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When Gran-Gran’s Pearl Necklace Goes Missing she narrows her eyes at my brother, Dusty. He’s forever misplacing stuff: LEGOs, socks, mouth guards. “What would I—” He stabs at his chest with his forefinger. “Do with your pearl necklace?” Throwing his chin in the air, he points to Gran-Gran. Arms folded, Gran-Gran stares at Dusty over her tortoiseshell glasses. Then at me. Then at Dusty again, and harrumphs. “Maybe you misplaced it,” I offer. Gran-Gran sucks in her lips, then peers at her mint-green parakeet, Jo Jo. She runs her wooden cane across his cage. Rat-a-tat-tat. “Damn bird eats anything. Ain’t that right, Jo Jo?” “Ain’t that right, Jo Jo?” her parakeet says. “No way,” I say. “Jose,” Dusty adds. Jo Jo flaps his wings and squawks. Moments later, Gran-Gran stabs her gnarled finger into the front window. “Now there’s the thief!” Dusty and I turn to see a doe trot onto the front lawn. It stops, lifts its head, then looks our way as if it knows we’re staring. “Let’s go,” Gran-Gran says, ushering Dusty toward the front door. “Get a wiggle on.” It’s wet out from last night’s downpour, so I want to argue, but something in her voice stirs up memories of when Pa-Pa used to take me geocaching as a kid—memories that’d lodged themselves deep in the back of my brain after he passed away. So instead, I help Dusty with his Superman rain boots and we head outside where we find ourselves trudging through the mud, brown muck flecking the backs of our legs. Gran-Gran shields her eyes from the sun and scans the area. “Use your x-ray vision, Dusty-boy. My pearls are here somewhere.” Dusty grabs my hand, and we roam the yard. Before long, he points to a bulge in the ground and bounces his legs up and down. “Here! Here! Here!” With our hands, we rake the mud and unearth a pile of LEGOs, ping-pong balls, and mouth guards. I clear my throat loudly as he stuffs as many of the items as he can into his pockets, flashing me a dimpled grin. “Ah-ha!” Gran-Gran exclaims from a few feet away. Arriving by her side, we find a collection of brown pellets on a small patch of grass. “It’s scat,” I say. “Yeah, scat,” Dusty says. She hunches for a closer look. “But they’re so round. Why are they so round? Deer scat isn’t round. Are they round?” Dusty and I bend over and place our hands on our thighs. Gran-Gran’s right. The pellets are unnaturally round. Their unusual shape reminds me of square Wombat poop, something I learned in class last semester. I’m in the middle of telling Dusty this when I hear Gran-Gran squelching through the mud. Garden hose in hand, she offers me the spray nozzle then raises her eyebrows. “Seriously?” I say. “Seriously?” Dusty says. She gives me a laser look that says I-am-so-so-serious. As the water washes off the mud, shiny spherical objects appear. I hmm. Dusty hmms. “Ah-ha!” Gran-Gran laughs hysterically. I shake my head, bending to gather the objects. “Uh-uh, Gran-Gran. They’re marbles.” “Marbles?” Gran-Gran grabs one and studies it like a jeweler, peering at the white cat’s eye design inside. A few seconds pass before her lips creep into a smile. Wrinkles emerge from the corners of her mouth like a dry lakebed and tears gather in her eyes. “Your Pa-Pa gave me these before he died. He used to collect them as a boy. I thought I lost them.” I let out a sigh. “Me, too.” Dusty wipes imaginary sweat off his forehead. “Phew! Me, too.” Gran-Gran gives me a once over, then beckons me with her hand. I raise an eyebrow as she wraps her bony arms around my waist. Dusty grabs the back of my thighs. My arms lift, ready to embrace, when I feel her tug at the waistband of my denim shorts. “You need to wear a belt,” she says. “I can see your underwear.” She shoves me away with the strength of a superhero, and Dusty and I fall onto our haunches. Marbles and LEGOs spill into the mud. I side-eye Dusty, who’s side-eyeing me. I shrug. He shrugs. Gran-Gran stands akimbo in her purple flowered muumuu and looks off into the distance. “Now, where are my pearls?” Jennifer Lai writes mainly micro and flash fiction. She has work in Bureau of Complaint, Flashflood Journal, hex, and elsewhere.

CW: unplanned pregnancy, termination, gaslighting/emotional manipulation, acute manic episode There’s a clamour, a buzzing like a hive. No, a swarm. Discordant glasses clink, people chatter. A woman’s laugh rings out. It’s hers, I know it is. I look over. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but not the understated elegance of the lace bodice and gentle swell of the chiffon skirt. She has a tiny lace and rhinestone horseshoe dangling from her waist. So trite. If that were me, I’d be in a sari, blazing red, gold embroidery weighing me down, hair engorged with jasmine. I’d be cloying, I’d get in your nose. “Isn’t she gorgeous?” Pei Yin asks. I pooch my lips like I’m considering, like I haven’t been wondering the exact same thing. Is she gorgeous, or isn’t she? “Let’s get a drink,” I say, dragging her to the bar. “Gin and tonic,” I waggle two fingers at the bartender. “The church service was good,” says Pei Yin. She says it like a statement, but really she’s asking – what kind of scene are you going to make? Something fizzes inside me – I decide it is excitement. Excitement at our erstwhile housemate’s wedding to a wonderful girl. Just wonderful. She’s a vet nurse. What’s not to like? Mife -PRIS- tone. I waggle another two fingers at the bartender. Pei Yin hasn’t finished her first one, so I shrug and down them both. “Let’s dance!” I say. “But they haven’t opened the dance floor yet!” she says, her voice dopplering after me. I move into the centre of the room, tables and chairs are strewn about the space. Purple-orange light from the setting sun streams through the glass walls. I bump a couple of chairs out of the way and begin moving my hips, arms up in the air. They’re playing some kind of nineties shit. “Maybe she chose the music!” I say to Pei Yin. “Why aren’t you dancing?” I bump her on the hip. “That’s my seat,” a woman in a black cocktail number says. “Do you want to dance?” I yell at her. The chatter in the room is deafening. “This fuddy-duddy over here doesn’t want to, can you believe it?” “Could you dance somewhere else please? That’s my seat.” “Okay, geez,” I say, grabbing Pei Yin. “What is wrong with people?” “You need to take it down a notch, Sana, okay? I said we shouldn’t come. This was a bad idea.” Miso-PROS-tol. “Relax, Yin! It’s all good! I’m so fucking happy for Daniel and his wife Leanne.” “You know her name is Leigh, Sana. Stop it, you’re being obnoxious.” “You’re being obnoxious, Yin. Always telling me what to do.” My arrows always hit home with Yin - I’ve known her since we were twelve. “Shit, sorry Sana, it’s just…well, I’m worried about you.” Ma had called, also trying to talk me out of going to the wedding. “What dose has Dr. Rehman got you on?” she had asked. Everyone is so worried about me having any feelings. Mife-PRIS-tone. Miso-PROS-tol. I give Yin a hug. “I’m okay – see?” I flash a bright grin at her. We head back to our table, in the far reaches of the Daniel-Leigh galaxy. I think he’s seated us with his old football buddies. I grab the champagne flute, bubbles tickling my nose. “How do you know them?” a lanky man in an ill-fitting blue suit asks me. “Yin and I used to live with Daniel,” I shout over the din, pointing at Yin. “I used to play basketball with him,” he shouts back. “I really don’t care,” I say. “What?” he says. “Isn’t Leigh wonderful?” I say. The man smiles and gives me two thumbs up. “Get me a refill?” I give him my flute, empty now. “Back in a tick,” he says, getting up. Yin is looking at me. “You good, Sana? Are we going to be okay today?” “Such a worrywart, Yin! I’m having a fabulous time!” She has always been a buzzkill. My body fizzes again, the velvet cover on the chair feels really itchy. I don’t know why I chose this satin dress. I wanted to wear a sari. I am Durga on a tiger. “Stop fidgeting so much!” Yin says as I knock her drink over. I put my napkin on the spill to stop it staining her dress. “There’s Daniel’s mum!” I stand, pointing at the tall woman in purple. Yin rushes after me as I walk towards her. “How are you girls? I hardly see you anymore!” she says. “We’re well, Mrs. McDade, thank you! How are you?” Yin, like a horse out of the gates. “I’m so happy today – don’t they look wonderful together?” ‘Just wonderful,” I say. Mife-PRIS-tone. “Yes, it was a great ceremony,” Yin says, dragging me away. “Enjoy your night!” “What was that about?” I hiss at her. “Why didn’t you let me speak to her?” “I was worried you might say something -” “Something what, Yin? Something true? Something real? You are fucking afraid. That’s what you are. Just afraid. And that makes you dishonest. It makes you say she’s wonderful. When you know damn well we’ve spent hours bitching about her!” “Keep your voice down, Sana!” Yin is looking around us. She has always wanted to please everyone else. She continues, with that look on her face – the ‘I love you, but – ‘ look. “You’ve been obsessing about him a bit, Sana.” The fizzing is making my skin itch now. This dress is too tight. I mean that’s why I picked it, but I feel like I can’t breathe. Yin has never approved of me and Daniel. I remember the look she gave me that time when she woke up and saw us kissing. We had collapsed on the couch after one of our parties, Daniel in between, an arm around each of us. I tucked right into his armpit, snuggled my head on his chest. He was lazily twirling my hair in his fingers. I looked up, and he was looking down at me. He smiled, said hey, then kissed me. There was a split second when I might have stopped him, but I didn’t. Miso-PROS-tol. There’s a plate on the table in front of us. I am starving, so I grab it. It’s a flaky onion and feta tart. Delicious, but I have crumbs all over me. A bewildered man comes to me and says “I think that’s my -” A set to my jaw, I say, “your…what? Your what? Speak up man!” “Never mind,” he backs away, looking at Yin who is mouthing sorry at him. “Why is it so hard for people to just speak the truth, Yin?” There’s a waitress passing with a plate of canapes. It’s a scallop on one of those stand-up spoons, with a little hillock of orange roe on top of it. The orange reminds me. “Have you seen my tiger?” I ask her. Quite solemnly she shakes her head. At the next table there is a kid, about ten. She’s reading a book. “I loved Judy Blume too,” I say, sitting next to her. She glances up then back at her book. “Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret was my favourite,” I try again. She shrugs, “it was okay”. Mife-PRIS-tone. I had read that book in the window seat in my room. The cushion on the seat had a pink and purple checked cover. It felt soft and hard at the same time, like I could sit there for hours, and it would hold me up as long as I wanted it to. I would sleep there sometimes, looking out at the luminous sky, stars winking that they’d keep the secret. “Anyway, I’m not a kid anymore. I’m a goddess now. It’s just that I might have misplaced my tiger, so be careful, okay?” I say to the girl who finally looks at me properly. “Come on Sana. Let’s go sit down,” Yin butts in. I don’t want to sit! I want to fly! “Let’s get another drink.” I run to the bar, and she can’t keep up with me. She’s too slow, weighted down by all the lies and half-truths she tells. Like how she’s my best friend. That second time, she was in the kitchen when I came out of Daniel’s room. She’d raised her eyebrows at me. When I had finished in the shower, they were having breakfast. Munching their toast like it was a normal day. She’d poured me a coffee and he’d left without even looking at me. What had she said to him? The bartender is ignoring me on purpose. I know he is. “Hey! I asked for two gin and tonics!” I call out. “He’ll get to us soon, Sana.” Yin says. She has the exact same exasperated look on her face she did when I went into her room that morning a few years ago. I had wanted her to explain the two blue lines on the pee stick to me, to tell me what to do. But I’d said the wrong thing. I’d said “Yin, it’s about Daniel and me,” and she’d rolled her eyes. “Will you just let go of it, Sana?” she’d said. “He’s with someone else now.” I spin around to her, suddenly realising the truth “it was you all along, wasn’t it?” “What?’ “You fed him that poison. You told him to break it off with me, didn’t you?” Yin is about to cry. I knew it! Fucking lying bitch. “You have never loved me. You are a taker, Yin. At school you were at my place every fucking weekend because your family wouldn’t have you!” She’s proper crying now. Good, the truth always hurts, but you have to hear it. You have to hear it to set yourself free. I am so encumbered. By my hair all tied up in a stupid knot. I pull the hairpins out, and they scatter like the confetti we threw into the air earlier that day. People are saying something. What? At the table next to me there’s a woman, and she has a baby in a pram. He’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. His skin is the exact colour of a toy chest I had once. It was from China, with a carving of a junk on it. Gold and caramel and coffee and pepper. “Oh my God,” I say to his mother. She’s more latte. “Is Daniel the father of this baby too?” I ask. “Mine is littler. Much littler. Just an embryo really. Might have only been an idea in my mind. I would have called him Sachin. Means truth.” She looks alarmed. I’ve frightened her. My tears are running in mascara rivulets down my cheeks. “Are you okay?” she says, half standing. I wave her back down and nod, “I’m fine,” then I shake my head, and I am wailing. “All you have to do, to turn a real baby back into an idea, is to take mife-PRIS-tone, then twenty-four hours later, take miso-PROS-tol. That’s it! And if you’re really careful and you tell no one, you can even trick yourself that it was one of your little delusions.” I look down at the baby, and it is wailing too. The baby knows. “This is not your baby,” I hiss to the woman. Her eyes widen and she looks around wildly. “This baby belongs to the Universe.” “Ma’am?” a voice says at my elbow. “I’m only called Ma’am when I go shopping, and everyone can tell I have pots of money, just pots! It’s just me on my corporate salary. No husband! No kid!” Alarmed, I look around, where is it? “Have you seen my tiger?” I ask the waitperson. She looks to the mum, like the truth might be in her eyes. “Don’t ask the mum! Ask the baby! The pepper baby!” This is the truest idea I’ve ever had. I lunge towards the table and the mum makes a little scream. She is not one who sees the truth. I grab the salt and pepper shakers and stand over the baby. Or I try to, but the waitperson gets in my way. Suddenly – it is his face. His beautiful face – grey-green-brown eyes, the hint of brown stubble. “Sana, come with me.” With you, Daniel, anywhere. He takes me to the bathroom, and hands me a drink. Ugh. Water. “Have you been taking your meds?” “They’re a cage, Daniel. A cage for the mind. You wouldn’t understand. You just entered a cage voluntarily. One called marriage. To a wonderful girl. So happy for you.” He sighs. He says my name, voice all husky, and it breaks me. “Oh fuck, sorry. I’m sorry.” My cat eye is ruined. I think there’s snot all over my face too. He gets some toilet paper for me. “Why can’t you let it go, Sana?” But I did let it go. I let it all go down the toilet. Mife-PRIS-tone. Miso-PROS-tol. I stand up and move closer to him, I must show him the truth. I reach for his waistband, pulling down his zip. He grabs my hand. “Stop it.” I titter. “You don’t really want me to.” I am down on my knees. “Stop it, Sana!” He turns away from me, doing up his zip. “I am married to Leigh. I love her. Please stop this. I knew I shouldn’t have invited you.” “Why did you then?” I say from my place curled up on the floor. It’s so comfortable here. “Leigh wanted me to.” That stops me. “She thought it was right. She said I shouldn’t ignore the fact that we had something.” He looks at me, and I think he is saying sorry. Why does everyone speak in riddles? Daniel turns to leave. When he opens the bathroom door, there is a balloon of sound – chatter, cutlery, laughter. The door shuts and abruptly cuts it off. I stay on the cold floor, completely alone, like I have always been. There’s an orange light on the ceiling, buzzing at a frequency that hums in my bones. I am five, out in the moonlight for a stroll with my dolly Gina in her pram. My pink plastic heels with the bow clack-clacking as I walked along the pavement all the way to the park. I spoke to Gina the whole way “it’s okay baby, I know you’re scared, but it’s okay, Mama’s here”. The sodium lights at the park buzzed orange as I walked right round the track. I didn’t know what else to do so I went back home. The front door was wide open, just like I’d left it. Ma never knew. It was a dream, I think. The door opens again. “Hey,” a voice says. The dearest voice in the world. The voice of the person who is always there. Always. No matter what. “I’m sorry,” I say to Yin. My tears are falling through their own ponderous gravity. The lies I have been telling myself are pouring out of me. She says, “I’ve called Dr Rehman. We’re going to see him tomorrow.” “Okay,” I say. She has our bags and coats already. Of course. I gather myself, and wash as best I can in the shitty sink. My cat eye has run all over my face, and my hair is a rumpled mess. We head out, slinking past the mess of people and tables and happiness, to the exit. “Sana,” someone calls. I turn. And it is her. “Are you okay?” she asks. I can’t speak. “I get it,” she says. “I love him too.” She looks straight at me. “But he’s married now, Sana, okay? To me.” Isn’t this what I have been waiting for? The truth, for once? So why does it hurt so much? I lift my chin and nod at her, just once, then Yin and I leave. Sumitra writes in Naarm/Melbourne. She travelled through many spaces, both beautiful and traumatic to get there and writes to make sense of her experiences. She’ll be the one in the kitchen making chai (where’s your cardamom?). She works in mental health. You can find her and her other publication credits on twitter: @pleomorphic2

People in unstable situations I know a girl who moved from finglas in her 20s to athy. has a longterm boyfriend a little younger lately talks a lot about people she knows getting pregnant. she's into and he's into computer games. a house in athy was the only place they could afford outright, but lately it's been costing them much more than they expected to pay. and most of her friends are still renting, as well – have been having kids with people in unstable situations but she has to get windows in and has also an ant problem and her dad has an ex-wife problem and she has a mother -in-law problem and a mother problem too, since she's close to her dad. it's amazing what you can learn sitting across from someone Every sound could be a drama the wind has been moving the leaves of the plants on our windowsills like tips on the fingers of a loose cotton glove. the window's half open. out from the world this sliver is letting in snippets. sirens call: emergencies are rushed up the quaysides. a woman screams somewhere and somewhere a bottle breaks – somewhere else or close-by – I don't know. the thing about apartments in the middle of the city is that every sound could be a drama or just be things happening. in the kitchen I knock over a glass full of ashes and wine. in the bedroom my wife snores a brass band and no-one else hears. DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as "a cosmopolitan poet" and another as "prolific, bordering on incontinent". His work has nominated eleven times for Best of the Net, eight for the Pushcart Prize and once for the Forward Prize, and has been released in three collections; "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016), "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)

boyfriend diary i found poem i’ve been feeling a lot. i don’t know how i keep reminding myself to move, breathe, understand goodness, i’m crying again. i know i’m past your limit. boyfriend diary ii found poem i made mistakes, & isolated myself. it’s been difficult, unearthing, reaching for deeper understanding that disconnect is my kryptonite. mikey, the first time you pulled away it hurt. boyfriend diary iii found poem this week has been bitter -sweet. i’ve been busy with work, with friends; game nights, casinos, critical role. i’m learning how to be my own person, admitting my mistakes, acknowledging the church fucked me over. but i’m here letting the darkness warm me like embers in the cold. boyfriend diary iv found poem god, i was so scared to fail that i failed anyways. i see you, see the symbols of our journey, stars & planets & i’m in love with the orbit, the pull of gravity. i know there’s still a lot to move through but i trust in the feeling i got when you smiled for the first time in months. Michael Russell (he/they) is coauthor of chapbook Split Jawed with Elena Bentley (forthcoming from Collusion Books) and mother monster to chapbook Grindr Opera (Frog Hollow Press). They are queer, mad, and overflowing with anxiety. Currently, he has a craving for chocolate chip pancakes with bananas and thinks you're fantabulous. Insta: @michael.russell.poet

Greetings! Tis I penning this missive neath a wretchedly dark and dusty blanket. Little Arnold rests on my lap, as I endeavor to hold him still. I am uncertain he possesses the ability to fix his gaze on the camera. I picture him atop this heavy black fabric in the shape of me, cheeks flushed and eyes out of focus, lending his face the countenance of old Mrs. Biffinblotch after a goblet of gin and lemons. I can’t see him. Or the camera. No reason for mother to be in the photograph. You must be wondering how I can write as I remain still for nearly two minutes while the tintype is produced. I saw most of you at the traveling medicine show. If you can believe snake oil is a cure for lumbago and rheumatism, you can believe I’m writing. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by Lytton’s suggestion that I sit under a blanket and hold little Arnold. When we were courting, he once asked me to duck down in the carriage while he waved to passing maidens in the street. “Twas but a jest, of course,” he said after my sister chastised him. After she noticed part of my skirt and petticoat hanging from the side of the carriage, flapping in the breeze. They say a woman engaged in her proper duties has no time to write. I’m calling these moments under the blanket leisure, perhaps even recreation. I shant write anything serious. Perhaps a treatise on the domestic arts. The photographer’s mind and nature are much more serious, with his knowledge of chemistry, light and reflection. Were I to expect my small thoughts to be worth the ink I’m using, I could be considered utterly selfish. And I’m not selfish. My udders are, however. They’re demanding attention. It’s about time for Arnold to nurse. Little Arnold is an unruly babe. Between the blanket and his gown, it’s difficult to hold his squirming legs. And his aroma! As the philosopher Karl Marx said, all that is solid melts into air. The digestive effusions of rutabagas under this blanket are making me so vexed my eyes are watering. It’s not just him, gentle readers. I ate the rutabagas as well. He looks like a doll in his gown. He won’t be in breeches until the age of reason. By which I mean able to visit the privy on his own. Once in breeches, Arnold can pose for a tintype with his father. Without a blanket. I may venture to say I look forward to the day. Lytton rarely shampoos his hair or beard. Just last week he explained to me how to make stewed plover more tender and a morsel of said plover fell from his beard. Due to his embarrassment, I decided not to ask how a man who’s never made stew can provide a wordy explanation of the process. By the by, I must take my leave. If I don’t feed little Arnold soon, the pressure in my breasts shall become unbearable. I must be brave and flip this blanket aside. Lori Barrett (she/her) lives and writes in Chicago. Her work has appeared in Salon, The Wall Street Journal, Barrelhouse, Citron Review, Laurel Review, Peatsmoke Journal, and Middle House Review, where she was nominated for Best Small Fictions 2020. She serves as an assistant fiction editor at Pithead Chapel.

headache split head thunderous nauseous strobe lights concussion beat drip dripping over my teeth iron tang scattered pills across the silky tiles my hands can’t hold anything right now cheekbone pressure gauge sharp as a butcher i’d carve me out to escape the tocking of the clock can barely hold my eyelids back sweet autumn release a long dark winter silence please i can’t feel the hit and i never reach it just walking dead carrying sickness in my skull ditch living such big eighteen year dreams wideness and bright-lit eyes a plan scorched and dead in a dorm room narrowing and narrowing anorexic optimism atrophied limbs and mountains to climb landslide bruises color-changing chameleon skin stronger but don’t ask for five years delusional headlights swing off I-95 all the time ditch living swamp stagnant water with the rest of the roadkill but still breathing for now still here rings on fingers only money never photos in the wallet standing in an empty parking lot midnight hum closed eyes arms wide just breathing and breathing you’re on your own lesson learned but alive still alive boots in pools of neon planted on concrete like the daisies in the cracks defiant things alive still alive Brenna Boytim writes about ghosts, regrets, and reveries. You can find her on twitter @hi_thisisbrenna.

list (a living document) for when you say ask you anything and I cannot and all my words, thoughts, feelings are caught in loop inside me and it’s probably not what you had in mind can I touch the inside of your thigh and run my fingers down can you kiss me again but not goodbye and not like that do you think about me ever too is it ok that I’m imagining all of you fill in the blanks with just about anything and yes, that’s what I want to know will you let me ______, can we ________ do you ______? it was fleeting and I miss the weight of your being pressed next to mine the absence is not real in French they say tu me manques I miss you but means so much more- you are missing to me, absent, beyond reach, lacking (in need of) I surrender to the universe it’s all I can do and you are here, even if not don’t confuse the melancholy of my music or my soulful words of longing for sadness this is me alive and well I woke up at midnight, 2 am, 4:30 and 5 I wanted to tell you I can’t stop thinking about you maybe what’s been missing is the music that time when you turned video on so I could see you for a few seconds and you said it was just for me and all the blood rushed through my body and for those seconds I was only energy- delicious desire, and while I do want to feel your skin, remembering that one moment is sometimes all I need Janna Wilson is a Vancouver-based poet, wanderer, and lover of sunshine, beaches, tattoos and music. In the other hours, she works as a program coordinator for the University of Victoria. Recent work has appeared in Paddler Press and Discretionary Love. Her first chapbook, The Octopus Hunter, was published by Leaf Press in 2010. Forthcoming work in Beyond Words Literary Magazine.

Robot baby is put in a crib at night. It bows, bows, bows under Robot baby’s weight. In the dark, Robot baby glows like a lonely firefly. Its parents kiss it on its round robot face, good night, sweet baby, and go to their bedroom and their cold little bed, lie side by side and stare up at the ceiling. One of them imagines, overhead, the starlit sky. One of them thinks of the swell of baby’s breath, the thrum of such a small, small heart. One of them put Robot baby together in the garage with forgotten childhood things, little pieces of metal and gear, springs from childhood pens, snip of hair from little-sister’s marble-eyed baby doll, fragment of bone-dust white, and, in the place of a heart, a torn page holding a line they’ve carried all this time: All children, except one, grow up.

76-degree morning already The birds no longer chirp and the hum of air conditioners mixes with the polluted canadian wildfire air the radio d.j. tells me it’s a 76-degree morning already and it’s going to be steamy today, he says hitting the mid-90s but it’ll feel 100 out there he sounds excited by this like he has a hard-on the way electric company executives have hard-ons this time of year my eyes burn and my throat feels dry my breath tastes like wood chips and stale coffee the streets are sweaty armpits waiting to envelop me they smell of eau de rotten garbage and dog shit soaked in the fetid water the fop sweat of capitalism pouring out of us from head to toe. the woman drinking a cosmopolitan alone noon is the perfect time for drinking a cosmopolitan by one’s self but then he had to show up greasy hair aviator shades bright rayon shirt unbuttoned to his belly a black heart tattooed on his chest i can see it all over your face as he tries to talk to you a small good thing that you did for yourself ruined and you chug the last little bit of drink get some cosmo on your chin that hangs there then gone gone not even waiting for the check

My high school boyfriend leans on me, the full weight of him disarming the rhythm of our steps as we walk home from school. The worn sleeve of his forest green hoodie covers his hand draped across my shoulders. There is a significant gap between our heights, his stride longer than mine, he pulls me close as the winter wind picks up. His friend, Jamie, strolls alone in his own hoodie and shivers, colder than my high school boyfriend, who leans on me. # My high school boyfriend leans on me. My knees prop up his back, American Lit notebook in my lap too close to my face to adequately write my essay outline. I scrape my pen along the metal spiral, the ca-jink jink jink vibrates in my fingertips. Angelo plays his Switch, periodically lifts it up so I can see where he’s at. I wait for him to die before asking him to shift so I can turn the page and write my last topic sentence. He growls as he snuggles further between my knees, his sharp shoulder blades dig in my tender flesh below my kneecaps as my high school boyfriend leans on me. # My high school boyfriend leans on me at dinner on a double date with my friend Monica and her butch girlfriend. Empty plates, dirty napkins covered in buffalo sauce balance in small piles around the booth. Angelo’s head under mine, I breathe in his leathery Drakkar Noir cologne, the smell of weed in his hair. Monica and her girlfriend are tonguing each other, her hand grips Monica’s thigh under the table. Monica breaks away and asks me to go with to the bathroom. My high school boyfriend leans on me more, holds me down so I have to struggle a bit to get out from under him. I play along for a moment, laughing behind a grimace and then break free. Angelo yelps as his neck flinches and he bangs his forehead against the edge of the table. He accuses me of doing it on purpose. He would never do that to me. He was only playin’, he says, there was no need for me to get up like that. When we return from the bathroom, I split the bill with Monica’s butch girlfriend. My high school boyfriend leans on me to whisper that he’ll pay me back. Monica’s butch girlfriend cackles and says, yeah he will, on your back. # My high school boyfriend leans on me when he is cut from the basketball team for his bad grades. He has more free time now, and he wants to spend it with me. When I hang out with Monica on Wednesdays, he’s with us, “just tagging along,” he says, he’ll stay out of the way of our girl time, but constantly looks up from his phone at us eating chips in my kitchen. He says he doesn’t want any. Jamie is still on the basketball team so we don’t see him as much. I tell Angelo that I have math to do and I’ll call him later. He kisses me deeply, cinnamon breath, his tongue sweeps mine. He is impressed by my dedication to school, he winks. Monica stays at the dining table and he hollers for her to walk out together. If he can’t distract me, neither can she. My high school boyfriend leans on me one last time, watching Monica put her boots back on. # My high school boyfriend leans on me after he comes on my breasts, his knuckles in my collarbone. I try to fix my bangs so they stick less to my forehead, fluff them up again, but he pushes them aside and says I should grow them out, the bangs make me look like a child. My high school boyfriend leans on me, inhales my hair, wipes my chest off with his t-shirt. # My high school boyfriend leans on me with his fist against the wall. He threatens my mother on my behalf when I tell him I can’t go out that night. I am pissed at her, but it feels strange that he’s more angry than me— at me. It’s not my fault, I tell him and his hand, the wall, my mother yells. Once he leaves she tells me that was out of control, my high school boyfriend leans on me too much. # My high school boyfriend leans on me–stay home with me–call me right now, I need to speak to you. His eyes bore into me, don’t talk about me to other people. Whose number is that? Who’s texting you? Your mother is a bitch. Monica looks at you funny, like she’s into you. You better not dump for me a girl. Promise me if you dump me, it won’t be for a girl. My high school boyfriend leans on me, his nostrils flare, his smell is feral and hot. If his jealousy were a smell it would be timber and vetiver. # My high school boyfriend leans on me on our rainy walk to school in spring after a sleepless night of crying and begging him to trust me. The crook of his arm possesses me, pinning my arms to my sides. The rain whips my hair across my chin and I cannot reach to wipe it away. Brown molted leaves from last fall clog the sewers, rancid. Blood under my skin spreads its yellowed-black wings in all the spots he’d leaned on. Water rises along the side of the road next to the curb, nowhere for it to run, run out to sea. Alison is a mixed and messy writer existing in Massachusetts. They have some other stories in Ellipsis Zine, JAKE, and Rejection Letters. Read more by visiting www.alisonfraser.space

"Before words can run out, something in the heart must die." —Alejandra Pizarnik Bella closed her eyes at the bar, and memory formed two people from shadows. They were born six months apart, alternating elevenths, opposing points in the revolution of the Earth around the Sun. One. One. Adding to two, until one night, they became none. Bella sounded a little scared when she got to that part of the story, and considering what happened, she was sad when she concluded it. It is never a straightforward story to relate to but tell it, she did, painful as it was. The compulsion was obsessive. Bella just had to talk about them. Tomorrow, Bella’s sister Vivian would have been 71. This weekend, Bella planned to get a cousin to drive her to Granger and visit her. Bella will join Vivian, Daddy, and Mama, a family, then forgotten. That assessment scared Bella the most. People needed to know about them. She did not want them left unknown. Also, Bella did not want to die without their story entirely told, realizing her mind continued to fail her frequently. That next step of her long decline was coming soon and she was running out of time. The symptoms of her illness were irreversible and not going to stop until everything else did. Drinking made it worse. Bella did not care. She was beyond that, weary of fighting against the tide before the inevitability of being pulled underwater into oblivion. But, there was something Bella had to say, to grasp, and pass on before this lifetime of facing a shattering mirror, watching once-important memories fragmenting into shards. She always hated puzzles; now, her life was becoming one. * * * * The specialists called and told her she had organic brain syndrome. Daddy had suffered from this. It crept up slowly. As his condition worsened, he sat in his overstuffed chair in the den, a television tray serving as his desk. While holding a notepad and pen, he would ask Bella about past events, himself, and the family. Bella would tell him. Daddy would write them down, his arthritic fingers struggling while scrawling over the lines of the notepad. Then, when he finished writing her answer, he would look up to ask another question, and Bella would answer. It was vital for him to write it down himself. When he finished, he would look up and ask her again. One afternoon, at the dining nook in the kitchen. Daddy stood up and said he had forgotten his name. He reached his throat, grasping Vivian’s Confirmation medal, tugging on the chain until it snapped. “My name,” he said. “What is my name?” This is what was going to happen to her. She found that talking about her sister Vivian helped. Who she was. The time she went to the Dairy Queen. Everything changed after that. But she needed to understand why that was and how she stood in the wreckage of Vivian’s death. With a drowning grip, Bella held to the story of her older sister. There was hope in those days. Life was easy, and choices were simple. Dairy Queen, Holiday House for burgers and shakes, and the Woolworths counter for grilled cheese sandwiches. Dance squad, and working towards making varsity cheerleader and good enough grades for the University. Coming home to her room, and always finding Vivian sitting on her bed, reading magazines and books and writing in her diary. That was the time of her life Bella focused on. That time led to a thunderstorm night and the officers at the door, but as months passed, Bella realized the fragments of weeks before and after her sister died mattered the most. Daddy had just joked to Mama that Vivian wished the rain would never end when the doorbell rang. After being pulled underwater, the disease proceeded with Bella’s slow but discernable decline. Yes, she was told the drinking made it worse, but she felt she had to die of something and decided she should feel good in the process, and nothing made slow-motion suicide in the face of an incurable disease feel as good as a single malt scotch, neat, with a water sidecar. Since the symptoms began three years ago, Bella had already forgotten much of her life. For a time, she worked furiously, keeping a diary of stories about growing up, the years at the University of Texas, and the time she went to San Francisco and Marin County for two years before returning home broke and humiliated. She filled two spiral notebooks before she realized there was no one to read them but her and that so many of these stories were meaningless. They were not that important to Bella. What was important was remembering the date, when to take her meds, that she took them, and doctors’ appointments. Eventually, piecing together those shards of memory was too much for her to handle. She needed to focus. But Vivian, her sister, was the most important. Bella needed to remember her. After Bella’s diagnosis, she recalled Vivian in as much detail as possible. The night she had left them forever was when everything changed. Woke up every morning with an empty bed next to Bella’s. A space at the table permanently left untouched. Mama started getting sick shortly afterward and died when Bella graduated high school. Finally, it became Daddy alone, staying that way except for his trips to the family ranch in Granger. As Daddy sat alone, Bella went on that adventure to find herself. That was San Francisco after it was fun. The architecture was crumbling as the people staggered around looking for angry fixes, caging change, stealing, and kicking the crap out of each other to finish that mathematical problem of maintaining addiction. If it wasn’t the heroin used to sink oneself into the ground, it was a go-go of shooting speed. Bella went for the former. She wore long sleeves for years after that. She whored herself out. Backstage at the Fillmore, sweet-talking touring musicians into bed with an eye on what was in the velvet trouser pockets in the morning and running out to the Haight to score. Eventually, this got too much for her. She flipped out and ran with one of the lesser self-proclaimed gurus to a tumbledown Victorian in Marin County. She latched onto a fantasy of the Boxcar Children amid the chaos of filthy mattresses and became pregnant. Junk sick and desperate, she hung a ride from her rescuer. All she could remember was his flaming red hair and beard. He drove her to a clinic. Got a referral to a halfway house and spent months there on brown rice, beans, and methadone. She was as much of a blur as those memories. She willingly gave up the child at birth, incapable of taking on anything more than getting clean. She wished the redhead had been the father. But instead, it was probably the guru. His name was Gus. Or Gaston. She couldn’t remember even back then, and no reason to start now. After taking night business classes at the University of San Francisco, she returned home to Texas. * * * * On several occasions, Daddy told Bella, “I can accept loss, but I cannot abide it forever.” She felt the hurt in those words, in his voice. He didn’t speak much about it otherwise, but Vivian lived on in the silences between sentences during conversations. And on Bella’s dresser, a cedar box with revelatory artifacts inside. The adoption papers were neatly folded in the cedar box. She looked at them daily to remind herself, especially after Carey was hired as the bartender. Vivian was Bella’s sister, and Mark was the boy Vivian met. It was a cold spring day at the Dairy Queen on Guadalupe Street. Her sister had just turned fifteen. Her given name was Irene, named after her grandmother. Irene did not like her name and insisted on calling herself by her middle name, Vivian, as in Leigh. Gone with the Wind, with God as my witness. Irene was a Texas girl, but Vivian wanted to be someone bigger than Texas. Bella ordered another scotch neat. The disability money went into her bank account yesterday, so it was The Balvenie today. She was feeling expensive. “Do you want me to close out the tab?” Carey, the bartender, was sweet and one of those new girls. Her dad was a cop in Rhode Island, and behind the nose ring, the color streaks in her hair and tattoos was a young woman raised right. Looking at Carey’s expression, Bella recalled Vivian telling her: “I am a good girl, not wishing to be bad, but learning to be both. Good bad. That’s the thing about me.” “I guess I’m good for now,” Bella said. “Maybe the one after this.” Bella glanced up at the television screen. The fantastic young quarterback backing up for the injured starter, Dak Prescott, tossed a five-yard slant to Whitten. First down, Cowboys. * * * * Vivian was a genius as all she touched turned to gold. Except for that boy she fell in love with at the Dairy Queen on Guadalupe Street. He was one boy parents would wish best left unmet, but that’s the kind of boy some of us dream of, Bella thought. But what a boy Mark was. He was one handsome fella; Bella recalled that brunette ducktail sliding down over his forehead, the blue denim Levi’s jacket, and his striped t-shirt. Yeah. A greaser. Vivian was a good girl. She sure looked like one wearing her Girl Scout troop leader’s dress, with black lace-up shoes and knee socks. It was cold that day, so she had on that black wool jacket while listening to music on the jukebox, sitting at the table alone, waiting for her strawberry shake. Vivian said she was the only customer until Mark entered the Dairy Queen. When her order was called, she went to the counter and stood beside him. He smelled like Fatima cigarettes. Their eyes met. Bella was not there because she was practicing to be a line girl for the opening of the new Interstate. It was a big event. The Interregional Highway was going to become Interstate 35. But, the newspaper said, when finished, the highway would be from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Cape Horn in South America; instead, the road goes from Duluth, Minnesota, to Laredo. While sliding her finger over the glass, Bella remembered her sister’s face when she told her about meeting that boy. He just sat down across from her. Slapped a pocket paperback book, The Informer, by Liam O’Flaherty, on the table and sipped his soda, staring at her. “He’s a poet,” Vivian later told Bella. “He wrote me a poem on a sheet of paper and slid it across for me to read.” Bella folded the poem in fours in the cedar keepsake box on her dresser. Bella read it before bed. Mark could write. Had something going on as he was growing up. What Vivian wanted and held on to until the very end. We were born six months apart, alternating elevenths. Opposing points in the revolution of the Earth around the Sun The spider-chalk scrawl we gaze upon from our seats. Unexpected emotions were shared, clustered around silent glances. Furtive defines our rhythms as our interrupted lives now control this shared space. We speak, betraying the sense of wonder and surprise. I think they know. Watching your smile return to lips, eyes flickering. Undeniably happy in the place where your heart suddenly stops, starts on a different shore Okay. Should we-- add a note into the atlas of memories? Discovered. Dusted. Opened. * * * * Vivian had dirty blond hair, cut in a bob like Barbara Bel Geddes, who Mama said she resembled. Thick black glasses hid a Southern beauty, and her overbite added character. That’s what we all said when we took her home, crying, from the orthodontist when the family could not afford braces. Those were different times. Only the West Austin girls in Tarrytown had the money for braces. We had to make do with whatever God gave us for appearances. That and makeup, but we were Catholics, and our parents were stern. Vivian was a good girl and made do. She did, you see, she did. Vivian saw Vertigo at the Paramount on Congress Avenue when she was 12. Bella was 10 and too young for that movie, but Vivian went. She loved Barbara Bel Geddes in the movie. She played a painter in love with the hero, a detective who feared heights and couldn’t save the girl. She wore glasses like Vivian. After that, Vivian cut her hair into a bob like Barbara’s. When they looked at the fashion magazines, Vivian kept pointing out Kim Novak’s dresses. While Barbara was a pretty girl, Kim was beautiful. Vivian pointed at a photo of Kim Novak. Then, pushing her glasses back, she said, “I can be Barbara and her.” * * * * The bartender carried out a rack of barrel glasses from the kitchen. After setting it down next to the twin steel sinks under the bar, she removed and stacked them neatly beside the cash register. Bella watched the bartender work without actually seeing. She was too busy trying to remember. Bella took a sip from her scotch. Then paused, downed it, and asked Carey for another, placing her bank card on the bar. She promised herself the next scotch should be her last. She smiled as Dak Prescott ran a quarterback draw into the end zone. Touchdown Cowboys. The most dynamic quarterback they have had since Staubach. A shard from the past flickered. The family gathered, watching the team on the Zenith console. So this is who they were, and Bella wanted them back. Mama sat on the plastic-covered tan couch with her knitting. The cancer was already growing deep inside. She died from it five years later, three after Vivian passed, who sat cross-legged next to Mama, reading her book. She was disinterested in sports. Bella sat at her father’s feet. She loved watching football. She was a cheerleader at junior high that year and hoped to make the freshman squad at McCallum High the following year. Looming above Bella, Daddy sat nervously in his chair, tapping his pipe against the polished oak end table. The Cowboys wore navy blue uniforms with star designs on the shoulder pads and white helmets. They were dark gray on the black and white Zenith. Eddie LeBaron was the quarterback. The playcalling was rudimentary. They were a new team—an expansion franchise, they called them. They invariably ran on first down, with the fullback, Don Perkins, driving into the pile of bodies. The television game announcer, his voice rising, said, “First down. Perkins up the middle.” * * * * “This one’s on me, Bella,” she said. Her smile was a little sad, Bella thought. Got her thinking again that Bella was old enough to be her grandmother. She never did become one. Did marry, though. Didn’t like it and learned to hate the man she was with. Living with him became worse than in the commune in Marin County. It is a memory that fades. She knew it was terrible, but Bella forgot why. Carey started working here two months ago. A petite blond from Rhode Island. Father is a cop—a detective. She told Bella he raised her himself. Bella knew not to ask why. Instead, she remembered how Mama started to fade after Vivian died. The summer before Bella began University, she had passed, the first to join her daughter in the family cemetery in Granger. Carey listened to Bella’s stories with a sympathy that grew with intensity in each visit. The other night, she confided to Bella that her mother left when she was a little girl. Her mother was still around, remarried, but their gulf was an unbridged abyss. Carey commented she was the wandering type, obsessed with finding her birth mother. The family that adopted her was abusive. Bella suddenly stared. Carey had Vivian’s hair and eyes. Since then, Bella had thought about asking her over to the apartment. Make her dinner, and talk. Show her the life she had and the essential things about Vivian. Carey was alone. She just broke up with her boyfriend: Bella saw the fight in the parking lot the other afternoon. Yes, Carey would listen. Ask questions. She cared. No, Mama--I guess that would do it, Bella thought. But I never fit the part, she whispered. * * * * The Eagles quarterback fumbled the snap on the first play after the kickoff. Dallas recovered the ball on the Philadelphia 25. Carey handed her the receipt. Bella paused before signing. It was laborious to write her signature. Her hand quivered as she overarched the B, followed by a straight line. Sometimes she signed with her old married name, her older signature. Her last driver’s license had this, which was often problematic when signing paperwork. She remembered the night Vivian wore the party dress Mama made from a Vogue pattern. It was black silk chiffon with an angled neckline that framed Vivian’s coltish body, particularly her shoulders. She was such a skinny girl, but she grimaced when Bella zipped up her dress that night. The lining was taffeta, and Mama tailored the fitted waist to give Vivian more of a figure. The shirred skirt flowed over her legs. The dress matched the church gloves Mama gave Vivian for her birthday. “That’s a right, pretty girl,” Daddy said, biting nervously down on his pipe, his newspaper spread across his lap. It took some convincing for him to allow her to go out. Vivian did look like Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes. Daddy drove her to the dance at the roller rink in South Austin. Bella knew Vivian switched out her kitten pumps the minute she walked in. Vivian’s forbidden high heels were Lucite stiletto slingbacks with rhinestones. She borrowed them from a girl in school. Mark waited for her. Bella imagined him leaning against the wall behind the back tables above the rink, smoking his Fatima cigarette. They said he was dressed in a dark green suit and a string tie, with his black shirt and cowboy boots. They made quite the couple, with Vivian as that Texas girl wanting more. She came to him. They kissed. And left. * * * * The Cowboys won. Maybe this is their year. Bella remembered sitting and watching the games with Daddy. Unfortunately, he died the night after they beat the Bills the second time in the Super Bowl. In her notebooks, Bella speculated that Daddy’s decline began when the new owner of the Dallas Cowboys fired Tom Landry. Daddy loved his football and obsessively held on to the team after Vivian and then Mama died. The franchise firing the legendary coach changed Daddy. Bella wrote that he started to forget parts of his life, like mixing up the stories he used to tell of working at the ranch in Granger, which he spent in Lawton, Oklahoma as a mechanic during World War II. He married Mama in Granger at the old Czech church on Christmas Eve in 1944. Irene Vivian, and then Bella Ruth were born. They moved to Austin, and Daddy went to business school at night and took courses at the University. While he never earned his college degree, Daddy had a good job in the billing office at Winn’s. Daddy worked his way up and retired the year before Landry was fired and planned fishing and hunting with his old friends. But, as Bella later discovered for herself, Daddy began acting like sleep was coming down, as he put it. Bella moved in with him, back into the house of her childhood. Daddy was adamant he didn’t want the nursing home. So Bella hired a nurse and a housekeeper. She had long since divorced, and the house wasn’t far from Antone’s blues club. Bella was seriously drinking by then, and listening to the music made a good fit. She does not remember those days well other than the margaritas, which she had more than she could handle. After the trophy presentation, Daddy asked Bella to turn off the TV. In a rare moment of lucidity, which was few and far between in the last two years of his life, Daddy reached out from his worn-out chair, grasping Bella’s arm tightly. “I miss my little girl,” he said. He paused, tears in his eyes. “He was a good boy, Bella. This wasn’t his fault. None of it.” “Yes, Daddy,” Bella said. This was the first time he mentioned Mark to her. Suddenly, Daddy was a younger man. Bella sensed his sunken chest filling with the air and his stare with a mindful sharpness that had been thought faded forever years ago. “Bella,” he said. “I never told your Mama, but I visited his family. We all had a long talk. His parents were good people. I came away wishing I had met that boy. Wanting things to be different.” His grip slackened just a bit as if aware he could hurt Bella. He continued, “Jim—the father, you may remember—took me to Mark’s room. We sat together on his bed, walked around, and touched his possessions. The books. That boy certainly read a lot. Papers were stacked neatly on the desk--his poems. Jim talked of publishing them, eventually. He never got around to it—I guess it was too much for him to do.” Daddy described his hands traveling over the broken spines of battered old paperbacks, sliding over what Mark’s father called the “smooth geography of books” Mark read as a child. But, he added, “Jim said Mark would go to the bookstore above Dirty’s on Guadalupe and spend hours there. Jim also said these books would do no good sitting on his desk and would sell them back to the bookstore.” Bella put her hand over his. “We gathered them up and took them there,” Daddy said. “But I held onto one. I accidentally opened it when we stacked it on the bookstore table. Then, when Jim wasn’t looking, I put it into my satchel.” He raised his hand toward his father’s live oak shelf during the Depression. It had been in the same spot in the den for forty years. “I put the Coronado’s Children dusk jacket over it. I didn’t want your mother to know we had it. She would know that the book belonged to him.” “Why hide it from her?” She had to ask. Daddy was already starting to fade away into the shadows of his mind. It took a lot for him to get the words out. “You’ll know when you open it. It’s not about the book but what the boy left inside. Trust me. You will know.” His head slumped slightly to his left. “I’m tired, Bella. But, how ’bout those Cowboys?” They smiled. Bella walked him to bed and did the Decades of the Rosary before he slept. When she checked on him an hour later, Daddy had already passed. She had read the Celine novel as part of her mid-century literature class before finally getting her degree in the mid-1970s. The unfortunate coincidence of its title had already touched Bella. Out of bored curiosity, she had already discovered the book one afternoon a year before and had it in her hands when she found her father. She held his still-warm hand, read the note aloud, and called for the ambulance. With the letter were the adoption papers for Bella’s daughter. Bella had thought she had lost them when she moved in. But, instead, she sat at his side, numb to the consequences of silence. * * * * Bella finished her drink and said goodbye to Carey. Pausing, their eyes met. The young woman resembled Vivian. She really did. I am scared, and I am brave. Bella recalled the look in Carey’s eyes the night she broke up with her boyfriend. This happened in the parking lot. Bella and the other patrons watched out the window. One of the young men shooting pool went to the door, slapping the cue stick in his palm, ready to act if needed. When Carey returned, she started crying in front of Bella. Bella reached out and grasped Carey’s wrist. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” “I don’t want to cry alone.” Bella gasped. She remembered when Vivian said that after she vomited and told her why. I am scared, and I am brave. I am ready to tell the family, but Bella already knows. I had no choice. The dates she recalled. Those numbers matter only to Bella. 1968. 1990. Carey’s mother. Carey. Bella left unsteadily out the door. Bella was drunk. Nothing is as disgraceful as an old drunk almost turning 70. * * * * Vivian had kept that in her clutch purse, neatly folded with her Confirmation medal, a lucky rock she found in the dry bed of Shoal Creek, and loose change in a zippered pocket. The clutch purse lay on the oiled asphalt, a white chalk line circling it. Bella went with Daddy to the police station to pick up the box when it was released after the inquest. They did not go directly home. Instead, Daddy drove them to Bull Creek Road, the television and radio antennas on top of the hills outside the city limits. Several years later, when she was hanging out to see The 13th Floor Elevators play at the Jade Room and the New Orleans Club, Bella found out that was where all the freaks stashed their dope. When they arrived, Daddy told Bella to stay in the car. He took the cardboard container from the backseat, setting it on the hood of the Dodge. He opened it and looked inside. “Bella,” he said. “You can come out and see this.” He was crying. Daddy kept the Confirmation medal. Bella, the poem. They buried the rest behind a gnarled mesquite tree. Daddy’s tears were still on her mind when she saw the antennas. In this part of the story, she repeatedly tells herself to remember what remained from her life as it crumbled slowly, inexorably to nothingness. Daddy wore the medal around his neck for the rest of his life. He told her that the award felt warmer around Vivian’s birthday. Daddy explained it to Vivian, letting him know she was always there. Bella had that poem in the cedar box, too. Next to the book she intended to give Carey when the time was right. Bella felt the time was coming soon. She needed to do it before she forgot. * * * * Bella crossed the parking lot to the apartment she was resigned to die in. She would invite Carey tomorrow night, and if she said yes, Bella would tell her everything. Carey had heard about it many times, though she did not know the entire story. Some essential details had been left out. She did not know about the book and the story folded inside. A letter. It was more than just a poem. So much more important—this was about what was cut short on U.S. 183 one night. Bella will soon forget about this, memories vanishing, and no one will ever know. She cannot withhold. There is a lot to talk about with Carey. She needs to know. There is that letter to show her from the book Daddy found. Then Carey will fully understand what it all means. Why this is important. Bella planned to leave nothing behind when the lights went out. Bella resolved that Carey had to know. So finally, she decided it was time to say to it once and have it fade into the shadows. At last, someone will know and remember. Bella tried to focus as she walked, her thoughts moving quickly from inception to disintegration. But, instead, she focused on recalling the rest of the note Vivian wrote: There are times when you walk into a particular room where all you ever wanted is in place or meet someone, and somewhere in your head, a door opens, and the light shines blindingly on you. This yellow envelope in its warmth. Our grandmother said: Do not put out the fire that burns you. As her mind began flying again into pieces, Bella resolved that this was what she must share before she lost it for good. So this is what this is all about, Vivian. Right? I have to remember you to finally come to remember me? Right? Right? The clouds had darkened, filling the sky, portending a thunderstorm. Mike Lee was raised in Texas and North Carolina trailer parks. Editor, writer, and photographer for a trade union in New York City. Stories are upcoming or published in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Drunk Monkeys, BULL, Fictionette, Bright Flash Literary Review, and many others. His book The Northern Line is available on Amazon.

I paid close attention to those who barely paused and those who honored my mother and took their time and pointed, laughed, or even cried as they inspected and studied each picture. The easel under the archway of the viewing room held up a giant collage of snapshots that captured different moments of Mama's life as dozens of family members, friends, and coworkers moved through the receiving line, exchanging memories, hugs, and tears. Along with personal photos we brought to Mama's house, my sister and I, and Hugh, Mama's longtime partner, spent the previous forty-eight hours sifting through troves of albums Mama kept in the antique hope chest that once belonged to her mother. I tasked each of us with selecting the perfect photographs that genuinely captured the essence of Mama and her relationships with her family and friends. Mama's life meant something, but precisely what that something might be to an individual is like a whisper you could only hear in your heart. Between greeting mourners, I caught someone admiring the picture I had taped to the bottom of the collage. Did they spot Mama in her best Sunday housecoat twirling my once coal-black curls with her fingers? She pressed me tight against her soft, doughy belly on that summer day while we sat at the picnic table in our yard. She smelled of Crisco, flour, and her favorite Avon roll-on deodorant. That very picture, like me, was Mama’s favorite. Earlier that morning, my sister Kathy had taped up a photo of Mama smiling, holding up the carrots she pulled up from her treasured vegetable garden in one hand, the other hand closed into a tight fist that hung by her side, making it hard to discern whether Mama truly felt happy or frustrated. And like a trail of clues, a crushed soda can and crumpled paper napkin lay on the ground behind her as some trash overflowed from a nearby barrel. Despite her pride in growing the sweetest and largest carrots that season, those tiny but visible details on the ground probably drove Mama crazy that day. Mama hated a mess, and most of all, she couldn’t tolerate carelessness. Not such an ideal photograph to represent Mama in her garden, I thought as I grew annoyed at my grieving sister standing next to me. Aunt Martha, a childless eighty-five-year-old and Mama's last living sister drove down from Maine all by herself and arrived at Mama's house with only an hour to spare before the wake. She breezed into her late sister's house wearing a fitted black sheath and pumps,looking remarkably fit for a woman her age. Aunt Martha was ten years older than Mama, but cosmetic surgery ensured Martha looked much younger than her baby sister, a fact my aunt often pointed out to Mama, only to be rebuffed with one of Mama's snorts. Once settled in the living room, Aunt Martha pulled about ten photos from her purse and studied each closely as she shuffled through them three or four times until she finally stood up and placed one of her pictures inside the top right of the frame. She selected a photo of the four sisters all dressed alike, lined up like the tiny wooden yellow ducks in a carnival shooting gallery, wearing matching bobby sox, button-down cardigans, and plaid skirts. Mama, the youngest, had been positioned on the far right with her face tilted slightly to the left. Mama looked annoyed. She hated this pose among the dozen or so others the professional photographer had taken that day in her family's living room, much preferring the photo where she sat on the floor in front of her sisters, staring straight ahead with a full smile, ready for the flash. And although Aunt Martha knew how her sister felt about these pictures, she selected Mama's least favorite photo for the collage. I thought about taking it down in protest, but instead, I rolled my eyes and let Aunt Martha leave up her choice as a true reflection of her relationship with Mama. A moment later, my eyes drew to a picture of the four of us, before the divorce, standing together in front of the doorway of our old house with my sister Kathy’s arms wrapped around Daddy’s leg and Daddy’s hand at Mama’s waist while she cradled me like a loaf of bread. Mama’s proud chin jutted out, but she didn’t smile. When she got sick late last year, Mama confided in me that an old neighbor had taken this picture on the first day we moved into our new house, on the very same day Mama found Daddy in the back of our old Chevy earlier that morning, thanking their realtor, Kitty, who later become Daddy’s second wife. Who added THAT picture, and when? I silently screamed and glared over at Kitty, who sat with my ashen-faced father in the back corner of the funeral home. I scanned the collage again and focused on a picture of Mama looking beautiful in blue. She and her best friend Donna had hunted dress shops for months to find the perfect shade and fit for Mama's mother-of-the-bride dress. Donna made sure she placed THIS picture of Mama, radiant in this particular hue of blue, near the middle, just left of center, so that everyone at McVoy's Funeral Home would be sure to see it. Mama looked especially satisfied and happy in this picture, practically glowing, standing proudly beside Hugh at my sister's wedding. There was a slight glint in Mama's eyes as if she had shared a secret with the photographer, or perhaps, she knew she'd sent a message for all that would look back at this moment, her moment, later. And who should be sitting in the picture's background just over Hugh's left shoulder but Kitty! Boy, she looked miserable that day. Kitty had been seated with my father at a table directly behind my Mama and Hugh, wearing her familiar scowl, an extra twenty pounds, and a noticeable au jus stain from the Prime Rib on the top left corner of her breast where a heart might have been. I laughed so loud that my sister elbowed me in the ribs while a few mourners looked me up and down curiously. I collected myself, then my eyes danced toward Kitty and then back to Donna. I smiled. Like Mama always said, make sure they get your good side. Margo has worked in public education for over thirty years and is the mother of two daughters and the best rescue dog ever, Harley. Her work has appeared in places such as Maudlin House, The Dillydoun Review, MER, HAD, and Roi Fainéant Press. You can find her on Twitter @67MGriffin.