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ANNIVERSARY I stick my thumb out and demand a ride. It’s our anniversary. Of the day we died in our last lives. I want to celebrate with you—catch up over coffee, then find a room to catch up on all things pent up. I pray whoever just complied with the thumb’s demand isn’t a creep. I point every few streets, he turns as I direct, until we are forty-five minutes away from where he meant to end up. We start pulling through what looks like our old town, and I see what looks like our favorite café: same beaten-up exterior, same yellow walls. I don’t know why I remember so much, or why I was stuck remembering if I wasn’t given the power to find you. I start crying. The driver doesn’t interrupt, just rolls down my window, puts on a song. When he drops me, he tells me, “I’m sorry, whatever it is, I’m sorry.” I tell him, “Thank you,” before shutting the door. Everywhere I go I do not know what I will find, but I cry just in case it’s still not you, all over again. WHEN I SAY LONELINESS I’m at a restaurant. The walls are white, the lighting fluorescent. The waiter is glued to the kitchen, barely checks in. To my right, there are stacks of unused chairs. I counted them: fourteen. The fly in my soup gets lodged in my throat, and is humming along to the Lucy Dacus song playing in my ears. When the waiter makes his way back over, I ask for another of the exact same thing, and swallow it down fast so that the fly can have someone to talk to. He buzzes as if to say thank you, and I breathe as if to say I know what it’s like. ART + PAIN > NO PAIN, NO ART I say look ma, I made art, and her eyes fall to the ground. The vase she dropped only a moment ago Is now enhanced in its beauty by some pinecones I found in our backyard and some flowers I picked From the front. She says that’s great, hon, but the Shards will still make your feet bleed, and proceeds to sweep away all my goddamned work. PSYCHIC The psychic folds over a card and leaves me to stare at it. She carefully chooses one that says I will die in the near future. I reach for the dictionary to define “near” but she slams her hand against the book and holds tight—I can’t slide it out from under her. She gets up to fix me tea. She even tells me to take my coat off, she’ll wash it for me. She says she wants to spend some time together, make a day of it. She says we don’t have much time. I reach again for the book for a definition of “much.” And I guess she doesn’t trust me anymore; she throws the book into the fire across the street that wasn’t there when she started to toss, but I guess she saw it coming. I have checklists of what I want to feel before dropping dead, and if I’m low on time, I need someone who’s going to do all the work, make me feel all of it at once. She tells me there’s a man who plays guitar on the same street corner every night, gives me the coordinates, says when he plays he looks just as impassioned as I do when I’m hunched over sheets of looseleaf, agonizing over words. She promises that he, too, thinks driving into the mountains at 4:00 in the morning is the most important thing a person could possibly do. Sounds like my kind of guy. I get my ticket for the subway and tell the woman, her hand on a pole, that I have finally found something worth holding on for. She asks me where it is, and I tell her, I don’t know— I lost the coordinates—left the boy on the corner for somebody else to find, because I already have it, just by knowing it is possible. And because I know everything I have ever wanted is out there, I don’t need it, not even any of it! I let myself fall asleep, deciding that I’ll get off at whichever stop I wake up. How can it be that both things are true? I am dying, and everything is possible. Danielle Lisa is a poet born and raised in Long Island, New York. Her mother knew Danielle would grow up to be a poet because, as a child, poetry would get her to stop crying. Now at twenty-six, poetry doesn't get her to stop crying, it makes her start. She has been published in Waxing & Waning and her poem "I'm Convinced You Actually Liked the Whole Wheat Pancakes" will be published in an upcoming edition of Rattle.

Lying in bed one night, I found a lump on my testicle. This was Spring 2009; I had recently turned thirty. To be certain, I fondled the protuberance with my fingertips, discreetly worrying at it until there was no room for doubt – a small node on the right side not present on the left. My heart sank, my stomach roiled in queasy appreciation. This was it, the moment you think will never happen to you. Certainly not in your twenties but they, it seemed, were long gone. As I lay there, my wife beside me (oblivious to my intestinal turmoil), I made a snap decision – the single most imbecilic, feeble and contemptible of my life. I would ignore it. If I pretended it wasn’t there, maybe it would go away. I said goodnight, turned off the lights, and lay there staring into space. Why had I reacted like this? I had one of the most supportive people I’ve ever met lying right next to me yet my instinct was not to mention it. Rather than share, which would have allowed me to tap into the unwavering reservoir of support that my wife, Kim, provides, I chose to hide it. Simple: embarrassment. It was too much. Not the embarrassment of becoming ill, (although the idea that my immoderate lifestyle was finally catching up on me, you reap what you sow, the pigeons coming home and all that, did cross my mind as I lay there pretending to sleep), but of having to show a doctor my junk. I was so mortified by the idea that in that instant, I made the fateful decision. It was preferable to slowly die of testicular cancer than to get it checked out. I fell into an uneasy sleep. This secret, that I had a tumor in my bollix, I lived with for months. I compartmentalized the issue, stored it neatly amongst the bric-a-brac of long-lost friends and childhood clothes at the back of my brain. Nightly I would check and recheck my right testis to see if I could be mistaken, hoping beyond hope that somehow this lump would miraculously disappear, but to no avail. Every time I checked, there it was on my right, there it wasn’t on my left. The old queasiness would roll through me and I would turn over, close my eyes, and hope that when I awoke the next morning, it would have all been a bad dream. After the first year, I became aware that the growth was living up to its name. Previously, when I first noticed it, it had been more or less the size of a pumpkin seed, whereas now it had doubled to the size of a pea. There was no pain, no tangible decline in my fitness, no erectile dysfunction, no hair loss (which I know is caused by the treatment of cancer rather than the cancer itself but the association is strong). No ill effects to speak of at all. This did not, however, inspire confidence. I may have felt fine, but it was inevitable, the tumor was metastisizing inside me. It was only a matter of time, I was sure, until the ticking bomb in my ball sack went boom. Still, I kept shtum. The bigger fear, even bigger than dying from a disease slowly but surely forming in my very core, was to have to expose myself to a medic. This is far and away the most pathetic thing about the whole story. I had conditioned myself to think this way. It was hard-wired into me. Years upon years of schoolyard banter, taunts by friends at me or more likely by me at friends, had emotionally stunted me to such an extent that I was paralyzed with fear. Death was preferable to potentially opening myself up to ridicule. A literal case of toxic masculinity if ever there was one. This is all the more embarrassing to admit given that Kim had just given birth to our first child. During this time, as practically all pregnant women do, Kim had undergone any number of smears and scans and prods and probes, yet I couldn’t even bring myself to get checked for cancer? Not just putting my own risk at health, but potentially tearing our newborn family apart just as we were starting a life together. Another year passed. Still no illness, no pain in the marrow, no thinning hair (I’m aware I’m an idiot, this is the point). We were trying for another child, we wanted a bigger family, and after several months, Kim became pregnant again. We were over the moon. So much so, we decided not to wait until the traditional twelve-week mark to tell people, but instead told friends and family at around week nine. What was the worst that could happen? we reasoned. If there did end up being a problem, surely it would be better for our friends and family to know than have to go through it alone. The theory soon got put to the test. At the next scan, week eleven or so, we were told the pregnancy was ectopic, the foetus was, for want of a more medical term, stuck in one of Kim’s fallopian tubes. We were to lose the child but, with immediate treatment, they may be able to save the tube. A hammer blow, we were devastated, but, thankfully, we didn’t have to go through it alone. Our friends and family swiftly rallied around. Kim subjected herself to more probes and scrapes, pills and poisons, and I did my second-best to support her. I did everything, absolutely everything I could, except, of course, from subject myself to anything remotely similar. God forbid. What if somebody poked fun at me? Another year passed. The lump had, at least, remained pea-sized throughout. This did little to encourage me though. I was sure this could only mean the tumor was boring inwards, its ever-metastasizing carcinogens seeping deep into my dick, my other ball, my spine. By now, I knew, I could be riddled, and there would be nothing I could do about it. Through a mixture of embarrassment and prudishness, I had let myself die. I’d destroyed our family. Finally, one night, after more than three years of procrastinating, I mentioned it to Kim. You need to get that checked, she said without hesitation. No drama, no molly-coddling, just straight. She was right, I agreed, there was no time to lose. Two weeks later, a helpful porter escorted me into a room in St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin, asked me to take a seat on the trolley and wait. The Ultrasound Doctor would be along shortly. A minute later, in walks a young, female doctor, extremely attractive, who asks me to lie back on the gurney and pull down my pants. This was it. The moment I had been dreading for so long, that I had put my health at risk for. What if, God forbid, she laughed at me or, even worse, I had an erection. Dublin is a small place; this woman could easily know people I know. With no small sense of horror and shame, I did as I was told. The doctor was in no mood to hang about. Without the faintest amusement, repulsion, or admiration for that matter, she slopped a dollop of KY on my ball sack and began nudging my nuts with a sonographic probe. The experience was neither pleasant nor in any way, shape or form, arousing. It was perfunctory and sterile, and the doctor, like every other medic in the country, was actually there to help, not to laugh at or tease me like an immature child. You’ve a cyst, she said matter-of-factly. Is that, like... cancer? Oh no, an epididymal cyst. They’re quite common, really. Oh. Ok, I said, my fears evaporating like the mists of a new dawn. So, what do I do about it? Nothing. Just ignore it. It’s not dangerous. If it gets too big, come back in and see us. How big is too big? The size of a fist. At this, I almost choked on my own relief. The notion of having something the size of a fist tucked neatly betwixt my balls was abhorrent. Whenever it gets to bothering you, she reassured. Here, she said, handing me a ream of blue tissue paper, clean yourself up. That’s it for today. I went home to Kim. Everything was going to be okay. Part 2 A decade passes. A second daughter is born, then a third. We have the family we have always dreamed of. My cyst is not yet, thankfully, the size of a fist. It is, however, the same size as the other two spheroids in my sack. This was considerably disconcerting, especially when playing football. I took one to the balls a couple of times that year and the pain was the usual agony but exacerbated by a crippling fear. The cyst might burst, I thought, leading to who knows what kind of a mess down there. There was only one solution. My third ball, the superfluous bollock, had to go. I told my doctor the situation and we booked in for another scan. This was the diagnosis. Below is your ultrasound report. There are several things that can go amiss in one's sack and you have more than your fair share. Good news is none of them will harm you unless they get too big and even then are only an annoyance to be removed. Your visit to the urology clinic in June will be infinitely more valuable with this done in advance and ideally they will offer you the chance to have some of these extraneous items removedThere is a 4.2 by 4 cm cyst in the head of the right epididymis, this has increased considerably in size since examination of 02/11/2012.There are small bilateral varicocoeles, larger on the right. There is a small left hydrocoele. No other focal abnormality in either testis is demonstrated. Conclusion: Interval increase in size of right epididymal head cyst. Small bilateral varicocoeles, larger on the right. 4.2 by 4cm cyst. Slightly larger than your standard ping pong ball. Two months later, having fasted for eight hours, I arrived at Loughlinstown Hospital for surgery. I met the consultant leading the operation, he made some crass joke about me being lucky to have three balls (obviously went to an all-boys school too), and I was escorted to wait in a ward. A few minutes later, I was in a cloud of blues and whites, six medics surrounding me. The mask went on and the lights went out. I awoke back in the ward, groggy and weak. The surgery had been a success, I was told. I had pain along the centre line of my scrotum where the incision had taken place, but apart from that, all was well. The cyst had been removed; my balls were back to normal. Kim kindly picked me up, three relieved daughters in the back seats, and we went home. Despite having been under for two hours, or perhaps because of this, I was still exhausted by the time we got home. I shuffled into the living room, lay down on the couch, and promptly fell fast asleep for another hour. Then, at about eight p.m., I made my way upstairs, brushed my teeth, and crawled into bed to sleep the whole thing off. Part 3 Break the fucking lights. This is what I asked – no, correction – begged of Kim as she pulled up behind a couple of cars at the junction of Ailesbury and Merrion road. Run the fucking lights, I screeched in hysterics, another wave of pain crashing over me. Run the fucking lights! It was astronomical, the pain, like nothing I had felt before. I was teetering, on the verge of passing out. I needed to be in the Emergency Department fifteen minutes ago, when the pain was only threatening to pull me apart. Not now, too late, when it already felt like I’d been shot. The lights turned green, Kim raced through, pulling up in an ambulance bay where a kindly porter fetched a wheelchair and helped me into triage whilst Kim parked the car. I’ve always fancied myself to have a reasonable tolerance for pain. I’ve played rugby with twisted ankles, broken fingers, a broken thumb. Every tackle sent a white-hot jolt up my arm as my thumb inevitably banged off the opposing player’s hip, but I played on, then strapped it up the following week and togged out again. This was different. For one thing, the pain was bigger, much, much bigger. It felt as if somebody had affixed a clamp to my gut and was slowly but surely jacking it apart. Like a hole was ripping inside me and it was only a matter of time until my guts spilled out on the floor. Then there was the fear. Despite not being localized there, the pain could only be emanating from my most delicate point. Something had gone wrong with the surgery and now there really was a problem down there. The pain was excruciating. I sat in my wheelchair in the E.D. waiting room and whimpered inconsolably. Eventually, after an interminable half hour, I see an administrator. He asks me some details. My brain is too scrambled to communicate effectively but thankfully Kim is by my side, (in sickness and in health) and relays the pertinent points. How I had had an operation, what time the surgery, what time the pain kicked in, etc, etc. Did you do any strenuous activity when you got home? Not a thing. Slept on the couch for an hour, then went upstairs and went to bed. You walked up the stairs? he asks incredulously, as if I had broken the cardinal rule of cyst excision. This stair-shaming did little to alleviate the pain. Yes, I mewled desperately, mea culpa. I had walked upstairs. At this point, or some indeterminate length of time thereafter – time had ceased to move forward but was instead caught in an eddy, slowly but surely dragging me down with it – I was shown through to the ward and assisted onto a trolley. Kim was not able to follow me through so reluctantly turned away and, without any concrete understanding of what was going on inside her husband, headed home. My trolley and I were wheeled into the middle of a busy E.D. and deposited there to wait our turn. I can talk (even if only to groan), I can breathe, I am not bleeding. I am demonstrating no immediate risk to life. Ergo, my problems can wait. At least a full five agonizing hours later, a cannula is finally inserted into my vein, I am administered a shot of morphine and slump into an exhausted heap. The opioid hits me like a cold blast. The pain, the incessant, interminable pain, is finally gone. I sleep. Part 4 Briefly. I am awoken by a drunk woman who is shouting outside my door (unbeknownst to me, I have been wheeled into one of seven rooms which stem off the central station), threatening to fight the entire staff on duty. No particular reason, as far as I could make out, but she was well up for a scrap. I look down at my stomach. There, where the pain still resides despite the lingering effects of the drug, is a dark purple bruising. Two inches wide, slightly below and to the right of my naval. The penny drops. Internal bleeding. The scab on my right epididymis where the surgeon cauterized the wound must have come off and I’ve been bleeding into my abdomen. This is a relief. Yes, the pain is still monstrous but at least I now know what’s going on. I lie back down and listen to the soothing sounds of an Emergency Department in full flow and soon fall back to sleep. Shortly after, I would guesstimate at about four in the morning, I feel the need to pee. With an abundance of care, I ease my legs off the trolley and, wincing, take to my feet. I stick my head out the door. All is quiet now, relatively speaking. The mad woman has been sedated, there are few shouts or cries. I tread my way to the toilet, lock the door behind me, stand in front of the bowl, and pull out my penis. Still groggy, but having done this literally thousands and thousands of times, I take aim, close my eyes, and let it flow. Disaster. My urine is not just slightly off target, it has flicked to full garden-sprinkler mode. The spray is everywhere, all directions all at once. I look down to see what is going on and that’s when I see it – the horror. My dick is not something I recognise. Instead, I appear to be holding a dark purple mess in my hands. It’s an organ of some description, that I can tell, but if I had to guess, a barbecued kidney would be my best bet. I turn off the hose and, mortified, stuff my malformed sex back in my pants and wipe the piss off the walls and floor. I now have a moment of confusion. In this bathroom there is also a shower, it’s a wet room of sorts. I wonder if this shower has been provided for people in my exact predicament – that of not being able to control the trajectory of flow. I wonder in all seriousness whether I am meant to piss up against the wall and then wash it down. Eventually I realize this can in no way be hygienic and is probably the last thing I am meant to do, but nor do I think if I sit down on the toilet will I be able to hit the pan beneath. I’m torn, and still in dire need of the toilet. So, for once, I do something sensible. I go and ask a nurse. Of course, as luck would have it, the nurse at the station is unbelievably good-looking. Let’s have a look, shall we? she says, leading me back into the bathroom where I am obliged to show her my mutilated genitalia. No problem, she says, disappearing for a moment before coming back with a cardboard jug. Here you go, she says, handing it to me. Pour it down the toilet after and then stick it in the bin. I do as I’m told. The jug, a one-liter not dissimilar to the type of juice bottle that has a handle fitted into its side, has an over-sized mouth for this very reason. Relief. My dick may be presenting as an aubergine emoji, but exhaustion takes precedence. I limp back to my room, lie down in the bed, and snatch a couple more hours’ sleep. Part 5 I spent four days in hospital that week. The streak of bruising along my midriff extended from one side to the other, three inches deep, fifteen wide. A belt of blood, purple and green; a bike tire track across my gut. My balls and dick matured in color from mauve to a dark wine. Guts of a pint had spilled into my nether region, one nurse estimated. The elasticity of the ball sack ideal for soakage. Like a sponge, he explained loudly. I thanked him for his candor. There were three other men in the urology ward with me. To my right, Kieran, a short, wealthy (as he liked to allude), tonsured man in his early seventies. Kieran was of a nervous disposition, and understandably so. He was being monitored to see if he could qualify for a new kidney. Opposite him was Gerard, a younger man, mid-fifties I would say, with rich, thick, dark, peppered gray hair and pitch-black eyebrows. He reminded me of one of those guys in a Just For Men advert. His was a good news story. He had found blood in his urine, flagged it with his doctor straight away, and now here he was, a couple of months later, happily recuperating as somebody else’s kidney filtered the waste from his body. Time would tell but the surgery, it seemed, had been a success. Then finally, opposite me was Patrick, the eldest of the group. He was in his eighties. I wasn’t sure what he was in for, general waterworks presumably. Tall and thin with a sharp nose and sprouting eyebrows that gave him the air of an elderly emu, he was a warm, friendly, chatty man, but ever-so-softly spoken. On the first day we exchanged pleasantries but neither of us could clearly hear the other given our debilitated states. The important thing was, though, we both understood and recognised that the man opposite us meant well. There was an immediate rapport. There were curtains between each of the beds which any of us could draw around ourselves should we need our privacy. Plastic piss jugs sat on the night stands beside each bed (Patrick had several scattered around his enclosure), and a television was on mute in the corner. That is to say, your typical man’s urology ward. Whitewashed walls and linoleum floor. There was also a large bathroom into which we could totter to use or empty our piss jugs or to give them a rinse. That first day I remember very little of, other than being visited twice by troops of trainee doctors requesting a look at my butchered meat. Two separate occasions, two separate cliques. I lay on my back, pulled down my tracksuit bottoms, and thought of Christmas. Twice. The ignominy. If my teenage self could see me now. Here you go, folks, here’s the road kill. Feast your eyes. The second day passed much like the first. More trainee doctors, some nurses, a consultant, all swung by for a gander. Down went the pants and up went the smile as I grinned and beared it. At least something good might come out of this, I thought. At least by exposing myself to all these future healers I may help prevent some other poor unfortunate three-balled bastard from experiencing likewise. A learning experience all around. Also, Gerard had had more good news. His latest test results were positive. He might be allowed leave tomorrow, all things being equal. The same couldn’t be said for Kieran though. His bloods, or whatever it was they were monitoring, weren’t where they needed to be. There was zero progress being made, no evidence his body would accept a new kidney and therefore no point risking one. He put on a brave face but we could feel his anxiety heighten, but what could we do? Patrick, opposite me, had a quiet day that second day. He sat up on the side of the bed when the nurses and doctors came to examine him. He’d shoot me a conspiratorial smile, the occasional wink before the curtains were drawn, but other than that there was little engagement. Rest was the order of the day. No family came to see him, nor me, for that matter. I had agreed with Kim it would be too much hassle with the kids and sure wouldn't I be home soon enough. On day three, Patrick slept even more than the day before. There were no smiles, no craning of the neck over a nurses’ shoulder to give me a wink. The man was clearly exhausted. But overall, day three was a good day. We said goodby to Gerard. At least, myself and Kieran did, Patrick kept his curtain closed. Gerard’s levels had sustained, they were happy for him to check out; he could take his new kidney home to meet the rest of the family. Hands were clasped and, when Gerard’s daughter came to collect him, celebratory sweets passed around. We were both genuinely happy for him. He was a nice guy and now he’d go on being a nice guy out there in the real world. If Kieran was jealous, it didn’t show. Gerard’s bed, a totem to modern-day medicine, remained unoccupied for the rest of my stay. Patrick’s, however, was still occupied and still he lay asleep. At intervals I would get a peak in at him, resting there, surrounded by quarter-filled jugs of wan piss, which the nurses would either empty for him or not, depending on how diligent they were feeling. Whatever plumbing issues he had, fatigue was a major side-effect. I, on the other hand, could feel my strength coming back. More nurses and doctors came to visit me, to peer at the medical anomaly between my legs, and I even managed the occasional joke. Not literally, but things were looking up. I’d be home the following day, where I could lie on the couch and not have people come to visit me and the most mangled member in Dublin. Kieran said he was glad for me. I almost believed him, too. The next day, day four, the day I was to be discharged, I woke to a commotion. Patrick had died in the night. Nobody, other than medics, that is, had come to visit him during the four days I had been there. Nobody, confirmed Kieran, during the two days prior to my arrival. Just me, Kieran, and Gerard, the last three people on earth he had spoken to who weren’t discussing his blood pressure, piss or pills. The wink he had given me the day before was the last interaction with a human outside of the medical profession he ever had. Kieran and I shook hands when it was time for me to go home. I wished him well with the kidney, even though I had heard the consultant earlier that morning telling him the bad news. They would wait one more day but if there wasn’t a significant change there would be nothing they could do for him. He wished me well with my recovery. I thanked him and we parted. Him, climbing back into the bed. Me, by chance, walking out the front door. A few weeks passed (it would be a few months yet until I was back at the 5-a-side football); I had some old school friends around to watch a match. A barbecued kidney, I insisted, much to their disbelief. I’m serious, I said, slipping out the phone. (On day three, prior to a shower, I had taken a snap in the mirror. A quadrangle of black circles described my torso, the gluey residue of monitor suckers. My penis engorged and hideous). I flashed the screen at them. Look, I insisted. Look!

My father played guitar at night. Sometimes, I’d peek out my bedroom door to listen. He’d sit in an old velvet chair, his guitar like a broken lover in his arms. Strumming and picking until the nylon strings snapped. Until his fingertips bled. He had a voice like chocolate syrup, so sultry and smooth it was easy to crave, easy to get lost in a sugary high. Easy to forget the bark, the bite, my mother’s resentment, his indifference, the neglect. My father played guitar on weekends. Sometimes, I was his audience. Sometimes, his many girlfriends were. He’d sing about old truths and new lies, lost in the tomorrow of yesterday. He’d sing about little white houses and harbors. About the end of the return of the long dark nights. He’d sing until his audience disappeared. Until his voice cracked or his eyes misted. He’d sing until there was no turning back. My father used to play guitar. Now, his music gathers dust. Sometimes, I sit on my red velvet couch transported to the bedroom I’ve never really left. The cold smell of frost on its single-pane windows. A fresh coat of paint on its crumbling walls. I listen to his old recordings. The unmistakable crackle of the cassette tape. The squeak of a finger slide. The shiver of a fret buzz. I listen to his voice, a splash of sambuca in my cup of espresso. His words spike my heart. I listen until I can’t hear it beat.

I suppose you think it’s funny, that my friends call me Madman, or you think I’m going to be funny, or do crazy things, or belong on “Jackass” or blow something up or, I don’t know. Maybe you don’t think that.  I just know this about myself. I was a skinny kid and I didn’t have friends until eighth grade when I began to sing out loud in public besides that, I grew ten inches and began the bulking up process that guys go through, and grew my hair longer than anyone else’s in our school (which was easy to do, since they all had crew-cuts or whatever you call short hair) and then I had friends. Which is to say, people stopped making fun of me and began to like me. First for my voice and, second, the girls liked my looks, too.  And maybe some boys too, I have sort of feminine features so who knows? Someone compared me to Johnny Depp but that’s far-fetched, the only thing is that we both have fine bones and big eyes and that is not enough to make me Johnny Depp, but let me tell you that I’m a lot taller than he is, and I don’t know if he can sing, but I sure as hell can. Think I talk too much? I do when I’m nervous and I am nervous because I just got kicked out of UCLA, cause I sort of forgot to attend classes and I only made it one and a half years, and I had bet my dad that I could make it through two full years, so he won, but I don’t talk to him anyway. That’s not why I’m nervous. I am nervous because I am sitting here in this auditorium and about to go on stage to sing for a band whose lead singer died three years ago (okay, died is a euphemism. He committed suicide by combining alcohol, drugs, his car and a cliff. Might as well have thrown a gun in there, too.) and now they are looking for a replacement and every singer in L.A. is here trying out.  There must be three hundred people here. I’ve been watching and listening. Some are really good, but they have a blues edge, or a soul sound, or an r&b thing that is better suited to pop music and these guys are this outgrowth of grunge/punk, but newer in the way that has yet to be defined by Rolling Stone magazine or anybody else.  Past emo, past screamo, not even nu-metal.  I just know it fits my voice and I like their songs and I think my songs can fit into their niche but they won’t know that if I don’t get up there and sing. There’s no real order here. You sit in the audience and when you feel ready, you go up and hand this incredibly ice-cold beautiful woman your registration sheet and line up to go on stage. A lot of us sit and wait; a lot go up.  The doors opened at around 2 p.m. and now it’s nearly six and I don’t know how much longer they will go on, so I have to make my move. But I can’t. Not yet. Some girls are trying out too.  Some are really great, I would pay to hear them sing somewhere, the Key Club, the Knitting Factory, even House of Blues prices wouldn’t put me off some of them.  There have been three guys today who I think could be in this band, but I’m trying hard not to think about them and to get my mind together to stand up and make the walk down the aisle to that woman. Maybe it’s her.  Maybe she’s the one keeping me from the stage. I don’t have good luck with women, that’s for sure.  Listen.  My first girlfriend, Suzanne, wanted me to take her virginity and I wouldn’t do it, because I was still a virgin and too scared, so she convinced my close friend, Jeremy, to do it which he did (a virgin too), and then they both told me all about it in great detail.  It’s not just about sex, though. I did finally lose my virginity and things have been okay since, but I don’t seem to be very good at being a boyfriend. I almost married Tabitha, even with her totally weird name that came from really weird parents.  She loved to hear me sing, had me sing to her in the shower, in bed, while she made dinner, all kinds of times.  I started to feel she was a vampire, she was draining me of my voice and my energy; I spent it all singing for her and when I went to gigs (I had gigs in background vocals) I often lost it, went hoarse, couldn’t hold a note or stay on pitch. She sucked me nearly dry of my one and only talent, so I dumped her while she was making wedding plans and putting deposits on caterers and photographers and gazebos. No one talked to me after that, no one in her family or my family. So that’s when I moved back into the dorms and threw myself into dorm life (except for the schoolwork part of it) and met lots of girls, and made new friends among guys, and guest-sang in a myriad of garage bands that were mostly horrible, but when I sang with them, an audience came and people had a good time. This is boring. My life is boring.  Don’t get me started. Or, I guess I am started, but make me stop. This is all because I am nervous about going on stage, which is ridiculous, I can do this. It’s just that I actually want it, more than whatever else I wanted before. My girlfriend offered to come with me. Yes, I do have one, and her name is Suze and I’m not scared of her, in fact, I really like being with her and I’m comfortable with her.  And she’s pretty but doesn’t think so. She’s not super-skinny like the girls around campus, or the girls here on stage. Or the ice queen down there.  Suze is not in the least fat but by these stupid modern fashion standards, she could be described as baby-fat cute.  I could give a shit. She is beautiful.  We even went through this really bad time, we almost broke up even though the thing that happened was out of our control – neither of us could do anything about it – but we survived and this is something I find like really amazing. But Tashi, if she came with me today, I would be even more self-conscious. A guy stands up in near the front row, and I realize it’s one of the band members, the bass player.  He turns to those of us left in the audience and, in a really loud voice (shouldn’t he be the singer?) he yells out, “Don’t any of you have passion?” Fuck, maybe not. I have passion for sex and for Suze. I have passion for music. People tell me I am really involved in music when I sing, they say I embody it, but I don’t really know what they mean.  I feel it, yes, and I love it and love singing and don’t want to stop once I am started, but hell, more than half the people I just watched on stage sing with that kind of passion.  Does he want something else? Does he want more? A half a dozen people leave quietly, slipping out the back door. Not even enough passion to believe they can still have a shot. No one else moves. The ice queen looks at the band members and I recognize her signals to mean, should we end this now? No, they can’t. I leap up, a bit too ungainly, and trip my way over the feet of people whose faces look up at me with suspicion and awe. Is he really going to go on stage after that?  I am not going to let them shut down auditions without having even tried so I am loping down the long aisle to the ice queen, barely acknowledging her presence and then I am up on stage. I feel like someone who has just won a Grammy award and now I should thank everyone who helped me get this far. But I am not that far.  I am on stage. The lights are bright and I can barely make out the band members in the front row, can’t see if their faces are intrigued or disgusted or bored.  The singing is a capella, there is no one to wait for, I can start whenever I am ready. There was this really bad time.  Suze’s friend had died in a cruel incident. It was kinda suicide and kinda murder and completely horrible and Suze and I both were witnesses.  We moved in together after that.  We held each other a lot and for a while didn’t even have sex. Suze works at Starbucks and she almost lost her job ‘cause she couldn’t bring herself to go to work.  I don’t even like to think about this but it has an odd way of slipping into my thoughts and suddenly exploding like goddamn fireworks at the wrong times. And all times are the wrong times. Suze suggested therapy. She said we have post-traumatic stress. “That’s for Vietnam vets,” I said, “Iraqi war vets.” “It’s for victims of crimes and terrible accidents and tragic losses.  It’s for us.”  She showed me a corner torn from the L.A. Weekly. An ad for a clinic in Silver Lake that listed, among its other services, group therapy for post traumatic stress disorder. “Please,” said Suze.  So I went, figuring that while it probably wouldn’t help me, it wouldn’t hurt either. We parked on Silver Lake Boulevard and walked two blocks to a small bright green storefront. The windows were sealed from window-shopping view by what looked like furniture pads, making it a sort of black hole among all the furniture and décor shops around it. I was not eager to go in.  Just as we stood there, the door opened and a tiny Asian man stepped out. He looked up at us, smiled like the sun had just come from behind a cloud and beckoned us inside. “Please come,” he said, in limited English. “Doctor is good, very good.” Then he left and we were standing in the dim interior of a waiting room, the furniture pads being the primary decoration in a room that otherwise held seven metal folding chairs and a water dispenser sans water.  We shuffled around together, whispering. (Me whispering, “let’s go” and she whispering, “No.”) A woman came through a door.  I do not believe I can describe her in any way that would do her justice. She was tall, a little over six feet.  Husky in a Midwestern sort of body. She had grey hair pulled into a ponytail that went down her back to her waist except for the multitude of stray hairs that spun out of control around her head and arms.  Her eyes were dark and the skin under them saggy like a basset hound.  She wore several layers of what I took to be Guatemalan dresses and skirts.  When she waved us into an interior room, it was all I could do to keep from running the other direction.  Only Tashi’s strong grip on my hand kept me moving toward this woman and her mysterious room. Her office was one step better than the waiting room. She sat in a padded folding chair and there were more of the metal ones scattered around the room.  Files and books and papers lined up on the floor along one wall. This doctor had great need of a desk and bookshelves and some decent seating. “Is this the whole group?” Suze asked. “I thought it was group therapy, I imagined more people.” “Not right now,” the woman said with a voice that informed us not to mess with her. “So, what do we do?” asked Suze. She is so sweet, she wanted to do whatever this woman thought would be appropriate. “Names?” the woman demanded. “Suze,” said Suze, “and Madman, er, Mattais.” “Madman?” “A nickname. Just for fun,” I added.  She stared at me, and I waited for some diatribe about the inappropriateness of the nickname, or a deep psychological interpretation or just some obtuse thing.  I really disliked her.  And she didn’t tell us her name. “What was so traumatic?” “Uh,” stammered Suze, “um, uh, my friend, um died.” “Lots of friends die.” “She died in a fire,” said Suze. I sat back and watched. Would this story come out one sentence at a time, with a judgment on each sentence, and then the next sentence trying to reconcile the judgment with the emotion? “Lots of people die in fires, too.” “We saw her die,” explained Suze. “Wait,” I said. “And lots of people have seen people die in fires, right?” “Hostility is not welcome here,” the woman said. “Only polite people can get therapy?” I answered. Suze took her hand away from mine, distancing herself.  I thought, I won’t forget that, babe.  I will remember that. “You will have to leave if you cannot be civil.” “Listen. Our friend, Moira, joined a religious cult. They built a bonfire, she stepped into it and even when she wanted to get out, they pushed her back in. We watched, we tried to get to her, to help her, but they held us back. We watched her die a long slow burning death.  Now,” I sat back in my creaking chair, “is that typical of lots of people?” I was dismissed. I waited in the stupid waiting room on a stupid folding chair and listened to unintelligible murmurs from behind the closed door.  When Suze came out she was crying but also smiling. I never saw the woman, she did not enter the waiting room. “I wish you had stayed,” Suze said. “I wish we had both left,” I said. “Fuck you.” Suze turned to me and hit my shoulder. “You and your big male ego couldn’t just listen to her, to hear what she had to say. She helped a lot, Madman. She helped me a lot.” “Yeah, well thanks a lot for pulling away from me, for letting me just hang there, for letting me leave, for not coming with me. Fuck you.  I’m taking a walk.” We parted there on the sidewalk. Suze drove home. I walked around Silver Lake for a time, had some coffee, walked through a video store and a clothing store, not looking at anything. I walked up to Sunset and stared at a bus stop sign for a long time until a smiling Hispanic woman asked if I needed information. “I need to get to Santa Monica,” I said.  And she efficiently wrote down the three buses I needed to take from that very corner to the very corner of Wilshire and 14th Street, four blocks from the apartment.  She even made change for my five-dollar bill.  I could have kissed her feet. I wanted to ask what she knew about post-traumatic stress because I was certain she could be very helpful in that matter, too. Long bus rides are useful.  This is how:  By the time I walked the four blocks to our apartment, after more than two hours on three buses, I was ready to apologize. I hoped Suze was ready to let me.  When I went in, she tackled me, crying and sobbing and soaking my shirt and telling me how she was sure she would never see me again.  I said sorry, she said sorry and we made love for the first time in months.  Oh, yeah, that helps a lot and things got better and better. “But let me tell you one thing the doctor said that helped,” said Suze as we lay coiled together, our sweaty bodies cooling off with the breeze coming in the window. “Okay, I can take it,” I laughed. “She had me deconstruct the incident.” “Um, like Foucault or Derrida?  French literary deconstruction theory?  You took it apart?” “Well, whatever that is.  First I told her the entire story. Then we talked about all different parts of it, focusing on the dancing, the singing, the fire itself.  I had to describe in detail the moment Moira stepped into the fire.  And in detail what it was like to run toward her, to be grabbed and held by the other people.  And last, I told her the story completely backwards, so that Moira stepped out of the fire, danced backward around it and went back to her room.” I listened and I understood.  Better than Suze, who said, “I feel better but I’m not sure why.” “You lessened its power,” I explained. “You took away the one narrative and all of its power and pain, and you examined the parts and felt each one of them fully, then like they are little gems or something, you put them down. And then you played the whole thing backward which means you control the narrative and it doesn’t control you.” She glared at me. “How do you know that?” “College, babe.  A course in postmodern theory, the deconstructionists, the way we looked at literature. It’s the same thing.  Take power away from the text and the author, and give it to the reader.” Suze curled her head up against my chest and I stroked her back. I was glad she felt so much better.  I was glad to be back in our apartment and not wandering the streets on foot or bus. And I was glad that, no matter what, I was not going to see that doctor again.  I would deconstruct Moira’s death on my own, if that was the cure. “What are you going to sing?” asks a face from the dark front row. “I was going to sing one of your songs,” I reply. “I was going to sing, ‘No Reality.’  But I changed my mind. I’m going to sing ‘The Country Where No One Knows the Language.’” “Whose song is that?” comes the voice. “Mine. I wrote it.” And without waiting, I launch into the song and I sing it with all the passion I had written it with, I sing it with my fear, and with my certainty. I wrote it for Moira and I sing it better than I ever have before. It is silent after I sing.  The ice queen is busy talking to someone in dark clothes who I cannot see; I await her official words to leave the stage.  I wait. The remaining singers wait.  Someone in the front row stands up. The guy with the booming voice. “Good on you, bloke.” The ice queen calls, “Next,” and as I pass her on the steps, she puts her hand on my arm. Her hand is warm and soft against my cool sweaty skin. “You can go. But expect a call-back.” She smiles at me, pleasantly. I don’t know what comes next. I just know that there were odd bits of Los Angeles that went into whatever success this is: wackos who immolate their true believers, a wiry-haired doctor who heals with Derrida, and a sweetheart of a woman who knows the bus system and can impart her knowledge to a suffering fool when needed. Amy Jones Sedivy grew up in Los Angeles and currently lives in NELA (Highland Park) with her artist-husband and their princess-dog. She recently retired and spends her time reading, writing, and exploring the rest of Los Angeles. Amy’s most recent stories have been published in (mac)ro(mic), Made in L.A. Beyond the Precipice anthology, Big Whoopie Deal, and The Write Launch. “On Fire for Jesus", a story that tells about Moira's character and her death, will be printed in the Chiron Review in April.

So I’ve been wandering sodden streets, crossing narrow bridges. It shouldn't be any great surprise that I’m lost in Venice. It’s the easiest city to get lost in. There are landmarks, sure, like the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari and the Canal Grande. But they don’t direct you from one to the other, much less back to your hotel or country of origin. I’ve asked in Italian if there are any maps but was laughed at by the locals. When they stop laughing, they admit they can’t remember another time when it rained so long. Now I’m hoping a gondolier takes pity and ferries me back across the Atlantic. I’ll pay them in stories collected while lost in a sinking city. We’ll set course for the Statue of Liberty. It’ll be a straight shot. Matthew Isaac Sobin's first book was the novella, The Last Machine in the Solar System. His poems are in or forthcoming from South Florida Poetry Journal, Midway Journal, Orange Blossom Review, Ghost City Review, and MAYDAY Magazine. You may find him selling books at Books on B in Hayward, California.

The Resounding Silence The silence was resounding— Stifling as it crept into my every thought. The silence was all consuming— Reshaping every crevice of my imagination. The silence was foreboding— As the thoughts of my mind seemed to echo off the walls. I wanted the silence to break, But it seemed to gain on me, twisting around my heart— Wrapping its chilled fingers around my throat. I was powerless to stop it— But something sounded, a bang, a crash— Piercing through the shroud of endless silence. —My heart? Was I finally falling apart, At the thought of my own silence? No— It was the door. And with it, came a flood of noise— Tumbling into the room, overwhelming every thought I had. A bang, a crash —And smoke. Was it a fire? Was I wrong about the silence? Or had it only been hiding, waiting for this moment to consume me? No— Oh— My dad’s smoking again. Broken Mug It was a cold, clear day in the second week of April. I remember that it was a Saturday and that I was in the kitchen making coffee for the two of us. I remember taking the cup from me and holding it up to the light to see if it was clean. There was a smear of coffee on the rim, but the coffee inside was still clear. I remember how the light shone through the coffee and made the liquid glow. I remember how he stood over me then, and how my heart fluttered like a bird. I froze. He took the cup from my hand and threw it against the wall. It shattered into a thousand pieces and I remember watching as they fell to the floor like rain. I opened my mouth to tell him that it was his fault, that he should have known what he was doing, but then I remembered that it was me who did that to us. I took the broken pieces of ceramic and put them carefully in the sink in case there might be some use to them later. I cleaned the place I had thrown my heart at, cleaned the place I had thrown my soul at. I swept up the pieces of my life, as dull and meaningless as the fragments of ceramic. I carried them to the garbage and threw them in, along with the fragments of my body.

fisherman he is only seen in flashes, gold thrashes on the line, reeling it was not he who was found, so cold to the touch, that sallow thing iscariot online it can deceive the eye, a lie upon the lips that betrays it’s through a judas hole i spy where no one returns my gaze it’s through a judas hole i spy so you can’t return the view might it deceive the eye, a lie upon my lips that finds you indian summer in warm reprieves we’d enter soft infernos of foliage, leaves so vainly hanging on for winter how it froze us, in short sleeves J. R. Wilkerson is a resident of Northern Virginia by way of Lawrenceburg, Missouri.

Whimsy The day I saw the life-like parrot swaying on a string in front of your kitchen window I knew you had made a pivot in the cage that trapped your hardness now headed for fresh air, lighter, you offered me a gingerbread-man cookie letting me believe you were feeling powerful telling me you could get a head on a plate if you wanted to as you sat smiling next to your prayer plant Offshoots I am most comfortable staying behind the lens looking to take just a second of time for one picture, one frame taken in an open meadow that keeps teaching me I will be surprised by what appears after one click when it is time for me to look at the finished piece when I find rays of light I didn't see with my eyes go full spectrum, out of nowhere, illuminating crevices when a blur of cloud formations come to reveal a window in the blue where a lit-up man sits with his arms spread out over this kingdom reminding me that even when I am out of sight trying to hide in stillness, trying to avoid hard doors that may slam in my face, nature will open will speak out loud through closed spaces bountiful eyes share with the poor from fields of view in the making Turn Up I send you a picture of a rutabaga while you are hiking with a message that says the rutabaga and I love you you call me instantly because it is just what we needed I thank the farmer who planted the rutabaga, who helped us harvest our urgency First Cousin Only six years older than me you seemed to be so much wiser you were trusted to take me to the playground, so we could go on the seesaw up and down I wanted to be as pretty as you I wanted to put my sneakers aside, be shiny in patent leather like you, until you jumped off while I was smiling high in the sky making me fall hard sideways onto the cracked pavement catching only the look in your eye that frightened me more than the pain on my face I told no one when we went home as though I seemed to know it was safer to calm myself than to speak of this new found lowdown Susan Shea is a retired school psychologist who was raised in New York City, and now lives in a forest in Pennsylvania.  Since she has returned to writing poetry this year, her poems have been accepted by a few dozen publications, including Across the Margin, Vita Poetica, Ekstasis, Persimmon Tree Literary Magazine,  and The Avalon Literary Review, as well as three anthologies. Susan is so happy to wake up every morning knowing she now has the time to write poetry.

Disney’s recycled animations It’s been said that Woolie Reitherman had the cels of those scenes drawn over each other because it had already worked once, so why not again? Well, because that afternoon Christopher Robin walked a resurrected Indian jungle and began to feel the transfusion flowing through the landscape’s veins. Déjà vu at first, and then the full embrace of a parallel abandonment. The stock-phrase-pastime of slinging rocks over the bluff was really young Christopher questioning the colonialism of Mowgli’s god. How did I miss that? And if I missed that, it seems certain that I, too, am an organic sketch drawn over many past lives. Tell me great animator, how did the last me fair when our leg was fractured, running through cinders in the schoolyard? Or when we approached the burning car in the early hours before our breakfast shift at Jennifer’s on Pearl? The night of the fire, the night our neighbors nearly spit-roasted themselves, how often do they live? And does the flame continue to follow me through time? It does, doesn’t it? It’s rare but sometimes out on the rocks, if I stand still enough, I can feel your ventriloquism in some kind of celestial acrylic. I must admit it’s easy to lose track of your life. Sometimes, I swear I can hear your clear sheets flipping, layering themselves over us the weight holding us down, moving us along. SPOF Such poor machines we really are. What engineer worth their weight in gearing would craft so many Single Points of Failure. So many non-redundant environments with no backups, junctions where one failure, one loss, ends the system’s hum within the world. But that is exactly how some of the best lives are built. We hold our husbands, daughters, brothers, mothers, sons, and wives with all the strength of a stripped bolt. Tightened, with almost no hold at all.

Plumb or Plum? There, just outside my living room window, are six standard issue, old school mailboxes fixed on top of six wooden posts and a street sign at an intersection that says HWY 23 and N. Plumb, each one leaning at just a slightly different angle, each one pointing to a wildly diver- gent set of coordinates up there, in the night sky, looking down on us, all the time, that are, in turn, separated themselves, by millions of lightyears, and each one of them with a planet that’s almost like ours, maybe… But, for some reason, the one thing I keep coming back to is why would these folks name their street Plumb instead of Plum? Kansas Clouds They look like Kansas clouds, she said, raising a postcard up for my inspection as she emerged, suddenly (smiling somewhat triumphantly), from a forest of t-shirts, cap-guns, trinkets and toy tomahawks: a strip of Arizona highway, 1953, under a towering cathedral sky crowded with cumulus clouds like arctic caps that someone (mischievous) had set adrift to wander with the weather, their shadows slowly flowing over the arid landscape below, most likely unnoticed by the hitchhiker and gas attendant. Staring at the Ceiling Woke up to what I thought was the sizzle and tang of bacon cooking and a wandering piano solo, coming from somewhere, that seemed vaguely familiar to me though I just couldn’t identify it, no matter how long I laid there, staring at the ceiling, but instead it was just a soft summer rain falling on the steaming grease trap down in the alley that the Thai place next door kept right below my open bedroom window, and I guess the piano must have been just a dream. Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is Fence Post Blues (River Dog Press, 2023). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.

Susan wakes up in a sweat. A suffocating feeling of doom pins her to the bed. For a moment she panics and thinks she is back to those months of sticky sleeplessness when she thought she was losing her mind. She’d been terrified to find out what might be wrong with her but had no option but to go to the doctor when she forgot the PIN for her bank card, her password at work, and came within inches of crashing into a car she hadn’t even seen, all in the same week. It was a relief to discover that it was the menopause and not a brain tumour or dementia or something awful like that. She was too relieved about her diagnosis to spend any time mourning what it meant the end of. She’d never been one of those women who spent their lives dreaming about having children. She wasn’t really sure if she wanted them. Being on her own, it wasn’t a question she’d had to realistically face. You’d need to be with a man for a few years to get the measure of him, to know if he’d be the sort you could trust if he’d be someone you could build a future and family with and that’s not something she’d ever managed. There’d been a few boyfriends when she was younger but they’d never lasted more than a few months before she grew sick of the sight and sound of them, or they of her.  There weren’t exactly suitors queuing up at the door these days and she’d given up on internet dating ages ago after a long string of encounters with desperate divorcees, married men and headcases. She didn’t have to work hard to spot the red flags with any of them. They were practically waving them at her from the moment she met them. Now that the HRT had kicked in she’d been flying the past few months but maybe she’d gotten used to it and needed a higher dose patch. The doctor said it might need some adjusting over time. She never wants to go back to that useless brain fog stage again. It was terrifying, and mortifying. Susan turns over, pulls the duvet up tight to her chin and tries to go back to sleep. An image of a boy sitting alone in a dark room pops into her mind and she realises that’s what had woken her up in such a state. She’d had a horrible dream about that poor, sad hungry boy in the dirty nappy from the Barnados ad, the one she has to change the channel every time it comes on. They shouldn’t be allowed to manipulate people’s heartstrings like that for money, it’s not right. Seeing it always makes Susan think of that book of her mother’s from years ago about a woman who’d been neglected as a child. She’d read bits of it when she was in second or third class. It made her feel sick but there was something fascinatingly compelling to learn of the horror people were capable of inflicting on a child, their own child. She’d been too young to read such awful things and it had never left her. Some people don’t deserve to have children. The boy in her dream had been crying. He wanted Susan to help him, to rescue him, and though he was right in front of her, for some reason that only makes sense in the world of dreams, she couldn’t get to him. The feeling of helpless panic is still palpable and she doesn’t want to drift back into the dream so she drags herself out of bed to go pee and splash some cold water on her face. She should write to the advertising standards people, or whoever it is that governs those sorts of things. As she climbs back into bed she is grateful that at least it means it’s not the menopause that is haunting her tonight. Susan sleeps poorly for the rest of the night and is a wreck at work the next day. She does her best not to show it and to plaster a smile on her face. They all, well most of them, gave her a lot of lee-way when she went a bit loopy. She thinks they were as relieved as her that there was a reasonable explanation for her brain and personality malfunctions. They’re not a bad gang. They make an effort to go out for dinner and drinks every few months and though she invariably gets stuck with Ciara, whose sole topic of conversation is her never-ending divorce, or Keith who can only talk football, it’s the only chance she has to go out these days so she tries to make the best of it. All of her friends have teenage children now and are too busy driving them from soccer to music lessons to friend’s houses and back again so they don’t have time to go out anymore. Her sisters are much younger than them and they have their hands full with a bunch of pre-schoolers. She meets them now and then for coffee on Saturdays but she never gets the chance to finish a sentence without the young ones needing attention, food, entertainment, or refereeing. Going out and meeting people without having an actual conversation leaves Susan feeling lonelier than ever afterward. The girls have provided the grandchildren for their parents to obsess over so that leapfrogged them both past her into favourite daughters positions. Any time Susan calls her mother, the conversation always ends up on the children and which of them drew an amazing picture, scored a goal in their soccer match, or said something so cutesy and funny it has to be repeated for weeks. Still, things are good with Susan. Work’s going well, another year or two and she should be promoted to Team Lead. She has her Spanish classes on Tuesdays, her books, and goes to the theatre every week or two, the cinema the rare time there’s anything decent on, and her trips to The Shelbourne in Dublin or The G in Galway on her own for a treat every couple of months. She can’t complain. A couple of weeks later Susan calls into the supermarket on her way home on Friday evening to pick up a few bits. As she walks along the fridge section towards the milk, she passes a toddler sitting at the front of a trolley. His father is berating the little boy for reaching around to grab a packet of mini Babybel cheeses he’s just put in. As she opens the door of the fridge, Susan hears a child start to cry. “I want it,” she hears the wailing voice say. She instinctively turns to look back at the little boy in the trolley but it’s not him who is crying, though it sounds like it’s coming from that direction. There’s a high wall of special-offer toilet paper stacked next to them and she reckons there must be a child crying someone behind it and that the tower of toilet paper is throwing the sound around in some weird way. She carries on towards the freezer section to get some ice cream, glad to be escaping the grating noise. There is a work night out planned for the following night. There are just five of them meeting up to go to the new Thai place on O’Connell Street. Between weddings, no babysitters, secondary school graduations and other plans, most people couldn’t come this time. Susan thought about making up an excuse to cancel. That small of a group could end up being awkward. There’d be no escaping someone if they got too intense or boring but it’d been ages since she’d been out with anyone other than herself so she decided to take her chances. She could always leave early and get the last bus home if she wasn’t enjoying it. It’s quiet at the bus stop when Susan arrives a few minutes before six. There’s just a baby in a buggy there with what must be his Granny. She thinks it’s a boy. It’s hard to tell when they’re only a few months old, though its so chubby that it must be a boy. She’s checking the messages on her phone to see what pub they’re meeting in when she hears a whimper. It slowly builds and builds until it turns into the distressed cry of an upset baby that desperately needs something – food, a nappy change, burping, something. Susan looks up. The boy in the buggy is not smiling or talking but he’s not crying either. He’s just sitting there looking back at Susan. The noise doesn’t seem to be registering with his Granny at all. She’s watching for the bus while keeping an eye on the electronic notice board. “I want to go home,” Susan hears a child scream through tears yet the boy’s face is motionless. She looks around but there is no one else here, no other babies. She doesn’t know what to think but something very strange is happening and it’s starting to freak her out. She turns and begins walking back towards home. As she does, the crying fades. She looks back over her shoulder. The little boy is watching her, his face motionless, yet she can still hear a baby crying. Susan thinks about the crying in the supermarket the evening before. But that was different, she reasons to herself, there probably was a baby crying there that she just couldn’t see. She half runs, half walks back home so quickly that she gives herself a stitch in her side. When she gets there, she pours herself a double vodka with a splash of coke and texts Paul from work to say she missed the bus but that she’ll get a taxi in and will meet them at the restaurant. There must be a logical explanation for what happened but none come to mind no matter how she turns it over in her head. The drink has taken the edge off her uneasiness by the time the taxi arrives and the small talk she is forced to engage in with the driver is a distraction. The night out is okay but not great. The food is right up her street but the conversation gets stuck in a loop about their boss and whether he’s over-stating the hours on his own time sheets, if he’s going to stay with their team or more to a rival company who’re setting up outside the city next year, whether he’s qualified enough to even be the manager, and on and on it goes. Saturday night TV would have been better than this, Susan thinks, not impressed that talk of work has invaded her weekend. She downs a few more vodkas than usual to take the edge off her irritation. Her hangover the next day means she can think of nothing but lazing on the sofa, watching rubbish TV. The next week at work is busy and Susan has to stay in late a couple of evenings to finish a report that’s due so all thoughts of strange crying babies go out of her head. It isn’t until the following Saturday, when she is out for a walk and turns into the park that it comes back to her. There are children everywhere, like there always are on weekends. A little girl of about two is coming towards her on a toy car, pushed along by her father. They pass by Susan with only the sound of their chatting hanging in the air. As she continues, she meets a mother and baby in a pram. Susan’s shoulders drop in relief when they walk by her without a sound. She tells herself off for being anxious over nothing and quickens her stride to get on with her walk, taking the path that follows the boundary of the park all the way around. She’ll get a couple of laps in before she heads back home again. As she rounds the next corner, Susan nearly runs into a woman who is walking with her head down, furiously typing on her phone with both thumbs. A little girl is waddling precariously behind her, trying to catch up with the woman. The toddler looks Susan straight in the eye and as she does, Susan hears it start to cry. The child looks upset but, like the boy at the bus stop, she doesn’t seem to be crying. There are no tears falling from her eyes, her mouth isn’t even open. But it has to be coming from her. There’s no one else near them and no big stack of toilet paper to form a semi-plausible explanation this time. “Mammy! Wait! I’m tired,” Susan hears the little girl call out but the sound isn’t coming from her mouth, it’s shut tight. Susan breaks into a jog and heads for the path that will bring her back to park gate. She has to get out of here. She passes more children on the way out, a bunch of young lads playing soccer, a baby in its mother’s arms being fed a bottle, a little boy on a practice bike with no peddles. None of them are crying, obviously or otherwise. But then she walks by a little girl of about two and a half or three whose father is trying to make her kick a ball to him and as soon as Susan lays eyes on her, she hears the girl start to cry. Like the other times, the girl’s face remains impassive while the sound of crying fills the air. “I hate football,” Susan hears her scream. “Why do you always make me play football?” Susan picks up the pace and doesn’t stop running until she’s through the gates and on the path home. She crosses the road to avoid a buggy coming towards her. What is going on? As she walks home, she thinks back over all the crying children, trying to make sense of it. Other people didn’t seem to hear them, or if they did, they pretended not to. But were the children even crying at all? To look at them you wouldn’t think so, their faces didn’t match the sounds she’d heard coming from them. It was like the sound was emanating from them but not from their mouths, as you’d expect, though that doesn’t make sense. As she thinks about it, she realises that the crying doesn’t usually start until she looks right at them, until their eyes meet. Are they trying to communicate with her? Are they looking for her attention or help?  Maybe she has a gift that allows only her to be aware or or to tune into their pain. She has a vague memory of a cousin on her mother’s side being the seventh-son of a seventh-son but he only ever had the cure for shingles and warts, and he wasn’t even that good at it, as far as she remembers. Susan thinks over it all afternoon as she tried to catch up on housework. Maybe she should stop running from whatever this is, stop getting so freaked out by these children. They’re only babies, she tries to convince herself. They aren’t trying to scare me. Could she be more open to them, to let in whatever they are trying to say to her? The prospect scares her but she has a niggling feeling that she’s been somehow called to do it, that they’ve chosen her for a reason. It would be cruel to ignore that. Susan can’t help but notice children and babies all the time now. Everywhere she goes she sees children being ignored, not listened to and not having their basic needs met. They are in McDonald’s and cafes at lunchtime, in the library, in the queue for the cinema, in shops, on the street, everywhere. Their lips don’t need to move. She can hear their endless cries in her head.  “I’m hungry.” “I have a pain in my tummy.” “I want Mommy.” “Let me down.” “Get me out.” “I don’t want to.” “Give me milk.” She tries to connect with those that signal they are in distress, to meet their gaze with concern, willing them to see in her eyes that she cares, that she understands, that she’s sorry they are hurting. Sometimes it works and the crying subsides. Sometimes it’s not enough. Susan stops being afraid of whatever this is that is happening to her, and takes comfort in the fact that she can soothe the pain of some of them. The cacophony of the troubled souls and the emotional energy she has to expend to reach them becomes exhausting. She doesn’t have the mental capacity for watching TV or reading when she gets home and usually falls asleep listening to Classic FM, contented by the work she has done. She stops caring about her actual job so much. She does what she has to and makes a point of leaving on time every day. If Paul wants to lick up to the boss by doing overtime and volunteering to take on new projects, he can have the Team Lead position when it comes up. Susan realises that she doesn’t care about it as much as she thought she did. She skips a work night out at the bowling alley, then a musical they all go to. She hasn’t seen any of them outside the office or her sisters in a while. It doesn’t bother her. She’s afraid they’d notice something is up with her and there’s no way she could explain any of this to anyone. Beside, it feels like it should be just their thing, hers and the children’s. There is a boy in a buggy in the riverside park Susan always passes through on her way from the cheap pay-per-week car park to the office.  It’s ridiculous to even call it a park since it’s mostly concrete and the few narrow strips of grass there are are covered in dog shit. At first, he is only there the odd time. Now he’s there every morning on her way to work and every evening on the way back. He must be a year, or a year and a half at most. His mother looks like she’s been pushed to her limits. The sagging black bags under her eyes make her face seem even paler than it probably is. Her hair is stuck to her head and looks like it hasn’t been washed in weeks, and her grey tracksuit is pock-marked with stains. The way the boy looks at Susan haunts her. His eyes tell of his pain, of long hours spent on the streets, of the bottles of milk that no longer fill his growing belly, of the shouting and fighting and drinking when they do go home. He never cries though, not like the others. He seems too defeated to, too tired to. She knows she should do something to help him. Who would she ring and what would she say? Without a name or address to visit nobody would do anything anyway. Social workers are all overworked. It’s always on the news. They can’t keep track of their enormous case loads as it is and hundreds of children stuck in horrendous situations are falling through the cracks every day. That night, she dreams about the boy. He is in her house, crying. The sound haunts her she runs from room to room trying to find him. His cries grows louder and louder, the intensity of it panicking her. When she reaches the kitchen she sees he is outside, sitting in the back yard in the cold with just a nappy on, a dirty nappy, like the boy from the Barnardos ad. She runs to the back door but it won’t open. He is hysterical now, crying for her but no matter how hard she tugs at the back door, it won’t budge. Tears are streaming down her face now too. She is letting him down. Susan wakes in a panic with the most awful feeling of guilt she can’t shake for the rest of the night and into the morning. She listens to podcasts until dawn sends a pale light through her curtains, then gets up and goes to work an hour earlier than usual. She avoids the park by the river on the way there, taking the longer route through the shopping streets, but the boy is on her mind all day. Autopilot brings her on her usual, well-worn route on the way home, though she hadn’t meant to come by the park. When she gets there, he is sitting on his own in his buggy his eyes pleading with her to help him. His mother is off over on the other side of the park, getting a light from some men drinking cans on a bench. The woman’s back is to the boy, oblivious to any danger he could be in. Without thinking, Susan grabs his buggy and runs as fast as she can back in the direction she’d come from. She doesn’t dare look back until they’re out the gate and hidden from view by the dense hedge that borders the park. She finds a gap she can peek through and is disgusted to see that his mother hasn’t even turned around yet and is oblivious to the fact that her son is missing. Susan bends down to look at the boy and make sure he is okay. “Take me out of here, leave the buggy,” he silently says to her. “I can’t stand another minute trapped in this thing.” She does as she is told. She has no car seat so she leaves her car where it is and runs to the bus stop two streets over instead, looking over her shoulder the whole way to make sure they aren’t being followed. There is a bus just about to pull off when they get there. “Thank you,” he says to her as the doors close behind them. Susan has no idea what she is going to do, how she will explain the fact that she suddenly has a child, where he will sleep, who will mind him while she goes to work but all worry about these practicalities disappear from her head when he says, “Let’s go home, Susan.” A quiet peacefulness floods through her. She will look after him. This is what all those other children were leading her towards. This is her purpose. It’s what she is supposed to do with her life. She has never felt so sure of anything before. Margaret Cahill is a short story writer from Limerick, Ireland. Her fiction has been featured in The Milk House, époque press é-zine, Ogham Stone, Honest Ulsterman, HeadStuff, Silver Apples, Autonomy anthology, Incubator, Crannog, Galway Review, Limerick Magazine, Boyne Berries and The Linnet’s Wings. She also dabbles in writing about music and art, with publications on HeadStuff.org and in Circa Arts Magazine.

The third person to walk by outside yells, “It’s the bird’s garden!” before turning away. While it may be the bird’s garden, the baby is in my belly, pressing up on my liver, which is sliding into my ribs. On a video call with my mother-in-law, I pronounce the word “Chiropraktiker” correctly in German – I just don’t say it loud enough. My chiropractor says everything far too loudly. I guess it’s because she rattles backs with a tiny “jackhammer.” I slide downward on the table, so my belly properly fits into the pillow’s belly cutout. I swear I feel him wiggle, but he’s as soft as good poetry. All good poetry starts with a time and a place, so I set a timer at my desk for 25 minutes. I am told to refrain from reading the book now as it will evoke too much nostalgia and I agree. I continue to read about cults. How many 25-minute timers must one start in a day? Please don’t answer that or I’ll have a nervous breakdown. I look at the picture of me and my sister in LA, a cactus behind our heads. I think, “Wow, I used to be so fit” before remembering I’m pregnant – this isn’t a matter of weight, goddammit. It’s a matter of one body growing a baby while the other was not. I will call you when it makes sense, somewhere deep in Prenzlauer Berg where it starts to look like Friedrichshain and there are no longer any cobblestones. Some days, I cry about things that never actually existed. Like, hypothetical nostalgia – like, this could have existed, but it did not and never will. And this person could have been this way, but they never were. We may be in the bird’s garden, but the baby is in my belly, pressing up on my liver, which is sliding into my ribs. Taylor Miles-Behrens is a writer and adjunct English and creative writing instructor living in Boulder, Colorado. Her work has recently appeared in Fjords Review, MORIA, and [sub]liminal. She studied North American literature and culture at Freie University (Berlin) and creative writing at Kingston University (London).