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A face so beautiful you’d hate seeing it age. He had to die young. Almost. Fingers, hard-knuckled yet so delicate, at once pulling and not pulling the trigger, like the soft spots of my body. Someone had to tell him. Someone had to kill him. Before it was too late. Funny when you think about it. How he downed one Bud Light after another like it was nothing. How it was all that it took for me. Just the hour before, those cops bothered him with all their silly questions, ruining his mood. Mistaking him for some other douche. He’s guilty of many things, but not this. He’s guilty of the burn holes on my bed. He’s guilty of murdering the plants on her momma’s grave. He’s a guilty father, a clueless partner. “I gotta find Rat.” His fingers probe the bowl on the bar counter like the scoop of a gift machine. One nut. Two nuts. Three nuts. “He’s gotta know what to do.” I think: Why would anyone call himself Rat? He says, without knowing: “Why would you rat me out anyway?” The truth is, I didn’t know better. He didn’t know I didn’t know better. Not yet. Devil got the better of you, that skinny-ass priest in Ma’s favorite TV show would tell me if he knew. If he knew me. How stupid and uncareful I can be. “I didn’t know better,” I say, clinking my bottle to his in apology. “I love you.” Those cops. They didn’t happen to be just passing by. I was the one who called. Watching that poor girl getting her ass beat by that motherfucker was just too much to bear. What with this new critter in my belly. All those screams and tears. Motherly tears. Babyish tears. They couldn’t stop me from getting hysterical. That was when my man got hysterical, too. Their fight had turned into ours by the time the cops arrived. They just couldn’t wait until we left now, could they? He’s the baby papa, I couldn’t say when they asked. “I love you,” I now repeat. He leaves his beer on the counter and gazes about the bar. Patrons are dancing and kissing all around us as if to sate a certain kind of thirst. The birds in the corner cage are chirping the tunes to a classic Fleetwood Mac song like a pair of organic jukeboxes. Old people moving in younger clothes. Young people sporting old teeth. We’re nothing like them. We’re more. “Let’s bounce,” he says. Outside, the sky is already claimed by dirty-looking clouds. We walk and walk along the highway until time becomes one thing and we another. We count all the blue cars to kill time. He tells me at one point that his mother once forgot him in the back of her Camaro when he was a kid. Where were the cops back then, he says—and for the right reasons. It turns out that if it weren’t for the snoopiness of a passing-by carjacker, he would’ve been dead by now. Nada. Gona. Banana. I nod along the way, pretending to be interested in whatever he has to say. I wonder when we’re going to kiss next. Watching his lips move, I crave a vanilla milkshake. We stop by a drugstore past a water tower, which, as the sign reads, doubles as a public toilet. “Just wait,” he says, then whips into the store before I can talk back. Waiting for him, I watch my copy in the shop window. My reflection in the frosted glass looks thinner than the last time I checked, getting wavier with each new move as if to mirror my anxious mind. I can’t tell if my belly has started to show already. I can’t tell if he noticed. I can’t tell if he still finds me pretty. That girl in the park. She, too, was pretty as a peach. Yet it didn’t stop her from getting hurt by her man now did it? Right in front of all those buggers and coppers. And what about Ma? As the story had it, she was the prettiest gal in her class. In that asshole of civilization she had the misfortune of calling home. I know she was just as gullible as me but too proud to admit it. Why in the hell wouldn’t she tell me who my papa was otherwise? Why keep silent for all those years? Then, out of nowhere: a gunshot. Bang. One shot. Two shots. Three shots. Bang. Bang. Bang. Seven. Another bang—this time from the front door slamming open against the wall. My man plunges out of the store, the packs of baby diapers tucked in his armpits. His neck hangs low while running as if he pulled a muscle there. “Let’s bounce,” he yells. We start dashing about the highway like stray bullets. Cars honk at us as they pass by. Some of the diaper boxes fall on the ground along the way, but I don’t care. Watching him carry all those fluffy pink boxes fills my chest with such warmth I could scream. “I love you,” I keep shouting. “I love you I love you I love you.” “We gotta find Rat,” he keeps saying, disinterested in what I have to say as ever. “He’s gotta know what to—” —Bang. Of course. Bang. Bang. Bang. Those coppers. They just wouldn’t let go now would they? They blockade the road before we even know it. They withdraw their guns and start yelling at us without even bothering to find a middle ground. I stand and look. I think of all the things I can tell this critter about her papa. I can tell her all the half-truths and half-said love-you’s. How pretty didn’t do him any good. How the cops didn’t like the look of him. How one glance was all it took. How there was no changing their mind. How he pointed his gun at me and yelled, “Let’s bounce.” How I didn’t reply. A writer of Turkish descent, Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, DIAGRAM, Normal School, Vestal Review, Maudlin House, and HAD, among other places. His stories have been selected or nominated for anthologies (Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Wigleaf Top 50) and awarded a finalist status at various literary contests, including the 2022 Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction Award. He's currently at work on his first novel in Philadelphia and Amsterdam. Find him online at sarpsozdinler.com or on Twitter @sarpsozdinler.

The Titillation A bird has left an azure feather on our cold red cement sill. It corroborates the curiosity's tale about the bird, about me. The bird must have probed the room, bearings, belongings, my chair, my father's table, crime-club book of the month and the silk flower you crafted in-between the pages fifty two and three. A breeze levitates the feather. My palm stays open, impoverished. The whistle from the nearby train track asks, "Why do you never desire to know where I go and with whom?" I shake the window-frame and flip it. Mistral The leaves gossip to the vardar, mistral. One white hair entwines a reed. It is the time for our winter jackets albeit not quite, not this year. I try to cheer you up, "We know the end, yes, but the ways are endless." Moody Swamp The plant stuck in its tub, in an ever youth, bears the burden of my mate's dry-weather norale, flow state. The other week he brought a brook, softened the dirt, that sunk an inch. The hardest part of the bole rose up a little. I hold the tub, lift the plant. The old leaves yellow the circle. Sun flares up an will-o'-the-wisp in the swamp of the room. In bokeh my friend sits in front of the tarots spread on the table of fate. They show nothing but a hand-fan pattern. Rays spatter like a chicken's sacrifice. As The Memory's Vultures Circle "Where are you going?" He cannot answer me for the first time or the second. He has to rake his head before he can say, "I don't know." His voice sounds autumnal. A pale wind brushes the tips of the streetlights. The sky will not tell us if it is an evening or a morning and the city has forgotten to turn off the lights. The posts remind me of cacti in a deserted path. Kushal Poddar is the author of 'Postmarked Quarantine' and has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of 'Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe. Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

After First Frost Let’s be unrealistic. I’ll pretend the armadillo isn’t dead in the ditch, it’s half burrowed hole beneath the hostas filled with leaves, that the white aster in the spent raised beds matter still to anyone, the fritillaries long gone, only the buzz of a thousand Asian lady beetles leering from the garage window in the brief warm midday sun. Subdivisions Below the red barn the red hills run tilled for the last time reaching the creek slipstream into eddies and are gone. I want to say stop. Stay with me longer than the morning stratus filled sky, a language deeper than blood that dries it’s eyes knowing the storm isn’t here yet, isn't here yet. Sam Calhoun is a writer and photographer living in Elkmont, AL. The author of the chapbook “Follow This Creek” (Foothills Publishing), and a collaborative work “The Hemlock Poems” (Present Tense Media), part of the Conservation Through Art: Saving Alabama's Hemlock program and exhibit. his poems have appeared in Pregnant Moon Review, Westward Quarterly, Eratos, Boats Against the Current, and numerous other journals. Follow him on Instagram @weatherman_sam, or his website, www.weathermansam.com.

For the icebreaker activity at the workshop we have to introduce ourselves to the group by imagining that our life is summed up in a four-square photo booth strip. There are so many ways to do this it paralyzes me from the neck down. Four animals that have mattered. Four teachers that curved my destiny. Four favorite pasta dishes. Gemini, Monkey, INFJ, Enneagram 5. Four apartments. Four things I never understood: barley, bangs, how I got tennis elbow from whipping cream by hand, remote controls. Four moments of shame. Four trophies. Four train rides. Wyeth, Hopper, Wright, Rothko. Four things everyone else in this room will say that will make me vomit just slightly: high school basketball, finance major, marriedwithtwokids, going to the movies. Four things about you that I miss but I can’t tell anyone because I wasn’t supposed to be looking: your hand on the cat, your hand on the steering wheel, your hand pouring me tea, your hand reaching out. Four dream destinations. Turns out there’s only one: back to that hand. A native of Westminster, Maryland, Sarah Kartalia moved to France at twenty-one, where a six-month contract turned into three decades and counting. Today, she coaches multicultural teams and teaches Leadership and Business Storytelling in companies and MBA programs. She was the Grand Prize winner for Short Fiction for INKWELL Magazine, was shortlisted for the Fish Flash Fiction Prize and was a finalist at The Writer’s short story competition. Stories have also appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Kerning, and Sky Island Journal.

At a work function, Brad, our resident brown-noser and office know-it-all, told our general manager that Earth harbors more trees than there are stars in the Milky Way. “Look it up,” he said so that one of us would have to admit he was right. “How do they know how many trees there are?” I asked. No one heard me, so I imagined a guy named Johnny, Johnny Tree Counter. It was Johnny’s job to count all the trees on the planet and then compare his number with the astronomer whose job it was to count the number of stars in the sky. Why, you might be wondering? For science. So that people could attend parties or work functions and repeat the numbers and reassure themselves that things weren’t so bad. How could they be when there are so many trees? Earth: 1. The rest of the universe: 0. Anyway, Johnny started counting in his backyard. One, two, three. Then he moved to his neighbor’s backyard and counted the trees there. Then their neighbor’s backyard and so on and so on. “Great insight, Brad,” our GM said, shaking Brad’s hand like he’d forgotten about the vast emptiness of space between stars, about all that scary darkness. Within that vastness, I thought about how people cut down and plant trees every day. I thought about how maybe a recount was due, about changing my name to Johnny. Staring at the fluorescent lights, I wondered, not about pointless shit like Brad, but about how many times I could pretend to miscount and not get fired, about how many times—one, two, three, one, two, three—I could start over. Then it was five o’clock, and I drove home to count the trees and whatever else was growing in my backyard. Will Musgrove is a writer and journalist from Northwest Iowa. He received an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Penn Review, Wigleaf, Passages North, The Florida Review, X-R-A-Y, Tampa Review, and elsewhere. Connect on Twitter at @Will_Musgrove or at williammusgrove.com.

Everybody Knows In childhood father said I was indelicate, clumsy, straw bristles for digits and feet like oil drums. About these things he was never wrong. Yes, I’m a homewrecker. That is, measure once, cut twice. Patience left in the pocket of my other jeans. But I persist, inserting crooked planks in the gap-toothed decking, smearing caulk on the surgical backsplash, twisting backwards the marrettes of ceiling lamps to throw some 60 flickering Watts into cobwebby corners of a marriage. I’m trusted not to burn us down and I don’t know why. On the ladder as I curse in French I can’t believe I’d risk us all before I’d call an electrician, one who’d rob us blind for a job a chimp could do. Me, whose greatest fear is burning alive. So much that I’ve never used the sun in a poem, leery of metaphors around an H-bomb the source of all creation, a thing which blinds us into silence so that only lesser lights are speakable: candles, coals in a wood stove, fridge bulbs. Illumination that makes the things I can relate to. Like a welder’s torch and rod, fusing means toward an end in white hot lust. Or the crackle of socks removed in the dark: little blue gods deserting dad’s drunken feet before the heft of his head could topple him—the room as quiet as a clearing once a blaze has claimed a forest at the speed of gossip. Fatal Flaws I’m plummeting as we speak, a cherub bucked from a thunderhead before I fledged. I won’t land at mother’s feet, she who gave so much that what remained cast no shadow. I will splatter the shoes of the man she married, who built a house on a pillow too small for joy. From him I learned to treat the world like a G.I.’s chocolate ration, as last-ditch energy or currency for sex. He taught me that if kindness hugs a man beside his sons it must be picking his pockets. I was due to meet him at the place where children say of the quivering aspen, Look dad! That tree ate the wind and now it’s full! but he was too busy dying so slowly it looked like natural causes. I missed his end because hamartia is not a flaw but a missing of the mark. I never heard his final words, which were to wait till he was gone before I burned him, before I cast him to the lake and buried him in water. Performance poet and songwriter Richard-Yves Sitoski is the 2019-23 poet laureate of the city of Owen Sound, Ontario, on the territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation. He has given performances in industrial ruins, has read poems to earth worms, and has written verse on snow with biodegradable food dye. He's got poems in Arc, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire and elsewhere. His most recent works are the chapbook How to Be Human (Bywords.ca, 2022), and his Don Gutteridge Award-winning full-length collection Wait, What? (Wet Ink Books, 2023). He is co-editor, with Penn Kemp, of Poems in Response to Peril: An Anthology in Support of Ukraine (Pendas Productions/Laughing Raven Press, 2022), profits from which went to assist displaced Ukrainian cultural workers.

First, don’t even be at the zoo during a forecasted storm even though your mum guilted you into taking your Tita, her not-so-favourite sister, there. Second, don’t catch the ferry swaying about like a drunk at a King’s Cross bar. Don’t listen to your Tita when she says, “They won’t ferry us back if it wasn’t safe enough.” She always assumed every non-Filipino person knew what they were doing. Third, don’t let your Tita convince you that upstairs on the ferry would be better than being downstairs. Remember, she also said it’d be a good idea to hide in a coffin and surprise people… when you were 10 years old. Fourth, don’t sit close to her when the waves throw the ferry about like the rag doll you pined for back in Manila, which your Tita kept kidnapping, so she could get you to do chores for ransom. Fifth, do not under any circumstances giggle when she prays. Never shout you’re an atheist when she forces you to kneel on the dirty ferry floor. Sixth, don’t tell her about the life jackets because she would panic and pluck them from under her seat, while you contain your nervous laughter. When the ferry is tilting at a 45-degree angle towards the sky, you’ll feel you’re flying to the heavens, and have escaped the blighted day with your auntie, until the ferry’s bow smacks into the angry water. The dry chips from the zoo cafe, escaping your system. Seventh, when your Tita whisper-cries and you hear her promising not to gamble ever again, sit way out of earshot because she’ll be in confession mode preparing to die. Keep your distance before she says things like, “Mae, you know you’re adopted right?” Eighth, don’t scream at her, accusing her of lying. Lastly, when the ferry docks at Circular Quay, both you and your Tita would have jelly legs. Don’t leave while she wobbles an apology, it was all a joke.But you’ll be far gone, wiping your tears, safely retreating into yourself. Elisa is a proud Filipina living in Wurundjeri Country, Australia. She studied fiction-writing during strict Melbourne lockdowns in 2021; and won a prize for the second Writers' Playground Competition for her speculative fiction, "Free range". Her poems have been published in FromOneLine Anthology, and Musing Publication's "The nuances of new-age feminism". Her micro fiction stories have been included in NFFD's UK Write In 2023, 101words.org, and ParagraphPlanet.com. Someday she would like to write a book her daughters would love to read.

The dried crunch of seaweed brought a crowd of swarming flies, the buzzing intermingled with gull calls. The tang of salt and iodine laced the stench of decay. I wandered past drifts of storm-thrown seaweed and wrecked branches. They drew me, those broken pieces, recognising kindred, the chaos of my life fusing here, to this moment. When I reached the firm water-laden sand, bathed clean, I could breathe again, perhaps I too could be renewed. Sand hard-rippled under me, I crushed the occasional razor clam navel hole and worm cast. I sang to the rhythm of the sounds as the waves made sand clouds in the water which were thrown up and sucked back into the surf. My shoulders relaxed inside my Hi-Vis jacket, the day not so wearisome, memories softened, melding between my toes. The abandoned concrete gun emplacement smelled of urine. My steps faltered, I forced them onward, I had work to do, redemption to gain, community service to pay back. High storm-tide had left a human mess of assorted plastics tangled in fishing nets and rotting seaweed. The gentle colours of the dunes, the delicate pink flowers, peered up between the lurid cans and luminous plastic packets. My litter grabbers worked away, my bag heavier with each snatched piece of human life, my thoughts lighter. I looked back at the community crew, most of them had gone in the other direction away from the gun emplacement. I preferred it this way, on my own, away from the jibes about getting caught shoplifting pic-a-mix. In the distance ahead I thought I saw a large seal lazing on the sand. As I approached, shining silver scales were scattered around the sand. A gold crown lay encrusted with periwinkles, its peaks sand-capped, it had made wide circles as it had rolled. A trident covered in limpet shells was embedded in a dune. It was no seal but a giant of a man, his green thongweed beard drying out. His bladderwrack clothes were in shreds and a large gold belt dragged at his waist. His mouth was open and rough snores emerged from between his huge lips. The smell of alcohol hung heavy around him. I backed away, my bin bag of waste rustled and smacked against my calf. His chest heaved and he spat out a gallon of seawater, missing me by a few seashells. He was still retching when I reached the gun emplacement. Ignoring the stink and unspeakable litter, I stepped inside, the skin of my soles cringing within my boots. He picked up a large clay pot and drank deeply, rum spilled from his sand covered beard. Belching he hoisted himself up, and stood wobbling, looking out to sea. He roared at the waves, shook his fist at the foam, called for more rum. Around us clouds gathered, purple and blue lights flashed within. He thrashed into the water and was carried away by a cresting wave. I collected the golden shells fallen from his belt, tucked them away in my shoplifting pockets. I stood in the hollow his body had made, but no clouds called, the sea caressed the sand ignoring me. Carrying the bag of waste like it was a bubble of opportunity, I laughed at the waves, only the gulls heard me, and I walked on picking up litter, salvation weighing down my jacket. Joyce Bingham is a Scottish writer whose work has appeared in publications such as Flash Frog, Molotov Cocktail, Ellipsis Zine, Raw Lit, and Sci-fi Shorts. She lives in Manchester, UK and when she’s not writing, she puts her green fingers to use as a plant whisperer and Venus fly trap wrangler.

I was on the way back with the dog, last street. People don’t know neighbours in other streets. The man started the conversation about dogs. This is the only reason anyone can strike up a conversation with a stranger. If it was just a man standing in a field it is doubtful that you would walk over and strike up a conversation. Especially if I was carrying a length of rope and shouting “come here, come here, do you want a treat?” at you. I had never seen this man out with a dog before although he clearly owned one. I spotted the dog jumping up to the window. I could not be sure of the breed, however this was certainly the largest dog I had ever seen. It was monstrous, a bear. A black hulking mass of animal. “He’s a Caucasian shepherd,” the owner nodded. “Bet you never heard of one of those. I don’t dare let him off around other dogs. I don’t think he’d do anything but…,” he shrugged. “Not worth the risk is it?” He eyed me up as if I was about the size of the Caucasian’s lunch with my little dog acting as an amuse-bouche to the main dish. “He’s a big softy, honestly. He’s just big”. I was glad the dog was inside, I tried to step away with the casual demeanour of someone who had to be getting on. “Were you round here when they started that building work down by the canal?” I shook my head. “No? Surprised you couldn’t smell it when they started digging over there. If you aren’t from round here, you probably wouldn’t know. Used to be factories. All covered over in concrete.” I did remember that, miles of concrete block, and the noise as they broke them up for months on end. “Bet you don’t know why they was digging at night though do you? I do. I went down there, I took things.” “What things?” I replied, regretting it instantly. Curiosity was a bitch at times, no matter how half-baked the tale. You can’t get away from that. “Well, like I say it was factories. One was a glue factory. The Bone ole they used to call it. In the old days you had to wind up windows on the train, it’d stink, melting down for glue. Melting bones. I had heard this. Or read it in Animal Farm. I couldn’t remember now. “Yes, but what I took from down there, weren’t what you’d expect. If he starts talking about human bodies, I am on my way right now, I thought. “They was chucking all this stuff straight into the canal. If it ain’t natural to this country it’s got to be contained, processed. He rubbed his thumb and finger together to indicate money. “So they chucked it all in the water.” He folded his arms in conclusion. He took a long drag on his roll up, then coughed. He kept his eyes on me the whole time. It was unnerving. “I have a thigh bone from a rhino, a giraffe's neck and a bison skull in my back room. I can show you if you like.” I glanced at the massive furry face glaring at me from the window. “It’s alright. I believe you” “So they knew you see, they knew I had it and it were evidence. If I showed it around they wouldn’t let them build the houses on it, costs money. It’s just a big fraud” he folded his arms again as if his point was made. “Anthrax out of them bones, other stuff too, benzene, mercury, not tested, that’s why it was covered up”. “So what did you do?” I asked. I was still curious, but had to draw the conversation to an end somehow. “What did I do? I took them to court, to high court in the end. It’s cost me my house to do it. Them flats is built on a bone yard, pal. Them people down there don’t know that – and that’s wrong” he spat. The story hung in the air between us for a moment. I thought of the people, hoovering their carpets, making brunch, stepping over a zoo-like graveyard. “Well, I must get on, things to do," he shrugged and sloped back to the house. I stood for a few moments outside, thinking about what had just happened. The crazy old fellow, his bear dog, and the museum of bones down by the water. But it got me thinking, about all that stuff in the air, the ground, the water. If this was real, or just a way to start a conversation with a stranger. I googled it later. There really was a glue factory down there for many years and it certainly used to stink. I just hope the people who live down there now aren’t too keen on gardening. Gavin Turner is a writer from Wigan. He has published numerous short stories and poems with JAKE, Punk Noir, Voidspace and Boats against the current. He has released two poetry collections, The Round Journey (2022) and A mouthful of Space dust (2023). You can reach him @GTurnerwriter on Twitter.

Some might like to fancy it up, call it a mobile home, but let’s be serious, it was a trailer.  None of those trailers had tires, they weren’t going anywhere, they weren’t mobile.   I was living in one and trust me, if I could have fired it up and driven off, there were times I would have.  The trailer park sat right off a four-lane road, heavily trafficked.  I had the fortune of being in Lot 1, right there roadside. At one time there had been a house next door, sitting on a narrow but extremely long tract of land.  Whenever they mowed their grass, it smelled of garlic and onions.  It would smell good until it didn’t.  It never occurred to me until years later that the smell was the result of that entire property being overtaken with chives, releasing their fragrance as they were cut down.  It probably seemed like a good idea at one point, a little patch of chives right outside your door.  Until the homeowners grew old and no longer had the patience to control those chives as they spread and spread.  The house was torn down and the lot sat empty for years.  I imagine a property sandwiched right between a trailer park and a “weekly rates available” motel wasn’t in high demand. I had a telescope when I lived in that trailer.  Big and complicated, nothing I would have bought for myself.  My ex-husband had gotten it for me, trying to throw expensive toys in my direction, showing off that he had money when I didn’t.  He meant well, knew I liked to sit outside and stare at the moon and stars.  The telescope ruined it.  It was too heavy, too many knobs and dials, a user manual thick as a dictionary.  I felt boxed in, opening myself to scrutiny if I dared sit outside and look at the moon.  “Why aren’t you using your telescope?” I anticipated being asked.  So, I just quit looking. Once, my daughter and I decided to walk to the nearest park, to go creek stomping.  Some might prefer to say crick, and they would be wrong.  I don’t know why we walked, maybe we didn’t have a car available.  It wasn’t terribly far, maybe ten blocks, but I can’t imagine we carried any provisions such as snacks or water.  I know we didn’t take spare pairs of shoes.  It had to have been warm out, the creek mostly in shade, I wouldn’t have wanted it to be too cool as we stomped through the mud and water. The water level was always unknown; would it be up to our ankles or up to our thighs? Would the creek bed be rocky, risking a twisted ankle or would we be trudging through sludge, each step more challenging as our shoes grew heavier with the mud enveloping them?  A good creek would have small areas of running water that I could refer to as waterfalls. My daughter, only five, and not knowing any better, would find  that amazing.  I do know better, and I still think they were amazing.  I’d go find one right now and be quite pleased I believe. On the best days, we’d see animal tracks in the mud alongside the creek, tiny fish darting through clear waters.  The sun would shine through the leaf canopy, bouncing polka dots of light off the water.  “God Shines” my daughter used to call those rays of sun when she was attending Catholic school.  In later years, when reminded of that, she would tell us to shut the fuck up. It was a miserable walk home, grit, and mud caking our socks, grinding our heels against our soaking wet shoes.  I don’t remember if we broke down and walked shoeless.  It would have been a risky undertaking, walking along the road towards home, maybe stepping on a wad of gum or broken glass or a used condom. The good thing about returning to our trailer in our filthy state was that it was already pretty shitty.  Gold shag carpet likely installed before I was even born, scarred linoleum in the kitchen.  There was no one to yell at us about tracking mud in the house when we got home. Kim McVicker is a life-long resident of Iowa but has no cows, chickens nor any farming experience. She worked for decades in the financial services industry, which is as dull as it sounds. Mother of one, now gone, she finds solace in writing about her experiences with her daughter, even the ugly memories.  When not reading, writing, or listening to NPR, she enjoys letting her granddaughters squish mud, fingerpaint and otherwise make whatever messes bring them joy.  Her other pieces have been published in a folder labeled Writing on her desktop as well as in HerStry, Pithead Chapel, and forthcoming in BackChannels and Anti-Heroin Chic.  She lives in Des Moines, IA with her delightful, patient and mess-hating husband David.

Within the cocktail of sound, the only thing I hear is a car tyre grinding my bones into a fine powder. To be exhaled by rigid accountants, while my spirit flounders like a shy oracle. They won’t grant me an allowance, but scold me when I ask to wear their skin for just one sultry evening; o’ how they are terrified I will run away with it. Into the night with the silk sarong that keeps their nose in every dandelion pie. Signed and scored by the unguis of Lucifer. Their lacerations are no match for me: I am a thoroughbred, off the latch and wolfing the mint residue of a Grasshopper from the stony cone bowl gifted to me by truth. Courtenay Schembri Gray is the author of four poetry collections, the latest being THE MAGGOT ON MAPLE STREET (Anxiety Press). Her work has appeared in journals such as The Bolton Review and CAROUSEL. She resides in the North of England. Keep up with her on Twitter (@courtenaywrites) / https://themaplemoon.substack.com

CW: Abortion Mornings here are shrouded in mist. It is a soft, golden mist: too cool for Southeast Asia, too hot for the countries kneeling to the Himalayas. The interior teak walls groan, reluctantly awakening from slumber, much like myself. Outside, the improbable city rises from the dust; umber and xanthous and sandy. After a quick breakfast alone watching groups and couples plan their day over limp toast and congealed egg, I shrug on a light cardigan, wrap a bandana around my head, and grab the bike from outside. It’s a rusty old thing, chalky-mint paint peeling from the skeleton. But I paid $2.50 for five days' rent, so I’m not complaining. It has a decent sized basket so I can tuck my daily supplies in it: water, a couple of apples, Lonely Planet. It has no brakes though, so stopping involves either dwindling to a halt or jumping off the seat to plant my feet in the dusty earth. Today, I have no particular destination in mind: I plan to listen to my instincts, to change my usual frenetic pace. To become a human being, not a human doing. # It was not my intention to skulk around Old Bagan to ask the forgiveness of eighty-one dead-eyed stone Buddhas, but here I am, ten in, committed. Kneeling at the feet of number eleven, I marvel at my absurdity. I’m not a Buddhist, or even religiously inclined, but I am riding the swells of grief which are drenching me in a feverish madness. At least I know that I am mad. I am many things but deluded, I am not. "Hello Buddha," I say. This is a small temple and I'm alone, boxed in by stone walls, cold statues. Outside, a hump-backed cow sits sentry by the door: rural security at its finest. I rest a hand on Buddha's knee, close my eyes. "Forgive me. I have fucked up splendidly." It is unrehearsed: I say whatever is bubbling up when I get to each one, and in these silent chambers, self-consciousness stays outside with my protective cow. When I've lingered long enough at this one, I open my eyes, stand, thank him. # They made me pay upfront. I peeled the wad of notes from my wallet, trying not to baulk at the price. The monetary one, anyway. I tried to keep my mouth closed so the frowny receptionists wouldn't notice my blue tongue from late night snacking that I couldn't even clean, with furious toothbrush scraping. "You see," I told my reflection. "You're an incapable mess." She looked back with sad eyes. I sat on a squeaky plastic chair clutching the forms, eyes making a watercolour of the waiting room, while couples drifted in and out. Dr Lin lay me on the bed in a cold consultation room. “There it is,” he said, printed out a photograph and sent me back to the waiting room. They kept the photo on top of my file, where I could see it: a grey grainy little prawn shape against a black hole. # By eleven, my clothes are sticking to my wet skin. There is little shade here between the temples. A few malnourished trees beg fruitlessly for moisture by the roadsides and dirt tracks. I take myself and the bike into New Bagan, flopping into a seat at the nearest open cafe. There is wi-fi here and my phone buzzes intrusively as soon as I connect. Stupid, I curse. You don’t need to look. It starts ringing immediately. I’ve been starved of conversation for days and a tiny strand in me craves human connection. The rest of me wants all humans to disappear and never bother me again. I answer. “Lis? Jesus, where have you been?” Neil. Angry, scared. I picture him sitting in his poky London flat staring at the rolling February smog. It will still be dark, I remind myself. He’s up early. Probably can’t sleep. “It’s been six weeks,” he whispers. “What the hell?” I sigh in response, but can’t find a word, a phrase, that ties together the whirling maelstrom so I say nothing. “Seriously, Lis. It’s not on.” He is still whispering. “Is she there, Neil?” She. Caroline. His fiancee. In just a few short weeks, she’ll be his wife. As long as…well. I suppose he is calling to check that I’m not going to mess that up for him. “Look, I just want a straight answer, Lis. Did you do it?” Did I? # In the temple of Dhammayangyi Pahto, I lay my arm on a cool stone slab, the well cradling my arm intersected by a perfectly straight gash. It is said that King Narathu - who ordered the building of this monument - demanded that the walls be laid with such precision that not even a pin could pass between the bricks. Any mason responsible for a pin-thin breach would have their arm chopped off on this very stone. This proved what an excellent and pious Buddhist he was, in this building constructed to atone for the murders of his father, brother, and wife. I shudder, stand, continue strolling around the temple. There are only a few Buddhas here now, and even if there were more, it's too busy for me to execute my ritual. And walls touched by a cruel man such as Narathu doesn’t really fit with my slightly deranged loving atonement. Outside, a young couple pose in wedding finery for photographs and I think about Neil getting married and his panicked voice on the phone. "Picture, Miss?" A chubby-faced boy is selling sand art on the steps of the temple: lotus flower, dharma wheel. His father helps him, he explains. He's saving for teacher training college. "Good and happy children are very important," he says. I select a picture of a hand in vitarka mudra. "For wisdom. You are a good lady." I'm not. # Buddha twenty-nine sees me calling it a day. The sun is dipping into the horizon and I'm craving a lukewarm shower. I stroke Mr. Twenty-nine's narrow, almost feminine cheek. "Thank you, sir." It's only when I mount the bike that I realise how sore my limbs are, how burnt my shoulders. I'm gritty and grimy all at once and I don't really feel much better. "Maybe tomorrow." My feet push slowly on the pedals, Neil's desperate voice ringing through my head. "I was worried about you, Lis," he'd said. But he wasn't. Isn't. He's worried that his pretty little house of cards might fall. A pathetic part of me that I despise tries to convince me that he does care. The thin, judgemental goat tethered to a post near the hotel knows the truth though. He stares at me with such piercing certainty, a spring bubbles behind my eyes. "Fuck off goat," I say. But really, I mean fuck off Neil, and take any lingering sentiment I have far away. # Holiday romance, he called it. Giddy, exuberant, he left me breathless from the moment we met. Down at Loewy's, they pack them in on a weekend, and it took him three attempts to holler his name over generic house music. We laughed as he misheard ‘Lis’ as 'Geese' and honked at me. He was visiting his cousin, he said, and we laughed some more when we realised that his cousin was Mal, who'd just started working at our place. "Shall we get out of here?" he'd murmured. Neil was funny, erudite and damn sexy. "We shouldn't mention us to Mal," he said. "I don't want to put him in an awkward position." A few weeks later he was flying home. "I'll miss you," we said. And then he was gone. And the following day at work, Mal said,"you know he's getting married in a couple of months?" # Mita is an excellent saleswoman. Under a thatched canopy in the middle of a market stall row, she sells me five woven handbags. Handwoven, she tells me, by enterprising village girls. She could well be spinning a yarn: she might have bought them cheaply wholesale from a Yangon factory, but I choose to believe her. Her daughter, Yunyoo, blinks at me from beneath a roughly hacked fringe, with eyes that say I know what you are. Mita smears a thick disc of yellow paste on each of my cheeks, a stripe down my nose. Thanaka. "For sun," she says. "But also pretty. You find nice Burma man to make you happy." She pauses, mid-daub. "You're not kowaan?" I frown. She taps her belly, points at Yunyoo. "Pregnant? No." She adds a stripe to my forehead. "Okay." From the stall, she plucks a small woven purse. Sanitary towel sized. "For the private things." Yunyoo rolls a coconut across the dirt. # Test again in a month, said Doctor Lin, dismissing me with his busy hand. I misheard him though: anaesthetic, grief. But I heard week. Test again in a week. A week after I returned home, I tested. Positive. My pulse was thudding high in my throat, threatening to leap out of my mouth. Shaking fingers fired off a badly punctuated email to Doctor Lin to which a perfunctory reply pinged back. Month. I said month. No greeting, no inquiry as to my health. Just four sharp words and a brutal dismissal. The thrill I felt at seeing positive, though, told me all I needed to know about what I’ve done. # The last Buddha of my second day is my forty-ninth all up. I show him the blurry photograph I've been carrying in my wallet for the last few weeks, the one I laminated at work after everyone had gone home. "What do you think?" Of course, he doesn't answer, but I imagine if he did, he'd have made some sympathetic remark with a tilted head and gentle smile - he looks the sort. I don’t need to look at the photo as I hold it out to the statues: it is imprinted in my every thought. I run my hands across my belly, grasping for something. At times, I can’t stand, can’t breathe. It sneaks up on me, knocks me off my feet, strangles, yells, punches me. Grief, you are a brutal lover. I've cried a lot today, and it's left me dry. I feel papery and insubstantial:a discarded onion skin, a dead moth-wing. "Can you bring him back as something lovely? A swallow, a kitten?" Him. That's the first time I've done that. "A mother who keeps him safe and warm, please?" Outside, the dark presses in and I consider curling up by Buddha forty-nine, spending the night at his feet. Better still, staying here until I've dried out completely, crumbled, blown away as a blizzard of dust. I stand, drag my arm across my eyes, say goodnight to my latest lama. # "Get out," hissed the receptionist. She jabbed my shoulder with her pen. "You're upsetting the other patients. Go. Sort yourself out." In a blank corridor, I sobbed, debated running. But my bag was still on a chair in the waiting room, and my shoes were underneath. Stupid really: monumental moments decided by a Desigual bag and a pair of $15 Bali-buy Havaianas. My face was studded with pink blotches, and no amount of splashing in the sterile bathroom was helping. Go. Leave. Go for lunch. Go shopping. Go figure stuff out. You are pathetic, said something inside me. It doesn’t deserve to be saddled with you. I can make it work, I told the uninvited voice. I’ll think of something. I…want this You only want to feel okay. You are a selfish waste of space. Go in there, pick up your bag and leave. Walk out. It doesn’t matter. It matters. It doesn’t. I can do it. I can love. You’d be a horrible mother. # In my mouth, the sweet-sour flake dissolves. It is like nothing I’ve ever tasted before, and I’m devastated to learn that after I leave Bagan, I’ll probably never taste them again. Only here, the vendor tells me. Now, I’m armed with two big bags of them, and for the first time in weeks, I am enjoying the process of eating something. “I’ve discovered tamarind flakes,” I tell my first Buddha of the morning. “Quite the revelation. But you already know that, right?” He is Buddha fifty and his left eye has disintegrated, giving me a jocular wink as I present the photo. “Maybe you could bring my boy back as someone from Bagan who grows up eating tamarind flakes.” I’ve decided to name him, my boy. The forum I scrolled last night over dinner said that it can be healing. I’m not sure I deserve to heal, but I’m going to try the name thing nonetheless. Buddha fifty-one has both eyes and looks like a sensible sort, so I show him the photo and try out a few. Hugo? Martin? Richard? Nothing. Benjamin? Ralph? Buddha fifty-one looks on, impassive. “Neil?” I snort. It comes out as a laugh, but turns into a sob. “I know, I’m pathetic.” Daniel. My breath catches in my ribs. That’s the one. Daniel. # I’ve missed you, Daniel, since before they even took you from me. A fat-fingered nurse jabbed my arm with a needle. “Can’t find a vein,” she told Doctor Lin. “Then stop,” I said. “Let me go. I’ve changed my mind.” They stared at me, then the nurse looked to Doctor Lin who nodded for her to continue. “I don’t want to,” I said. I tried to move, but I was strapped by the feet, knees spread. Your picture was in my head, imprinted on the insides of my eyelids when I closed my eyes and tried to forget you. “Please,” I said, but it came out as a whisper, a breath. “Aha,” said the nurse. And then everything started to swim away: the room, the clumsy nurse, the cold eyed doctor. And you, Daniel. You started to swim away. I grasped for you Daniel, please believe me. I fought as hard as I could. No. I should have fought harder. I came around slowly, sluggishly, as if dragged through thick tar. Pale blue curtains separated me from the world. I was on my side on a cold vinyl surface. A bed of sorts, narrow, hard. From beyond the curtain, I heard the sleeping breath of another woman. Did she feel relief? I knew you were gone. I was hollow, empty. As my body started to obey me, I wept. Softly at first, then louder, wilder, abandoned. “Ssshhh,” said a knit-browed nurse. “Hush now.” She patted me on the arm, but she was looking at the soft flutter of the curtain between me and the other woman. “I need to go,” I said through thick lips. “I have to go.” She shrugged. “Free to go whenever you like.” Daniel, it was hard, to push myself to sit, to swing my legs over the bed, to slide my bare feet onto the floor. The nurse helped me to my feet, my legs insubstantial as dandelion stalks to hold the weight of my body and my grief. I took a few tentative steps, a thick pad wadded between my legs. “Go home now,” said the nurse. “Live your life. Forget this ever happened.” # I have the last ten Buddhas to speak to today. I ride to one of the furthest little temples hugging the riverbank that I saw on my way back to the hotel last night. The single stupa rises from a half derelict building that somehow feels reflective of my fractured heart. It is cool inside, as I have come to expect, but there is something else here: a scent. I sniff. It is some sort of oil, faintly herbal, and between the crossed legs of a Buddha, I see a small bowl on legs with a flickering tea light underneath. The temple is empty. I wonder how long it has been burning. Ten Buddha’s line three walls of the temple: four either side of me and two straight ahead. For a moment, I am elated. This is surely some kind of sign, I think. Ten Buddhas, a burning light. I am about to be redeemed. I kneel at each Buddha in turn. Look after him, Buddha. Let Daniel know his mummy loved him. I am not sure what I expect when I arrive at my last Buddha. My eighty-first, my final. Settling in front of him, I cross my legs, rest the photograph in my palm. Eighty-one days, I tell him. Eighty one days, I carried my boy. And then I let him go. I unlock what little reserve I have been holding back and let everything out: the last few months of clutching my little secret to my belly, Neil’s sharp tongue, Doctor Lin’s blank face, the jabs of the needle, the foggy head, the empty space in my centre, the longing, the grief, the regret and the years of a now-impossible future lying ahead. Everything I will not have leaks out: the birthdays, the milestones, the dirty knees, the tears to wipe, the hungry mouth seeking his mother’s nourishment, the warm body sinking into mine. They fall in a cascade, the tears, until there is nothing left to cry. I look up at Buddha eighty-one, my final hope, my last stab at redemption. He stares back, impassive. The candle has gone out. The herbal smell is gone. There is just me gripping a grainy photo in the presence of stone on brick. I’m not sure what I expected: a lightning bolt, a shifting fog, a sense of peace. But it wasn’t this, a dull, empty malaise. Tomorrow, I will travel to Lake Inle, buy a Burmese ruby to commemorate Daniel, look for ways to fill the spaces in me. But now, I bow, thank the Buddhas for listening and climb back onto the dusty bike. I push my feet down on the pedals. I have to keep moving. One, two, one, two. Jay’s work appears in numerous publications, including Unleash Lit, Cerasus and adda. Winner of the Exeter Short Story Prize, Fabula Aestas, Writers Playground and Furious Fiction, she was shortlisted for the 2022 Exeter Novel Prize and the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Her debut novel Mim and Wiggy’s Grand Adventure was released in July 2023.