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Pietro Brown was his name; when you were first getting to know him, and queried the Italo-English name, he’d just shrug, say something to the effect that his English parents had named him that after an Italian-American friend they’d made upon coming to the U.S. when Pietro’s mother was six months pregnant. People whispered that he was a spy, people who knew people around in places, oh, not just average places, but the sorts of places I ventured to in order to write my cheap fiction for a penny-ante publishing house in Tucson. The publishing house itself was planning a big move to London the year after I met Pietro, and I was angling first of all not to get laid off, and secondly, to go live in London. That seemed close to both London and Paris, and God knows how many other fine and wonderful places that I thought I might see. But Tucson was my home base at first, and I never returned there without making a note in my private journals about him: if I had seen him; where and when; what he was doing; what he was drinking and eating, usually on some lovely patio above a seaside resort, or along some crowded boulevard with beautiful trees and cafés. I told myself originally it was because I wanted to write a story about him, but then it became clear to me, when I was honest with myself, that I was just fascinated. The word “love” was a little bit off, perhaps too extreme, but I certainly was taken with the man. Finally, the great move came, and as opposed to having to cart my belongings back and forth in luggage lines that were ever so much longer from the U.S. to the European cities I’d rarely been able to visit, I was suddenly in London and able to get back and forth with more ease. And with more charm and dignity to the European cities, I persuaded myself, thinking of Old Quarters and fancy restaurants, and jugglers and buskers in city squares by the droves, and on and on and on. A tiny voice also whispered, “And with more chances to see Pietro where he apparently goes most often, to Europe.” I giggled a little, sighed at myself, suppressed the thought, but hugged myself and decided at 10:30 at night to have a latte. As I prepared it, I said aloud to myself, in reproach, “You are very badly behaved!” But I didn’t mean it, and I sat up when the coffee had done its work, watching for the dawn and trimming my nails and toenails as I mused. It was the next year, though, a whole six months later, that I finally ran into Pietro again, in Barcelona, where the young men hang around the outside of hotels and coo at approaching female patrons who are first-time checking in. After the doormen get to know you, of course, they shush the supposed offenders and drive them away with big whooshing sweeps of the arm, and exclamations of something that sounds like “Hasta! Hasta!” But another female patron grinned wisely at me and told me that they were there to help the doormen earn a tip for driving them away from the richer women and that the doormen shared their takings with the better performers. Somehow, the cynicism of this didn’t ruin the dangerous charm of the approach, possibly because I once dropped a valuable theater ticket (valuable to me, anyway, a ticket to see Romeo and Juliet performed in mime). One of the loungers came running up to me a block later, where I had hurried away from them, but as I motioned at him impatiently in a female imitation of the doorman, he said, “No, no, señorita, mira, mira!” And he held up my precious ticket. I groped in my bag for a small tip, but he held up one hand and said, “No. Romeo e Julietta? So, give kiss here!” And he pointed to his cheek, dead center. When I stared at him, astounded at his temerity, he tapped it again, three times or so, grinned at me and nodded encouragement, then tapped again. “No tricks!” I responded, then leaned gingerly forward and brushed his cheek, backing away even as I did it, and looking around to see if anyone had seen me. For just a second, Pietro flashed through my mind. He held out my ticket to me, which I grabbed and placed in a safe place in my bag. He saluted me with his hand raised, then skipped off backwards down the street still facing me until the very end. I noticed as he went that he was quite young, much younger than my twenty-nine years, still full of fun, probably intending to share his joke with his friends. I had to hope that it didn’t result in a profusion of such outrageous requests. But when I returned to my hotel that night after working on my latest potboiler all day in a small café I’d taken to frequenting, he was nowhere to be seen, and there were fewer of the younger men around; evidently, there was some kind of festival on in Barcelona, and the few who were there outside the hotel were a little drunk, a lot tired, and more interested in sharing smokes and jests with each other than in earning indirect tips. Even the doorman looked bored working when he wanted to be elsewhere. I too was tired from the heat of the day, and entered the lobby with nothing else on my mind than a cool shower in the indifferent stream of water that came from the hotel sprays in the rooms, and possibly a small repast ordered from room service, which was slow but cheaper than some. I had no notion of meeting anyone I knew there, as it was so late on what I had at first forgotten was a festival day. But there in the lobby, standing at the front desk, was Pietro. All my weariness vanished in a second; should I go up and say “Hi?” Was he checking in? Yes, as the clerk had handed him one of the room cards. I said to myself, “I mean, I haven’t done anything wrong; I don’t think he’s married; I’ve never heard of a girlfriend; why shouldn’t I just say ‘Hello?’” And before he could disappear into the anonymity of the elevator alone, while he was still lifting his suitcase and briefcase, I hastened to go up and speak. He looked startled. “Oh, Penelope, hi. I didn’t expect to see anyone I knew here in this hotel. I’d forgotten all about the festival. Just a small, local thing of the regional bread-makers, I think, so it slipped right out of my mind. How are you? Are you here for long?” “I’d forgotten, too! I’m here until I finish this stupid lump of writing I’m on right now. I can’t wait until I can work on more serious work again, but money considerations, you know. What about you, how long are you here for?” “Not sure. Here for work,” and promptly, he clammed up. We were both walking to the elevator, though, so I waited as tactfully as I could for the relative privacy of the elevator, and then resumed the subject he seemed to regret having brought up. “So, you’ve never said, Pietro; what is it you do? You know I’m a hack writer right now, who hopes for better things to come along. What engages your attention?” I tried to look encouraging, but he flushed and for a moment was silent. Then, he said, brief and to the point, “I work for the government.” “U.S.?” “Yes.” “Sorry, Pietro, I don’t mean to be intrusive; but a number of people now have told me you’re a spy. I guess that’s just gossip?” To my surprise, he hesitated, then grimaced. “That’s kind of over-glorifying it; I started out as a private bean-counter sort of person, true enough, in an espionage department, but that’s all I can say. Can’t talk about it really, you see, even counting beans means something to somebody higher up.” And he grinned down at me, obviously pleased at having both answered and not answered at the same time. I smirked back at him and was preparing to exit the doors, which had whooshed open on my floor, when he raised his arm to hold the door, as it started to shut too fast. I glimpsed a fine, shiny revolver tucked into a shoulder holster, and couldn’t help but gasp. “And that’s why I can’t talk about work. Sorry you had to see that. But I’m not really a spy sort, just for self-defense, you know. I mean—” “That’s okay,” I hurried to reassure him, and that was really my intent; he was so very ashamed of himself and apologetic in his manner. “I’m just glad to know that you are able to defend yourself. Even bean-counters have a right to.” He laughed with sudden relief, and answered, “That’s right. Thank you,” and then for the second time that day, and to my everlasting astonishment, I was again party to a display of affection, though private in this case, and not public; he leaned down and gave me a small, warm, peck on the cheek. This was immediately followed by, “Sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t have done that! Just this—this horrible, sultry weather and no break to it, and checking in so late, and having something revealed that I didn’t intend, after finally seeing a friendly face. Can you forgive me?” “Of course I can! I am, as you remarked, a friendly face and I am rather glad you did it.” “Well, but, well—it’s just that nothing can come of it, you see? I mean, as my life is now.” “Please don’t worry about it! I’d rather you than anyone else!” And I meant that. He looked worried for a minute, but as I got off the elevator and spoke my “Goodnight, hope to see you sometime around the pool, if you go in for such amusements,” he watched me walk off backwards, as I had just imitated the posture and stride of my young friend from earlier that day. Finally, he gave a short, sharp laugh and shook his head at something unspoken, and I turned back in the correct direction and went on towards my room. “Well, at least there was that!” I said to myself as I brushed my teeth and flossed and got ready for bed, my thoughts of a late meal already given up. I wasn’t hungry! “And you, my girl, had best forget about it, and not expect miracles,” I said, pointing meaningfully to my reflection. But she looked back at me with a gleam in her eye, not repentant in the least. When I woke up the next morning, however, more sobering thoughts came to me. I knew myself very well; I was the sort who, when in love, tended to hang around like the female version of a mooncalf, waiting for great things to happen, and I knew I had to get to work on the “dumb crap,” as I apostrophized it, which was currently paying my bills. Somehow, though, I knew I would only rebel and create a bad situation for myself if I didn’t let myself have some headway, so I aimed a bit for middle ground and decided to work at a table by the pool. There were portable chargers for my laptop for rent at the front desk, and luckily I could write it off as a work expense, since it was one. I did catch sight of my own silly face as I hummed and made happy noise, and I once again pointed the comb I’d been preparing to place in my hair in the local fashion: “You’re not fooling anyone, you!” I said, then predictably enough, went on vocalizing, just a little lower. I didn’t really expect Pietro to show, as we both were working people and had things to do. So I concentrated the best I was able, and to my surprise got a whole chapter done. That was something I could respond to my inner critic, anyway, that he’d been “good for business.” Around two o’clock, though, soon after I’d finished a late lunch brought out by the languid hotel staff, he sauntered by, saw me as if for the first time, then said, “This seat taken?” as he lifted the back of the chair across from me. “Not a very original opening, I’m afraid, but at least direct.” And he grinned in a way that to my startled mind was similar to my young friend of the day before. “No one here but us chickens,” I responded, and continued, “That’s not only old hat from me, but country as well.” I gestured, “Have a seat.” The upshot of it all was that we spent the afternoon and early evening together, chatting, but mostly about safe topics and surface politics and culture, both of us careful not to tread on certain subjects. I noticed that he was watching with a certain sort of bemusement three teenagers in the pool, who were there almost as long as we were. The two boys and one girl were horseplaying as a threesome at first. Then, after what seemed like a long while but could only have been an hour at most, the last hour, it was clear some choice had been made. As if led away by pixies, who had somehow enchanted him and kept him from a kinder fate, one boy watched with regret and drifted away as the girl and the other boy separated off. “Ah, isn’t that always the way that it goes?” said Pietro softly, with a certain melancholic or philosophic turn. “What?” I asked though I knew well enough what he referred to in the scene before us. “Two stay, one is always drawn off alone.” “Well, not if he didn’t want to be, for goodness’ sake!” I objected in a cheerful tone. “They’re very young.” “Patterns are established young, sometimes.” This was his only response, and the next moment he was scraping back his chair, and I was afraid I’d lost him. But then he said, “Are you going out somewhere yourself for dinner, or do you have a fancy to accompany me to a small place I know of here for a tapas meal?” “Thank you very much, Pietro, I’d love to come along! Is it very fancy, or will a different set of togs do?” “No, since our dip in the pool, I’ve rather a desire to get the chlorine out of my hair and duck into the shower, but it’s casual dress, very easy. Just something cool, it can get quite overheated even with fans.” After all these years, I’d like to be able to score off my inner critic by pointing back and saying that I had bested Pietro’s aloneness and that his work hadn’t gotten in my way. But that’s not what happened. For reasons that I had no means of knowing until the events transpired that evening, our evening fell flat even from the start. Pietro wore a jacket that seemed to me to be too heavy for the “something cool” he’d told me to wear, and he was overly officious in watching for traffic, holding my arm when we crossed, looking up and down the sidewalk, I’d thought in overcompensation for the crowd. But later I was not surprised as much when I got pushed to the sidewalk and told to “keep down!” Since the next thing that happened was that a spray of bullets hit the overhang behind me, my angry objections died on my lips. There were sirens next and confusion, and I found that I had been hit with a bit of stone that had broken off the building, ricocheting and sticking into my upper arm, and causing a good bit of blood loss. Officers came; Pietro talked to them very fast, and very efficiently, in what to me seemed like flawless Spanish, for about fifteen minutes, while a rude and abrasive (so it seemed) female nurse asked me questions repeatedly which I couldn’t answer, not understanding. Not understanding much more, I watched them cart away two dead bodies from across the street, and it was only later that I realized that Pietro’s gun had been drawn at some point, and he had fired it. He then looked down at me and said, sad as it seemed, “I’ve got to go with the officers now, Penny. Do you mind if I call you that? I guess you may well. But if you want to—well to keep in touch—you know, letters and such, emails—I don’t know if they’ll let me see you—well, anyway—here’s my government office, on this card. You can always write there, and after a while, I could respond; if you want to.” I was near enough to him to grasp the card quite firmly but meant to be equally firm with him about some other things. “Yes, of course you can call me Penny, though I’ve never had a nickname before. And of course I’ll write to you, though I’d naturally like to see you again. But—” and here I brought up the main thing on my mind—“you aren’t under arrest, are you? I mean, someone, I can tell, shot at you first!” And he laughed. “No, not arrested. Remember what I told you, Penny. My good luck penny. Two go away together; one is always drawn off alone.” And when I visited his grave, two years later, it said on the stone, to my great surprise: For Penny: I should have stayed with you. Greater Boston, MA area, born WV. Ph.D., English/Theater. Website: creative-shadows.com. In-Print: "Poems from the Northeast," 2021; OOP but free on website: "Scenes de la Vie Americaine (en Paris)," [in English], 2022. Between Aug. 2021-Aug. 2023, Victoria will have published 42 times with: Roi Faineant Literary Press, Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art, The Hooghly Review, The Unconventional Courier, Discretionary Love, Barzakh Magazine, Alien Buddha Press, The Madrigal Press, Amphora Magazine, Olympia Publishers, Winning Writers, Cult of Clio. She has been accepted for a fiction piece in The Hooghly Review 10/23 & for 4 poems in Dreich Magazine in 11/23. Victoria writes Fiction/Poetry/Flash/CNF/Essays. She is an organizer of the poets' collective @PoetsonThursday on Twitter along with Dave Garbutt & Alex Guenther. Twitter: @vicklbennett & @PoetsonThursday. (Trying to understand) Mastodon: @vickileigh@mstdn.social & @vickileigh@writing.exchange.

Family portrait of a passed pawn I feel as though my child has died she says but I cannot be dead because I am in check she has chased me down the family board my brother and my father implied squares we pass through on our way to where she is not prepared for me to become the one piece that moves nothing like her and can leap Aubade Eben, she says, pressing a hand against my shoulder. The cat must have nudged the door ajar in the night so Mom could slip into the room like light around the shade. Too light light. It’s late. Oh god I’m so late shit the bus will be here in like zero minutes (she presses) did I even print my essay and will I have time (she presses) to grab one slice of bread before I head out the door, head, as in my head is out the door but actually—I am still in bed because she holds me down, knows my desperation, presses against it, says, just a moment it will be okay breathe requisitioning calm, or at least, stillness. I make my inhale and exhale audible. She means to spare me, the woman who wakes at 3am to the least sound, desperate for sleep presses like she could hold back inheritance, press as in printing press, as in I need to check my binder to see if I printed my essay, press as in Mr. Hertzrog will press me for answers, as in press conference, the flashbulbs of their eyes will be blinding as I enter the classroom and the headline: Bad Boy Late for Umpteenth Time After Eking Out Structurally Unsound Essay at 1AM and the article will mention nothing of Hertzrog’s insane standards, only how kindly Mom’s hand was and she’ll want to impress upon everyone—the cat grown still in her arms, me not her intent, but the cold, hard fact that her hand was the hand of kindness, yes, even twenty years later she will impress upon me: History cannot be rewritten. The cat was purring and therefore couldn’t have been readying its escape. Eben E. B. Bein (he/they) is a biology-teacher-turned-climate-justice-educator at the nonprofit Our Climate. He was a 2022 Fellow for the Writing By Writers workshop and winner of the 2022 Writers Rising Up “Winter Variations” poetry contest. Their first chapbook “Character Flaws” (Fauxmoir lit, 2023) is out and they’ve published with the likes of Fugue Literary, New Ohio Review, and Columbia Review. They are currently completing their first full collection “From the top of the sky” about parent-child estrangement, healing, and love. He lives on Pawtucket land (Cambridge, MA) with his husband and can be found online at ebenbein.com or @ebenbein.

I’ve always been sitting at this kitchen table, even when I haven’t. My life: ash from a cigarette, swirl of torn paper. His name was… . He wore a cap pulled to his eyebrows. He said… and blink, there’s music playing over the static, chips of song with only half the words. (The trees are thickening, buds visible as a fog clinging to the branches.) I hold on to the idea of his hand, his cream-slicked hair falling forward, his leather jacket, if he had one, his smooth uncertain lips. My own hand cautious on the concrete wall by the church, my hand thinking in its stolid way that the wall was warm, my bookbag heavy, my eyes taking in the sky (always blue in memories of childhood), my glasses, if I had glasses, sliding down my nose, my head starting to fill with a thought that would later turn to ash, to paper. I am already forgetting this table, its woodenness, its grain, the jam stain that has lasted so long it’s an heirloom. The table is a prop in the play I’m staging for my twilight years. The air is filled with dust that glows and rises with the memory birds, smudged as they are, and torn, parts of a puzzle I can’t solve or forget. His name began with an F.

My father is buried where crows can watch over they rattle and grate to the sky. They stand triangular in the sharp pinyon pines: they don’t know how long they’ll stay. I want to speak how the crows do, clear as uncoiled rain, forged bright as ten-penny nails, agile to cut through any distance. My father loved their rawness. His spirit reaches out to me across the trees. Today a trapezoid-winged crow falls on the pale aspen by the old steel mill, at the highway and orange grove crossroad. My dad threw steel beams into that foundry for a time. He flashed bright in the kiln. The sky is sluiced into faded gold, as the sun strays. Now he is ash, and crow, and swift feathers tossed to the pines. I walk in water, the swirling tide I walk in water, the swirling tide pulls, combs the fingers of smoke into dires of want. Sky blues into move and sun note lies, casts the open into a vast net of finds. The deer travel and leave, skull and bone under full moon rise, whitened by time. I told you it didn’t have to happen, yet you showed me what you thought was enough: a deer on the patio makes itself the only wise thing. How do you surmise the new direction? The sun dives over thick waves, weaves through foam. The eyes see grey in the antlers of morning as the lyre guards the stones, produces lost thoughts, sutured and gone, like rocks too far out to sea. Instructions for cloudy wing I dream about walking the ridges, the pinking finches right near the top. Clouds sweep blossoms to wind cliffs. I remember you talking of switchbacks on the grapevine, bowing across mute shale like a phantom in a lost world, an imaginative scarring moment of change and regret. Speaking of regret I like how it rhymes with egret, a waterbird who lives in the line between final and sky, the wings freed at right angles. As I go up, I feel the beak of it pressing the air back further and then I have the flight, the lift, to hit the ridge, beautiful and bereft of goldenrod and bluebells, but the seeds still scatter the way the pinned hawk claims the sky with its own searing, its knuckled fist, it’s another way to be night. Reading the sky and wings, when the moon buries the dark below the cairn, I touch edges with wind and sky, still burning, all I need is to cry the egrets, cloudy wings holding sky. It’s another thing I watch for you, who might wander by any minute, and yet if you don’t, I’ll move on, because that’s what I do. It’s another thing to know the sky reflects silver and the little gnats gnaw away at the edges uncounted, and the steps through the pines go to the next step. Why do we need to know where the path leads, there was nothing there before. It is a lot of time to catch a fish and to ferry a child in a boat across a sound and no one is there to see it, they say the locusts can even hear undertones in the grass. Lynn Finger’s (she/her) works have appeared in 8Poems, Book of Matches, Fairy Piece, Drunk Monkeys, and ONE ART: a journal of poetry. Lynn also recently released a poetry chapbook, “The Truth of Blue Horses,” published by Alien Buddha Press. Lynn edits Harpy Hybrid Review, and her Twitter is @sweetfirefly2.

I held your hand when the Rigor mortis set in You were firm with me that day And my heart was soft and malleable As it slipped through your fingers like Sand Your bones felt like they were trying to escape When your mouth pulled back over your teeth Perhaps a smile Perhaps to laugh at me Like eyes rolling in a skull at something silly I’d said Again Why do I do that? But words are pointless now Just like hearing them Because nothing said is nothing gained Or ventured perhaps Or ever at least for you Because I walk away now Because it’s done Amy-Jean Muller is an artist, writer, and poet from South Africa who lives and works in London. Both her art and writing explore culture, memory, mental health, identity, femininity, and sexuality. She has worked as an indie poetry EIC for Outcast Press, with regular contributions to Versification and The Daily Drunk. Her debut poetry collection, Baptism by Fire, was released in January 2021. The work is beautifully introduced by Stoya, Pornographer and author of Philosophy, Pussycats, & Porn who noted, ‘An angry woman remains a political act, and is sometimes a creative one as well. Rage, here, is transcended into art…” Muller is currently completing her first novel and a second poetry collection slated for release in 2024. | amyjeanmuller.com | Twitter: @muller_aj

Coaster. It’s faded somewhat, but something about it has always caught my eye. The grey skyline and traffic, against brown marshland and skeletons of bare winter trees, beneath Suffolk’s Orwell Bridge - taken nineteen eighty something. I think about those people in the cars, the lives they led after, the greying, the decaying what love may have passed through and the ironic nature in which life eventually pans out. And how unknowingly years on, their journey still remains frozen in time on a coaster - beneath a reduced to clear can of 7-UP. Neon Summer Rain. *For Mark Anthony Pearce. We take pictures, as others run for cover. Smeared purples, whites and pinks reflect in the puddles, while the overflowing drains spread the canvases across the road. A waterfall cascades down the steps, with illuminated baby blue droplets from the underpass, like some late night concrete waterpark. And even in the reflections of flickering neon corporate logos - some magic is found amongst the lost dreams and rain soaked tents that some people call home, down in Bristol’s Bear Pit. Gwil James Thomas is a poet, novelist and inept musician. He lives in his home town of Bristol England, but has also lived in London, Brighton and Spain. He has been nominated for Best of The Net twice and once for The Pushcart Prize. His twelfth chapbook of poetry Wild River Carry me To Sea is forthcoming from Back Room Poetry. His poems have recently featured in Viper’s Tongue, The Songs From The Underground anthology, DFL Lit, Paper & Ink and Late Britain Zine. He plans to one day build a house, amongst other things.

About three years ago, I began to take showers in the dark. In part to wash away the grime and filth of the day, but also to feel something that I lost. I would clamber into my windowless room of tile and steel, and lay my towel along the seams of the door; stopping any light that might spoil the dark. I bared myself, stripping away layer after layer, each casted cloth a moment for memory. All would be sequestered in the corner of the room. The desire to reside anywhere but in myself would overtake me. I would open the curtain; a swift cold urging my hair to full posture. Clinging to the valve, I would turn it to red, as hot as I could bear it. In the windowless room, I was in a state of prescripted blindness. I could not see in front of me, but I knew the room well. I knew the seams on the floor tiles, I knew the sound of thundering water as it collided with the ceramic. I did not need to see. I did not want to. I would feel the abrasive water relax me like a drumline massage. It was loud and rapid, but soothing. My eyes were open, because why should I close them? I was already consumed in the darkness. Slowly, I would slip away from thought, stress, and anxiety. Until there was only heat, feeling, and reflection. Heat A few summers earlier, as we rowed down the dirty, girl-scout-green Erie Canal, my crew mates Ian and Christian were chirping along to Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al”. A few of the other boys and I had grown tired of the tune, as it had played for at least an hour every day thus far on our journey. We had been rowing all afternoon, and in fact for the last five days, in a rowing shell for four rowers; forty-four feet of black carbon fiber absorbing all of the sun’s rays. We were to be in Albany in five days, sweating and swearing our way along the canal. I was the youngest on the crew at the age of 16, and whether I would admit it then or not, I looked up to many of the boys I rowed with. Ian, Joey, Sean, Alex, Mike, and Christian. Christian is a man best defined as a free spirit trapped in a box. Whether it was a boat or a necktie, Christian’s wild soul found itself bound in some way. His messy crop of white-blond hair dangling in front of two bright blue eyes, intelligent and mischievous. As high school boys trapped in a boat together for eight hours a day… for ten days, you can imagine the kind of cooperation it took to get through it all. It was the kind of cooperation that would make any normal person turn off a song after the third, fifth, or even twelfth request. This mindset didn’t stick much for Christian, though. He would play the song until I had memorized every note of that peppy tin flute solo. Most of our nights were spent in pitched tents on the side of the snaking canal, or the gnarled gravel of rusted marinas. We weren’t just rowing three hundred and forty miles on a whim or even the goodness of our hearts; it was mandatory, backbreaking charity work. Our act of community service, the ‘Row for Hope’ was a tradition amongst my high school’s rowing team, we simply were the next to take the mantle of Samaritans. Christian was always the kid to wander away from the eyes of coaches and teachers, inducing panicked thoughts of child abduction before inevitably returning with a token from his journey. One day on the row, Christian wandered from our campsite unbeknownst to the coaches and returned with a handful of warm pennies flattened smooth from a passing train. The throwaway change was transformed into a memory of locomotives, friends, and mischief. That same evening he returned from the woods with an armful of frogs, beaming at our worried coach. I reflect on this memory now with nothing but fondness, but at the time I remember hating his behavior. I was an extremely anxious kid growing up. I was often told I had the spirit of a 50 year old man, but in truth, I was bound by a fear; grappling with an undiagnosed anxiety and panic disorder. While Christian was communicating with wildlife, and molding metals, I was holding a lump of panic in my throat. What if he got lost? What if we stall too long and miss our next stop? What if we fail to follow the schedule and become the first boat to ever fail on the Row for Hope? I realize now how my doubts and anxieties often limited my appreciation of others. When I looked at Christian I saw chaos walking, a wildman restrained only by a necktie. I must emphasize the shallowness of this assessment. I never pulled Christian aside to ask him about his fears, to check if the lack of concern was an act. I never had the freedom or wisdom to. I was so self-absorbed by my own mental torment, dealing with my own mental backstabbing, that I wasn’t ready to extend my empathy. I wasn’t ready to be vulnerable for others because I felt so vulnerable within myself. That said, Christian’s personality did not encourage intimacy, at least not with me. We didn’t talk about each other's fears, desires, and other deep ideas; we talked about stupid shit, laughed at stupid shit, and got frustrated by other people’s stupid shit. For a time, I knew him best through the synchronized, snap, swish, flick, pull of our oars. In the more desperate heats of the summer, when the weather was a painful 90 degrees, Christian would square his oar and let a small splash of canal water hit me as we rowed on. On days of passing thunderstorms, we would beach the boat and run to shore to wait it out, dreading the game of catchup we would face once back in the shell. I would always be concerned Christian would wander off and hurt himself, get lost, or find something truly amazing. Though I hated the way I felt when he was enacting chaos, the suspense he brought wherever he went helped bond us all as brothers, not in blood, but in spirit. Christain’s disregard for scheduling and basic safety never ended in a poor outcome, he always came back with a memory. Each time we were forced to stray from our destined path we were reassured we could forge our own. Despite the begrudging attitude we maintained before the journey, it seemed all of us on the trip grew closer, in no small part thanks to Christian. Feeling Christian and I found our lives intertwined for a time, even after our experiences on the crew team. Junior year of highschool I joined the Rugby team, a team which Christian was an integral member of. Nervous, inexperienced, and tentative, I found myself attached to Christian as a source of familiarity in an environment entirely new to me. Christian taught me the rules of the sport: how to run, where to run, how to tackle, who to tackle. He taught me what emotions were useful and which were not in any particular moment. When the situation called for calm, he was quiet; when it called for fury, he was loud. He never denied pain, but neither did he indulge in it. He seemed to have a sort of balance. Christian was one of the smallest guys on the field each practice, playing the role of “scrum half”: a small, speedy runner whose job was to take the ball from a tackle, and throw it to the first receiver, which initiates each play. It was in this context I could see the wild side of Christian freed from the bonds of boats and neckties, as he sprinted from point A to point Z throwing the ball. Although small and speedy, Christian was not afraid to take on any giant that may oppose him. He voraciously attempted to tackle anyone who should cross his path. His passion rubbed off on me I suppose. Through the guidance of Christian, I became a determined, seasoned player. Although I was a decent rower, I found my true physical talent in Rugby. Christian was a senior the year I joined, so he did not see me become captain of the team the following year. There are many things I wish Christian had seen, many things I wish I had said. Although we were close, we never quite made the journey into deep emotional conversation. Perhaps it was the age gap or grade gap, or maybe there were other gaps I couldn’t see or dare venture, but the closest we came to emotional expression were the hugs we gave after each rugby match. Win or lose, we found ourselves in an embrace, an unconscious support transferred through flesh. When we found ourselves at the NY State Rugby Championships, playing one of our final matches of the season and one of the last matches with each other, we lost our first game, placing us in a competition for third. Despite the loss and the hopes abandoned, we hugged. Reflection Oftentimes we do not memorize what people say. Unlike what movies may have you believe, even if someone is important in your life you often can’t remember their most profound moments. My writing of this piece is impaired, because you don’t get to have flashbacks of dialogue where everything is serene and they know just what to say. You remember what the world wishes you to. You can’t force memory to be profound, it just is. I don’t remember Christian’s statements. I remember determined looks on his face, hugs we shared, things he did. I remember eyes filled with the copper shine of flattened pennies. I remember him tearing shirts apart with his teeth to make sleeveless crop-tops while rowing. I can remember sweat dangling from the tips of his wild blonde hair while he ran across the rugby field. I remember a feral smile on his face as he joked. I remember a tame smile as we greeted strangers at mass. I remember “You Can Call Me Al” and a perfectly memorized tin flute solo, of all fucking things. These things mean more than any great quote to me. I remember Christian. It has been three years since he was found dead of natural causes in his college room in Hong Kong on February 5, 2020. I didn’t know how to react when I was told. He was only 20 years old, two years younger than I am now. As is often the case, the emotions had hit me late, a cheap shot right as I was walking away. I cried in the hallway of my first dorm around a month after his death. I had thought I stopped thinking about it, but when my father added “Christian Memorial” to my calendar it started again. I felt a sort of revulsion to see him become another date in a book, a place in the calendar of “things to do”. When he died my emotional intellect was in its infancy, and unsure of how to move on I began to take showers in the dark, not simply to wash aways the grime and filth of the day but perhaps to feel something that was lost. I would take a deep breath, and try to let the loud waters relax me, let the darkness consume my thoughts, and let the heat hold me. Was this a regression to infancy, to feel naked, in the heat of the dark womb? I didn’t know how to remember Christian in the light of day, in the frantic halls of life. So I took showers in the dark. I didn’t realize that those moments, standing in my darkened shower, were the beginning of the hardest period of change in my life thus far. Almost immediately after Christian’s passing marked the beginning of COVID in a practical sense in my life. I was sent home much like many other students, but I became drug dependent as I attempted to cope with the instability of my life. This, combined with extreme anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and an eating disorder radically affected my mental state and tested my resilience. For some time I lost sight of Christian and those feelings of mourning as I was dealing with my own demons. Again, I was consumed in my own backstabbing to empathize with others. As a result of all of that personal hardship, I have found myself. I brought myself out of my addiction cold turkey, examined and helped heal my own mental health. As an atheist I will admit that my logic based, hedonistic stoicism brought me unhappiness because I was out of balance. Now I have a newfound sense of balance with the world, and new ideas about how I should live my life. I used to think happiness was something to be acquired, but now I know it is something to be crafted. Happiness is not won, it is grown and tended to. I don’t take showers in the dark anymore, now I accept the pain that may come from light. I have finally learned the lesson I was to blind to adopt in highschool, that every moment of chaos is an opportunity to summon the order within us and forge a new path. I now know that my mindset is a tool that manufactures reality for my own consumption; that locking myself in the darkness does not cut me off from my pain, only from that which can aid the burden. I know now that Christian wasn’t a creature of chaos chained by a world of order, rather, he was a wild wind harnessed for flight. Kevin Reed is a singer/songwriter and 6th-grade English teacher from Rochester, NY. Kevin’s work has been presented at SUNY Geneseo’s ”Great Day” event from where he is a 2023 graduate. His debut EP “This Thing is a Bullet” is available on Spotify and Apple Music.

d.S. randoL (they/them) goes dancing on Friday nights sometimes. They fantasize about successfully harassing neighbors for games of ping-pong. You can find more of their work at SledgehammerLit, Punk Noir Magazine, or on Twitter @dSrandoL!

grandpa's riverboat comes to a halt— coconut plantation the welcome drums at Ọmambala -- fragrant blossoms the eternal-rose you gave never fades -- our slow dance quickens to a tango the courting couples elegantly cruise past us -- carved on the tree bark our names deeper in foreign native accent -- nwantiti active love potion— pure white swans entwine in hearts Christina Chin is a painter and haiku poet from Malaysia. She is a four-time recipient of top 100 in the mDAC Summit Contests, exhibited at the Palo Alto Art Center, California. 1st prize winner of the 34th Annual Cherry Blossom Sakura Festival 2020 Haiku Contest. 1st prize winner in the 8th Setouchi Matsuyama 2019 Photohaiku Contest. She has been published in numerous journals, multilingual journals, and anthologies, including Japan's prestigious monthly Haikukai Magazine. Uchechukwu Onyedikam is a Nigerian creative artist based in Lagos, Nigeria. His poems have appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Brittle Paper, Poetic Africa, Hood Communists, The Hooghly Review, and in print anthologies. Christina Chin and he have co-published Pouring Light on the Hills (2022)

After driving for many hours, Chloe and I step out of the car to approach the Grand Canyon. Both of us are smelly and stiff from the journey, but we forge ahead until we can see the view in all its golden glory. The early evening sun illuminates every crevice of the Canyon’s vast display. My eyes widen, hungry to chew over every last detail. “That’s it?” Chloe asks. I turn to her with a frown. “What do you mean?” “I thought it’d be…bigger.” I assume she’s joking, but she has a serious look on her face. “The Grand Canyon isn’t big enough for you?” I ask. “That’s so condescending,” she says. “All I was saying is that it’s smaller than I thought it’d be.” Chloe stomps away from me, towards a vista point that’s teeming with tourists. Her knee-high chunky boots make an exaggerated crunchy sound as they pound against the dry dirt. Her dyed-green hair bobs back and forth in a high ponytail. When she’s annoyed, she looks exactly like she did when she was a kid, even though she’s certain she’s a woman now. She can wear all the makeup and mini skirts she wants, she’ll still always be a kid to me. Part of me wants to run after her, but I know that will only provoke her further. I stay in place and let the Grand Canyon keep me company instead. I stare out at the layered rock and consider how many millions of years it took to transform into this marvel. Water steadily carved down its center and time sneakily deepened that divide. My entire existence is a blink of an eye in comparison. It makes all my problems feel silly and small. I hope Chloe is staring out at the canyon and feeling silly and small too. I stroll along the canyon’s edge admiring the fiery shades of red smoothly blended with the muted beige and gray. I study its many dips and shadows, emphasizing its untamed roughness. I admire all the people proudly posing for pictures together. As bad as human beings can be as a species, it’s sweet how sentimental we are. Once I reach the swarm of sightseers, a man approaches me. He’s wearing an Ohio State shirt with a matching fanny pack wrapped around his hips. “Excuse me, Miss? Could you take a picture of me and my family?” he asks. “Of course,” I say with a smile. The man hands me his phone and rushes over to his wife and children. They gather under his open arms in front of the majestic view. His wife nuzzles into him as she grips the shoulders of their two small sons. The boys stand in front of them obediently beaming with missing baby teeth. “Everyone say cheese!” his wife says. “CHEESE,” the boys shout. I click a few times and nod when I’m done. They unlink from each other and the husband runs back over to me. “Would you like us to take a photo of you?” he asks. “No thanks.” “Oh, sure you do!” his wife says, waving me over. I pause to scan the crowd. “Give me one minute. I need to find my sister first.” I hurry through the herd of holidaymakers in search of Chloe. I notice her hunching over the furthest tip of the fence gazing off into the distance. I’m not sure if she’s actually enjoying the view or if she’s pretending to so that I’ll leave her alone. I race over to her and tap her on the arm. “Come here for a second.” “Why?” she scoffs. “Just come.” I drag her by the wrist back to where the family is waiting. “How in the world did you convince your parents to let you do that to your hair?” the wife asks upon laying eyes on Chloe. “My parents are getting divorced, so they literally don’t care at all,” Chloe says. The wife bows her head in embarrassment. “I’m sorry to hear that.” I pull Chloe close to me as we model in front of Mother Nature. She doesn’t smile, but I decide not to bother her about it. The man squats down low and sticks out his behind to capture the picture from the perfect angle. I giggle once I see the photo. We’re trying so hard to act normal for the camera. We look ridiculous. “I hope everything works out for you two and your family,” the wife says, as we walk away. Chloe and I head back to the car in silence. We lock the doors and I blast the air conditioning. I reach into the back seat and grab two water bottles. I place one in her lap. She glugs down half a bottle and wipes her mouth with her t-shirt. “Hey, do you want to go?” she asks. “We just got here! We drove all day.” “Do you?” she repeats. I gaze directly into her green eyes to gauge her sincerity. She doesn’t blink. “Yeah,” I say with a shrug. “Let’s go.” Miranda Steinway is a writer based in California. Her writing has appeared in Ellipsis Zine, Across the Margin, Maudlin House, and Expat Press. She is currently working on a novel. Find her on mirandasteinway.com.

The rainfall at 4:30 am Early in the morning. Promised sleep is broken. Glory still intact in the rain. An old house, The roof that acts like a roof. It is proof that Beggars can't be choosers. Romance with words, Early morning sentences, Knowing about the day. No sun or moon visible In the 4:30 am rain. I don't watch the sky I am stranded myself, Robbed out of poetic intensity. I turn away from the part of the sky My world fits in a room, It is pouring outside, The rain always makes music When I start writing. I do it awfully quiet, So, I don't wake up the house Under the roof. Sushant Thapa (b.1993) serves as an assistant editor to Himalaya Diary, an online publishing platform. He lives in Biratnagar, Nepal. He holds an M.A. in English from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. His fourth book entitled "Love's Cradle" was published by World Inkers Printing and Publishing New York, and Dakar, Senegal recently.

Certain tropes are dead. Crumpled up like paper And discarded, fallen off the table, gathering dust In a corner of the room. For example, old poets Would wax lyrical looking at some farmers Throw their back as they dig into the Earth, But all I see is hard work and sun-beaten faces. There is no romance in that scene. It’s real. But then other tropes are like those same pieces of paper Discovered while cleaning the room, smoothed out, And added back to the book, like when I was on a walk The other day I heard a magpie chirp. It reminded me Of an old nursery rhyme. I took my earphones out And listened, really listened to the bird songs. I felt like I was living a poem. Sameen Shakya is a poet and writer based in Kathmandu, Nepal. His poems have been published in the following magazines: Havik, The Pittsburgher, WINK: Writers In The Know, Teach Writer, and W-Poesis.