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I sat, criss-cross applesauce on my back deck in the direct sunlight, waiting for that hint of inspiration to come down from the heavens or whatever magical place one believes exists if they think heaven is a con. I had just read Elizabeth M. Castillo’s book “Not Quite An Ocean” published in 2023 by Nine Pens Press. This complete work of beauty, pain, anger, love, and personhood, inspired me yet is so perfect in its execution it left me a little dizzy. Thus it is a perfect example of someone’s poetic inspiration lighting a fire under my behind: I must write about this, and immediately. But there I sat, dumbstruck. I would like to say it was the heat, but what happened was that I read the piece “Poem after my 4-year-old’s bedtime tantrum” for the first time. I found myself immediately connecting with Castillo’s words. Suddenly it was twenty-eight years ago and I was alone with my daughter amid a standoff over putting on pants. My wishes, and desires that were seemingly simple within the chaos of child-rearing, now seemed fraught with regret. I remember wishing eighteen years would hurry up and pass, and that I could matter again to myself. I could barely keep the tears from breaching the sills of my eyes. Castillo’s honesty is tinged with melancholy in this piece, a beautiful look backward and forward at secret regrets, selfishness, and unconditional love. I think we have all experienced the drifting away or the sudden removal of someone who has fundamentally shaped our existence. Castillo bravely explores father-daughter dynamics in “Things that have replaced my Father”. Whether the absence of the father is figurative or literal, the deep dive into the wreckage left, as well as the beauty inherited is powerful. There is a temptation as a reader, to get to know the protagonist in this poem. I want to understand and relate, which seems to be the miracle of Castillo's writing. You care about this work and the subject. “In Which Bertha Mason Cannot Sleep” is a poem I wish I had written. Simple, to the point, this piece harkens back to an iconic fictional character through the lens of a modern, privileged woman who realizes she has been painted as the bad guy for far too long. That her melancholy may just be justified. It’s not easy to make an impact in so few words, but Castillo can paint a vivid picture with very few strokes. “In summer I am beautiful” is another direct hit to my heart. As I read this I was sitting lizard-like in the sun. Castillo’s description of the seasons in conjunction with the self, and the perception of who we are within the ebb and flow of nature is absolutely lovely. Case in point, the line “In summer, I wear beauty like a shroud, and my solitude becomes a wildflower crown” is the perfect description of how it feels to come out of that cocoon of bitter cold and gray of winter, to the warming sensuality of summer; to the blossoming of the fruits of flower ‘sex’, the exposing of hidden skin, to the water. There is a distinct quality to the writing in this piece that reminds me of Mary Oliver, where the seasons and humanity are wrapped around each other, returning to the order of things. I can’t tell you what makes a poem feel personal, but I can tell you that whatever that is, this one has it in spades. “Love song” so aptly named, reads like a Country song. It flows, it fights, and it wills itself to be understood. Again, there is a tinge of sadness and a conclusion that feels inevitable. I read it to my husband, who is often my poem-reading audience, and said “This is how I feel about you”. Like a song dedication on the radio, he was flattered. The helplessness in the decision to love an imperfect person is palpable. What we sacrifice and what we hold onto so desperately for love. This poem could be the beginning of something or the end, you decide. But I’ll tell you one thing, you can sing it in your sleep. I left my little backyard inferno, and picked up the iPad to begin this review, a little stunned and more brave for having had the experience of reading “Not Quite An Ocean”. It’s a task indeed, to find the right words to convey how perfect and impactful Castillo uses hers. I don’t think I will ever have it in me. But I will say, you should pick up your copy of “Not Quite An Ocean”. You may get lost in the beauty, you may have to feel around the walls in the dark rooms of your heart and feel something you thought you left behind. You may look at your own writing and want to burn it in your fireplace. But you will learn something about yourself, you will see yourself in this work, and you will love something in this collection. Elizabeth M Castillo is a British-Mauritian poet, writer, workshop teacher, and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives in Paris with her family and two cats, where she writes a variety of different things, in a variety of different languages, and under a variety of pen names. In her writing Elizabeth explores the different countries and cultures she grew up with, as well as themes of race & ethnicity, motherhood, womanhood, language, love, loss and grief, and a touch of magical realism. Her writing has been featured in publications and anthologies in the UK, US, Australia, Mexico and the Middle East. Her bilingual, debut collection “Cajoncito: Poems on Love, Loss, y Otras Locuras” is for sale on Amazon, and her debut chapbook "Not Quite an Ocean" is out now with Nine Pens Press. You can connect with her on Twitter, IG and TikTok as @EMCWritesPoetry, or on her website www.elizabethmcastillo.net Kellie Scott-Reed is a real so and so, and loves to write music, poetry, and short stories, review other’s work, and make a spectacle of herself. She is AEIC of the Roi Faineant Press, the host of “A Word?” where she interviews creatives of all sorts. She is published in Punk Noir Press, Identity Theory Press, the anthology “A Place Where Everyone’s Name is Fear”, Five Minute Lit, Bullshit Lit, and Three Rooms Press to name a few. She can be found wandering aimlessly in the woods in the Finger Lakes Region of NY with her dog Juneau until her husband calls her back home.

I’m not talking baby curls but full-Jesus, gleaming-waxen-flaxen, back-to-the-sixties, personal-best lush. The waves of maturity. Gray to be sure. I’d considered adding a trace of beard that all the young guys sport, but then I’d look homeless. My wife goes to the hairdresser every six weeks for a color and cut. Essential for her self-esteem. She says that she doesn’t recognize me. I tell her to use her sense of smell. After all, our dog Max doesn’t bark at me because of my locks. The woman is just hair shaming me, pressuring me to see a barber. She doesn’t understand that long hair is freeing, opening up fresh lifestyle choices like actor or philosopher. Drama classes are possible, or I’ll buy a chiton tunic on eBay and head for the Agora. My intransience caused her to purchase dog clippers. Staring at me, turning the shears over in her hand, her eyes became Delilah-lustful. Max succumbed to her grooming. After all, she’s potentate of his food bowl, so he can’t resist. I sense a quizzical jealousy in his eyes, wondering why I’ve not had to relent to her grooming. For him, my wife’s the alpha-female, and after him, I’m third in our pack’s pecking order. Time for Max and my wife to get with the program. With my mane, I’m now king of the beasts. Joe Giordano was born in Brooklyn. He and his wife Jane now live in Texas. Joe’s stories have appeared in more than one hundred magazines including The Saturday Evening Post, and Shenandoah, and his short story collection, Stories and Places I Remember. His novels include Birds of Passage, An Italian Immigrant Coming of Age Story, and the Anthony Provati thriller series: Appointment with ISIL, Drone Strike, and The Art of Revenge. Visit Joe’s website at https://joe-giordano.com/

lily-pads on the cold water Paper boats gliding through uncertain eddies - - - Soda bread chewy in all the wrong places Trying not to gag Telling grandma Its lovely through heaving breaths - - - Sprinting, running through uncut fields To silver streams at the bottom Sharp stones turned ankles Concrete lanes to other worlds Where imagination lived alongside wooden swords The tiny house and its caved in roof And rusted pump on the dried up well lily-pads on the cold water floating drifting always always out of … … reach. we were More years ago than either of us can remember we were driftwood, even then And then, washed up upon a shore we were the shelter we didn’t know we needed And the town we became grew, and we supported more than each other, and we had to become more And so we did. We grew and grew until we were everything around us and we were nothing at all. But still, we were. We were the roads and tracks of our new world, and the blood that flowed. We became the lives of others and the thoughts in the dark and the shadows at their doors. We were the fears in their dreams and the hope in their futures. We were the rains that fell and turned their barren lands to crops. We were the thunder that echoed in their valleys and the lightning that lit their nights. We were the nameless We were the memories of things that didn’t happen. We were everything. And we were nothing. Sean Smith is a writer and poet from Northern Ireland, who is previously published in Roi Faineant, Fiery Scribe, Orchard Lea and others. He is currently found trying to get pieces of writing in on time to complete his MA in English & Creative Writing at Ulster University.

I was at a home show hot tubs and roof vendors baked goods and hot sauce Fancy chamois that suck up all the spills What I didn’t expect was a poet tucked between a deck builder and a coffee cake baker a young woman offering to write patrons A poem for $10 My hand immediately reaches into my pocket here in the flesh one of my brethren a chance to connect like minds for only $10 But what would I have her write The confidence to write and hand it over Immediately instead of pondering for months How do I introduce myself and not feel weird it always feels weird I didn’t buy a poem or even say hi I’m a poet, too it’s a week later and I still feel guilty I had $10 I should have bought a poem even if I couldn’t introduce myself but after 46 years on this earth I still find it hard to say hi to a stranger Jason has a website at www.jasonmelvinwords.weebly.com

Early on the last day, we drive to find the bottle bank. The morning is thick with sunrise and unspoken language and ladybirds clustered on windows. Silence melts like chocolate on our tongues. Your face conveys discovery; chores will never look so beautiful again. We say little, pendulums swinging back and forth. Days ago we were squealing atop boulders — somehow monotony is more fun. I carry as many bottles as I can. They quiver in my grip as I do in yours. Glass calls back its brokenness, shapes swishing through the dark like falling stars. Destruction is unexpectedly romantic; let’s take a sledgehammer to the sky. We mock the strangeness of temporary traffic lights. Standstill makes me dizzy. In the forest, I pulled a ladybird from your hair and wished that I could take its place.

Technically speaking, it is night. However, despite the chronological truth of the statement (a quick glance at his watch offers the time: twenty-fifteen), the moon barely glimmers in the sky. The heavens are unchanging – they remain as lazy blue as the afternoon. Summer does not bow down. It is not safe yet. He sits on his porch, contemplating. There is an emotion deeper than impatience, there – it is the impatience of several days – several months, several years, several decades – and if he had a heart, it would pound with anticipation as he waits for the inky darkness of true night. He always waits. His skin still feels cool to the touch, underneath the awning’s shade. In the sun, he feels the burning sensation come on quickly. From underneath, where his organs begin to heat up, it travels at record speed to the surface. Once it breaks through the surface, he feels a rupture – excruciating, like something inside of him trying to break free. Summer does not bow down, but it eventually grows bored, and allows brief hours of coolness for monsters to roam. He watches the fleecy white clouds, waiting. If there was any blood in his body, the summer sun would set it on fire. He knows – more than most men – how fast blood can boil. When he drinks it, he mixes in ice cubes. That’s when it tastes sweetest. He will wait for such delicacies. He always waits.

“Hi, table for one, please?” The hostess looked up from her phone, startled. She could be new, Mark had never seen her before. “Oh!” She stood up straight. “Yeah, sorry. Uh, this way, I guess.” She led Mark to the dining room and pointed to a table. A small one, tucked away in the corner of the otherwise empty room. “Thanks.” Mark sat and gave the menu a quick scan just to make sure nothing had changed. The hostess retreated, her face aglow in the white light of a phone. Roman emerged from the double swinging doors of the kitchen, frowning. He checked his watch and wandered to the hostess stand, scratching the back of his head. “Nothing?” They turned together as the hostess gestured to the single occupied table. A smile sprang onto Roman’s face. “Aha, my friend!” Roman waved to Mark. To the hostess, he said, not quiet enough to keep Mark from hearing it, “There is no reason to put anyone in that corner if the room is available.” “I thought you wanted to keep the main tables open for larger parties?” The hostess looked concerned. “Yes,” Roman said at a normal volume again, “but not my friend Mark. He sits anywhere.” He approached Mark’s table and gestured to the open dining room. “Anywhere you would like to sit.” Mark didn’t mind a corner table. This one sat out of the way and had good lighting. He got up anyway and moved to a round table with four chairs, selected at random. “Water with lemon, yes?” Roman swept three of the waiting glasses from the table. “That would be great, thank you.” “I will return shortly, with some bread.” The kitchen doors flapped shut behind Roman. The hostess was watching Mark, so he pulled a book from his jacket pocket and pretended to read it. It was a thin mystery paperback he kept for emergencies, and he’d read it nearly a dozen times now. Mostly he just skimmed it, just to have something to focus on. He only realized he had actually started reading it again when a basket of bread dropped onto the table and startled him back into the real world. “Thank you,” he said by reflex, looking up. A tall woman with jet black curls stood near Mark, staring at him. Imelda, co-owner of the Local Street Bistro with her husband, Roman. Her face held no expression whatsoever. “Uh.” Mark picked up the menu and pointed to the appetizer section. “The stuffed mushrooms look good.” “You have had the stuffed mushrooms before.” “Oh yeah. Right. They are good. I think I’d like those?” Imelda didn’t blink. She said, “Why do you come in?” “Imelda! My love!” Roman hurried toward the table, eyes wide. A strained smile was plastered on his face. “It’s time that he knew,” Imelda said as Roman gently persuaded her back into the kitchen. Some minutes later he returned, alone, wringing his hands. Mark made a show of scrutinizing the menu and not paying attention to the owners and whatever they were talking about. Just doing my own thing, his actions said. I didn’t even notice them walk away. Oh, did Roman reappear? What a pleasant surprise, I hadn’t realized. Mark said, “The stuffed mushrooms look good.” “I would like to apologize,” Roman said. “Oh, uh, that’s fine. For what? Never mind. It’s nothing.” “This place has been very hard on her, the restaurant. There have been so many late hours.” “Oh, I’m sorry. I come by to help whenever I can, ha-ha.” Roman smiled again. “Yes, thank you. You were one of our very first customers.” “Well, you guys do a great job. I hope business picks up soon.” “We are OK, thank you. Business is good, we are just tired.” Mark did not glance around at the empty tables. “That’s good.” “Anyway.” Roman waved the conversation aside. “Stuffed mushrooms to start?” The service and the food were good, no polite lies there. Mark had come at least once every other week since Local Street Bistro opened its door two years prior. Most of that was because of the food. The rest was because he liked Roman, who never rushed him and let him sit and read while he ate, and because it was two blocks from Mark’s apartment. Roman asked his usual refrain before clearing away the plates. “Dessert?” A flicker of movement from the kitchen caught Mark’s eye. Imelda, staring at him through a crack in the door. Roman noticed and gave her a quick head shake. The kitchen door eased close. “Yes on dessert?” “Uh, nothing today, thanks.” Roman paused, and sighed. He said, “I do appreciate you coming so much. You are a good friend to us.” “Thanks. I’m not sure…everyone agrees with you?” Without making eye contact, Roman leaned forward. In a lowered voice he said, “Imelda, she thinks you are bad luck, is all. Pay it no mind.” The kitchen door opened again, a fraction of a fraction of an inch. “Bad luck?’ “It’s just…” Roman grimaced. He appeared to be in pain. “Whenever you are here, no one else is.” A sharp crack of the hostess’s gum echoed in the silent dining room. Mark drank a sip of water from his freshly filled glass and took a moment to wipe his lips dry. “But, of course, that’s not my fault. I don’t really see very many people in here often at all.” Roman nodded aggressively. “Of course, of course. There are slow nights. It’s only that the slow nights are always when you are here. You see? This is not,” he hastened to add, “anything for which I blame you.” “Wait.” Mark traced his finger along the edge of his plate. “Do you think that I’m driving people away?” “No! It is simply an odd coincidence.” Roman picked up the empty plate and hustled it into the kitchen. Mark sat for a while, skimming the open book in front of him. # Friday evenings were for relaxing. Preferably at home. Mark’s Netflix queue was growing and his lazy Friday night ritual of falling asleep on the couch with a show playing on the TV was one he typically started looking forward to every week around Tuesday or so. The bar in front of Mark was called Suds and Spuds, which sounded to Mark like the name of a laundromat, and it was not his couch and almost certainly didn’t have Netflix. Mark checked his phone: 6:42 PM on a Friday. That seemed like a reasonable time to be hitting the dinner or drinking rush. The interior of the bar was decorated like a mountain cabin for some reason, and of the maybe thirty tables and booths, Mark counted four with any customers. Another couple sat at the bar in the middle of the room, watching a football game. A bartender shouted at Mark to sit anywhere he wanted. Mark opted for a booth and straightened the condiments basket until a cheerful woman with red and black hair brought him a laminated menu and informed Mark that her name was Sky with no “e,” as though he would have spelled it that way. “Beer,” she said, not as a question. “OK, yeah, something local, please.” Mark didn’t really know beer. It seemed like a safe response. When Sky came back with an enormous sweating glass of something the color of pale straw, she asked, “Have you been in before?” Mark shook his head. “First time.” “Great! Welcome, welcome. What brings you in?” “Oh, not much, I just heard this was a popular place.” Sky laughed. “Usually. I don’t know what the heck is going on tonight.” “Typically more crowded than this?” “Never seen a Friday night this slow before. Would you like a few minutes to look over the menu? We’re famous for our five cheese macaroni, hint, hint.” The macaroni was in fact very good but Mark only ate a couple bites. # “Can I get a hotdog with onions and ketchup? And a large Coke, please.” “You got it.” The man behind the counter slapped the hotdog and onions into a bun and spun the result inside a foil wrapper in a quick, practiced motion while a giant cup filled with Coke. “Ketchup and mustard are around the side, here. That’s sixteen even, please.” Mark pulled twenty dollars from his wallet and placed it on the counter as the drink topped and the stream shut itself off. As the man capped it with a lid and opened the cash register, Mark said, in a forced casual way, “Seems kind of slow today.” It was Mark’s first professional baseball game. He had no basis for comparison. Still, assumptions could be made. “You ain’t kidding.” The man held out a small crumple of bills. “Why do you suppose that is?” Mark opened the foil and squirted a healthy glob of ketchup mostly onto the hotdog and only a little onto his shoe. “Man, I wish I knew.” Resting his hairy forearms on the counter, the man leaned out and scanned what he could see of the stadium. The game had just entered the third inning. The man said, “It’s a nice day. I don’t get it.” He jerked a thumb at a glass case of pretzels. “You want of one on the house?” “Uh, sure? Thanks.” Mark rewrapped his hotdog and moved it to the crook of his arm to free up a hand. “Well, they’re just going to go to waste drying out under that lamp. There’s no one here to buy any today.” Mark said, “Oh, yeah. Sorry about that.” The man handed over a large pretzel coated with parmesan. “Not your fault. Careful, it’s hot.” “Ha, right, of course.” The pretzel was dry and hard, and the cheese burned Mark’s tongue. # “Sorry I almost ruined your business,” Mark muttered. He wiped his palms on his jeans. He’d been standing across the street from Local Street Bistro for a while now. “I didn’t think it was true, but I am bad luck. I’m cursed or something.” A group of six people brushed past Mark and entered the restaurant. It bustled in there. A few people stood waiting for a table to open up. He said to no one, “I’m sorry. Thanks for being nice to me anyway.” In the end, it was the crowd that made him walk away. If there were that many people, didn’t that mean he wasn’t actually going to go in? # Almost no one went to the grocery store early in the afternoon. Mark had seen that to be the case even before he went in. None of that was his fault. But it make for a double surprise when he turned into the frozen foods aisle and nearly collided with Imelda. She stood with a pint of ice cream in each hand, glaring at them. Mark stopped short and said, “Oh, uh. Sorry.” Imelda turned the ice cream containers towards him. “Which is better?” “Sorry about everything. What?” “Mint chocolate chip, or vanilla?” Imelda alternated the two pints, thrusting each into Mark’s face. “Well, no one actually likes vanilla, so…” “I like vanilla very much.” “Right. OK. Mint chocolate chip, though.” Imelda put the vanilla back in the freezer and gave Mark a curt nod. “Very well, mint chocolate chip it is. Come by next Tuesday.” Mark stopped trying to turn his cart around. “Tuesday? What do you mean?” “Next Tuesday. The Tuesday of next week, you understand? Come to the restaurant for dinner. Around 7 PM.” “OK. But, wait, no. I have to tell you, you were right about me being unlucky. I don’t know what it is, but it’s real. “I know it is,” Imelda said. “That’s why you should come by on Tuesday around 7 PM.” She set the pint of mint chocolate chip in her basket and gave Mark a look from the corner of her narrowed eyes. “I prefer vanilla. You better be right about this flavor.” # Around half of the tables were empty, maybe a little less. It was the most crowded he had ever seen Local Street during dinner. Conversation filled the dining room, loud and cheerful, but not so loud Mark had to raise his voice to speak to the hostess. “Hi, table for one, please.” “Just one?” She didn’t give any indication that she recognized Mark. Which was understandable, that had been months prior. And she had seen plenty of faces enter in the meantime, by the looks of it. “Just the one,” Mark said. He followed her to a table near the kitchen. She dropped him off with a menu and headed back to her station to greet a couple ready for another table. It was 7:19 p.m.. Roman burst from the kitchen and whirled by with a plate of something that smelled delicious as it flew past Mark’s table. Was it a relief or a disappointment that he didn’t even say hi? Mark couldn’t be sure. Possibly both. He looked at the menu, rereading descriptions he’d read a hundred times before. “My friend!” Roman materialized at Mark’s table. “It has been too long. I haven’t seen you in here in two months, yes?” It had been more than three months since Mark’s previous visit. “Something like that, yeah.” “It is good to see you again. One moment, please.” Someone was gesturing from a large table of ten people, across the room. Roman hustled over and bent down to listen to them, then straightened up, laughing. The whole table joined in, enjoying whatever joke had been told. There was no reason to feel jealous. Not when Mark hadn’t even been in to eat in months. That would have been a silly way to feel. His chicken Marsala came out in minutes, perfectly warm, perfectly juicy. So, Roman and Imelda and their crew could keep up with a larger crowd. There wasn’t a rushed panicking feel to the evening. They weren’t acting as though they were unaccustomed to the number of diners. If anything, they appeared to be in their element. Roman smiled and schmoozed his way through the room every few minutes, dropping off dishes, refilling drinks, even pushing in a woman’s chair when he spotted her returning from the restroom. OK, great, they were doing well. He wasn’t ruining their business. Not tonight, anyway. But why not tonight? Imelda didn’t pause long enough for him to ask. By 8:12 PM the chicken was gone, and his glass was empty. Roman appeared with an apologetic smile. “My friend, I’m sorry we didn’t have more time to catch up. Would you care for any dessert?” “Oh, thanks, but I should probably get going.” Mark took out his wallet to make clear his readiness to pay, but Roman was distracted. Imelda waved him over to the kitchen door and whispered something to Roman. They both looked at the large party, now at the loud chatty portion of their dinner. Roman nodded and returned to Mark’s table. “Would you like to meet some other friends of the restaurant?” Mark blinked. “What?” Roman tilted his head toward the loud cheerful group and said, “Please.” He led Mark to the table, where a group of well-dressed people cheered Roman’s arrival in a way that suggested the two wine bottles on the table were not the first to be emptied that evening. “There he is!” One of the men reached over and slapped Roman on the shoulder. “Still doing well over here? Thinking about dessert?” Roman gave the man a return pat on the arm. Everyone agreed they were doing well, or better. “Always happy to hear so. This is my friend, Mark.” Mark felt blood rush to his face as a group of strangers said hello. “He was one of our very first customers when we opened two years ago.” Mark gave a pained laugh and a nod of acknowledgment. Roman gestured to a younger woman at the opposite end of the table. He said, “You were also original customers, yes? Or close enough.” “You know it. We can’t stay away.” The woman raised an empty wine glass and gave the air near Roman a pretend cheers clink. To Mark, Roman said, “They are having a work dinner. Everyone here feels this is the best place to meet, if I may brag.” Everyone cheered again. Apparently, this wasn’t going to stop on its own. Mark said, “Well, it was very nice to meet you all.” A man scooted his chair back and stood up, directly in the path of Mark’s attempted exit before he had a chance to move. The man grabbed Mark’s arm, a little more firmly than Mark would have preferred, and insisted he sit. “Oh, thank you!” Mark tried to catch Roman’s eye. “I couldn’t take your seat, though.” “I was on my way out,” the man said. Before Mark could protest, another man stood. “Yeah, we’ve got to go,” he said. “Have a seat, Mark! Work is paying for drinks tonight. Sit next to Naomi, she’s handling the bill.” That prompted fresh cheers around the table. Mark sat in the newly emptied chair, still warm from another man’s buttocks, next to the woman, Naomi, who held an empty wine glass. She gave him another cheers, which he returned with a water glass someone left on the table. “Would anyone like anything else?” Roman asked the group. “Dessert?” Everyone gave their polite no’s. Mark stared at the table top and wondered how he was going to escape. “Thinking of escaping?” Panicked, Mark wondered for a moment if he had spoken his question out loud. The woman on his left smiled. A purple tinge stained her lips. Mark said, “Ha. No.” “I’m Penny,” Penny said. She extended her hand. “Mark,” Mark said, shaking it. Penny snorted. “So I heard. You’re a regular too, huh? Kind of an unusual night. It’s sort of nice not being completely packed for once.” “Huh.” Mark caught himself about to take a sip of water from someone’s abandoned glass and shoved it away. “It’s typically not very crowded when I come.” “Weird. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it this empty before. What days do you come?” “Usually it’s Wednesdays. I have a schedule where I have to work late every other Thursday, which means I start late and get to sleep in those days, and so Wednesday I can…” Mark waved his hands around the restaurant. “Explains it, right there.” Penny pointed a finger at Mark’s face. “I’m a weekend goer outer, myself. Other than today, I mean. Freaking job, making tonight the night our sales team fly in. I mean, a departmental outing on a Tuesday?” She gave a sloppy raspberry to the schedule. “At least Imelda was nice enough to keep a spot open for our team. I asked her last week.” From the corner of his eye, he could see Roman and Imelda standing near the kitchen. They were watching him. Roman whispered to his wife and then winked at Mark. Alarmed, Mark turned away and watched Penny give one of the empty wine bottles a shake and a frown. He said, “Can I ask something?” Penny nodded, swirling nothing in her wine glass. “Is it usually crowded, wherever you go?” After a moment of intense thought, Penny said, “Interesting question. Crowded how?” Imelda was suddenly at the table side, refilling water glasses. She gave Mark a clean one. “Fridays and Saturdays,” she said to Mark, tipping her head in Penny’s direction. “Got it,” Mark said. “And, thanks.” Imelda offered a tiny nod. She returned to the kitchen as Roman replaced her at the table side. “So!” Roman clapped his hands together. “Everyone for dessert?”

I was born in a country that seems unimaginable today — India before the internet and smartphones. Like many growing up in the early nineties, my pre-teen sources of indoors-entertainment were limited to books and parentally-supervised television (not past 10 p.m., obviously). I’d quickly outgrown the ‘He-Man’ toys and hide-seek games of my childhood. Noting a penchant for reading, my parents bought me a monthly subscription to the widely loved comic book ‘Tinkle’. Today when I have to describe that series, I paint it as India’s answer to Aesop’s tales padded with educational, humorous comic stories, all hand-drawn and brightly coloured. Marvel and DC had nothing on it! Instead of the usual postal delivery, or ‘snail-mail’ as it was called once email appeared on the scene, a local paperboy dropped each month’s Tinkle copy at our doorstep in New Delhi. In a flurry of few days, I’d read and, during the remainder of the month, re-read all the stories featuring familiar recycled characters: a wise monkey called Kapish with super-powers (evidently modeled on the simian Hindu god, Hanuman), a bumbling forest-guard called Shikari Shambu and an incorrigible simpleton called Suppandi amongst others. On the last few pages of that comic book were puzzles, crosswords, quizzes, letters to the editor and a contact list of children, from across the nation, looking for “pen-pals”. To the current social-media savvy generation, a pen-friend (as it was also called) might seem antediluvian and arcane. A pen-friend was someone you could exchange handwritten letters with and build a long-distance bond. Today, you can instantly text or video call to any corner of the world. But to many in the pre-tech epoch, pen-friends represented a grand adventure — the possibility of an otherwise impossible friendship across vast, sweeping distances! The temptation of getting to know a remote stranger, through written words, lay in the promise of novelty, of expanding the narrow scope of one’s monotonous life. The unknown has an easy allure. So when I was around ten years old, I decided to send out short introductory letters to contacts in a Tinkle issue. I tried desperately to sound funny, smart and engaging in the hope that people I had never met would want to befriend me. Back then, the Indian Postal Service provided sky-blue, pre-stamped origami-style paper for routine correspondence. These folded into a rectangular envelope when creased along the correct edges. You wrote your letter on the inner side, filled out an address on the back, licked (and this was the crucial step) the gluey flap-shut and put it through the metal visor of your nearest red, squat mailbox. Then you waited, for weeks, at times months. In my case, the wait could’ve been indefinite. Indeed, I had no idea if my epistolary doves would ever be reciprocated with equal ardour. After long spells of silence, one was. I was overjoyed to receive a reply, any reply. My euphoria amplified as I read each lovely, neatly written out word in the response. My correspondent had the most exquisite handwriting for any child. Until of course I understood that he was no child. He was older, much older than the average Tinkle reader. A real person, a grown-up, an adult deigned me worthy of his time! R was a businessman. He lived between New Delhi and a small town in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh. He was the president of his own company, he mentioned something about owning alcohol distilleries. In his introduction, R also mentioned a wife and two children. His son was nearly my age. R said he travelled often for work, to Delhi but also to far-away wonderful places such as Los Angeles and London! Already in that first letter, I was awestruck. R disarmed me with his easy charm. Quite quickly, he managed to convince me that I, too, was special. He complimented my writing skills, my way of thinking and expressed a desire to continue our exchange. I felt flattered by the attention and told my parents about my new “pen-pal”. They took it to be a natural nod to my penmanship that an accomplished industrialist should be interested in pursuing a remote dialogue with me. In hindsight, someone ought to have asked why R had advertised his contact details in a comic book meant for children and teenagers. Yet no alarm bells rang, nothing seemed off the mark. In the absence of anything sinister, our friendship began. Unbridled, effusive letters were written in a golden haze of innocence. R always answered with assured confidence of adulthood and beautiful calligraphy. Over time, we exchanged photos : old-school printed photos taken on film and snuck into a thick envelope along with the increasing number of sheets our letters slowly spread over. I even knew what he sounded like. R had offered to call on the fixed ‘landline’ phone after a few letters. We spoke at length. I took this to mean he was undeterred by the mounting inter-state telephone (STD) call charges. The calls were free for him, he told me, in his casual way of flaunting wealth knowing well that it would entice a middle-class boy. Our friendship, albeit intergenerational, became gradually consolidated and, given my parents’ approval, it felt entirely legitimate. Several months passed before R offered to visit me. When I told my mother my pen-friend was passing through Delhi and wanted to ‘hang out with me for the day’, she did not mind. R organised it all, he even called ahead and spoke to my mother to get her permission. The day arrived and I had never felt such a rush of excitement. I was to finally meet my pen-pal, in flesh and blood. I’d seen him in photos, a bald, round-faced, physically unremarkable man. R came home on a hot summer afternoon and spoke ingratiatingly to my mother, who was also taken in by his upper-class status and genteel demeanour. We had tea and then R whisked me off in his fancy car to a bowling alley. I’d never sat in an expensive car and definitely never stepped into a bowling alley until then. My mind does not recall the murky details of that day. We bowled, had lunch, laughed and talked until it was time for me to be dropped back home. I had a great time. Then something happened that I blocked out of my mind for years. On the ride back home, we were stuck at a traffic signal. R grazed his hand over my thigh, touching my inner thigh gently. He was not aggressive but definitely insistent in the way he caressed my childish limbs. Then, before parting, he hugged me for a long time to say goodbye. Later in a letter, he would tell me my ‘tight jeans’ made me very handsome. With the advent of the internet, our communication switched to email. Although my parents never read any of our handwritten letters, the absolute privacy of email emboldened R and revealed a new side of him. His messages became less obscure, more vulgar. For example, he mentioned sleepovers with his son and his son’s friends, where he’d lay with all of them. He told me repeatedly he enjoyed bathing his son. In one email, he told me he would love for me to visit his farmhouse in the hills, at Shamli, and spend a weekend with him. There were other perverse suggestions that I could not decrypt or even fully fathom at the time. My mind was jolted by the newness of all that he wrote. There, starkly apparent in the hyper-sexualised landscape he drew out for me in each email, lay the truth of R. He was a pedophile. A truth I did not understand until I was an adult. At that age, I lacked the vocabulary, the emotional and intellectual frameworks to comprehend, report, and challenge what was happening to me. A year after my first meeting with R, my father’s work led our family to a new life in Mumbai. I stopped mentioning R after our move. I never lay eyes on him again. However, sporadic emails from him continued into my early teens. I did not block them, something I regret. They became increasingly vulgar, explicit and pornographic in detail. In some, he forwarded erotic fiction of a particularly depraved and fetishist nature. In others, he simply mentioned things —acts — he wanted to do to me, with me. Things he claimed to have experimented with his son’s unsuspecting friends. I lived in the silent shame of being the recipient of those lurid emails. At the same time, the precocious sexuality of a confused pre-teen found its trigger and release in those inappropriate exchanges. As I grew older and more uncomfortable, I stopped responding to him. Eventually, we lost touch before I had even finished middle school. I changed my email address but the shame still haunts me. Years later, I wondered if I was culpable and complicit for partaking in his sick, monstrous schemes. Until one day, in my late 20s, a barrage of repressed memories came rushing back. I was struck with cold terror. I was living in New York and childhood was merely an irretrievable mirage. But as an adult, I now understood what pedophilia was. My brain blurted out in bold letters “You were lucky. You could have been one of those children.” Just like that, the floodgates opened. I had relegated the episode with R to a dark, blurry cell in my mind’s cave. A cell I have avoided visiting, out of humiliation and guilt. Questions crawled out of that cave to haunt me: Why didn’t I stop replying sooner, what did I even write back? Why didn’t my parents seem more concerned? Why didn’t I immediately see it for it was — rampant pedophilia? What would he have done to me had I fallen trap to any of his deviant propositions? How many children has he physically molested in the guise of being a “friend”? Is he still lurking around there somewhere, free to hurt others? Are we all so fragile, unprotected and vulnerable? I will never have all the answers. But laid bare, I can now live with my truth. Luckily he never managed to get to me although I shudder to think of that version of events. And that, to me, is worth something. For one, I know that I am not the heinous criminal in my story. Tejas Yadav is a polyglot writer & scientist whose work has been published in Burnt Roti, Active Muse, Borderless Journal, and Literary Traveler etc. Themes of identity, race, alienation, social justice and mental health inspire him. His published writings can be found at https://writejas.wordpress.com.

The key was right where I left it, beneath the loose brick in the path that led up to the door, but I left it gleaming gold in the black earth, took the brick in hand instead, wound up and threw it through the pane of glass in the door. I aimed right for the little flyer taped to the inside: WARNING: THIS PROPERTY HAS BEEN WINTERIZED. Crash. The first day I ever stepped through that door, the air rushed in at my back, and the new house heaved a sigh, it was exactly as I’d always dreamed it. Now, I broke the last of the door pane’s jagged teeth down with my foot, stepped through and into the foyer, the soles of my boots scraping the fragments against the smooth stone floor. Crunch and gristle, as if across packed snow. High ceiling, wide walls, the empty house spread out around me like a pair of open arms. It was summer when I raised it. The sun sat heavy on my shoulders; my body moved under a crust of sweat and granite. When I brought the first wall up, and its shadow fell across my back, it was as blessedly cool as a mountain creek. A cold wind shoved me from behind, blew up into the reaches of the dark house. I pulled my jacket tighter, scraped the last of the glass from my boots, and moved in deeper, ran my fingers up and down the walls, into their old grooves. That made me smile. The bank may have taken it, but here was proof that I had been here—some last trace of me left to haunt the bankers, the realtors, whoever came next. It was still ten steps to the living room. I stopped at its threshold, looked into it. When I designed it, with lead-stained hands and a crick like a hot coal in my neck, I drew wide windows, drew doorways without doors—everything open and flowing like ventricles to a heart. When it was finished, before I moved anything in, I moved through it, imagining all it could hold. The light shining in caught on all the angles of the place—the hollow in the corner where a couch would go, the shelves carved into the wood of the walls. I couldn’t make any of that out now; it was too dark. The room was formless. Just a hole full of holes. I pulled the lighter from my pocket, flicked it on. A ring of orange light spilled out. I thought of the clear pus of plasma ringing beads of blood. In my other hand, the bottle sang—liquor against glass. Before I lit the fuel-soaked rag stuffed into its neck, I held it to my ear, listened. I always loved the sounds they made, glass and stone. That was my favorite part of building this place—with every stone I took in hand and slid into another, with every nail I drove into a plank of wood—the noise, the rugged texture of it all. As the bottle left my hand, I stumbled forward, reached out, as if I could pull it back. Crash. I watched the fire unfurl in great red petals, brush the walls, the ceilings. A crooked little sound escaped my throat, and then whatever part of me made it blackened and fell silent. Vasilios Moschouris is a gay stay-at-home writer and Best of the Net nominee from the mountains of North Carolina. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Chautauqua magazine, Hobart, Press Pause Press, and in the museum of americana. Unfortunately, he can be found on Twitter @burnmyaccountv.

The House Ghosts All Read the Time Traveler’s Wife and Now Have Something They Want to Tell You The morning ghosts are subtle and subversive, beginning with bread possession of the ancient toaster, the heating elements pulsing with overhead lights in a one-two-three gentle broadcast from the Other Side with breakfast and tea before moving on to the larger appliances of brunch, like the refrigerator and oven which makes it hard sometimes to predict if you will have over easy or fried to a crisp eggs, smoking slightly on the edges, though by lunch the microwave is nearly hopeless and best for transcribing messages directly from the spiritual world to beef stroganoff, a mark especially clear in the still-edible sticky noodles of the afternoon ghosts, which are more direct but not without compassion, as there is not much you can say about the evening ghosts except you will be lucky to get a jelly sandwich from the glued cabinets unless you shout very loudly to the walls, “yes I will get a better job, I will take a shower, and maybe I’ll trim my toenails and check the dating app, if you will let me have a bit of dinner before bed” which will often quiet them for the night except for the one ghost who watches television romances in addition to reading and there is nothing to be done except nibble leftover crumbs on the bedsheets until the morning shift takes over. Librarian, mother, and minor trickster, Janna has published in SmokeLong Quarterly, Cheap Pop, Whale Road Review, Necessary Fiction, Best Microfiction 2023, and others. Her story collection, “All Lovers Burn at the End of the World” is forthcoming from SLJ Editions in 2024. Generally, if the blender explodes, it is not her fault.

I start my day by finishing it the sun is creeping down like that spider under my bed and I really need to clean it out but my back aches like an old man god I really need to stop curling up in the bath like it’ll make me feel young again. Anyway I start my day by finishing it the sun is creeping down the bell has rung and they’re all flooding the street around me. I must look like a rock in a stream. Honestly I feel like one sometimes. Not in the fact that I’m not moving I’m always moving - me and my brain are on a high-speed train called the gifted kid and it’s taking me all the way to Cambridge and everyone’s so proud. I’m like a rock because I’m all hard shell because I’m all alone while you’re all connecting twisting, curling, flowing with each other. It’s like what the Smiths said about charms and arms. I’m not alone as in alone but I don’t know if anyone has ever really met me. Anyway you put your earphones on and I put my hands on my ears. Life sounds better this way let me hear it through a wall of grey. And I start understanding that I’m not understanding something that everyone else is. Alone in that I’m the only one who’s here. (Only one who’s not?) … I scuff my shoes on the concrete and I get the bus home. Benjamin Bowers is a student from England. His work has appeared in Backwords Trajectory. You can find him @benkb_poetry on Instagram.

my, my sister calls too early in the week, an early hour unallotted for pleasantries, especially for those a certain age a flinching, momentarily before i steel myself i say hello hello too muted to be received, ghosted in the background, in between the pauses of familiar voices, familiar sounds: the dog barking the door slamming clearly misplaced clearly unheard, all at once i am relieved and melancholy and am suddenly reminded of the true meaning of nostalgia J. R. Wilkerson is a resident of Northern Virginia by way of Lawrenceburg, Missouri