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In my fancy Park Service clothes. Stupid hat and everything. First day “opening” the Visitor Center. With COVID, this means unfolding tables outside and taping a laminated map of the Park on top. And, giant Plexiglas sneeze guards to ensure nobody can hear what you’re saying through your mask and the wind. First-of-the-season tourists wander like plane crash survivors. Imagine them blurry-eyed from tears freezing in the wind, muttering, “Why?” Inside, two female Rangers dance in place to stay warm, praying no one outside has a question. In their parkas they look like bloated pickles. App that delivers pickle-flavored french fries. Duck behind a cardboard cutout of a moose. It’s time. Panorama’s open, we could go on a date :hearteyes: Katie G: I can’t tell if you’re serious…either way, take it back. Currently in no state to date. Idk about you. But, have my suspicions. Was kidding! Take it back. You may be right about me not being ready. Kicking it/being vulnerable has been nice, tho. Katie G: Ugh my gif didn’t send :angryface:. It has been fun. Thanks for being there. Step away from the moose like, nothing-to-see-here. Sidle up to my sorta-friends, “What’s hap’nin?” “Thank god. These people are terrible. Everyone’s pissed. The bathrooms aren’t open. None of the buses are running yet. All the trails still have four feet of snow. I can’t do it, Tyler. Tell them to leave.” Set up my register. The other girl asks where the hell Luke, the Ranger taking over her shift, is. “I think I saw him applying for a different job.” A woman in a blue fleece that says ALASKA tries at our attention, her hood drawstringed so only her nose and bottom halves of her eyes show. She’s on tiptoes with her arm all the way up, waving a pink, frilly glove. Like we’re soldiers leaving harbor and she hopes the image burns in our minds before we die. “UGgghhhhhh,” the Ranger grabs her mittens and walks out. “Do you have a bathroom,” is heard as the door shuts. Katie G: Pretty much free tonight. You’re closer to pizza, but I have a shower, soooooo… I’ll bring pizza. Need a shower. Katie G: Don’t bring shitty pizza. Walk outside. A family approaches wearing blue fleece jackets that say ALASKA. The wife has bleached hair and, fifty pounds ago, probably captained the cheerleading squad. A white, caterpillar-of-hair spans the husband’s upper lip. A joke: How do you know if someone’s from Texas? They tell you. Two girls, about three years old, look to be twins. Each puts weight on one of their mom’s hands and hang. Their toes barely graze the ground and they slowly twist like abandoned marionettes. Somehow, punctuating the look of despair/desperation on mom’s face. “Do y’all have a toolet?” “We have port-o-potties, in the parking lot,” gesturing with an open palm, trying to nail a look like everything’s normal. It doesn’t work. “Come on, girls.” In defeat, she drags the twins while they yell, “Nooo!!!” “Gah lee. We’s from Taxes. Didn’t think id be suh bloomin cold.” Expressing surprise through eyebrow movements, I say, “Wow,” but the wind blows it away. He cups a hand around his ear. We lean in. Without the Plexiglas it’d be intimate. “Wow,” I yell. “Me and the wifey, well, y’all know whut they say, we ain’t gettin no younger. So, we saddled the girls for they’s old nuff tuh protest, flew um to Worshington. Took at Inside Passage turr. Gah lee, thas purty. Wells, n musta seen bouta hunnerd bald eagles. Glaysers fallin n the wadder. Gahd.” “Different world down there for sure.” “Huh? Got these plates uh halbut big is yer hedd,” he makes a circle then palms his belly where the fleece is stretched to capacity, “Gahd, they’s damned spensive, but gooood. I says, Margret, we gotta get to Denali quicker I might not make it through is bucket list.” He laughs, genuinely taken off-guard at how funny he is. I smile with my eyes over the facemask. Staring at the mustache. It’s trying to tell me something. “Glad you made it.” He’s suddenly serious, “Gotta ask. For the girlser back,” he checks over each shoulder, like it might be listening. “Where’s, Denali?” “Bout seventy miles away.” Luke joins the table, pointing two women toward the frozen plastic toilets. His face has a supremely stoned and flabby look. “Suh, you sayin we cayn’t even see it?” He looks incredulous. “You’d have to probably take a bus in the Park to get a decent chance.” “Could we steel take one?” “They aren’t running.” “Gahd! Can we do anythang, then?” “Have you paid your entry fee?” Visitor Centers are like wombs. Mirrors, showing the disregard for planning, the total helplessness, we long for signing up for “vacation.” I step back in the warmth inside. The building. The Visitor Center. Should I bring beers? Katie G: Only if you want something other than fireball. I’ll mull it over, decide if it’s tonight we make out. Katie G: What a thing to contemplate. I normally decide in the moment. I have blue moon and a few IPAs, so no pressure. I’ll bring a six-pack. Katie G: I still don’t know how I feel about beer/IPA’s. Sometimes I’m really into it and sometimes I just want high abv. Maybe I should keep you away from the fireball :tongueout: We can toe that line. Katie G: Looking forward to toeing that line dew, and the beers :cheers:. I think I have to attempt to clean now. Just enough that you won’t worry about me. You’d have to be an entirely different person for that. Four girls, early-20’s, walk up in black leggings and white sweaters. The sweaters say UCSC and PINK across the chest. Luke is visibly upset when they choose my side of the table. “Ughhhh, is that liiiike, Savage Alpine Trail, like, good?” “It’s pretty good.” “You, ughhhhh, think we could, do it?” “What kind of shoes are you wearing?” They turn side-to-side, asses in profile. Luke bites his knuckle. I assess the Crocs and Chuck Taylors. “Yeah, you’re good.” Their faces brighten, “Thank you!” Watch them walk away. I could take those legs and snap them, all the way up with me, to the windy blue. I walk to the port-o-john and piss. (Sorry again, for the go on a date joke, I wasn’t thinking about your current situation. I fucked up.) Katie G: It’s all good. Just so long as you know where I’m at. Totally do. Caught me off guard, when you reacted. Here, I thought you didn’t feel, but you’re a big SOFTY! :kissheart: Katie G: Don’t remind me! It hurts so much to feel :nervouslaugh:

Basket with Raspberries (for Anatoly Marienhof) The raspberries are misplaced in a wooden basket, cradled thankfully in multiple paper towels thick enough that the raspberries won't bleed through to the top of my coffee table. … Well, it's not a coffee table … any more than I am a real person. I mean I do not feel like a real person. I feel like a poser even though I live in a group home for the mentally ill. I live on a fixed amount of money from Social Security. I can write poetry but today I'm under a lot of pressure because each bedroom has four people living and sleeping in that bedroom. And oddly enough when things are going good I freeze up like crazy. So today is the day just before Thanksgiving and two of my roommates have gone out to be with family. I have the bedroom pretty much to myself. The one other guy that's home is watching TV in the front room, which I would call a living room except that 2 other people sleep there and call it their bedroom. I don't know what to tell you. I'm just beside myself when things are too good. I break down like crumbling cheese. Do you know that kind of cheese that crumbles so easily? Writers, especially absurdist writers, and especially writers that I have been following for 30 or 40 years, these are my friends ... my dear dear friends. I want to say that the raspberries are complaining about their lives. But that idea - that raspberries are conscious enough to complain - is too far-fetched for this world, or for this, my small group home, on the corner of the eternally parallel streets, 7th Avenue and 9th Avenue ... precisely because others might not be familiar with the work of Daniil Kharms, Nicanor Parra, or Anatoly Marienhof. Coffee Pot Larry Larry's very common way of reaching for the coffee pot in the Academy's Officers' Lounge was such an extreme habit that he could have done it blindfolded. Oftentimes he would be saying his affirmations and really have his eyes nearly closed during his break from work or first thing in the morning when he came in. He said his affirmations very frequently - some would say constantly - throughout the day so that he could raise his mood. Only very rarely did Larry ... Take stock of the situation in the break room or how much coffee was in the coffee pot. He would simply walk into the lounge, eyes closed, through the mild maze of tables and end up squarely, exactly in front of the coffee pot … completely preoccupied with his affirmations, most especially in the early morning hours, almost sleepwalking ... then, after standing inexplicably in front of the coffee pot for a few affirmations, Larry would go get himself a styrofoam cup and go back to the coffee station to reach for the coffee pot with his right hand. This morning the sun shone through the window just the way it did every single day of the week including the weekends when nobody was here. As Larry reached for the coffee pot unbeknownst to him it had been completely empty for about 73 minutes and 36 seconds. It exploded robustly. The glass went into Larry's stomach, into his intestines not by way of his mouth. Also, the shrapnel of glass went into the side of his head as a missile through his skin through his torso, his right eye, and his right temple. Larry felt a certain pain and couldn't figure out what it was - but he was doing his affirmations. Larry fell down bleeding profusely, groaning his affirmations. Larry died wrapped in his affirmations.

the sweet spot she weeps & creaks into the ooze & creep & scrape & crushing crackle of whenever trim / shape / slice / sculpt to feed this unstable dislocation every crazy corkscrewed thing braiding birds – in and out of cages (yellowing wallpaper) or tangles of manicured truth what do you reckon – pink or blue? is there a sweet spot? merging the question she unwraps another sixty shades of purple kaleidoscopic calamari curating the caricature chargrilling hearts nicely done unboxed: it’s a little bit Saturday when I bite into your warty heart (a hearty treat) Sunday is no longer such a terrifying prospect violent parasomnia peachskinned she commits murder in her sleep walking painting the apple spitting rainbows such strange delights what did it taste like? breaking hearts glow & she’ll eat you alive not being Kate Bush first time i saw her on Top of the Pops singing Wuthering Heights i wanted to be Kate Bush / & it was 1978 & I was not-so-sweet sixteen but i wanted to be her for the next 30 years because she was everything i aspired to be / & because you admired her talent & creativity / respected her originality / fancied her incredible mind & perfect body / if i could only look more like she did (i frizzed my hair / dyed it russet / wore bright leg warmers & tight vests) learn to sing like her (i had lessons) / write profound lyrics & memorable music (i got a music degree & composed songs) but i could never be her & as i approach my sixtieth birthday / hear Running up that Hill play on a nostalgia radio show / i wonder / why / i tried so hard / for so long to be someone else / for you / manicuring authenticity why i never felt enough / if i could only UK based neurodivergent writer Jane Ayres re-discovered poetry studying for a part-time Creative Writing MA at the University of Kent, which she completed in 2019 at the age of 57. In 2020, she was longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize. In 2021, she was nominated for Best of the Net, shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award and a winner of the Laurence Sterne Prize. Her first collection edible was published by Beir Bua Press in July 2022. Website: janeayreswriter.wordpress.com

### “Yes, life is life,” Charles said. “Except when it …” ### “Isn’t” ### Charles pauses here, to which Cassandra says: “Okay, so what we think is, isn’t, if I understand you correctly, because if that’s what you mean, I don’t.” “What I mean,” Charles explains, “is, what is and what isn’t, isn’t always what we perceive. What I’m saying is doesn’t always mean something is, and what isn’t doesn’t always mean something isn’t, unless we establish it is or isn’t.” After a pause, for effect, which doesn’t come, Charles continues his conjecture, uninterrupted. Cassandra still seems confused. “Another case in point is, if you think you see something that isn’t there, does it mean it’s there? It can be an optical illusion in the same way when you don’t see (or hear) something, or someone, say, behind you, does that mean someone is behind you, or isn’t, and you may be somewhat startled once someone walks passed you, since you had no idea or didn’t realize anyone was behind you, until you found out there was. Is that a better explanation?” “You didn’t know, until you did, what’s your point?” Cassandra returns. “Well, if you didn’t see (or hear) anything until whoever it was walked passed you and you only realized it then, that’s how quick someone can sneak up on you and how unaware and how unprepared you’d be if that someone had planned to attack you.” Cassandra’s eyes widen. “Of course,” Charles adds, “that is, or isn’t, only a supposition.” ### “Living in the Ancient Times” ### today.. Not all who wander are lost, Charles thought. Although they may be. They wear labels: If found, turn into the lost and found. The lobe in the center of the outer ear often lets in sounds they don’t hear. “Even if you do,” Cassandra says. When I got on the bus I walked in the front door and while the other passengers got on I walked out the back door and did the same thing with the next two buses that followed. I had time to kill and didn’t want to just sit there looking like I had nothing to do when a bus came and the other people waiting there got on. That’s usually the case when one doesn’t have anything to do to look like he was busy by having something to do when he didn’t have anything to do other than getting on and off a bus. Afterwards, I went back home, but went out again, as if I had somewhere else to go when I didn’t. Pretending you have something to do when you don’t is a job in itself. You can’t see the forest through the trees. Thousands of acres may surround you, but all you see is what’s in front of you. No wonder people get lost walking around until they don’t know where they’re going even if they think they do when they start out. You wouldn’t think that, but it’s true. It’s happened to me before. “I felt like such a fool,” Charles said. “You are,” Cassandra says. The people who say they don’t like BIG government intruding in their lives sure don’t seem to mind intruding on other people’s lives in any way they can. They love power. Except when it comes to money. They love money more. “Of course,” Cassandra says, “what’s at issue here are the singular groups of people in certain political groups who feel it’s their right to tell a nation of 350 million how they should live their lives.” “We know who they’re talking about when they say little government when it comes to the people they’re in office to serve,” Charles adds. “Corporate Greed!” Cassandra says. “The Monopoly World of BIG Money!” Charles adds. “Deep Pockets!” both say. A land where rules and regulations to protect the environment and our planet against corporate abuse is when they love little government. Rules and regulations are an infringement on corporate accountability. The environment and our planet be damned. This is when the Monopoly World of BIG Money wins. “BIG time!” Cassandra screams. ### “The Last Turn of the Screw” ### Charles met Cassandra passing through Harlingen working in Brownsville when he was in Texas. She looked like she needed a friend just like he looked like he needed a friend. She was working there like he was working there while they were both working their way through college. We spend the next week together. As a thank you she reached her hand down his pants and whacked him off every evening. A Howard Johnson comes in handy. She tasted just as good as she looked. The first turn of the screw hurts like hell. I can’t imagine what a piece of wood feels, Charles thought. Before you screw a screw into a piece of wood, you use a hammer and nail to make a little hole to start with, at least that’s what we used to do back in the old days before all these new power drills came out. You don’t need to be much of a man to work any of them. You did back in the old days when you’d get blisters across the palms of your hands and fingers even when you wore gloves until you got used to the work. But before that, you had to work through the soft hands and blisters, if you wanted to get paid. You couldn’t be a pussy about it. Screwing a screw into a two by four frame was hard work, hammering a nail is easier, but we ain’t talking about easy work here. We’re talking about real men doing real men’s work and by the turn of the last screw you feel you’ve accomplished something. All that’s easy compared to working on a relationship. Where screwing is easy. And you don’t need a power drill to do it. But the blisters you get on your heart from the hard work you put into it and the pain it leaves on your soul once it’s over and done with that comes from all the hard work you put into it that leaves you empty and distraught is a lot tougher than any job will ever be. I learned that from the relationships I’ve been in and I guess it’s safe to say each girl learned the same lesson from me, since relationships are a two-way street. ### “Rivers of Time ” ### flow through me all the time, Charles thought. I hope they bring us back together, Cassandra thinks. ### “The Wheel of Time” ### never stops turning. It keeps moving. Even after our wheels stop. You were gone before yours stopped. A memory that fades from time to time but still lives on in me everyday. Time is funny that way. It keeps moving even when it seems it’s standing still. “Dragging ass,” we used to call it. Because even if you were to sit and watch it, you never see it move, even though it’s speeding right passed us. With every breath you take. Until your time is up. ### “The Right to be Wrong” ### I never could figure out Cassandra. How many times can a person be right in life? How many times can a person be wrong? Is there a set number? Say 50/50? Maybe 75/25? Depending on what disposition a person has? Positive? Negative? A balance in between? Where most people seem to be. Do the people we hang around with influence us? The people we don’t? Some people think they’re never wrong. Some people are made to feel they’re never right. It’s a coin toss either way. Because no one’s ever going to agree with anyone 100% of the time and negate their own points of view on life even if they’re never right all of the time even if no one else is always wrong all the time when you agree with them whether they’re wrong or right or you’re right or wrong and nobody cares. This is the nature of the animals we are. How cool would it be if everyone just accepted that and let life be life instead of always having to try to prove how right they are all the time when something goes against the general norm as they think the general norm is? There’s nothing wrong with admitting you’re wrong every once in a while. I will if you will Charles says and Cassandra smiles. It doesn’t mean you have to become a different person. It just means you’re not always right all the time, except to you, and no one else. None of us always follows all the rules of the game that everyone is expected to play. As if we are all the same. ### “Closer Than You Think” ### If it isn’t, it is. By choice. I’m standing right in front of you. You just don’t see me. Yet. But you will. Soon. Right now you’re looking through me as if I’m not here. But you know me. I’m you. I’m lost, yes, like you, lost, in the unknown where no one exists but where everyone who is lost exists, and there isn’t one of us who hasn’t felt lost at one time or the other. We may find each other one day when we least expect it, if we bother to look. After all, you are me. I am everywhere you are. It doesn’t matter where you are. Italy. France. Spain. I am there. Right next to you. If it is, it isn’t. But will be. ### “An Incident of Mind Over Matter” ### I’ve looked for you around every corner. An empty void is where I travel. It’s how I get from place to place. It’s almost like time travel except I’m in the same time zone just a different location from a moment ago. It saves time and money that way when you’re in New York one second and the next you’re in San Francisco or anywhere you want to be next. Rome. Paris. London. You’ll find me. I’ll meet you there. ### “Turn the Clock Back” ### I want to go backward. I want to go forward. But I must go backward to go forward. Until we meet again. Cassandra never knew what I was going to say. Until I said it. But it didn’t matter. She was the same way with me. What time of the day was it when we first met? Do you remember? I don’t want to make the same mistake. Twice. And miss you. ### “If It Flies, Board It” ### Cassandra made Charles happy, and Charles made Cassandra happy. But it was a cat and mouse game. And each was winning in his or her own way. Charles was an aeronautical engineer at Gateway. When he was away on lecture tours or business elsewhere, he had affairs with as many women as possible as time allowed between trips from St. Louis to New Orleans or New York to San Francisco or elsewhere. When Charles was away on duty elsewhere outside of Chicago, Cassandra had affairs with numerous men she encountered on her own trips to Atlanta as a flight navigation instructor at Gateway where she and Charles worked and lived together in St. Louis after they met in Harlingen, Texas, when they were students at the College of Flight and Aviation Studies. Cassandra also taught flight navigation courses in Brunswick, Georgia, seasonally from September to December, where she also had numerous affairs with the other male instructors there as well. She also taught flight instruction studies for Gateway in Los Angeles during summer where she lived with James in his apartment off Sunset in North Hollywood. While Charles, during these periods, lived with Jane in the flat they shared together when Cassandra was away and he was on duty in Boston. Charles and Cassandra loved each other deeply. Their motto, like all lovers, was: It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. They planned to marry in the spring. They hoped to live happily ever after. Even if they knew that was a pipe dream. Rarely achieved by anyone. ### “Nine IX 9” ### Novo Neuf Nueve Nege Neun Tissa Devet Nau Thesha Tisa Chin Mathematically, if that sum were to be cut in half, that’s how fast the world can change in the blink of an eye. Get it? Understand? All right? We still may be able to avert it Before we reach ten. No matter what language we count in. ### “The Journey Ends” ### You ever wish for something you never had and get it and later regret it? I have. I’m living it right now. The vastness of space where I’m at is overwhelming. I never knew how this gift began. But I know how it ended. It began like it ended. I thought about Spain and then I was there. In Spain! Barcelona, to be exact. I don’t know how. I was just there. I could travel anywhere just by thinking and I was there. It ended as mysteriously as it began. I thought about Scotland. Glasgow, this time. I was to meet Cassandra there. We’d planned it, and I figured since I could travel so easily, I’d meet her there and surprise her. [He surprised her all right.] [He never showed up.] I was on my way there when it happened. All of a sudden! Nothing. I’m here … in the middle of … I have no idea where I‘m at. Nothing? The emptiness I usually pass through when I traveled here to there is where I’m stuck now. My mind keeps racing. Havana! New Orleans! Berkeley! Hoping against hope to travel anywhere but here. But as mysteriously as it began, it ended, and I’m lost between here and there. Reality and Unreality. There’s nothing around me, but I know I have to be somewhere, anywhere, other than nowhere, I have to be, there’s – air to breathe, because I’m still alive. I think. I was alive a moment ago. I believe I still am. But am I? I don’t know. This just happened. I’m here, lost. A victim of circumstances beyond my control. Where existence meets… non-existence? Yet I feel alive, or something is keeping me alive, if I’m not actually dead, and I have no idea what’s what beyond that. I don’t remember anything out of the ordinary happening before this happened. But I’m here now in a void of darkness. Did I die along the way and don’t know it? Where am I? Where is this? It’s as if someone’s turned off the lights. Did the sun die? Earth? All the people on it? How does anyone describe this? I started my journey, then everything went black. All of a sudden! Except my mind. Where life is or isn’t anymore? ### “A Thought on Lost Love” ### Cassandra never heard from Charles again. She never knew what happened to him. She did eventually get over him. Yes, she mourned his loss, wonderingly, over a weekend drink with a stranger she met in a bar in Detroit before going home with him later that evening; she had a fleeting thought while in bed with him that Charles may have run off with Susan who lived in the condo next door to theirs, because she caught Charles one time sizing her up when they were together, when Charles thought she didn’t notice, something they never did, except when one or the other was away on official duties elsewhere, as they often did, but never when they were together, so she easily dismissed that thought from her mind as jealousy; besides, Susan still lived next door, and she knew Charles loved her; so as in any love story, she went on with her life, hoping one day he would return, while knowing he never would. ### “What Is and What Isn’t” ### is not for the faint of heart to know unless it isn’t then it will do no harm. “I will meet you in Greece,” Charles had told Cassandra earlier that day, “and we’ll honeymoon in Monte Carlo.” Cassandra smiled, they shared a parting kiss, and she left him knowing what prevented Charles from leaving with her, since the groom is not supposed to see the bride the day before they are to marry, while neither knew the consequences that custom would carry, as Cassandra left Charles there, but she didn’t mind because she had plans of her own, like Charles, and knew they would be together afterwards. What neither knew was Charles was to be murdered later that day by the jealous husband of the stewardess who helped make his flight plans for later that evening, who also had no idea that her tryst with Charles would have her husband find her in bed with another man, kill them both, and later bury them in an unmarked grave in the backwoods of Louisiana in St. Charles Parish. He placed their naked bodies one on top of the other, as he found them. “Rot in hell!” were his parting words to them. While he pissed on their grave. Had either had any idea, their plans would have changed. Instead, with death, as is often said in moments like that, Charles’ life flashed before his eyes in a series of jumbled flashes at the exact moment as he ejaculated prior to the moment Jackie’s husband stumbled upon them unexpectedly and caught them in the middle of their liaison and killed them. Charles had his neck broken in the middle of orgasm while he lay atop Jackie unaware of what just transpired, while Jackie, herself at the height of her orgasm, had her face smashed in with the side of Charles’ head. In the same way an orgasm causes one to momentarily lose touch with reality, neither had any recollection of that moment in the bed they shared before Jackie’s husband found them in the middle of their rendezvous. For added measure, her husband put a fireplace poker straight through the side of Charles’ head right between his wife’s eyes, as a parting expression of his anger, and twisted it around, so the spiked part ripped away portions of Charles’ brain and Jackie’s eyes when the poker was yanked out. The effects of the fireplace poker struck that part of the brain experiencing the height of sexual pleasure. It left that moment as the dying image in their minds. Ghana! Tibet! Panama! And Charles wondering why those intrusive thoughts were there, other than his plan to fly to Greece to meet Cassandra later that day after his tryst with Jackie was over, but not wanting to leave her bed now and, moreover, Jackie not wanting him to leave. Unknown, wonderingly, Charles felt lost and quite discombobulated about the unusual circumstances he found himself in. Unlike his many trysts before, he has no understanding beyond that and even if he did he had no idea what he would or could do about it. He felt as a person whose life left its body, but was sure he was still alive, but he didn’t know for sure either way, but knew he just had one hell of an orgasm! A total out-of-body experience! What he thought was alive, if life left, was his soul. He was raised religious, but never gave it a second thought, until now, which made him question his relationship with Cassandra. Steve, Jackie’s husband , was later arrested after family members reported her missing. He claimed he had no idea where Jackie might be, but his annoyed displeasure and abrupt behavior about being questioned over her disappearance told a different story. He was later tried on suspicion of being the only person of interest in connection with her disappearance – that of Jackie’s alone, since no one knew of her tryst with Charles, other than Steve, not even Cassandra – and he was sentenced to 25 years in prison – with the possibility of a life sentence staring him in the face, if her remains were ever found, along with those of Charles. He was released 15 years later, for good behavior, and now resides in Jacksonville, Florida. He continued to maintain his innocence with her disappearance and no evidence was ever found to prove otherwise. As of this writing, Jackie remains missing and, in a sense, so does Charles, although no one is searching for him, not even Cassandra. Worse, neither has a memory of something they have no recollection of happening beyond their tryst. Charles wants to stay, but knows he has to leave in order to meet Cassandra later this day, but will wait until after the heightened effects of the orgasm he’s experiencing is over, unknown that it never will. As for Jackie, the last thing she remembers is Charles on top of her and both of them exhausted and breathing heavy and now, with nothing beyond that, believes she is still in bed with him, her eyes shut in ecstasy, hoping the moment will never pass but that her husband won’t come home any time soon to find them, which she fears, which would intrude on the revelry and the heightened pleasure she is still experiencing after her bout in bed with Charles and, wanting him to stay, but knows he has to leave, but not now, not at this moment, at least until this heightened feeling of pleasure subsides and before her husband comes home and catches them, unaware of time’s passage, with the reliving of the moments prior to death ongoing, like Charles, unaware of death, let alone atop of Jackie in a grave in the latter stages of decay, while feeling at the same time like a man with a mounting headache the size of the Sudbury Basin knowing he has to leave soon and not sure why unless it’s the residual effects of his time with Jackie and his fear of missing his flight, which was a thought he had prior to his last moments of life when he ejaculated and died at the same moment and all he could attribute to any delay in his plans to meet Cassandra is Jackie and hoping neither she nor her husband will delay time against that, but wondering that both might, in some strange loop of not progressing beyond those romantic moments, like Jackie, with no memory what transpired in those moments, other than the thoughts she was thinking during it with Charles, who was unable to piece together any delay in his flight plans or the fact he didn’t know what he’d tell Cassandra, like Jackie who did not know she would never see Steve again while wondering if she should divorce him and hoping Charles would never leave, but not wanting her husband to catch them in the same thought, and the fact Charles didn’t want to leave, but worried about missing Cassandra, unaware of the fact that he would never see Cassandra again or the fact that she is no longer the woman he remembers with the passage of time and has long since forgotten about him. Which only goes to prove what he has always thought. That happiness is rarely achieved in one’s life. Without consequences. ###

pills got bigger: ten to twenty milligrams. now they’re horsesized. change in dosage prompted by a cry for help. by a secret told to my therapist, my confidant. turned into a posthaste, rushed, emergency type situation. mixing dulled phantom spirits with SSRIs. was that the cause? the reason for this joyless head? eh, i remember rhyming emotions, of the same ilk, since middle school. but my seven-year-long, unchecked, recently-acknowledged [get ready for a scary word] alcoholism certainly didn’t help to keep the black dog at bay. so i toddler-proofed my pad. no more painkillers under the bathroom sink, no more sharp objects lying around, no more booze in the fridge for this flight risk. i was the losing caballo, handicapped by ailments unseen. magnet me was two souths, two norths. pressed up against each other: repulsed by everything, everyone, including myself. so i put down the bottle. things seem a little better, brighter, yeah. not so many no-sleep nights of intrusive thoughts and death on the brain anymore. but just below the surface, the hot war turned cold. never ended. that nasty demon parasite eats up my lust for life, still. just at a slower pace now. mmm, yummy, he says, after leaving me with an empty cupboard. rears his noggin sometimes: when i think about him too much. when i let my mind offleash to run free. despite all my impulses, my feelings toward living, the rational side of my brain wants to keep on running. even if i have to whiteknuckle it to the finishline. all that being said, i don’t wanna see that checkered flag until several years from now. don’t let me cheat or cut across the track. keep me from sprinting to see the end. keep me slow and steady. even with that hellhound at my feet. don’t let me quit this race, no matter how much i tell you i hate it. i ain’t got no cross, no crutch, to fall back on. just my own two legs. my two depressed, anxious, drunk, itchy-with-ideation legs. but still, i trust they’ll carry me to greener, sober, cheerful pastures in due time. will you be my champion jockey? Nicholas Barnes earned a Bachelor of Arts in English at Southern Oregon University. He is currently working as an editor in Portland, and enjoys music, museums, movie theaters, and rain. His least favorite season is summer. His favorite soda is RC Cola.

Her index finger throbs, becomes swollen. The climbing rose brims with scarlet-edged garnet flowers. Their perfume is heady, musk and Turkish Delight. Thorns bind the stems like razor wire. The prickle is embedded deep in the finger-pad. It hurts when she presses against anything—her tea mug, her toothbrush, her keyboard, her trowel. She rubs it with antiseptic and olive oil, massaging the soreness. “That’ll learn you. I told you to wear gloves.” “I did. The gauntlet ones, but I had to take them off to tie the stems in.” He shrugs. “Get rid of the rose bastards. They make a mess on the lawn.” Messy, like you, his eyes say. He doesn’t care for her garden. He dislikes the plants crowding his pitch of artificial grass, where he shoots goals, bending the ball's trajectory with a sly touch of his boot. He relishes moments of imagined glory, running like a champion, arms waving overhead. When she was twelve, she slipped while climbing on a bed of oyster rocks. Far out on the bay at low tide. The rocks lacerated her calf muscle in stripes, punctured her knee and the palm of her hand where she’d stretched to brace her sudden fall. The cuts were slow to heal until six months later, the point in her hand became red and swollen. It festered into a pearl of yellow pus, a piece of oyster rock was spat out, as if her body had ruminated, endured then expelled the shell in disgust. After she serves, then clears away dinner, she joins him in front of the TV. She squints to spy the prickle, squeezes the sore spot with her nails. “For fucks sake, leave it alone,” he says. “Watch the match. I don’t want to have to tell you what happens.” She tries to watch, so as not to annoy him. The commentators shout in excited cliches, ‘The stage is set, it’s evenly matched, it’s there for the taking, it’s anyone’s game.’ She stares at the screen, sucking on her finger. She can’t ignore the annoyance under her skin. The thorn is a constant irritation, one her body will soon reject. He roars when the match goes to penalties. He expects her to stand, shout support alongside him. She turns her giggle into a gasp when the opposing striker kicks right through the goal keeper’s padded arms. Should have worn better gloves, she thinks and bows her head to hide her glee at his fury. “Look, it’s out!” she says, and gives him the finger. “It was in, you stupid woman!” he shouts. Emily Macdonald was born in England but grew up in New Zealand. Fascinated by wine as a student, she has worked in the UK wine trade ever since. Since going freelance in 2020 she has been writing short stories and flash fiction. She has won and been placed in several competitions and has work published in anthologies and journals with amongst others, Fictive Dream, Reflex Fiction, Crow & Cross Keys, Ellipsis Zine, Roi Fainéant, Free Flash Fiction and The Phare. In writing and in wines she likes variety, persistence, and enough acidity to add bite.

The music fades out and I’m concentrating through the booze to work the ATM. It’s a more delicate operation than I remember. I stick the card in the slot. It spits it back out. I try again. In and out, in and out, in and out. I look to the dancer waiting for her money and wink. *** The bouncer is telling me I need to go. I ask why, but he waves away my question with a giant hand like I’m nothing. He has a body like a tranquil cow, and his arms are thick enough to pop my head from my neck like the cork from a champagne bottle. I tell him fine, fine, I just need to get my credit card back from the bartender, thankyouverymuch. He tells me, out, now. I tell him moooooooooo. *** The 911 operator is asking where I’m calling from. Man, do the police arrive quick. Once, Annie and I thought we saw a girl being kidnapped (turns out she wasn’t), and it took the cops over an hour to knock on our apartment door. Not this time. Five black and whites converge on the parking lot to help me get my credit card back before I finish my smoke. I explain the situation to an officer with an absurd mustache that bops up and down when he talks like a ballet dancer pirouetting. He doesn’t listen. Only wants to talk about how I’m getting home. Oh, boy, if he only knew. I don’t want to get into it and tell them to relax. I’m fine. It’s fine. I’ll sit in my car. Sober up. Go. For some reason, they all think this is hysterical and tuck me into a cab, hand on the top of my head, just like on TV. *** I’m telling the cab driver, change of plans. Take me back to the club. He’s got a hell of an accent. I ask him to repeat himself twice. I don’t want to ask a third time because that would be rude. It finally clicks. He’s asking, Are you sure you don’t want to go home? Buddy, I say, I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. *** I’m practicing walking sober in the parking lot. Annie taught me the trick the first night we met. Charged me two cigarettes for her secret. You gotta swing your arms just so, she said. Not too much, not too little. It helps to pretend you’re carrying a heavy plastic grocery bag in each hand. Stop, commands a thin man in a baseball cap. He looks like a scarecrow posed as a crossing guard, one arm outstretched, the other resting on an object at his hip. I’ve accidentally whiskey-waltzed behind the club into the parking lot reserved for the dancers. I’m trying to find my car, I tell the scarecrow. There’s nothing for you here, he says. Is there someone you can call? No, I say. There surely is not. Bio: Keith J. Powell writes fiction, CNF, reviews, and plays. He is a founding editor of Your Impossible Voice. He has recent or forthcoming work in Lunch Ticket, New Flash Fiction Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Bending Genres, and Roi Fainéant Press.

Six months have passed since François Bereaud and I collected 21 pieces together for the first Roi Fainéant Press special issue. Summer brought us heat in all its forms—fire, revenge, lust, blazing suns—and it also had some sweetness to it, reminiscent of summer fruit and happy times. But the warmth and lazy days of summer only last so long. Soon after we closed out that issue, I told François I wanted to do another with a theme of Cold if the Press Roi team would agree to have us back. Thanks to the original team, Tiff Storrs, Kellie Scott-Reed and Marianne Bartesky-Peterson, as well as our fellow “new lazy king” Margot Stillings for agreeing to let François and I take the helm for one winter issue. I joked in a tweet that we wanted literal, figurative, metaphorical, metaphysical and astronomical cold. And I think we can say we’ve got it all. These 35 pieces represent half a dozen genres and evoke even more emotions. It is an overall darker collection than the summer Heat issue, but with glimmers of light and hope. I want to thank the overwhelming number of writers—double that of Heat—who sent in work to us, at a busy time of year. I found something to admire in every piece I read. Saying no to beautiful pieces, writing we know people have dedicated their time and heart to, remains the hardest part of this gig. I hope everyone who received a no continues to send in work to Roi Fainéant and other journals. Lastly, I want to say I am so grateful to have met François, who is an excellent writer, a thoughtful reader, and a gracious and humble co-editor who was willing to work with me on this special issue even if it meant zooming during winter break. Whatever the season, whatever the temperature, he’s a wonderful writer friend and partner. I look forward to many more collaborations with him and the rest of the RF team, whatever form they might take! --Melissa Flores Anderson __________ In the summer of 1998, I spent one of the coldest nights of my life in perhaps the hottest place I’d ever been, Lagos, Nigeria. The air conditioning in my western hotel room was set to freezing and I shivered under a thin blanket anticipating and fearing an unplanned cross-country bus ride the next day. I’d read both The Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart in preparation for the trip and neither helped me as I tossed and turned, wondering why I’d left my family to take this solo journey. In this issue, extraordinary writers, from across the country and globe, take us on beautifully rendered Cold journeys in expected and unexpected places. It was a privilege to curate these tales and a heartache to decline so many fine pieces of writing. We had an outpouring of submissions and you’ll find familiar names alongside first timers to the press. This issue would never have occurred without the determination, organization, and literary passion of my exceptional co-editor, Melissa. She kept us on track, working both fast and slow to select the exceptional pieces here. If you haven’t read her writing, do so. It’s a privilege to be part of the Roi Fainéant community. I’m so appreciative of the support and inclusivity in all aspects of the press. Much love to the team that makes this happen every two weeks. Enough from me, you have a lot to read. Whether your favorite part of the sundae is the cold ice cream or the warm hot fudge sauce, take your time, you’re in for a treat. Francois

Your scuffed, unruly top hat has settled onto an adequately round head. Your body leans left, but not that smile. Small steady hands have made you. One thin tie hangs draped around your whole self. I gave you a broomstick. Keep us safe behind you. I give you some fancy dress shoes. Do not forget us when we forget you, and we will forget you. Try to entertain us as we entertain you. At night ice creatures froth at the mouth, their chill hands reaching clenched through frost windowpanes. Their poltergeist voices bouncing between shut houses, half frozen. Safe in my bed I imagine you smiling. Two men, strangers, in love, surprised themselves by stopping unexpectedly to pour their hearts out to you. You are a therapist, a time machine, a carnival midway. All things considered, you are my favorite Frankenstein. I saw a rabbit eat your face. At least the part of your face the squirrels knocked over. I wish that rabbits knew how to smoke the corn cob pipe that’s fallen off and decorates the grey shrinking snow. I wish you wind, hypothermia, frost. You, a rolled white mudpie whose snow patted middle bends. No spine, red mittens, weary smile beneath a slowly poured sun. Eager glazed eyes, charcoal nose, a days delight in flurries. Your form is your undoing.

I looked out at the half frozen lake. How lovely to be here without you: no stones or pinecones breaking the crust of ice and disturbing the fish. I had time and hands to look up the name of the black duck with the white beak and belly: The tufted duck. I turned back to the path. No squeals, no mumbled half remembered songs from the preschool down the road. How awful to be here without you. Abigail Myers lives on Long Island, New York, where she writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Her essays have appeared in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, with a personal essay forthcoming from Phoebe in winter 2023. Her microfiction recently appeared in Heart Balm. Her poetry recently appeared in Rough Diamond Poetry, with poetry forthcoming from Sylvia, Poetry as Promised, Amethyst Review, and Unlimited Literature. You can keep up with her at abigailmyers.com and @abigailmyers (still on Twitter).

Appointment 1 Instead of stomping the slush off her boots, Regina wipes her feet on the mat with a restrained marching motion, almost baby steps. Bill is already in line. She waves and points to the tables. She eases into a chair gingerly then unwinds her scarf. Bill sets down the purple tray with their bagels and peels off his coat. “So, talk to me,” he says. This is a phrase he picked up while studying to be a social worker. Regina drags her paper plate toward her, trying to remember Dr. Terry’s exact terminology. “He says I have… a subluxation of the second thoracic vertebra affecting the function of the brachial plexus.” “That sounds serious.” “I guess so,” Regina says, though she hasn’t yet put it to herself in this way. Bill looks at her, patiently awaiting more information. “Did you end up telling him how it happened?” He’s still feeling responsible, no matter how much she tries to convince him otherwise. “Of course not.” Regina gestures to the wintry scene outside. “I said I slipped on the ice.” It had happened in bed two weeks ago. Things were progressing nicely when suddenly she felt as if an ax had been hurled into her back. Since then, she’s been trying to manage the pain with stretching and ice. Bill’s well-meaning massages haven’t helped. So Regina set up an appointment with a chiropractor named Dr. Terry. He’d started today’s appointment by taking X-rays. When they were ready, an assistant came in and clipped them up on a back-lit surface. “Wow,” Dr. Terry said then started penciling notations on the films. When he finally moved aside, Regina stepped forward so she was face to face with herself. Her eyes, nose, and mouth looked like gaping holes. Her hands: a string of pointy bones like links of a chain. And her softer tissues – the tendons and ligaments – resembled smoke. In an attempt to connect her dots, Dr. Terry was forced to draw all kinds of crooked lines. He explained, “It’s like plate tectonics. One part of the earth shifts.” He pointed to her illuminated spine, right at the second thoracic, which did look quite off-kilter now that she looked closely. “And the part next to it shifts as well, or gets damaged in some way.” The doctor put his hands out horizontally before him then collided them together. “Chiropractic adjustments will gradually maneuver everything back into place.” He returned his hands happily side by side. Regina dabs her bagel at the stray sesame seeds on her plate. “I think skeletons get a bad rap.” “How so?” Bill backs up on his chair and crosses his legs, another counseling idiosyncrasy: the listening pose. “Every Halloween they’re depicted as villains, symbols of death. The thing is,” she continues, “we all have them.” She taps her sternum. “We’re all concealed skeletons.” Bill nods his head thoughtfully. “Let me see if I understand: the Halloween hype, the skeleton frenzy, is yet another form of commercialized self-loathing?” “Yes, yes it is.” Regina smirks, pleased, as always, with their banter. Though they met a year ago and have lived together almost as long, she’s often still amazed they found each other. Sometimes when she thinks about Bill, she clasps her hands together, as if holding something embarrassingly sentimental, a gush of some sort, between her palms. As they walk toward the door, she doesn’t hook her backpack over her shoulders, but carries it in her hand down at her side, like Dr. Terry suggested. “We should do this every week after your appointment,” Bill suggests as they step out onto the slushy street. “Sounds good.” She likes meeting up with Bill, like this, during the day. He pecks her on the cheek and they walk in opposite directions: he, toward his office, she, toward her 12 o’clock seminar on Surrealists, a class that pays almost nothing, but she loves to teach. That is, when she isn’t in pain. Appointment 6 Regina arrives first and orders their bagels. A few minutes later, she sees Bill tying her dog to the No Parking sign out front. She usually walks Scott mid-day, between her classes, but it hurts to do almost everything now. In fact, even sitting is excruciating, so she stands up beside the table. At home, she even stands to watch TV. When Bill reaches the table he stands as well, until she gestures for him to sit in the chair. There’s no reason they should both be uncomfortable. “So? How are you feeling today?” he asks. “Worse,” Regina sighs. She has recently started wondering if Dr. Terry is running a racket, if he’s overcharging Regina for something he knows is never going to work. She read somewhere that any “perceived” chiropractic strides are easily undone, anyway. “It’s a process, Reg,” Bill says, kindly. “Maybe I’ll never get better. This is me now,” she says with more bitterness than intended. “Try to have some faith,” Bill says. Give it time, he has been telling her. Patience. She rolls her eyes and instantly regrets it. She tries to backpedal with a nod of agreement. He’s right, and he helps people feel better about things for a living, but she’s annoyed anyway, mostly with herself. She’s been a jerk lately. She isn’t hungry and doesn’t want to hear herself complain more. Instead, she leans her hip against the table and watches snow accumulate on Scott outside. She rescued him and named him before she met Bill, when she thought for sure she’d always be alone. She imagines the little dog under attack now, each snowflake like a wheel of spinning daggers. She’s not an artist, but often she re-envisions scenes in her mind how they might be depicted on a canvas. It’s her own secret creativity. Since she’s been getting Dr. Terry’s weekly adjustments, she’s been experiencing pain all over her back as if the soreness is nomadic, roaming from the second thoracic to the ninth, then up to the fifth. “This is perfectly normal,” Dr. Terry had reassured her today. “In fact,” he made the tectonics sign with his hands, “it indicates we’re getting somewhere. Things are changing.” Things are changing all right, Regina had thought to herself. Bill reaches into his backpack. “I got you something,” he says and places a tiny pot on the corner of the table. “A cactus,” she says, looking down at it. He nods up at her, grinning. They’ve remarked on this before, how all kinds of people have these little upright penises on their windowsills and mantels. The cactus stands erect between them. It has now been almost two months since she got hurt. “Thank you,” she says. She bends her knees a few times. Standing this long makes her legs tired. She knows this is a jokey attempt to cheer her up, rather than an act of foreplay, but she takes it as another opportunity to feel bad about herself. Lately, she’s started thinking she doesn’t deserve Bill, that he’d be better off with someone who can move around the world normally, as if not made of cement. Bill is the polar opposite of other men she’s been with. Since he’s a good listener, she has often found herself revealing things she’d never expressed to anyone before. After their first date, he’d perched on her couch, knees under his chin, as she described the artists she liked to teach most: Rothko and Diebenkorn with their corridors of color. Frida Kahlo with her mix of realism and fantasy. She told him about the succession of drawing and painting classes she’d taken since she was a little kid. She admitted the truth: “I can understand art, but I can’t really create it.” He nodded. “Sounds like your talent is in sharing these artists with so many people.” “Maybe,” she swallowed. It wasn’t insta-validation and it wasn’t something that had never occurred to her, but it was what she needed to hear. That night, he recounted his parent’s divorce when he was eight, and meeting with his first therapist. He said he loved this woman almost more than his parents and thought maybe I could do this one day. Even though she retired, he was still in touch with her. To Regina’s amazement, Bill broke his lease the next month and moved in with her. Regina looks at the cactus, his cute gesture. But it looks less like a penis to her now and more like a spine: misshapen and misaligned. Regina examines its thistle vertebrae, touching one of the spikes. She wants to tell Bill that sometimes she doesn’t want to move, that she’s started worrying this sharpness she wakes up with, walks around with, reads with, will never go away, that this is now just how she is. But she doesn’t want to keep putting all of this on him. He has to listen to other peoples’ problems all day. Plus, her problem has become his too, a fact that pains her almost more than anything else. She presses her finger harder. She thinks of Frida Kahlo and how excruciating it must have been for her to have sex with her husband, the famous Rivera, after all of her back surgeries and miscarriages. Regina can only imagine this: the piercing, again and again like lightning along the spine. Maybe Frida kept trying. Or maybe she didn’t. “Woah, be careful,” Bill says, and takes her hand in his. Her index finger has a tiny dot of blood. He dabs at it with the napkin. “Hey,” he moves his face up closer to hers. “You’re going to be okay,” he says. “If this guy can’t help you, we’ll find someone who can.” She nods her head, genuinely this time, her eyes filling. Appointment 12 Regina sits down by herself and starts eating her bagel while it’s still hot. It’s the first day in months she hasn’t experienced even a prick of pain. Dr. Terry announced she was almost entirely “in line,” that her treatment would last only a few more weeks, followed by monthly maintenance visits. When he said this, Regina imagined her skull winking back at her from the illuminated wall. She watches pedestrians navigating the sidewalk, a bunch of bundled skeletons. It has been sleeting since yesterday, turning to ice when it hits the pavement. Road salt hasn’t yet managed to eat through the slick surface. She’d taken Scott for a quick walk before her appointment even despite these conditions and she felt fine. Bill can’t join her today because one of his evening clients needed to meet earlier. At least this means he’ll get home early. Realizing this, Regina feels a sudden surge of energy. She swallows another bite then swings her arms above her head and arches. She stretches as far as she can, as if she’s just woken up from a three-month slumber. There’s no pain whatsoever, not even a twinge. She looks at her phone. If she hurries, she’ll have time before her 12 o’clock seminar to pick up a bottle of celebratory wine. Maybe she’ll stop at that lingerie shop she’s never gone in, and buy something lacy and transparent. Regina thrusts her arms through the straps of her backpack then heads quickly toward the exit. On the sidewalk, she moves carefully: she looks down at the ice and thinks about each step. She waits for the WALK sign then crosses the street with precision. Halfway across, she catches a hint of something in her peripheral vision. She rotates her head to see a tan sedan skidding sideways toward her, its tires locked in place. Regina lurches forward. The car’s front bumper just misses the back of her thigh. Her boots slide across the ice. She manages to regain her balance. But as she does so, there is a rift, a violent shifting in her spine. Another ax has been hurled into her back. Regina shuffles her way to the curb, each movement more painful than the last. She drops her backpack onto the ice at her side. So it was true about chiropractic. All that progress, easily undone. Regina closes, then slowly opens her eyes, the only movement she can muster. Car tires spin, exhaust fumes swirl, and the air is streaked with falling ice. She envisions the self-portrait she’ll never paint: the tectonic plates, the ax, a single, blood-tinged tear rolling down her cheek. Even though the famous Rivera, who was said to resemble a frog, hopped around the world and into the arms of countless other women, he kept coming back to Frida’s bedside. Was this love on his part? Or devotion? Guilt? Maybe it would have been better for them both if he’d just stayed away. Regina stands undecided. All she wants is relief. There’s no way she can pull herself together to teach another class in pain. Dr. Terry’s office is two blocks east, and the apartment she shares with Bill is four blocks north. All destinations seem far off, like sinkholes in the distance. She decides they should break up. Bill might be resistant to this idea or maybe he won’t. Regina picks up her backpack. She grits her teeth and heads slowly toward class. Sleet has the nerve to pelt her cheeks, her eyebrows, and her lips. A word from the author: I hold an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. My essays, fiction, CNF, and humor have appeared or are forthcoming in Roanoke Review, Penn Review, Brevity Blog, Belladonna Comedy, Slackjaw, Leon Literary Review, Rougarou, Five Minutes, Slate, NBC Think, Newsweek, and Chill Subs. I have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. I live in Nyack, New York with my husband, son, and my antique eyeglass collection.

We choose our words with care. The garden is still and honeysuckle-sweet again, and the evening shade shadows our faces. We cradle our fledgling trust in our hands. We both know how easy it would be to let it fall into the grass, into the waiting jaws below. I want to take a paring knife and slice this moment into slivers. Carefully peel away ribbons of fading sunlight, prise out the hard seeds of disappointment that were nestled in the middle all along. Until all that's left is you and I, the twilight and the cool brown earth. Katy Naylor lives by the sea, in a little town on the south coast of England. She has work published in places including Ellipsis Zine, Emerge Literary Journal and The Bear Creek Gazette. Her poetry chapbook, Girl / Mirror / Wolf (Bullshit Lit 2022) and short fiction microchap (Moonlit Cafe Press, 2022) are out now. Find her on Twitter @voidskrawl.