. Shorter even than her, maybe, and skinny. Nothing like scary. Sort of cute, actually. He bowed again. "I am Seamus MacCormac Devlin Kerrigan, Esquire, of County Sligo, at your service, dear Miss. May I presume you are the heir of the beauteous Deidre O'Shaughnessy?' He smiled. "As if I needed to ask—you're the very image of her, and that's a fact." She stared at him. He had the greenest eyes she'd ever seen, and she definitely liked him saying she was 'the very image' of somebody 'beauteous'. But nowhere in her whole huge Irish family was there a single O'Shaughnessy, or even a Deirdre. He stared back at her, smiling, clearly waiting for her flash of understanding. Finally, with a puzzled look, he added, "She that married that feckless rogue, Tom Flaherty." "You mean great grandmother Flaherty?" she said, extending a hand. Well, great-grandma must have had a maiden name once, and a first name, too. "I'm Meagan. Seamus, you said?" Poor guy—what an awful name. "What can I do for you?" He smiled. He had a great smile. "More, what can I do for you Miss Meagan—it is 'Miss,' I'm hoping?" She nodded. "For I owe a very great debt to your dear. . . " he paused. "GREAT grandmother, you say? It must have been a very long time." He glanced down as if noticing his outfit for the first time. "The fashion has certainly changed." He didn't sound pleased. At long last, his glance fell on the bottle of Jameson's. "Now that's a most tragical thing to see, a pretty young lady, drinking all by herself. Have you no sweetheart to help you wash away your troubles?" He dropped down on the sofa beside her, picked up the bottle and raised it to his lips. "I don't recollect offering you a drink," she pointed out. He waved a hand airily. "There now, don't you fret about a little slip of manners among family. You'd have remembered in a minute." She was still mulling over why she wasn't afraid of him. Sure, he was a likable guy—she might even consider going out with him if he were taller—but a strange man sneaking into your apartment wasn't usually a good thing. World-class sneaking, too. He'd appeared out of thin air, like. . . But that was too ridiculous even to think about. Still, it was that exact moment when. . . "What would happen if I lit the candle again?" she asked. He turned those green eyes on her, all wide and wounded. "Now, what would you want to be doing that for? It must be the Jameson's talking—for surely you'd never send me off when you've not even made your wish yet." He edged closer to her on the sofa and took her hand in both of his. "Why don't you tell me what's got you weeping into your whisky and let me fix it for you?" "I'm not weeping!" He patted her hand. "Is it some lout of a man? I'll crack his skull into little bits for you. Aye, and spit on the little bits, too." "No, no, nothing like that. But I've been out of work for nearly a year now, my savings are all gone and I don't know how I'm going to pay the rent. And then that stupid Human Resources Manager had the nerve to make an Irish joke." By the time she'd finished saying it, she was weeping, so she put her head on his shoulder and sobbed. "Can you really give me a wish?" Silly as the suggestion was, she found herself looking up imploringly, somehow still hoping, even though it was sheer nonsense. He rolled his eyes. "Is that all you're needing? Money?" He lifted a hand—but happened to leave the other arm around her shoulders—and snapped his fingers. A flame leapt up from the wick of the snuffed candle. "There you go, little darling." She stared at the burning candle in so much confusion that she failed to notice that he had called her 'darling'. "I thought you said we shouldn't light the candle again." "No," he answered. "I said YOU shouldn't light it again." He smiled at her, clearly waiting for her to see the obvious. Eventually he sighed. "Ach, it's a good thing you've got me to protect you from them that would take advantage of your ignorance. As long as it's me lighting the candle, I'm opening the door, don't you know? But if you was to light it, you'd be closing the door." She turned and looked at the front door, but he hadn't opened that. It was closed, locked even. "What door?" He stared at her "You know. The door." She didn't know. He shrugged. "So, you think that'll be enough?" He waved a hand, and there, sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table, was a pot of gold. Just like in the old stories. Her mouth fell open. It had to be fake, some kind of trick, but she still reached down to look. Nothing happened when she lifted. It wasn't a big pot, not much more than a quart. She lifted again, with more force. Thirty-five or forty pounds, at the very least. She scooped up a handful of coins. They were all different sizes, with unfamiliar portraits and foreign inscriptions, some worn thin and others crisply etched, but all lustrous and gleaming in the candlelight. They couldn't possibly be real, but the weight of them slipping through her fingers was intoxicating. "How. . .?" she breathed, turning to Seamus, and his eyes glowed brighter than the gold, warming her heart and compelling her to smile. "Why don't you have another drink, Sam? I'll get you a glass." He smiled back, a smile that was almost magical. "I'd rather share yours, Meg." # She woke in the morning, never doubting it was all a drunken dream (despite the complete absence of a hangover) or even an outright hallucination. Then she smelled breakfast. The bottle of Jameson's was gone but the little clay pot was not. Sam was nowhere to be seen, but there were pancakes and bacon and home-fries on the table, still hot and fragrant. He must have just stepped out for a minute. The very thought of Sam's name set her blushing bright purple. So she ordered herself not to think about him, and set to work while she ate. Step one was sorting the coins. There were a dozen denominations, not counting a few that were too battered to identify. It took a long time: stacking them and counting them and bagging them up in zip-locs according to type, not to mention jotting down how many there were of each, while pausing at intervals to nibble a strip of bacon and wipe the grease off her fingers. Finally she leaned back, lips pressed together in annoyance. Not a single American coin in the lot, so no grocery shopping. It shouldn't have been such a disappointment. She'd known yesterday there'd be no grocery shopping if she didn't get the job. But with hundreds, nearly thousands, of gold coins scattered across the table, she felt entitled to go grocery shopping. Maybe if she asked Sam, he could do something about it. Except Sam wasn't there. He'd never come back. She sat up straight and looked around. She even called. But no Sam. What, he'd made her breakfast and then snuck out? The connotations of a man sneaking out before breakfast set her blushing again. Had she really? She couldn't have, she barely knew him! But he’d been so charming. . . And there was the Jameson's. . . And the gold. . . And then he'd walked out without even staying for breakfast, like she was a. . . The blush faded and tears welled up instead. 'NO,' she told herself. He'd cooked the breakfast he hadn't stayed for. He was coming back. He'd forgotten to leave a note, was all. Nobody handed over a pot of gold and then dumped you. Step two would have to be identifying the coins. She stuffed a baggie of sample coins into her purse and wrote a note for Sam (because surely he was coming back) but froze at the door. She couldn't just stroll out, with a fortune sitting on the kitchen table. Could she? No, she couldn't. She stuffed the baggies into the pot and pushed it into the cupboard under the sink, behind the giant economy package of paper towels. It was the best she could do, security-wise. Then off to the library for free wi-fi. She walked, of course. The car had been repossessed months ago. It was a good thing she loved the library. Otherwise the afternoon would have been a total waste. She thought she knew her way around the internet, but hours of surfing left her knowing only that coin collectors were called numismatists, rare coins were sometimes valuable even when they weren't gold, and numismatists were a secretive bunch of nerds. Their websites assumed knowledge and experience, and were impenetrable to the uninitiated, not to mention lacking in the visual data one expected of the internet. In the absence of pictures, she failed to identify a single coin. General searches on 'gold coins' brought up information on the difference between 24K and 22K, on the comparative weights of troy ounces, regular ounces and grams and on the history of the gold standard, which most countries had abandoned in favor of paper currency after the Depression. She learned that a new fifty-dollar American Buffalo gold piece (not available in banks) had recently been issued and used the same engravings as an old nickel. She also learned that the price of gold rarely fluctuated and was currently over $1,600 per (regular) ounce. At that, she paused for some mental arithmetic. She had originally guessed thirty-five or forty pounds. That would be worth about a million dollars! She definitely had to weigh that pot when she got home. But she still couldn't find out which foreign coins were made of gold, or what they looked like. Maybe that was all on websites in other languages. She stretched and her eyes grazed a window. It was already dark out. Time to go home. She'd try again tomorrow. Then, trudging through Evanston (not her favorite place to be after dark) and looking every which way to avoid eye contact with the panhandlers, she saw a sign in a darkened window reading, "L & D GOLD AND SILVER EXCHANGE. TRADE IN YOUR OLD JEWELRY FOR CASH!" She laughed out loud. Who cared what kind of coins they were? They were gold. She could sell them tomorrow. For now, Sam was bound to be waiting. Maybe even worried. She hurried home. Sam was not waiting, but a fresh batch of bills and the breakfast dishes were. Her heart sank. She set up a sink of hot, soapy water (the dishwasher was busted) and checked the fridge. Almost empty. Maybe Sam would take her out when he showed up. (She refused to think, 'if he showed up'.) She could go to the grocery tomorrow, after she'd been to the L & D Gold and Silver Exchange. Meanwhile she put together a sandwich with a couple of stale heels of bread and some Velveeta, and got back to work. Fortunately she still had her high-end digital scale, with the special little cup designed for measuring spices. The coins ranged in weight from an eighth to a quarter of an ounce. Which meant that even the small ones were worth about $200.00 and the large (well, less small) ones, $400.00. The middlemen would take a cut, probably a big one. But even if she only got half value, a mere handful of the coins would dig her out of her financial hole at last. That was all she actually needed to know, but she continued to play with the coins, weighing and measuring them and taking pictures with her cell phone (not the latest model but still a good one—lucky she hadn't broken it, throwing it at the chair) while waiting for Sam. He might be late but he was bound to show—he'd been so sweet, he'd really seemed to care for her. She couldn't be wrong about that. She fell asleep on the sofa, still waiting. # In the morning, her neck and shoulder had cramped and the back of her mind had faced the ugly possibility that Sam did not really care about her. Why should he? He barely knew her. She'd been a fool to hope for it. Yet he'd given her a pot of gold. Surely that meant he was serious? She sat up suddenly with a yelp, and not because of the twinge in her back. Maybe the gold was stolen! That would account for why he passed it on casually to a near stranger. Or not. Why bother to steal something, just to give it away? Unless it was so hot, he didn't dare get caught with it. She chewed her lip. Did she even dare to try selling it? Yes. She needed the money. If the L & D Gold and Silver Exchange said it was stolen, well, she would have to hand the whole pot over to the police, and hope for a reward. That might get Sam in trouble, but she didn’t owe him anything, did she? Not if he'd left her holding the bag, anyway. # At least there was no mention of theft. "What's that?" said the sullen teenager in peacock blue eye-shadow at the counter of the L & D Gold and Silver Exchange. Meaghan refrained from sarcasm. "It's a coin," she replied, as if that weren’t obvious. "Doesn't look like any coin I ever saw," answered the salesgirl, like that meant it wasn't a real coin. What, she thought it was an aardvark? "Where's it from?" Meaghan shrugged and went on smiling. "How would I know? My boyfriend gave it to me for my birthday." Close enough to true. "He said his grandmother collected coins." There was a pause. A long pause. "Does it matter? It's gold, isn't it?" The girl had to think about that. "I'll ask," she said at last, and walked away, carrying the coin with her. Meaghan bit her lip. She didn't like the coin going away. Were they calling the police? After several minutes, the sales clerk returned with a greasy looking man behind her. The manager smiled. It made him look even greasier. He held up her coin. "You are the lady that brought this in?" he inquired. Even his voice was greasy. When she nodded, he adjusted his smile in an attempt to look sympathetic. "I'm afraid it isn't real gold," he told her. "What!?!" If there was one thing in the universe she had not expected him to say, that was it. "But my boyfriend said it was gold!" The manager shook his head. "I am so sorry. He must have. . . shall we say, indulged in a little fib? Men will say many things to impress a pretty girl." Somehow, the word 'pretty' didn't sound very flattering, coming from this guy. "Or perhaps he was himself deceived. But it is only gold plated." He turned the coin over several times, while continuing to watch Meaghan from the corner of his eye. "It is an interesting curio. I could give you ten dollars for it." Meaghan stared at him, with her mind whirling. "Gold-plated?" "I'm afraid so. It is mostly copper and nickel." It was the mention of copper and nickel that tipped her off. She might have believed him if he had said lead, but copper and nickel were light metals. Gold weighed more than twice as much as either one, and she had weighed that coin herself. This nasty weasel was trying to cheat her. She should have looked up L & D Gold and Silver Exchange on Craig's List. She took a deep breath. "Thanks anyway, but it was a present from my boyfriend. If it's not valuable, I might as well keep it for the sentimental value." She held out her hand. "Fifteen?" he offered. She continued to hold out her hand. "Twenty?" He must have sensed that he was betraying too much eagerness. He laid the coin back in her hand, trying with imperfect success to conceal his reluctance. "Please come back if you change your mind." "Thanks, I will," she murmured, picturing him burning in an Irish Catholic hellfire. So she went back to the library, and drew up a map with gold dealers, coin dealers and jewelers marked on it, all of them with good reputations. She focused mainly on places within walking distance, but there was a cluster of merchants downtown that might be worth the price of a bus ticket. The jewelry stores declined to deal in coins, although they confirmed that hers were real gold. The L & D proved far from typical—several gold dealers told her earnestly that her coins were obviously rare, and she should check out their numismatic value before selling them as gold. But the coin dealers all said her coins were too rare. They dealt with American or British coins, for the most part, although one asked if she had anything from Japan. Since she hadn’t had any breakfast, she was hungry and tired enough to give up by 4:00, but she had to pass the last coin dealer on her way home anyway. When she did, she saw an old man inside, eating a very late lunch. She did not so much deliberately enter the musty shop as allow herself to be drawn in, mesmerized by the sandwich. The old guy saw her coming, and put it down on its wrapper. Then, to her horror, he folded the waxed paper up around it, and tossed the whole thing into the trash. "Don't do that!" she cried, and her voice actually squeaked. He looked (justifiably) astonished at her remark, and she attempted to soften her tone. "I mean, you shouldn't let me ruin your lunch, and besides, that's terribly wasteful." "Nothing to do with you. It was already ruined." He wrinkled his nose. "It's bologna. I hate bologna." He eyed her for a moment and then fished the sandwich back out of the bin and handed it to her. "Here, go take it to China if you want. Or is it India where the kids are supposed to be starving nowadays?" She took the sandwich and was embarrassed to see her hand tremble. She hoped he hadn't seen it. "Maybe I will," she announced primly. She stuck the sandwich in her purse, and turned to go. "You come in here just to collect sandwiches for the poor?" She winced. Stupid. Blushing and wordless, she fished a coin out of her bag and handed it to him. He glanced at it, and sat bolt upright. He picked up a jeweler's loupe and stuck it in his eye. Finally he looked up and said, "Mind if I take this to the back and check some books?" She nodded. As soon as he was gone, she gobbled up the sandwich. He returned with an armload of books, and lifted a section of the counter to permit her to come back and sit next to him. "So tell me," he said. "Where did you get this?" She started to stammer out the story about her boyfriend, but he held up a hand to stop her. "Sorry, wrong question. What I should have said is: do you know what this is?" "It's not stolen!" she burst out. "Didn't say it was. Do you know what it is?" he repeated. Nobody else had asked her that. She wasn't sure how to take it. "No," she admitted. "What is it?" He sighed. "Where did you get it? Really. And spare me the line about your boyfriend." "He is my boyfriend," she insisted, then hung her head. "At least I thought he was." "You thought he was?" "I don't see how that's any of your business," she sniffed. "You’re a total stranger. I don't even know your name. So, are you going to tell me what this thing is, or are you just going to sit there, asking personal questions?" He smiled. "My name is James. Not Jim. And I'd like to tell you, honest. The problem is, you wouldn't believe me. Not in a million years. Unless. . . " He thought about it. "This boyfriend of yours—are you sure he's human?" It was such an outrageous question that the truth popped out of her mouth before she thought about it. "I don't think so." He nodded. "Then I guess I can tell you." He held up the coin. "This is fairy gold." # "Okay, I think I got this straight," she said as they climbed the stairs to her apartment. She set the grocery bag down on the floor while she fished for her keys. James had taken her shopping. It felt nice to have groceries. "It looks just like real gold." "For all intents and purposes, it is real gold," interrupted James. "Only more so. But it can't be traced, because it has no earthly origin, and it has some special properties, which means it can be dangerous to handle. It's a good thing you didn't manage to sell any of it." Meaghan knocked before turning the key—just in case—but there was no answer, so she opened the door. James followed her in with two more sacks of groceries. "But Sam was so sweet," she protested. "I can't believe he would give me something that would hurt me." "He probably meant to stick around and help you spend it," answered James. "He'd have known—or at least he'd have thought he knew—how to handle it safely." "But then what happened to him?" she wailed. "I mean, one minute he was there, making breakfast, and the next he was gone!" She sniffed. "Maybe he really did dump me." "No, he'd have taken his gold with him, if he hadn't meant to come back." He started unpacking the bags. "Now you go get that candle. We can't find your Seamus without it." She left him doing a surprisingly good job of putting the groceries away, considering he didn't know her kitchen. Psychic powers, maybe. Great grandma's box of Irish luck was still sitting on the coffee table, which was otherwise very tidy. She didn't remember putting everything away, but apparently she had, as none of the detritus from the other night was sitting out: no pile of papers, no little framed pictures, no pocket watch and certainly no candle. Just the little canister of decorative coasters, an oversized book of Matisse prints, a bowl of nuts and the chest. It looked as if she had cleaned up for company. She opened the chest and started taking everything out again. The candle was not underneath the marriage license. It hadn't slid into one of the gloves. She didn't like to untie the packet of old letters, but she thumbed through them carefully. No candle. When the box was empty, she picked it up and shook it, as if the candle might be caught invisibly in a crack. It wasn't. And then she noticed the teacup. It was a very pretty little thing, in perfect condition. Not even chipped. Certainly not broken. "James," she called. "Don't panic," he told her firmly, when it had become inescapably obvious that she was panicking. "But it isn’t possible! I saw it broken! And the candle’s gone and that’s not possible either, and he’s gone, too! Why is everything vanishing? It isn’t possible!" "Exactly," interrupted James firmly, "It's not possible to disappear without a trace. There are always traces." "You mean it’s natural? We should we call the police?" "No," he sighed. "Not that kind of traces." He took her hand. "Go through it again for me, please. You were telling him your troubles, you said, and he called up the gold." He patted the pot, which they had brought out from the kitchen. "Which he then gave to you, unsolicited, just hoping to please you." "What's that got to do with it?" She observed his expression. "Yes, he just snapped his fingers and there it was. Like. . ." she skipped past that impossible concept. "Is that important?" "What's important is that the gold was his idea. You never actually wished for it. Be sure, now, Meaghan. Because it IS important." She thought it over carefully, and found she remembered it. Remembered it vividly. "No, I never wished for it. I never wished for anything. Why should I? There’s no such thing as wishes." She bit her lip. "At least that's what I thought." James nodded. "Excellent. And after he gave you the gold, did you say anything about your wish being granted?" She shook her head. "Not even, 'Oh, Seamus, that's just what I wanted,' or something like that?" She blushed and blushed. "No, we didn't talk much after that." Her eyes filled with tears. "I never even said thank you." "That's wonderful!" crowed James. Seeing her bewildered expression, he continued, "If you never accepted the gold, he still owes you a wish! So, no matter who took him, you have a prior claim." "Took him where?" she wailed. "Who would do such a thing? And why?" "The 'where' you don't want to know. It might not even be possible for you to know. But the 'who' is easy enough: whoever he stole the gold from. Maybe even a couple of whoevers, working together. And that pretty much covers the 'why', too." "You think he stole the gold?" "Puh-leeze. You think he worked for it? Being what he is?" She reflected that James had never actually said what he thought Sam was. But she was Irish enough to know what he meant. "They do have a reputation." "Larcenous little weasels," he sniffed. She gave him a look, and he added, "But charming and loyal, if they like you." He smiled, "So, let's get back to the candle. We could maybe make do with the teacup, since he must have fixed it for you. Or maybe the gold—we know he handled that. But touched it is one thing, and bound to it is another. The candle would be a lot better." "But I told you. It's gone." "Can't be. That candle is yours. It's the contract between Seamus and your great-grandmother and only you can destroy it. Maybe there's only a little bit left, but it’s here somewhere." They searched for an hour. Not just in the chest, since that was obviously empty. They combed through the threadbare carpet. They picked up the sofa cushions, and then the sofa, and then the recliner. They rolled the TV away from the wall. James even went into the bedroom and looked under the bed, although Meaghan was very sure it couldn't be there. Good thing she'd made the bed—sometimes she didn't bother. She went back to the living room, and checked the bookshelves again, which led her back to the recliner. The cushions were not removable, so she propped it up sideways and tried to look into the mechanism. It fell over on her and she started to cry. She was terribly embarrassed. She knew she shouldn't be crying. But it had been such a long day, and so many things that couldn’t possibly happen kept happening anyway, it just made her head ache. It made her whole brain ache. James was very sweet about it. He picked up the chair, and petted her. He sat her down on the sofa, and ordered her to rest while he made her some dinner. Then he disappeared into the kitchen, clattering pans and singing loudly and tunelessly in some language she didn't know. He'd been so good to her, buying her groceries and bringing her home. She'd thought she was going crazy, but he believed every impossible thing she told him, and then he’d even known what to do about the impossible—she didn’t know how she would have managed without him. So kind. So very kind. Kinder than she would have imagined possible. She sat there, exhausted, waiting for him to bring her food, sat there in front of the coffee table where she'd lit that candle. She'd lit it right there. . . On a coaster. . . She pulled over the canister of decorative coasters. The lid wasn't lying flat. Neither were the coasters inside it. Because the bottom coaster still had a large, knobby puddle of wax on it. With a short, black wick sticking out of it. She didn't even bother to call James, because she knew exactly what to do. The wick was so deeply embedded in the wax that she had to kneel on the floor and crouch over the remains of the candle to light it. No need to fear that she would close the door and push him out—he was already pushed out and she needed to open the door to let him in again. All the while that she was holding the Bic to the candle she whispered. "I never asked for gold. I never wanted gold. I never agreed to gold. He was supposed to care about me. He owes me that. Send him back." There was a hoarse cry from the kitchen door, "Wait!" But it was too late for that. The candle had caught and the flame leapt up, so brightly she could barely see. A dark figure—she thought it was James—tore in from the kitchen. He fell on his knees before the coffee table and flung his arms around the little clay pot. And at the exact same second, another dark form emerged from. . . from somewhere else, and also threw itself upon the gold, crying, "Mine! Mine!" in a strange, eldritch voice that hurt her ears. The two figures struggled together until they were engulfed in the light and she could not see them anymore. Then the light faded and they were both gone, and so was the gold. But Sam was lying on the sofa. He looked like he'd been in a nasty fight, but his hair was as bright as red gold and his smile was much better than magic. Michaele Jordan has worked at a kennel, a church and AT&T. Now she writes. She has written two novels- “Blade Light” and “Mirror Maze” and has numerous stories scattered around the web. She also makes pie.

Two (or Three) Bedroom Apartment, Winter Someone finally figured out what to do with that apple whisky – mix it with cider, apple on apple, why was that such a revelation after we tried every disgusting combination of liquids abandoned on top of the fridge? We stay in the living room, for warmth, as though the tv is a hearth we have to tend. The extremities of this apartment grow cold in unlined boots, and gather icy fuzz in unkempt corners. There’s a hole under the bathroom sink that looks clean down into the basement. There’s a third bedroom, unrented, too small, the window a hazard. We didn’t know what to do with it. We sit on the floor. We order pizza. We make tea, we eat cookies. We play a lot of Tetris. I’ve fucked at least three people in my single bed, and slept with two more that I didn’t fuck. We have four pieces of furniture that each had a life with someone else before they came to live with us. We don’t have enough to fill the third bedroom. Instead, we use it for interpretive dance, for communal naps, for processing our heartbreaks, for imagining the ceiling is a portal to places we haven’t been. We gather in on ourselves in this weird nest. We call it home. One Bedroom Flat, Ground Floor, Summer We were drinking iced coffees and speaking in hypotheticals. I’m opening a museum, he said. Another sip. A museum of our time on earth. I’m putting this coffee in the museum, he said, another sip. The cup sweats. The ice cubes tink tink against each other, against the glass, against the idea that they will live in a museum. We stole that glass. We drink more coffee. We make lists for summer. We pick flowers. We sweat. We stick to the pavement, gummy. We tear the paper with our summer slick. We lay under a ceiling fan. We float on a hard-ribbed, thin mattress. We share a joint. We share our bodies and other fluids. Demolition Man is on t.v. again. We eat pickles out of the jar. We hang string lights. We re-arrange the bookshelf. We cover the water damage. We listen to records. We cross items off the list. We buy cheap beer. Tink, tink, tink. He thinks I think he’s kidding, about the museum. He presses his foot to my foot: give me something to put in the museum, what do you want to remember? This: summer skin, hale and sweet with youth. The open door. The smell of jasmine. The lines on our faces drawing a map to tomorrow, if we get there. Two Up Two Down, Spring Something is supposed to bloom now: the earth, the garden, ourselves. It must be so nice to walk the river in peace and not feel the threat of the flood. I hollowed out all the rooms in my heart and one at a time I redecorated, I hoped you would like one of them eventually. We tried to call it love three times, we tried to fit three people inside and then make room for one more. We tried to call it family, we tried to call it radical. We made a mess. I hung hope around the room like new wallpaper, I deleted the old numbers, I dug up the drowned zucchini flowers. We made homemade pizza dough and beer from a kit and stored it under the stairs for three months and waited for the darkness to turn it into something we could stomach. We packed up the house. I accidentally killed two potted ivy and one peace lily on the way out – my thumbs never turned green, despite your efforts. I didn’t know spring was the saddest season. Two Up Two Down, Another Place, Fall The season shifts itself into slumber and we haul in a late harvest: our own skin folded into a ball and mallow cremes and tiny gourds we have no intention of eating. Why does decay smell so good? We sew our socks with the last of the sunlight, we beaver our way into darkness. We listen to the city: rain on corrugated rooftops and bus traffic clogged with damp commuters. It speaks the language of flux over and over. We put the kettle on. We open a jigsaw puzzle, we piece together another life. The grey of England’s October has shattered on my tongue more times than I can count. A friend once told me October babies are just the product of New Year romps, but every October baby in my life is the air and water to my earth: a recipe for a mud cake. We only need to add a little fire and something says we will survive the winter. Brittany Thomas is a queer writer who was born and raised in upstate New York and currently lives in London. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in X-R-A-Y, Five South Journal, Major 7th Magazine, Bullshit Lit, JAKE, and Fifth Wheel Press’s Come Sail Away anthology. You can find her online @britomatic.

From one heap to another after Brian Eno In the spring, I scatter normal instruments in secret locations. The road home is formless, crowded; I weave carefully through an out-of-sync marching band, whose feet get stuck in the gooey, gluey mud. Not mine; the trick is to never lower your soles down. Never touch and you won’t adhere. Time for a drink, is it? To be unafraid of the middle—now that’s cause for celebration, the director says. Handing me an ice-cold glass of something sweet. But I let it fall on the technicolor turf and sprint away. My piece is off the board —would anybody want it? The trumpet blurts wobbly and faint behind the horizon line now. Fainter and gone. Yes, I’ve learned to say no, but no, not yes. No more path just one big directionless stretch under the sun. At the center of a very small object. Maura Hehir is a writer and teacher from New Jersey. She is a third-year MFA candidate in fiction at New Mexico State University and the Prose Editor of Puerto del Sol.

My mother once told me the word for “forgiveness” in Sioux is “woakiktunze.” My mother, who taught me that to be Native was to be trapped. Lonely. Woakiktunze, she said. We weren’t churchgoers, but notions of contrition and penance, she knew them from the missionaries who tolerated the South Dakota winters because the savages had to be tamed. Because young Native women had to be domesticated before they were taken to Long Island to live among the whites. Woakiktunze doesn’t come from God, she told me. It comes from the person you wronged. My mother, who never met a stranger she didn’t like. Anyway, Bertrand, my best friend, showed me there was more to being Native. That you could be free to drink cosmos and dance until dawn, could stride into a piano bar in Greenwich Village or bathhouse in Midtown and reject the advances of every man suddenly interested. Could sleep with none of them, or sleep with all. Bertrand, the first friend I made after moving to the city, and the only Native I’d ever known besides my mother, showed me this. Showed me this and I encouraged it. Cheered him on. Asked him to show me more. Now he was sick, and somehow, this was about my mother and her Sioux words. It was about forgiveness. Despite a T-cell counting dipping perilously below 200, Bertrand bounced back from his first immune system crash, recovering from a bout of meningitis that in early 90’s usually meant it was the beginning of the beginning of the end. But he was well again–well enough, at least, to meet me at a downstairs bar called East of Eighth. “The IHS didn’t kill me!” he said, and like most of his res Indian references, he had to explain what Indian Health Services was to white-raised me, explain how Natives who went in for care never came home. I still didn’t get the joke—he’d gone to St. Vincent’s here in the city—but I laughed anyway, because I loved him. He was still striking, still handsome, and his eyes were the color of the brush that concealed wily rabbits. I was sure if I stared long enough, a rabbit might even hop out and scamper away. I told him he looked great, surprise in my voice. We embraced, and when the moment came for us to pull apart, we did so only halfway, still gripping each other’s arms as we talked. “I feel fine,” he said. “Fabulous, even.” In the evening light, the shoes of sidewalk passersby could be seen in the windows, some heading west towards Chelsea Cinemas and Eighth Avenue, some east towards the Chelsea Hotel and Seventh Avenue. Around us, older gentlemen, career homosexuals who knew exactly what they were, sipping vodka and tonics while the Bucketheads sang about these sounds falling into my mind but with the volume low, a subdued cultural reminder instead of the loud gay bar anthem it would be somewhere else. The bartender replaced Bertrand’s dwindling cocktail without being asked, said, “This one’s on me.” Bertrand pulled away, reached for it, and took a sip. “I think my status gives me street cred,” he said. “Cheers to that!” I asked if he was taking things easy. He shook his head. “My carefree days are over.” He took another sip. “I can only be careless. And, oh sweetie, am I ever careless.” He regaled me with tales of picking up strangers in bars. He said he no longer had to fear catching anything, and that the pills and condoms he’d been given went untouched—a point of pride, it seemed. I only shook my head, though whatever displeasure I might have been conveying was tempered by warmth, so much warmth. There was comfort in the fact that he was alive, that though there wasn’t much of a future, at least there was a now. Around us, the older men now had younger men to buy drinks for. It was the Pet Shop Boys’ turn to sing about how it was a sin. There was no beating around the bush with us, so I came out and said it: him getting sick was my fault, and I wanted to make it right. “You want forgiveness,” he said solemnly. We were quiet. After a while, he held up a finger, as if suddenly realizing what I could do for him. “There’s a Lakota tradition, a special soup—sunka soup. It’s got healing qualities.” I could make a soup. During the week I was a college student, but on the weekends, I worked in a kitchen. “I’m not saying I believe in everything my unci said, but…,” and his voice trailed off. I begged him to tell me how to make it. The rabbit sprang out from behind his eyes and made a break for it. “Sunka means dog, so you have to get a puppy that’s black and white—no brown fur. You have to cook it in water with carrots, celery and potatoes. And have some with me.” I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out. From his laughter, my expression must have been hysterical. “I just want to help,” I said. He shook his head. “My darling, kola,” he said, and he took another sip from his cocktail. “I am beyond help.” Bertrand, whose year in the city before me made him the wise elder to my innocent, young brave. Who, at my urging, led by example. Bertrand, who never met a stranger he didn’t like. “I am beyond help and I will never forgive you,” he said. “Because you didn’t do anything wrong.” Around us, the city and the scene Bertrand had introduced me to. I loved it as much as I loved him. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. My mother once told me the word for “forgiveness” in Sioux is woakiktunze. And “ithunsni” was the word for liar. Jim Genia—a proud Dakota Sioux—mostly writes nonfiction about cagefighting, but occasionally takes a break from the hurt and pain to write fiction about hurt and pain. He has an MFA in creative writing from the New School, and his short fiction dealing with Indigenous themes has appeared or is forthcoming in the Zodiac Review, Electric Spec, Sage Cigarettes Magazine, ANMLY, Storm Cellar, the Indiana Review and the Baltimore Review. Follow him on Twitter @jim_genia.

The shallow end greets me like an old acquaintance who can’t quite recall my name. I shiver from the cold or maybe doubt, then submerge, finding my way to horizontal, hands meeting overhead, biceps cradling ears, legs kicking through resistance. I streamline underwater until my lungs yell at me to surface. My first eight, nine, ten strokes are clumsy, but then everything clicks into place. Muscles remember. Flip turns connect me to the next lap and the lap after that. My body moves without thought, syncing techniques that were shaped at eight, nine, ten years old. With each breath to the left, I match a breath three strokes later to the right, the tendons in my shoulders familiar with the ice packs required as a result of favoring one side. Curiosity and determination team up to compensate for the speed and endurance stolen by time. Water still mystifies me, it still appears at the edges of dreams that wake me with a momentary panic that I’m late for practice. It still holds fears of failure I once vowed to leave behind to drown. Returning to vertical, I bounce up and down in the water, stretching shaky triceps and trying not to compare myself to the nine, ten, eleven other adults in the pool, my competitors, as I was trained to do. The lean bald man whose snorkel eliminates the need to concern himself with air supply. The young couple sharing a lane, ticking off the sets in a workout written on a piece of paper slicked onto a blue kickboard. The chatty elderly woman aqua jogging with a flotation belt wrapped around her waist, a full face of makeup and a trail of perfume I followed out of the locker room. I wonder what series of events in their personal histories had brought them all here to converge at this exact moment, this exact place, if those events were remotely similar to mine. The ghosts of coaches past are here too, but only one still haunts me, only one I can still see pacing up and down the edge of the pool, hovering, analyzing, critiquing my every move both within and well outside the realm of his authority. The one with the twitching black mustache, the anger contorting his face and his self-important stance begging for respect. The one with the shrieking tirades he called motivation, his words shrinking me with nine, ten, eleven variations of the same sentiment. You are not good enough. You will never be good enough. I rotate and switch to backstroke, my view now the ceiling as I picture him floating up and away from me. My arms windmill in and out of the water while I silently tell him all the things I should have said but wouldn’t, couldn’t. I will not lose more weight. I will not push through the pain the doctors warn could be permanent. I will not believe I can’t succeed without you. I will not trust you. In ten, eleven, twelve seconds I see the flags lined above me indicating the wall is approaching. I inhale visions of newspaper clippings glued in scrapbooks, shoeboxes overflowing with medals, my signature accepting the college scholarship, and after somersaulting into a new lap and pushing off the wall, I exhale flashbacks of the scales and weigh-ins, the injuries and burn out, the tears and regrets. I stop to rest, wiping my goggles and the mental slideshow clean. My sight clear, I seek total release, sprinting with whatever reserves remain untapped. My heart rate spikes as it did in every race throughout my ten, eleven, twelve years of competitions, my rarely used fast twitch muscle fibers thanking me for including them. I grasp the top of the wall as it breaks my momentum, panting, internally recording an accomplishment that can’t be measured by a stopwatch, needing no one’s approval now. I begin my cooldown, my kicks barely making a splash, fatigue replacing proper form. The muffled silence underwater pulses in my temples, the stillness louder than my introspections. The solitude never bothered me back then. I never questioned the countless hours spent sharing space with peers yet able to speak only through body language. We moved around and alongside each other, sometimes offering mutual encouragement, sometimes inducing envy, always aware we were on the same team but simultaneously fighting for individual wins. Friends whose dreams matched mine, who understood me like no one else could because the demands of the sport are so unique, bonding us forever. Now I see older versions of eleven, twelve, thirteen of those friends as I scroll through social media, some reliving those days through their children, maybe some, like me, nursing mixed emotions toward an entity that consumed our lives a lifetime ago. I peel off my swim cap and sink, tilting my head back as I stand to let the water smooth my hair. I try to figure out if I got what I came for. This was a recalibration of body and mind, a test of sorts. Could I still do it? Did I even want to? I hoist myself out of the pool in one fluid motion and walk the eleven, twelve, thirteen steps to the entrance of the locker room where my towel hangs on a hook. “See you next time,” the lifeguard says with a wave. I smile and thank the teenage boy who looks around the same age I was when I finally decided it was time to stop. I’m not sure if I’m thanking him for the invitation to return or the realization I’d like to accept it. In the shower I rinse away the stink of chlorine that defined my childhood, the itch that stained my nostrils and flaked my skin, the chemicals that faded my bathing suits and left green highlights in my yellow ponytail. Every inch of me is already sore and aching a mere twelve, thirteen, fourteen minutes after stripping off my Speedo. It’s the good kind of sore though, the kind that quietly, gradually turns into power. I return to the pool twelve, thirteen, fourteen more times, my middle-aged muscles remembering again, again, again. New imprints intertwine with the old, not as replacements but as reconstructed relationships with the shallow end, the fears, the ghosts. As past guides present, as pain guides strength, muscle memory forgives, but it never forgets. Heather Sweeney is an essayist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, HuffPost, Insider, Five Minute Lit, Brevity Nonfiction Blog, and elsewhere. She was the winner of the 2022 Writer Advice Flash Memoir contest and a finalist in the WOW! WomenOnWriting Q4 2023 Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest. She lives in Virginia, where she’s currently working on a memoir.

THE DAY The day his doctor told my father he shouldn't drive anymore there were suddenly so many errands to run. I ran into the mailbox, and delivered his newspaper late. There were so many errands to run but snow piled deep in the driveway. and the snowplow was late. The mail never came. The snow piled high against the walls. My mother argued with her caregiver and then read the same letter over and over. The turkeys ran wild in the yard. My mother argued with her caregiver because she said she didn't need a caregiver Later, they watched the turkeys run wild, and the starlings battle at the bird feeder. My mother said she didn't need her walker. My father, mystified by the remote, missed his favorite show. The bird feeder became a TV. My mother almost fell down. My father was mystified that he couldn't drive anymore. I fell asleep and drove my car into a ditch. WAITING ROOM The silence is a forest of bare trees. A grey sky hovers near the ceiling. Through the glass, snow covers the car the deck the hillside. Or is that just a memory? There is no child to play in it, only photographs — a couple skiing the hunt for a Christmas tree six-foot drifts from a blizzard. There are so many photographs, photo albums dominate the bookshelves, filled with people I no longer recognize. The ghosts of those still present sit with me. We wait for the bodies to arrive. G. Murray Thomas was an active participant in the Southern California poetry scene for 30 years. Then he moved back to Rochester NY to care for his parents. These poems are Living The Sundown coming in October 2024 from Moon Tide Press

It was the first really cold morning of the season, the sun was bright, the air crisp. When it was time to leave the cocoon of her cozy, varnished kitchen, Elena smelled the new weather and grabbed a wool coat and some gloves before heading to her car. She paused, almost imperceptibly, before opening the driver’s side door and getting in. The full tumbler of coffee she’d brought stayed in the cupholder, untouched, until she pulled into her assigned parking spot at the university. There, after the car was in park and the engine was off, Elena took her first sip. Lukewarm, but still good. Wednesdays were her busy day, four classes almost back to back, with only a forty-five minute break for a late lunch. Then, a long weekend of working from home. The lectures passed uneventfully, Elena holding her sighs back when she noticed a student asleep in the last row. She told her second class they’d have their grades back on their most recent assignment early next week. One girl, a student Elena knew and liked from previous years’ seminars, waited for her attention after class to ask for a letter of recommendation for a job application. Checking her watch, Elena decided to forgo a stop at her office and head straight to the café for lunch. Suzie chose a damp-looking quinoa and avocado salad with Asian slaw from the refrigerated case near the till, Elena a turkey, brie and arugula sandwich on ciabatta. It was Suzie’s turn to pay, and the cashier plucked the twenty dollar bill from her hand while shouting their coffee orders over his shoulder. He was a student, Elena recognized him from one of her foundational literature classes, but couldn’t remember his name and just smiled politely when he said “Have a nice day Professor Hobbes!” The women took their meals to a table tucked away in the back, near a floor-length window and away from socializing students. There were a few solitary diners, laptops and books open, earbuds in, studying over stale cookies and cooling lattes. “And of course next year I have my sabbatical, and I still haven’t submitted my initial research proposal because I can’t narrow down where to go,” Suzie said, before finishing the last of her coffee. “Does it all have to be for the one project or can you mix and match?” Elena asked thoughtfully. She’d never been on sabbatical. Though she loved teaching, the relentless boredom in some students’ faces year after year certainly made her itch. “That’s the beauty of it, I can see what happens. I mean I know the majority of it will have to be spent in London at the British Library, but I’m hoping to do a few smaller trips. I’ve got the entire semester, and it’s a big project of course. Going to Dublin will be easy enough for research, but I’d like to check out some smaller towns, and there’s a poet based at the university in Cork that I’ve been meaning to interview for an article.” Elena nodded and finished her coffee, placing the mug heavily on the table in front of her. A muscle in her shoulder seized and she rolled her neck subtly, frontwards, backwards, frontwards, backwards. She started to gather her things, phone, bag, keys, stacking dishes and wiping the table, waiting for Suzie to get the hint. “Have you been to Ireland?” “Yes,” Elena said, nodding tightly. She calmly plucked her gloves from the right-side pocket of her coat. “Where did you go? Dublin?” “Mm,” Elena said. Her fingers slowly slid into place against worn suede. “And to the west a bit, Galway. You know, the cliffs and everything. No I didn’t kiss the Blarney Stone,” She laughed a little too loudly and stood up hurriedly. “Spent a night or two in Donegal. Now I’m sorry to rush off but I have to speak to a student before my next seminar, I’ll talk to you later?” “Of course, good luck, and have a nice weekend.” The women hugged and Suzie settled back down into her chair. Elena left the café and turned sharply back towards the main academic building. She looked down at her feet as she walked, and tried to ignore the prick of sweat at the back of her neck. At dinner that evening, Elena’s husband Robert told her about a meeting he’d had with his business partner and the director of a film for which they’d put up a fair amount of money. “And this guy, he’s green, and we’re trying to explain to him that he needs to be more organized and he’s just totally ignoring us, he thinks this artiste cliché will get him everywhere he wants to go.” Elena nodded and sipped from a glass of chilled wine. The starter hadn’t even arrived, but by the way he gulped his drink and scoffed at his own story, she could tell Robert was growing irritable. She slid her hand across the linen tablecloth and put it on top of his. She listened as he finished his story, then lightly squeezed the fleshy part between his thumb and forefinger, wishing she could kiss him. It was hard for Robert, once a successful actor, now relegated to producing and silent partnerships. A rising star in his twenties and looking like he’d be set for parts for life in his early thirties, his career—and confidence—had crashed to a halt quite suddenly. He still occasionally acted, in quiet, intelligent plays or in small parts of films directed by old friends. But, he wasn’t happy when he talked about work, and she wished he’d just retire altogether. They didn’t need the money, he’d been smart with his finances when he was successful. Plus her modest income from the university, and they owned their house outright. But suggesting this to Robert would only get him thinking about his previous success, and they’d have the same old arguments they always had, round and round on a carousel of resentment. By the time dessert was served, Elena was tipsy and Robert was, in fact, irritable. He’d spent the majority of their meal talking about his own work, and now awkwardly transitioned to talking about hers. He must have realized how self-centered he was being, Elena could give him that. Robert was always aware of his flaws, which Elena appreciated. “And how is this semester going?” He asked. “Any shining star students?” Elena sighed and picked up her espresso. “I doubt it, they just don’t seem interested this year.” “Or maybe you’re the one who’s bored?” Robert lifted his eyebrows knowingly and smirked. “You may be right.” She set the cup down in its saucer a little too hard and sighed again. “What I really wish I could do is a research trip. Suzie’s going on sabbatical, and I must admit I’m extremely jealous. A whole semester to just learn something new for a change, have something fresh to share with students. And something different to write about, publish. Not just the same old opinions under new titles.” Her dessert spoon rattled on a small plate as she tapped her fingers on the table. Robert nodded and sipped his own coffee. Elena waited for him to ask. “Where’s Suzie going?” “She’s going to Ireland.” An awkward pause grew into an anxious silence, but Elena felt calm while the waiter cleared their table. “I’m jealous, really,” Elena said. Robert opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything. He looked at his hands. Maybe it was the wine, but the customary pricks of sweat didn’t bother her, and she calmly laid her credit card down in the folder and waited for it to be collected. When they arrived at home, Robert went straight to his office, and shut the door quietly. Elena turned the shower on and let the bathroom fill with steam before she undressed. She stepped into the shower and scrubbed her chest and arms until they were red and clean. Before applying face cream, she inhaled sharply and rubbed a circle clear in the mirror. Her face looked tired, she thought, her eyes only halfway open. She could glimpse just for a moment a version of herself, twenty-five years younger. This was the face she pictured as her own, but wasn’t sure if it existed anymore, or the woman she’d been then, existed anymore. That night she fell asleep quickly and deeply, but woke up when Robert dropped into bed beside her. She tapped her phone on the nightstand, 04:27 lit up the room and bounced off the eggshell ceiling. Robert curled up on the edge of the mattress, his back to her. She knew he was drunk from the slight snore that escaped from his huddled body. Elena woke again before the sun rose, and softly ran her fingers down Robert’s back, he hadn’t moved and his pajama top stretched tight across his shoulder blades, before getting out of bed. In the kitchen, she brewed coffee and put two pieces of crusty sourdough into the toaster. The sun started to rise, she saw wisps of orange and pink cloud through the window over the sink. A long rectangle of light slowly made its way across the wooden countertop as Elena drank her coffee, ate her toast and remembered another quiet morning, twenty-five years ago. It was instant coffee in a paper cup then, and a plain croissant she’d picked at over the course of five hours as she sat in a cold, gray room. People came and went, asked her questions, sometimes she was with Robert, sometimes alone. Mostly alone. A woman with a very tight, sleek bun and a scratchy-looking blue Garda uniform told her the other woman and child had passed away in the hospital. An investigation was underway. Photos had been taken, broken glass splashed across wet tarmac, sparkling under a floodlight. Elena had closed her eyes then. Just before noon, Elena heard Robert walking down the stairs. The last one creaked, and then he joined her in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table, grading papers with more coffee. He poured himself a mug and stood with his back to the window. Elena reached her hand out and Robert grabbed it, hard. His face was desperate, and Elena kissed his palm, then flipped it over. She knew this hand so well, after so many decades, but she was still shocked by the sight of graying hair and a light brown age spot on his second knuckle. The day passed sedately. Robert went out for a long walk in the afternoon, said he was going to the grocery store. He still wouldn’t drive. While he was out, Elena peeked into his office. Splayed on the desk were papers they’d been given, copies of forms they’d had to sign, in that cold, gray room. Underneath them was a newspaper, curled and browning with age, Robert’s youthful, closed-eyed face on the cover under a headline in bold and a foreign city’s weather report. It was funny, to see a prediction for something so far behind them. When he returned it was dark. Elena was making a salad and boiling water for pasta. The front door shut and Robert paused in front of her on his way upstairs. “I think I’ll retire,” he said. “Now, I think I will.” Isabel Crabtree is a writer from Rhode Island, currently living in the UK. Her work has been published in Esquire, Level and Honest Ulsterman.

The Witches swoop around the downstage lip of the stage. One leans close enough to smell the sweet tea on her breath. My wife bought us front-row tickets to opening night of Drunk Shakespeare. The cast sit like benched athletes at a “bar” stage right, tossing back plastic shot glasses of water poured from falsely filled liquor bottles, each gently rocking, primed to spring into multiple roles. To their credit, the Witches slur and stammer, crack up. I’ve worked with drunk actors. Up there, they’re dead sober. It’s my birthday, and tonight’s a surprise gift from my wife, bless her. In the lobby, she gobbled glasses of rose to survive. I told her she didn’t have to come. Her existence orbits Marvel movies, romance novels, and a high-pressure job. Normal people stuff. Leaning over, I murmur along the opening lines, trying to impress her, I guess. She ignores me, listening. The show goes on. It's cute. Actors are late on cues. Toss in bits, adlib. Lady Macbeth drains a flask, offers the messengers, the doomed king Duncan, even a girl in the front row who I suspect is planted or a friend. More and more of this. It’s not exactly funny, but they’re having a good time. It’s infectious, warm. Clever, really: horror enhances comedy. Directors forget this. Finally, we arrive at the big number, the speech everybody knows. Lady Macbeth is dead, dragged downstage by a grinning Seyton, and presented to her distraught king. The audience goes quiet. The “dead” queen takes a final drink and winks at my wife who sniffs a laugh. Macbeth eats the solemnity, vamping like a professional wrestler before his provocative monologue. He knows we came for this. My wife sees I’m excited, smiles, pats my hand. But a knee goes unsteady under Macbeth, and I see them now–slick eyes. From somewhere, not those crumpled shots of water, he’s sneaking it, swimming. Drunk. Here’s the “uh oh” look–is the rest of the audience seeing this? I did a performance in summer rep once where our Prospero, shit-faced on Wild Turkey, blanked and simply sat down. Just plopped on his ass like a tantruming toddler. They curtained and offered the patrons refunds. For a queasy moment, I think that's it, but his jaws chew into motor memory. Arms, legs, and body follow and he’s tomorrow and tomorrow-ing smoothly on cruise control. The critic in my head switches off, resigned to enjoy the language.  Macbeth kneels to linger over his fallen Lady, which is right. I hate soliloquizing loftily to the heavens, or aghast clawing into the void of profundity. Direct your words; speak to something. Bending like that, over the lain out corpse of his cold queen, it’s misting us, his syrupy bourbon breath, which the others expect. It’s Drunk Shakespeare, right? Ball lighting kindles his eyes, and the verse ignites: he’s actually crying–thin, popping tears. The words wretch out in ugly, desperate sobs with no music, rhythm, or drift. I taste notes of a thumping heartbeat, a drum, realize it’s my own open-mouthed breathing. I’ve been sucked toward the stage. He sees me and our eyes meet for a moment, then he’s looking up, out, and saying, “It is a tale told by–I’m the idiot, Leah.” A mutter ripples back, unsure whether to laugh. “Wait, what'd he say?” “It was an accident. I don’t even remember.” He’s sunk to his knees and is talking to us, to everyone, direct address. “I remember her saying ‘you're so quiet.’ I’m sure I was thinking about you, babe. I don’t even know what we did, Leah. It’s a blur. I didn’t want to–” Stage right, actors are standing and looking at each other like, “What should I do?” Macbeth’s scanning eyes find what they’re after, a tall lady in the middle of the house. I can’t help but swivel and bear down on her. Most of us are. Hundreds of eyes. She clutches a bouquet of red roses. “I’ll quit all this. Stay home. Leah, nothing matters,” he says and scoots forward gracelessly to the edge of the stage nearly sliding Lady Macbeth overboard. His legs dangle. The tall lady sits, frozen. The roses crush against her denim jacket. One of the actors, Banquo, puts hands on Macbeth but gets shrugged away. Lady Macbeth, trapped by his leaning hip is desperate to be dead, feigning death like her life depends on it, like, Oh my God, get me out of here. They dim the lights, but he keeps going. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It only happened once. If it happened.” He’s all over the place. You can’t follow–pauses, sobs, hiccups. “Let’s start over. She’s gone. Please.” He apologizes like someone who apologizes for breakfast, but his face isn’t lying. People are standing in growing groups. The show’s over. It’s murderous how awful this man looks, how the tall lady, Leah, is nailed to her seat, crinkling her bouquet, speechless, looking too stunned to cry, though her cheek twitches, the mechanisms in her face attempting to remind her. “I love you. You want this, right?” Macbeth is saying. Banquo and the stage manager drag him up, freeing Lady Macbeth to scurry away, cursing. Macbeth doesn’t need to shout, the room’s still quiet, despite the lines of patrons filing outward. He’s laughing gently, amazed. “Don’t come to my show. Don’t do that; come to dinner. Let's have a date night?” It’s only Leah and Macbeth here from the look on their faces. My wife is pulling me up and out of my seat.  I’m the last one transfixed; everyone crowds the doors. Out in the cold toward the car, I take my wife’s hand. It’s limp meat, but I grip. We ride silently for six miles, save the bossy GPS. Her hand is warmer now, squeezes back. I turn to her, smile. “That was the best acting I’ve ever seen.” She nods at the road, says, “I hate Shakespeare,” and switches the radio on. Travis Flatt (he/him) is a teacher and actor living in Cookeville, Tennessee. His stories appear or are forthcoming in Bending Genres, Flash Frog, Roi Faineant, JMWW, and elsewhere. He enjoys theater, fluffy dogs, and theatrically fluffy dogs.

)))wind unravels fingers— tones pores which gasp as sudden cold sneaks up on you like an icicle down your back, between your breasts stamps a crescent moon on your forehead as wrinkles huddle in its gusts skin dances, its electricity pungent in the snap of so much air fingers search for you your furred belly announcing its softness into my waiting hands Now You See It, Now You Don’t There is a pool where everyone can drink, liquid sliding down throats like cool tea on a hot porch-- eyes glisten in half-light as pinks and oranges give up the battle against darkening sky— It can ease the whocha and whatcha of life— at least for a while, but stay too long and the pool shrouds you in the woven hair of others whose time has come and gone-- crumpled into dust on some bench under stars that were once too hot. We lie in the grass above— the hills tendering their forgiveness one star at a time as we lose our names among falling petals— pinks and purples clinging to their scent— until the pressure of our hands releases it and thirsty skin drinks. A Man Stops The Clocks My time at Barnhouse & Timble stopped one afternoon when spring’s bright light leapt off marble columns in a tilt-a-whirl --- time fell away— a crazy man with a gun, a judge, two attorneys, and a soon-to-be ex-wife –the gunman looking to make her an ex-wife, lickety-split— Stood next to her, is all I did— that and calling a spade a spade – maybe he was drunk that day, but that is granting an awful lot of benefit-of-the-doubt. More likely, it was a grinding hate that unwinds clocks, turns a man inside out. Either way, a gun is a gun, especially when loaded and handled by a man wearing his innards as a suit. The sun glinting off that gun pointed in my general direction— the slowing tick of the clock, tears rolling down his face— tears as he pulled the trigger—and the breath that whooshed out so fast I didn’t feel it—not at first. Watched red cover white marble, slowly pooling, an ambulance on its way, turning inside out right there on the floor. They got divorced alright—later that year. Same judge, but no more appearances from the husband. They put a straitjacket on him to keep his innards contained. He’s jacketed still. On quiet days, I still hear that whoosh— so loud, it drowns out everything else, takes my pen away and stoppers up all the words inside— just me and him, and his tears as I struggle for air. Audrey Howitt lives and writes poetry in the San Francisco Bay Area.  When not writing, she sings classical music and teaches voice. She is a licensed attorney and psychotherapist. Ms. Howitt has been published in Purely Lit: Poetry Anthology, Washington Square Review, Panoply, Muddy River Poetry Review, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Total Eclipse Poetry and Prose, Chiaroscuro-Darkness and Light, dVerse Poets Anthology, With Painted Words, Algebra of Owls and Lost Towers Publications among others.