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I plod down the street to the corner a walker as my guide careful to navigate the cracks on the sidewalk, heat bouncing off the pavement. Inside the store sweat drips down my back and my chest in rivers I pass by aisle one and two sharp right tugging open the glass door at the end of aisle three I stick my head in the freezer. I suck it all in, chest tightening exhale, small misty clouds the air is heavy and dense, cooling the heat on my cheeks towers of frost-covered boxes, glassy crystals line the metal shelves underneath. Ice cream, sandwiched between cookies floating on root-beer with cake topped with browned meringue. creaminess coats the inside of my mouth, no rules, no restrictions no shame numb tongue, dancing on my tastebuds. My mood soars Closing my eyes, brain-inducing dopamine fuels the fire of gran’s homemade gelato, dense smooth delight dad’s sorbet, sweetened with fruit and liqueur sundaes drowning in chocolate sauce, Snow cones and slushies, crushed ice with flavoured syrup I created for my kids, long scattered across the globe now memories of making friends, courting lovers, family around the table counting blessings- Ma’am? the clerk mops his brow, that door’s been open over thirty seconds Through the cloudy glass, I agree but he’s wrong it’s been unlatched for decades, emotional well-being, flashes of a lifetime Still, I smile, he’s too young to understand how at my age it’s a slog even to get out how for people the likes of me? all we have to grasp onto are reminders caches of recollections freezer therapy Karen Grose is a writer from Toronto, Canada. Her first novel, The Dime Box, was selected by Amnesty International for its 2021 book club to represent women’s issues. She has recently begun to write poetry. Aisle Three honours elders, the hearts of building family, who in later years strive to keep knowledge and memories alive.

The bedside clock flips to 12:00 am as I lay and watch the changes that occur in the span of a second. Wednesday becomes Thursday. November becomes December. Today becomes yesterday. So much time moved into the past tense. Yet my mind still hangs on to too much. Those conversations I should’ve had, but fumbled and passed. Emails that were so imperfect, they write and rewrite themselves in my head but are too late to be sent. In this midnight hour, anything can become sharp, little shovels to bury me inside myself. I never used to be like this. As a kid, when December rolled around, I would lie awake and think of Santa. And now, I am thinking about garbage men. Not the regular ones who lounge inside their side-loader dumpster trucks. I know their sound. Grumbling up and down alleys. Big haul tires crunching gravel. Flexing bent mechanical arms every few feet to toss a bucket of weekly suburban waste into an open metal gut. Coffee pods leached of their dark roasted flavors. Single use contacts removed from sensitive dry eyes. Air fresheners dispensed of all their natural fresh scents. No. The garbage men I’m thinking of are the ones I never hear. The ones who tend to park bins bolted to cement slabs. Monuments to the wasteful in the middle of wind-chilled fields. Things that are emptied while I’m tucked beneath my quilt, worried about the growing inches of snow pressing on the eaves overhead. As I get older, accumulation becomes a form of burden instead of delight. And December’s miracles are no longer carried out by an imaginary man with a penchant for red velvet in the form of cookies, cupcakes, and coordinating knits. Just regular people who float through the night, black plastic sacks on their back, taking away all the things we no longer need. JENNY WONG is a writer, traveler, and occasional business analyst. Her favorite places to wander are Tokyo alleys, Singapore hawker centers, and Parisian cemeteries. She resides in Canada near the Rocky Mountains.

I am a snow-capped mountain, my flesh—old Himalayan terrain. Weathering winds from the poles I lay barren—uprooting seeds before they can dream. Pablo Neruda’s nightmare, I am a snow-leopard clawing at man’s musky scent. A guarded fortress alchemizing silver into gold at dawn, my jagged crown and cannon balls keeping lovers—looters at bay. But when a lone wolf, torn from his pack, howls at the waning moon, the geometry of snowflakes reflecting in his deep brown eyes, I can hear my frozen heart thump. I twitch a little, dropping icicles on that veined thing I thought was long dead, attempting to kill it again, but instead, I feel a tinge of guilt when faultless cities scream into the night. Tejaswinee is a Pushcart-nominated writer and poet from West Bengal, India. Founder of The Hooghly Review, she has/will have work published in Dreich Magazine, Setu Bilingual Magazine, Amity: Peace Poems (Hawakal, 2022), Muse India, Taco Bell Quarterly, The Unconventional Courier, Paddler Press, Misery Tourism, Roi Fainéant Press, Maw Poetry Magazine, and others. Tejaswinee is also a lawyer and can be found tweeting at @TejaswineeRC.

The air was cold, as it always was coming out of cryo-sleep. The Tamberlane Supply star freighter EREBUS was commissioned to travel between the Milky Way’s inner spiral arms and kept the crew in cryo for most of its return journey. Warrant Officer Sanders adjusted his stirring eyes to see the other pods had already been vacated and that the emergency lights were flickering. Only he and Executive Officer Kane were still waking while the Erebus’s navigator Lieutenant Billadeau stood by in a pressure suit. A hologram of the ship’s AI, THELEMA, appeared. “Kane, Sanders. The captain ordered your awakening and requested your immediate attendance in the command module.” As they shivered in the cool chamber, Billadeau produced a small hologram from her wrist communicator showing damaged components of the ship, “Mechanical damage to the engines and alternators produced a propulsion malfunction bringing us four months beyond intended arrival.” Billadeau enlarged the hologram. Several energy lines appeared ruptured from a tear from claw marks all along the inner and outer walls. “Vari. Likely jumped aboard from the Perseus ports,” Billadeau continued as a hologram of a large dark blue arthropod ravaged the outer hull with its two forelegs and scurried inside the vessel on its hind four. “So when will we arrive home?” Sanders asked, rubbing his hand together, generating friction. “Captain Canter will further explain the situation,” Billadeau remarked, then started down a corridor. Sanders and Kane gave each other weary looks, then followed after. Entering the command module, they noticed the captain, technician Farah, and Chief Engineer Stevenson wore pressure suits as well. “The longer it stays on the EREBUS, the greater the danger it poses,” Stevenson said, nodding toward the hologram. Captain Canter looked grave as he spoke, “Damage to the engine and alternator has rendered communication impossible, and life-support systems will need to be suspended throughout the EREBUS. We will divert all energy to the command module and the captain’s quarters. Door locks will help keep out the cold and vari but restrict access to the cryo chamber, engines, and even escape pods. Only residual temperatures will remain in the command module bringing the temperature down to just above two-hundred eight Kelvin.” “We’ll freeze to death,” Kane complained. “Pressure suits, with their isolated batteries and a small supply of adrenaline boost, should keep our body temperatures above freezing while worn in the command module. Captain’s quarters will still have the emergency ability to generate sufficient heat for rest if needed,” the Captain said. “We can’t repair it?” Sanders asked. “On recommendation from THELEMA, and captain’s orders, our energy-supported tools are suspended,” technician Farah explained as she dropped an ax on the table. Scratched and worn with recent wear and tear. “The outer layers of just one of the enclosures took nearly two hours to get into, and we still have another twelve more.” “I’m going to be direct,” the captain said.“THELEMA has run over a thousand simulations. Our crew only survives eight. Seven only happen if we immediately divert course for the Eller sector.” “Eller sector? You want us to stop between arms? Is anything even in operation?” Kane asked. “There is not,” Captain Canter replied in a decisive tone. “Lieutenant, expending all remaining energy, how long until we reach the Opol mining station?” “With no further damage, no more than two hours,” answered Billadeau. “How do we know this mining station is even a viable option? Some stations haven’t been active for over a hundred years,” Kane questioned. “This station has an active message relay system. Company logs indicate it was last serviced about eight months ago. We could prompt a rescue team within another six months.” “THELEMA, how many simulated trips to the mining station failed?” Sanders asked. “95.8%, one hundred and fourteen of the one hundred and twenty attempted simulations to the mining station ended with the death of the entire crew due to hypothermia or vari attack.” The crew became quiet. “The vari will come out looking for something warm to eat once the engines kick out, or it finds something easier to jab its mandibles into,” Stevenson added as he pressed commands locking all corridor doors. “These locked doors should help. We can deal with it once we dock at the mining station.” “Did we receive any communication before we lost connection?” Farah asked. “I would advise everyone to focus on their objectives,” Captain Canter said. Farah ignored the captain and opened her wristcom to the messages THELEMA sent. The last one sent showed a video of her child, hardly breathing with tubes sticking out of her, desperately trying to say something but unable to speak. A note attached to the transmission noted her daughter’s condition as terminal, with a date from two months before. Farah covered her mouth to silence her gasps as tears raced down her cheeks. “Two months ago?” Farah finally squeaked out. “My child may have died two months ago, and I wasn’t woken up?” “There is nothing you could’ve done,” Kane stated. “Don’t you dare! This was supposed to be a six-month journey. I could’ve said goodbye. I should’ve been there to hold her so she wasn’t alone.” “You’ve already said goodbye. You just didn’t realize it was the last one. Furthermore, this isn’t a choice that either you or I make alone. THELEMA has offered us two options: We continue on our trajectory in cryo and, for two months, take our chances with the vari, or we stop at the Opol mining station.” The crew fell silent. “Tamberlane Supply policy requires a majority vote. All those in favor of the Opol mining station in the Eller system?” The captain looked around as he raised his hand. Stevenson and Kane immediately raised their hands, as did Billadeau nervously. Sanders raised his reluctantly as well. Farah’s face turned red in frustration and anger before she spoke with great restraint, “When did THELEMA recognize the problem?” “Just after we left port, but the severity did not require our attention until now,” the captain said. “You told me that my diagnostics were wrong, that the EREBUS was fit to perform when we left the docks! We could’ve turned back for help months ago!” Farah’s voice began to rise. “Had we stayed to administer your diagnostic suggestion, the EREBUS would not have been on pace to gain bonus payment, and now this vessel requires your vote to determine our best course of action within cost.” “Within cost? I only came out here to pay for my child’s illness, who doesn’t have another six months! I was supposed to be back home now!” “You are here because of debt, same as everyone else. We’ve all spent the same ten months aboard this ship when it should have only been six. While none of us are pleased about the timing, we all agreed to our contracts. So stop crying!” “You did this to us. You killed us!” Farah screamed. Farah approached the captain as she continued to yell, throwing objects about the module. “You’ve killed us all for greed!” Stevenson stepped in and held Farah’s arms back. “Your daughter is already gone,” Stevenson exclaimed. “And if we don’t focus, we’ll be gone as well. Just don’t think about it. Move on.” “We already knew about the condition of the ship?” Billadeau demanded from the captain. “Repairs had been considered but ultimately denied by ownership. We may be able to complete repairs at the mining station,” Captain Canter insisted. “Now, Lieutenant Billadeau, if you please, redirect the EREBUS at full speed. Kane, divert all energy to essential components.” Billadeau reluctantly nodded back and routed the EREBUS toward the Opol mining station. Farah freed herself from Stevenson’s grip and raised her arms to show she wasn’t a threat. “THELEMA, how many simulations have been successful with partial arrivals?” Farah implored. “3.5%, five successful runs ended with at least one crew member dying,” THELEMA replied. “So having you around doesn’t really increase the odds that we get back alive, does it, Captain?” Farah rushed over to the ax on the table, picked it up, and swung it, wedging it deep into the captain’s side, puncturing through his pressure suit. The captain screamed in pain, and Stevenson and Kane tackled Farah to the ground, knocking off her helmet. “Throw her in the brig!” Captain Canter cried out, commanding Stevenson and Kane to drag the screaming Farah out of the room. Sanders grabbed a med kit as Billadeau dislodged the ax and applied pressure on the captain, who was rapidly turning pale. Once Stevenson and Kane returned, Kane adjusted the controls and diverted all energy to only the essential components. “It’s already starting to get cold in here,” Kane remarked as he rubbed his hands together. Feeling cold already, Sanders checked their vitals on his wristcom, reading: 97°. “Billadeau,” the captain commanded between breaths. “Gather the remaining pressure suits.” “What about Farah?” Billadeau asked, holding the frenzied technician’s helmet. “Without residual heat, she won’t last two hours.” “Good,” Kane commented. “No one knows the EREBUS as well as Farah. We may need her to keep the ship going,” Billadeau pleaded. “She’s hysterical. I’ll manage alone,” Stevenson remarked. “No, Billadeau’s right. Bring Farah her helmet. She’ll stand for trial once we return,” The captain sputtered. ***** After what felt like too long of an absence by Billadeau, Sanders went to inspect the brig. Now in his own pressure suit, he saw Billadeau standing by the brig’s control panel, speaking with Farah, “Farah? Are you okay? We need you to reach the mining station, and you hurt the captain. The EREBUS won’t make it to the mining station unless you help. I’ll let you out, but I need to know that you’ll help us.” Farah just nodded. Billadeau unlocked Farah from the cell. Sanders watched on with caution, still unsure of Farah’s mood. Farah walked over to a control panel and began to input commands. A hologram of the last broadcast appeared. A small child not older than seven appeared with tubes in and out of her body, struggling to breathe. The holographic child showed nothing more than a tear-filled wave while Farah put on her pressure suit helmet. As the video ended, Farah adjusted more controls on the panel, and doors throughout all the ship’s modules began to open. Farah asked, “THELEMA, what are the odds that only one crew member makes it to the mining station?” “0.07%” “What are you doing, Farah?” Billadeau asked frantically. “Before the end, each of you will know my cold, bitter grief,” Farah promised and ran down a dark corridor. Sanders looked over the commands on the control panel and panicked. “She locked every module open but cryo and the escape pods. With all heating systems offline, our thermal pressure suits will be some of the warmest things on this ship for the vari to track us.” Sanders and Billadeau returned to the command module, only to see Stevenson shaking his head over the captain’s cold corpse. “Farah escaped and locked open all hatches!” Sanders exclaimed. “You let her out?!” Kane shouted. “She’s in pain,” Billadeau argued. “This blood is on your hands, Billadeau!” Stevenson picked up the bloody ax. “When I come back, I’ll deal with you! Sanders, are you coming with me?” “You can’t be serious?” Sanders remarked. Stevenson rolled his eyes and headed down the hall in the dark chambers, ax in hand. Kane slowly backed and ran out of the module toward the captain’s quarters. Sanders and Billadeau quickly followed, unsure of what the executive officer was doing. Kane ran inside the captain’s private chambers and immediately closed the entrance behind him. They peered into the window and pounded on it for Kane’s attention. Kane spoke into his wristcom, “The vari can’t get in here, and I don’t trust either of you to not let that freak Farah in.” Sanders looked at their vitals, now a bitter 89.6°, “At this rate, our pressure suits can’t withstand the dropping temperatures for long.” Billadeau looked at her navigation tools. “We need to get to the escape pod! We can just about make it to the station from here. Kane! We need to get out of here. We can make it to the mining station with just the three of us.” Kane paused a moment, then asked, “And leave Stevenson to Farah?” After another pause, Kane tried to open the door, but to no avail. He started to bang and shove. An immediate expression of worry came over Kane’s face as frozen air started to opaque the window. Sanders checked Kane’s vitals, dropping fast to 82.4°. Not a moment later, an image of engineer Stevenson was shown lifeless on the floor of a corridor, along with Farah’s voice over the intercom system, “You’re greedy, Kane. Just like the captain.” “Billadeau, Sanders. Please,” Kane pleaded. Sanders attempted to pull on the door and looked at Kane through the window. His face was icy blue with purple lips, and his eyes were puffy red, swollen, and almost completely covered in frost. “She severed the heat. Kane has no pressure suit,” Billadeau observed. She looked at Sanders and shook her head in frantic desperation. “Sorry, Kane. It’s no use,” is all Sanders could say. He motioned to Billadeau to follow him down the hall. They could hear Kane scream a final cry down the hall, “Billadeau. Sanders. Please!” Hypothermia set in, and Billadeau’s movements became sluggish from the cold. She leaned on Sanders as she hobbled down the last bits of the corridor. Turning a final corner, they stumbled upon the escape pod module, and Sanders rested Billadeau beside the closed door. Sanders rubbed the sides of his pressure suit desperately to generate a small amount of warmth before manually working to override the entrance. The sound of the vari grew in the hall, and Billadeau started to weep in her fatigued state and slumped over, “I can’t go on. Farah killed us all, and we deserve it. I deserve it. I freed the monster.” “Hold on, Billadeau. We’re almost there!” Sanders checked their vitals, now a desperate 80.3°, and activated their adrenaline, jolting her awake. Sanders activated the switch to open the module door, stepped in, and anxiously looked around, wondering if Farah had already found a way inside. Once he was sure she hadn’t made it in, Sanders turned back to grab Billadeau. No sooner did he step back out the door that he saw the outline of the vari creep from the hall's darkness and into the dim walkway lights beside where Billadeau rested. Sanders only had a moment to gasp before the hexapod monster dug its mandible into Billadeau’s leg and pulled her backward into the blackness. Her screams through the wristcom lingered even after Sanders could no longer see her silhouette. He ran back into the escape pod module and shut the entrance behind him. Billadeau’s screams transformed into a coagulated gargle. Sanders couldn’t stand it any longer and shut off his communicator. Sanders activated the system, diverting power to the escape pod. A loud thud rang from the door. A glazed-over eye from the vari peered in the door window and filled Sanders with dread. A moment later, the creature’s face split from an ax driven through from the back. Sanders knew that Farah was here, and he was out of time. The pod had all the energy it was going to get. He quickly dove into the pod and prepared it to jettison. Before the escape pod back hatch completely closed, Sander’s last view was Farah with her bloody ax in one hand and a half-severed head of the vari in the other. The pod launched, and Sanders lined up for the docking port. The mining station was close. He noticed just how little energy the craft had transferred. All heating elements stopped, and functioning lights ceased. The pod rode only on the momentum from launch to propel itself toward the derelict facility. The windows began to frost over, and fatigue started to set in. Sanders glanced down at his wristcom to read his vitals were now a bitter 75.2°. “THELEMA.” “Hello, Sanders.” “What are the chances of an unassisted dock at the Opol mining station?” “0.01%,” THELEMA managed to say before her power ended. Sanders closed his eyes and accepted his fate as the EREBUS’s escape pod began to veer slightly to the left. C.J. Goodin is a Science-Fiction/Horror writer and author of cosmic/gothic horror anthology “Granite Shores.”

Clementa No-Kill Mousetrap Boxes – 5 stars Never had mice in the summer before, but somehow they’re getting in. Don’t want to kill the little suckers and these traps worked great. I give my 12-year-old son a dollar to go release the mouse in the neighborhood. My husband says someone else will just have to kill it but hey, at least it isn’t me! HealthyHeart Heart Rate Monitor – 1 star Wish I could give this product zero stars. I bought it to start running with my teenage daughter again. When I put the monitor on it shows my heart rate for five seconds, then the screen goes blank. My daughter hasn’t gone running with me yet, but I tried hers too and it was the same. Shoddy manufacturing and it was not cheap!!! Sending these back. SoBrite Noise-Canceling Headphones – 2 stars Bought these headphones for my 12-year-old son. They work, but they’re not noise canceling. He can still hear whatever is going on while he’s gaming which means he is turning the volume up too high and hurting his ears. Also the plastic is flimsy and seems like it could break if he drops them or slams them down. GoBigg Super 8-Quart Combo Air Fryer – 3 stars Unfortunately there is a gross chemical smell every time this air fryer is turned on. My husband thinks I’m crazy, but his sense of smell is shot after getting Covid. I tossed it in the trash, but the next day my husband “rescued” it and made sweet potato fries. I refused to eat them, but everyone else said they were good. So 3 stars I guess? If you don’t mind a chemical smell that makes you think the air fryer might give you cancer??? Soothing Sounds Multi-Option Peaceful Noise Machine – 4 stars Helps me fall asleep. I like the babbling brook and the ocean waves. Taking away one star because it’s hard to get the button to click on or off. Perfect Clean Crystal Care 11-Setting Dishwasher – 1 star This dishwasher has a gazillion settings but none of them actually get the dishes clean. My parents had the same dishwasher for 40 years and never replaced it. Things were made to last back then. We’re hosting Thanksgiving this year and it’s going to be a disaster with this piece of shit dishwasher that can’t even handle a plate with a tiny bit of tomato sauce on it!!! Breaking the Hold of Video Game and Internet Addiction by Kavin J. Howards – 1 star This “book” is just a few ideas from someone without any special knowledge of the subject. It’s full of typos and the suggestions like limiting video game time are so obvious that they’re useless. There’s a long chapter about porn that I didn’t need because thank God my son is not looking at that yet as far as I know. Sure Sens Multi-Drug At-Home Simple Urine Testing Kit – 1 star PROBLEMS: 1) Came in a box that says DRUG TESTING KIT in big letters. It sat on my porch all day and everyone passing by could see it. The last thing I need is to be the subject of neighbors’ gossip. 2) After a huge scene with my daughter when we told her to pee in the cup, we get a positive result and find out it could mean anything from marijuana to heroin, so not super useful. Then my husband does some research online and turns out there are false positives 25% of the time! So my daughter’s in tears and slams her door so hard a picture falls off the wall in the hallway and breaks and my husband’s saying it’s my fault for making her into an enemy and what does this even prove and she’ll be in college soon living her own life anyway. Hang Loose No-Tuck Dark Paisley Stylish Men’s Oxford Shirt – 5 stars Didn’t know what to get my husband for Christmas, but this shirt caught my eye. I like the way it’s cut shorter so it can be worn untucked. My husband says it makes him look too thick in the middle. I think on a different man this shirt would look really great. Dainty Pyramid Necklace for Girls with Cubic Zirconia – 5 stars This was for my 16-year-old daughter for Xmas. My husband says the pyramid looks like a weird freemason symbol and my daughter hasn’t been wearing it so maybe nobody else likes it, but what do they know – I think it’s lovely. StarScope Refracting Portable Telescope – 5 stars Bought this for my son for Xmas. I would’ve loved something like this when I was a kid. It’s just been sitting in the box in the corner of the living room. So I set it up one night and I’ve been taking it out in the backyard. I’ve looked at the moon, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. It’s freezing outside, but I love it! After everyone’s in bed I come downstairs and pour myself a big glass of wine and bundle up. It’s quiet and the empty tree branches frame the sky, and I think back to when I learned about the planets when I was nine and how they’re still all the same as they were then even if I am not. TrapMastery Glue Traps – 5 stars Our mouse problem is out of control. I think they’re coming in under the loose storm door, but my husband can’t be bothered to fix it. These glue traps are disgusting, but they get the job done. Every morning when I find a mouse on the glue, I stick it in a bucket and drown it. Their limbs tremble, but it doesn’t take long until there are no more bubbles and they’re still. They seem to drown faster when the water is cold. Kate Deimling is a poet, writer, and translator from French. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in I-70 Review, Tar River Poetry, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Roi Fainéant Literary Press, Ellipsis Zine, Waxwing, and other magazines. Kate is an associate poetry editor at Bracken and was a finalist in the 2022 J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction. A native New Orleanian, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family. Find her online at www.katedeimling.com.

The difference in mourning and morning is you. Dawn takes away anything “our”s, transforms it to “or,” a choice between two, as usual. Wordplay is subtraction and addition. A limit is the fifth tally mark, slashing the rest on a friday. I do not live just for the weekend. To lament another turning. It all becomes heavier with age. I start letting myself eat sugar and potatoes. I add almond creamer to my coffee, and think about the bees so bored of these blossoms they drop dead instead of sucking up more nectar. They’d rather starve. Even the birth of a new year is a grief, all erosion. In the spring, I’ll plant lavender and scatter an heirloom wildflower mix around the shed. How can I send you a poem without carrier pigeons? Who is next on the extinction list? The future greys, as do our days. Fresh air gives me a hangover, and I am out of stamps. I’ve already swallowed them all. And I have already donated all of my letters to the crematory, their black smoke rising toward dawn. Alison Lubar is a queer, nonbinary, & mixed-race poet, who works to bring mindfulness practices, and sometimes even poetry, to young people. They’re the author of four chapbooks, two published in 2022, and two forthcoming in 2023. Find out more at http://www.alisonlubar.com/ or on Twitter @theoriginalison.

It’s like waking up in a goddamn freezer. I reach out from under my mound of blankets to shut off the alarm clock and the air spills in like a bucket of ice water, soaking my chest, belly, crotch, all the way down to my knees. I shut up the clock and pull my arm back in, huddled shivering under the covers—two old wool blankets and my childhood sleeping bag with the busted zipper, pulled all the way up over my head. It’s still not enough. Even worse I got classes today, first one’s at 8 a.m., and that bike’s gonna be a bitch to get started in this cold. Last night the housemates were shouting about “Single digits!” over the TV downstairs while I was getting my ass kicked by quadratic equations. Probably better get moving. I ain’t getting out of this bed in just a T-shirt and socks, so I reach down and grab my clothes half-ass folded on the floor. Feels like taking shit out the freezer. I try to warm ’em up under the covers for a few minutes, but all that does is make me cold, so I wrestle into ’em—underwear, jeans, a henley and sweatshirt over the T-shirt I slept in—cold air pouring in every time I move around under the covers. I need a shower, I can smell that, but it was too cold down in the bathroom yesterday and it damn sure ain’t happening this morning. I get dressed, but I’m still huddled up shivering under the covers when the old clock radio cuts on at my desk, between-stations static fading in to full blast as the glowing vacuum tubes warm up in the dark room—a little slower than most mornings. I tense up, flop the covers back, and polar bear out of bed to shut it off. My coming-apart old slippers are so cold they feel wet, and I pull on my old oversized hoodie over everything else. All them layers want to tangle up and twist as I’m freeing my armpit-length hair. My fucking water glass is frozen. Not quite solid like used to happen when my room was up in the attic, but as I’m tying back the wool blanket that serves as a curtain, pouring an icy draft down from my frosted window, I can see by the predawn light that it’s got like half an inch of ice on the top and a meniscus growing down the sides. I light a smoke, same as any other morning, then pick up my icy water glass and head to the kitchen. When I unlock the deadbolt that serves as my door latch I can hear Mark’s clock radio blasting K-92 loud enough to distort the little plasticky speaker. He hates Top 40. Sets it on that station to annoy him out of bed. In the tiny room at the front end of the hall, meth-skinny Kevin’s snoring like a fat man. He was fucking my ex for a while—she broke off our hookup after I’d had time to get good and attached to her and her two kids, after I’d decided to go back to school full time from a single creative writing class and she razzed me that she couldn’t wait to see my 4.0 drop—but the HIV test she told Kevin to get come back positive, and this is the ’80s so that pretty much scared the shit out of everybody and put an end to their hookup even though turned out he just had syphilis. Shame, cause from the sound of it they was fucking like wild animals there for a bit. It’s a little warmer downstairs where the heat is, but not by a hell of a lot. When we got the house it was just a oil burner under the hallway and the illegal gas grate in the living room, with the flue caps from the old coal stoves in the kitchen and upstairs. After the fire, we got central heat put in downstairs but still ain’t shit upstairs. I double back through the hall and the useless room into the kitchen. The cabinet under the sink stands wide open in the dark so’s the pipes don’t freeze, a pile of dishes in the sink because the dishwasher froze up a few years ago and spewed like a hundred gallons of water all over the kitchen. I click on the lightswitch and the fluorescent light in the false ceiling struggles to come on, wan and gray like a solid winter depression. I fill the old orange hot pot, the draft from the window spilling over my hands after we stuffed a bunch of towels and rags and insulation and shit in the gap between the window and the counter that was added later. I set the orange hot pot on the orange countertop my mom picked out, twist the knob to high, then go back through the useless room, through the tiny afterthought of a door into the bathroom. The light switch is so close to the door there’s a cutout in the plain-board doorframe for the switch plate. Don’t ask why the bathroom has a full-size door going to the back porch and a miniature door into the rest of the house. This place was a Sears kit, built when like Grover Cleveland was President and indoor plumbing was new. Rumor has it some folks refused to shit inside the house. Might have something to do with it. The fluorescent light in there also comes on gray and dim above the missing lens in the false ceiling. The light over the sink don’t even come on at all, it just glows kinda pink at the ends. At least the pipes ain’t frozen. Back in the kitchen I make myself a cup of instant coffee in the blue mug with the cheesy sand dollar motif, the one I like because it’s big and keeps things warm. There’s no milk in the fridge, just some leftover cans of beer, so I drink the coffee black, scalding the fuck out of my tongue on the first sip. At least there’s half a loaf of bread in the breadbox and half a bucket of cheap super-crunchy peanut butter in the cabinet above. That’ll do for breakfast and lunch today. Probably supper too, if we’re being honest. I make some peanut butter toast and get a second pot of water heating up when Mark comes shuffling in, dressed in a hoodie with the hood up, a clashing pair of sweatpants, a bathrobe over all of it, and his comical pink fuzzy slippers. “Good lord,” he says, his words a cloud of breath. I nod, chewing my gloppy breakfast. He looks at my steaming full mug and the hot pot just coming to a boil. “That for me?” “Yeah.” “Thanks man.” He grabs his usual mug and rinses it out over the crowded sink, then spoons in several spoonfuls of instant coffee. “No milk,” I say. He nods and reaches for the jar of powdered creamer in his cabinet. “Classes today?” he says, pouring the steaming water into his mug. “Yeah,” I say. “Gonna make it?” “Gonna try.” He looks out the icy window into the predawn gloom and shudders. “Good luck.” “What about you and Mike?” I say. “Y’all gonna get out and sell tools?” “I hope so,” he says. “We both need to make—” The phone rings on the wall beside my head, the bell painfully loud. I snatch the handset off the wall. “Hello?” “Jay?” It’s Mike’s voice, as if he heard us talking about him. “Hey Mike.” “Mark there?” “Yep.” I hold the receiver out toward Mark and untangle the pigtail cord as he takes it. “Hey Mike,” he says. I reach under the cord for my plate and stand up and take it to the sink. “…You sure?” he says. “…Well yeah, I know, but…” “…Did you talk this over with…” “…You sure we can afford…” “…Well it is your truck.” I can hear the resignation in his voice. “Okay,” he says. “See you tomorrow then. Yep. Bye.” He stands up and hangs the receiver back on the wall base, unsnapping the cord and letting it twist out of its tangles. “Guess not?” I say. “Guess not,” he says, snapping the cord back in. After trotting upstairs to add a layer of long johns and load my book bag, I clump back down to the flimsy table at the bottom of the stairs beside the door, where our big library table used to been before the fire destroyed it. I pull on my rain pants even though it ain’t raining cause they’ll help block the wind, pull on my heaviest wool-lined muck boots even though they’re hard to shift the bike in, layer a zip-up jacket and a double-breasted coat over the layers I’m already wearing, with a scarf wrapped to protect my neck and down under the plackets to help with the draft at my chest. Then I pull on my helmet sock, my hoodie hood up over it with my hair tucked down the back, and my silver-threaded thermal fabric gloves. The welder’s gloves go in my helmet for the moment as I grab my book bag and head out the flimsy front door into the shocking cold. Even just standing still on the porch, the cold creeps in everywhere while I’m strapping my book bag onto the bike. I perch the helmet and gloves over the top of the sissy bar, get out the old weathered and warped 2x10 that Mark and I use for a motorcycle ramp, and do the little ramp dance to get my bike down off the concrete porch and then up the two steps from our front walk to the sidewalk. With the board stowed back on the porch I go back up to the street for the long process of getting Baby started in this weather. Twist the petcock on, turn the choke lever to full, key switch on, step over the bike, and twist the throttle a couple of times before turning on the kill switch. I flip out the kick starter. Ain’t even trying the electric start in this cold with my weak-ass battery. And even though the CB-360’s engine is easier to kick than a bigger bike, getting it started when it’s this cold is gonna be a workout. They’re really not made to run in this weather. The house is my mom’s, the fisbo fixer-upper she bought in this shitty neighborhood after my dad dumped us all for another woman, the house three doors down from the apartment he was renting here in the town where his mistress lived, when Mom had nowhere else to go and no way she could afford to live where we was living in DC and support two kids on her temp-nurse’s wages and somehow no child support. Then a few years later, after I was out of high school and working full time (making minimum wage) and Jimmy was either living with Dad or locked up again (I don’t remember which), one day Mom said, “You know, I got married with an instant family when I was barely twenty and I’ve spent thirty years raising seven kids and I never got to have a teenage rebellion because I had other people depending on me and now I don’t have to worry about that anymore—and I think It’s my turn,” and she packed her backpack and flew over to wander around Europe for like six months, and then my brother in Seoul flew her to Korea to live with him and his wife and his kids and their other grandparents for a while, and meanwhile I got into it with my little brother because I didn’t know no better than to try to talk to him about the crank he was tweaking on while he was tweaking and I got so pissed off I tried to deck the fridge but the fridge kicked my ass, and then I had my hand in a cast and I couldn’t work and I was late on an insurance payment on Mom’s bug and so they yanked the insurance but kept the money order and there was no way to get the insurance back without her signature but she was in like France stomping grapes or some shit so the car was uninsured and I had to take off the plates and we couldn’t leave it on the street and we couldn’t legally keep it in the backyard because we ain’t have a garage and there was literally no legal option other than rent a storage unit somewheres and get the car towed which woulda cost a shit ton of money I ain’t have and so it just sit in the back yard hoping we didn’t get a citation for it but leastways that ticket would be less than having the plates on it with no insurance. And I couldn’t drive it and I couldn’t ride my bike because you can’t twist the throttle too good with a cast from your fingers to your elbow, so weren’t much for me to do but sit around the house or walk down by the river and think about shit—and really I owe all the credit to Jimmy because maybe he ended up back in the pen but if it weren’t for all that time to think I might not have ever gone back to school like this, where I might be dead broke, and I might be hungry and skinny, and I might be riding my little-ass motorcycle to class in fucking seven-degree weather, and I might be scrounging change to put gas in the tank, but at least I got a Pell grant covering my tuition and books at the community college and a Sunday job driving newspapers and I’m working toward something other than minimum wage with no insurance or paid vacation making money for Collegiate Pacific’s stockholders. I’m sweating in the cold by the time I finally get the damn bike to start and stay running. I light a smoke and nurse the throttle with the choke on almost full for a few minutes, the engine threatening to die again at any moment, the little brap can mufflers that was all I could afford probably pissing off the whole neighborhood at 7:30 on a damn Wednesday morning, a cloud of vapor that smells like a gas station all around me, until the engine gets warm enough I can take my hand off the throttle without it dying straightaway. Then I pull on my helmet—the snap-on visor fogging up instantly—pull on the welder’s gloves, and clunk the bike into gear. It’s cold enough that even after warming it up like that I have to nurse the throttle as I pull away from the curb, and even with the long johns and the rain pants, the cold air rides up my crotch and it almost immediately feels like my balls are in ice water. It’s like four miles to Virginia Western. I can get from home to classroom in 15 minutes on an ideal day, but this ain’t an ideal day. The bike’s almost too stiff to shift as I ride out through the neighborhood, over railroad tracks and the river that has ice on the banks despite its fast current, past the gas station where I fumed out one morning on the way to class, went to switch to reserve and realized I was already on reserve, tried to bum some change for gas and learned just how quickly a guy can become invisible when he needs help, and then literally cried when a dude said “You’re trying to get to class? Fill it up, man, I’ll get it with mine.” The low spot beside the lily pond on Brambleton is always colder than anywhere else along the way. You don’t notice those things in a car but you do on a bike. Today there’s this weird frost I’ve never seen before, almost like everything grew a white beard. There’s one motorcycle parking area on campus, down in the big parking lot along Colonial Avenue, which the campus rises above on the hills on both sides. There’s usually other beat-ass bikes like mine parked there, but not this morning. My right eye watering in the cold wind, tears literally frozen on my eyelashes and soaking the front of my helmet sock, I park the bike, pull off my welding gloves and my helmet, and my hands are shaking when I light my before-class cigarette. My cold knees creak like I’m a lot older than twenty- one as I walk up the forty or so steps to the building my class is in. First class is freshman English. When I told my mom I’d decided to go to the community college she said I could use her old manual typewriter, from the one semester she was in college before my dad charmed the pants off of her and she dropped out to get married. That first formal paper that had to be typewritten, clean cut Mr. Capps looked at it when I set it on the desk, asked if I’d typed it on a manual typewriter, and when I said yeah he penciled an “A” at the top of the page without even reading it. Next formal paper I’ll write for him, the five-paragraph descriptive essay, will be about how old houses are cold. This morning as I’m in the room unbundling all my layers and loading them into the chair-desk beside me he walks into the room in his greatcoat and toboggan, smiles at me, and says, “You made it! I did not expect to see you this morning.” Jay Parr (he/they) lives with his partner and child in North Carolina, where he's an old alumnus of UNCG’s MFA in creative writing, and an NTT-for-life lecturer in their nontraditional humanities program. He's honored to have work published or forthcoming in Reckon Review, Bullshit Lit, Identity Theory, SugarSugarSalt, Roi Fainéant, Five Minutes, Anti-Heroin Chic, Dead Skunk, Discretionary Love, Streetcake, and Variant Lit.

The flakes of your love keep landing on my bare skin and dissolving before I can collate them. Two clutches I’ve salvaged are already turning to dirty slush in my hot, sweaty hands. I want more, so I can patchwork it all into some monstrous tribute to/cheap clone of you. Build a screwed up, Calvin-and-Hobbesque snowman of you. But it is late Spring, it has long stopped snowing, and everyone but me is done with the cold. Allison Thung is a poet and project manager from Singapore. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Chestnut Review, ANMLY, Maudlin House, Lumiere Review, Emerge Literary Journal, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @poetrybyallison or at www.allisonthung.com.

the sun’s a long yellow scarf pull it down to dress warm for the chill

The bumble bee did not know that winter had begun until he woke in the mouth of a tulip, her petals glossed over with ice. He bumbled around on the inside, tried to shake the ice off of her so he could escape. He did somersaults and spins, and tickled her many tongues with his wings in hopes she would sneeze. But he was not strong enough, and the tulip was sleeping – no, the tulip was dying – with the bumble bee her unwilling companion into oblivion. That she had survived this long was a miracle, but winter was not known for its mercy, and the tulip would not survive. The bumble bee would not surrender. He plucked the tulip’s tongues out one by one and wrapped them about his body until he was a flower-scented mummy. For the next several months, the bumble bee sucked the pollen slowly from the tube-like tongues that kept him warm, and he wept and slumbered and wished that the sun would warm him despite the snow; he dreamt of apricity. He did this as the tulip’s tongues grew straw-like and brittle, as she slowly shrunk around him. One day, the sun loitered right above the tulip that held the bumble bee. She reached down and bopped the tulip with her finger, and the bumble bee came tumbling out. The sun’s warmth made him fuzzy and drunk on glee. The bumble bee thanked her with a spin and said goodbye to the tulip. Enchi is a current student at Johns Hopkins University who loves all-things horror, dystopian, and surreal. You can follow them on Twitter @enchienchilada.

The ink was dry, she could see that, but Army decided to give it another minute before folding the paper. Smudges wouldn’t do. Without a delivery or return address, her letter wouldn’t reach its remote recipient, basically fated to end up as junk mail by an irate postal worker and their pitiless stamp. And yet, Army had enjoyed the inspired exercise, glad to have given herself over to the initial impulse and feeling a glimmer lightened thanks to it. Maybe she’d do it again when the helplessness found newer and harsher ways to reduce her. Army was blowing delicately on her handwriting, scanning the unvarnished words and visualizing their intended audience, when Elijah galumphed out of his room. He scripted quite a lot - it wasn’t nonstop, but it was frequent enough to warrant a mother’s anxiety. Whether he was delivering the lyrics of a song, acting out a movie scene by scene, or reciting one of his books from memory, Elijah was seldom quiet. Thank goodness he at least had a sweet voice. Everyone copes, Army speculated, single moms and only children included. Most times they have one another, but now and again they have nobody. Elijah would stagger over in the middles of most nights and clamber up on Army’s far too big, far too cold California King. The way Army figured it, there’d be a day when Elijah would stop coming to bed, stop smelling like a cloud from Heaven, stop letting her so near. So they’d goof off a smidge and then fall asleep entwined, as it had been in the earliest of beginnings. This helped shrink the largeness of her loneliness. That morning, though, Army woke up by herself. She’d waited and waited, but he never came to glow in the gloom. Elijah was singing the entirety of Let it Be and had reached “I Me Mine” when he plodded round the corner, pudgy arms swinging left to right, right to left. Classic Elijah choreography, Army was learning, his way of telegraphing boredom and a desire to be rid of it posthaste. From where she sat, he was bigger than life, though he stood only three and some feet. “I want no school today! I don’t want to school, Mama.” Elijah made this all the clearer with a stout, wagging finger. There was no whine in his voice, just emphasis. “No school, honey,” she agreed. “No more Miss Daisy.” “Bye-bye, Miss Daisy, anymore!” triumphed Elijah. “But I am going to find you a new school soon, OK?” “Mama, can we say what are you doing?” “I wrote a letter.” “Can I read it?” he inquired, his arms no longer swinging but outstretched. Her face ticked in hesitation, enough for Elijah to comprehend. “Elijah will use gentle hands,” he confirmed, intoning one of his many mantras while accepting the letter into a pair of perfectly sculpted palms. “Promise me, Elijah. Listen, please, and be so gentle." Army wasn’t foulmouthed by practice, so she was shocked when the words fucking shit slipped under the fence of her mind and went snapping towards Elijah. But she bit back then and controlled herself, choosing instead to watch the shredded missive float to the parquet floor and heap around Elijah’s chubby toes. “Elijah… honey, you need to listen next time, OK? I told you to be gentle.” The wheeling helplessness again asphyxiating her body and diminishing her soul. Elijah would never hear her. They never do. He would only continue to- “OK, Mama, I will listen,” he said, stunning Army. The boy turned, scripting the title track from the final Beatles album as Army collected the torn bits of paper. “Yeah, yeah, let it be, kiddo,” she said. Army had no wish to post a taped and tattered letter, so she rewrote it. The words, once frozen in ink, didn’t make her problems dissipate. On the contrary, they were laid before her, bare, on a single page. And they seemed small. Her pictured pen pal was also a single mother to an only child. She had been with Army always, an immortal portrait that saw her through from childhood to womanhood to parenthood. Army decided against wasting a stamp. Instead, she said a prayer. With careful cursive, for her hand was atremble, Army ribboned a name on the crisp envelope and imagined it traveling the crunched roads of Nazareth, maybe crinkling over time, where it would land upon the windowsill of Mary, mother of Jesus. *** “Armenoohi, you are late,” stated Ofik, the tiny woman at Army’s front door with crossed arms and wrinkled nose. “I know, Mom, sorry. I was talking with Elijah’s OT. He had a really good session, actually, and they were doing this-” “Oof, why do you waste your time with that? Oh-tee, you tell me, speech therapy! They are lying to you for your money. Only God can help with-” “If you can’t, I don’t know, tie your shoes, someone’s gotta teach you, right? You have to learn. Or do you think God will stop everything he’s got going on and come tie them for you?” “Watch your mouth, shameless! Who raised you as heretic, hah?” Army remembered her letter then, and Mary. Had the Holy Mother ever felt exasperated by Holy Motherhood? A handful of days had come and gone without mail from two thousand years ago and while no mail from two thousand years ago would come, Army had faith. “You should take him to see Father Movses,” advised Ofik, claiming omniscience more readily in her ascending age and wielding it freely. “Why?” “For help.” “Jesus, he’s not possessed, Mom, he’s- he’s just a kid who-” “Your mouth!” Just a kid who needed fine tuning, Army was trying to say - it’s what the pros told her, anyway. But each time Elijah swiped a paw or swung a fist at his helpers, Army choked, the ruthless thumbs of humiliation and inadequacy crushing her brittle windpipe. “Mama, can I have pancakes?” asked Elijah from the lawn. “Of course, baby. Do you want to be my sous-chef?” “Ye-yus!” answered Elijah as he got to his feet, dry grass clinging to his round knees. Army adored him in shorts, the contour of his thighs leading down to his calves, somehow made smoother by a fine carpet of peach fuzz. His perfect chompies, she secretly designated them. Standing atop his stepladder, Elijah was pretty handy with the ladle and rather adept at flicking a whisk. It brought Army such a surge of pleasure to see her child succumb to the process of making pancakes, to still and do. She could see him down the line of time, cooking like this for his own family. Army poured the goo into the skillet and helped Elijah flip the flapjacks. “He should have it a healthy lunch,” Ofik offered. “This is healthy.” “I want to cut,” said Elijah, reaching for the knife. “No, sweetheart, that’s a grown-up tool. We’ve talked about this, remember?” “How this is a healthy lunch? All fat, sugar, nothing nutrient.” “I want to cut!” “Oh, Elijah, use your quiet voice, please. My ears hurt when you yell like that.” “Mama… can I cut, please?” Please came out pwiz. “Thank you, baby, good listening. I really wish you could, and when you’re big enough-” Elijah began to squawk, an abrupt litany of harsh chords which never failed to sink Army’s resolve. It had become her most hated sound. “No, Elijah, no that! You listen to Mama when she say no first time!” Ofik said. “Mom, that’s not what we-” “I want to cut!” screamed Elijah, clubbing his approaching grandmother. “Bad boy, Elijah! Being very so bad,” screeched Ofik, matching his volcanism. “Hey!” yelled Army as gray filmed over her sight. “Absolutely not, we only use-” Too fast to stop, Elijah yanked the knife from the cutting board and slashed it down on the steaming food. “Can I want to cut pancakes!” The kid’s shrieking pumped Army’s head with helium. She needed to pop the thing off her shoulders and toss it rolling across the avenue and down the street, where this animal wailing would become faint and maybe vanish altogether. “Elijah, honey, let’s take some calm breaths together, please.” Army began her slow inhale as she inched closer and closer with hands poised. “I no want breath no more!” he replied, the lunch a sloppy confusion. Army brightened her voice and pitched it higher. “Ooh! I have an idea, Elijah! First, Mama cuts the pancakes, then we watch Sesame Street. First, pancakes, then, Sesame Stre-” Elijah whirled around at the promise of his favorite TV show, slicing the knife through space and across Army’s wrist. Upon seeing blood flow down his mother’s arm, Elijah dropped the knife. “Mama, are you OK?” “No!” she barked at him, sharp and short. Tears pooled and Elijah placed his hands behind his ears, another coping strategy. In spite of her son’s excruciating exposure, it had come too late. Army couldn’t smother her bellowing. “You hurt Mama, Elijah, you hurt me very badly! You cut Mama’s wrist!” During her nine months, Army was cautioned by a succession of women that pregnancy would sow a terrible power which she would reap after the harvest of birth. She filed the warning away as merely another tale wives tell. Until that moment. Frightening clarity prised her apart and delineated the difference between motherly intuition and genuine telepathy. Army could see Elijah’s quaking thoughts through his shimmering eyes. He was scared of her monster face and wanted it gone. In between a mouthful of blubbering, he began to speak the words to one of his beloved Beatles tunes, hoping to calm his Mama and make her happy again. But she was too weak to restrain herself, so she raged, and he wasn’t strong enough to keep from crying, so he sobbed. “Ok, Armenoohi, you go outside now. Go. I will take care of Elijah. Right, my boy? Come, come to Ofik Tati.” Ofik’s former frigidity melted in the fluid motion of her protecting embrace. Army wanted nothing more than to make it right with Elijah, but every single nerve in her body was pressing her to get out of the house. She listened to her remolded mother and turned away from her sniveling son’s sodden cheeks. Army hustled off, gripping her cut arm, when Elijah howled an endless Mama from behind her braided back. It was a far worse stabbing. Outside, Army’s skull shifted and moaned. Some of herself seeped out through a battened hand and splashed. Her breath was half-hearted, shorter and frailer with each huff. She was going to faint, she knew it, not from loss of blood, but of will. She was so tired. Before the cramping black tunnel could take her out absolutely, Army’s swiveling vision caught something, a shape, resting upon the garden wall. She shambled over to it and realized with stupid lucidity that it was a kind of envelope. Army trailed a red finger along its surface but the paper didn’t feel much like paper at all. The texture was coarser, as if composed of sandy beads rather than a single blank flatness, and fastened with simple twine. Army noted that she could somehow read the foreign letters scrawled across the parchment, her own name quilled in loops and angles she’d never before studied. One grand eureka flared up before darkness dragged Army down, and it was this: Mary wrote back! *** The Bible in Army’s hands was new, even if its contents were old. She seldom read the tome anymore, given her unique vantage point. But there was time before breakfast, and the kids were playing in the back, so she cracked it open. Army fiddled through her purse for a cheap pair of off-the-rack readers - as years wore off the calendar, so too did the muscle of her eyes. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Why would a newborn need gold, frankincense, and myrrh? Mary posed this very question to Army in one of their earliest exchanges. No one had brought her a thing other than the unsolicited mantle of motherhood. The scene itself, as captured in the Gospels and memorialized on Christmas lawns, was wholly accurate. The men who’d trekked across barren deserts under the guidance of some silly star barely acknowledged Mary, who’d been skittering around consciousness on bales of sour smelling hay. She was given short shrift, seen as little more than a womb, much less a mom. Actually receiving replies from Mary was shock enough for Army, but strip away the raiments, type up the stories in English, and the chasm between millennia would shrink to a crack. Mary’s frustrations were shared not only by Army, they also blighted an appalling number of women. “Grandma, whatcha reading?” “Hmm?” Army reentered the living room and the passing present. Her granddaughter was blurry so Army removed her pharmacy specs. “All the better to see you with!” “Big Bad Wolf!” giggled the little girl as Army stole her into a hug. “Yes, Vashti, and I’m going to eat you!” That carefree laughter teased a fresh species of bliss from Army’s soul. Vashti’s small hands clutched Army’s slate-colored hair and the flash of pain sent her flying back three decades. She was grabby, like her dad. Army rose and kissed Vashti atop her head. She followed her granddaughter into the kitchen where Elijah was plating their pancakes and singing a song to himself. Any stranger witnessing this wouldn’t blink twice at the scene. It was something normal. But a kid doing it? That steamrolled the naturally pressurized process of childrearing to a blister. Army thumbed her scar, the one Elijah had given her by mistake. The accident took place on the day when Mary’s first reply appeared. And that’s what it did indeed do: it appeared. The makeshift envelope occupied a slice of space where a moment before there had been pointless vacancy. What made Army weep with relief was Mary’s confession that Jesus also scripted - though the way Army’s brain translated the magically penetrable Aramaic was scriptured. From Genesis to Malachi, the scamp wouldn’t stop - couldn’t! It would drive Mary berserk. Army laughed out loud while wrestling with her tears. Turned out too that both boys gnawed their mothers’ nipples bloody and raw while breastfeeding. When a blushing dawn stirred Army from the best sleep of her life, Mary’s letter was still on the nightstand. The helplessness which permeated those budding years was replaced by different-natured worries: will he make friends, how are his grades, should he try sports, does he have any artistic leanings, can he figure out how to shave, is he going to college, won’t he ever just listen, who is this new girl, can we afford a wedding, are they ready to buy a house, will he be a good dad? Have I been a good mother? Army didn’t discuss or dissect these things with such fervor as she did with Mary. Each sentence formed a rising staircase to the bowing frame of Mary’s portrait, the very one that had kept watch over Army all her life. The Holy Mother stepped free from the fixture of suspended animation and became an everyday mom. Army read nothing about any fantastical manifestations of his heritage, simply the things that would be unloaded off the stooped shoulders of any mama doing their duty. The correspondences were ordinary. That’s what made them special. Mary had only just begun to confide thornier developments in the latter letters. A sullenness would float up in Jesus's eyes that evidenced either growing pains or an awakening prescience of the man he was fast becoming. Mary was keyed into the situation and it was starting to scare her. Jesus stood at swords’ point between simmering anger and enormous love while Elijah designed landscapes for a living and inherited his grandpa's bad knees. Army finished every crumb of her only son’s breakfast and bid the family adieu. “I love you, Mom.” “Love you too, my honey.” They kissed goodbye and a dab of syrup stuck onto her cheek. Seeing him settled spoke straight to the deeps of her soul. Vashti begged Army to hang out and accompany them for an afternoon of apple picking. “Oh, my gosh, I would love that, little buddy, but not today. Gotta get in touch with a pal.” On the drive home, Army began to draft a letter in her head: at the small desk facing the north window, a fresh sheet of paper from the printer waiting to be marked, her favorite fountain pen at the ready. The last time she had assumed this position was the previous year, to tell Mary of Ofik’s passing. Before the cancer finished her, Army divulged the collected communication. She assumed the revelation might hush her mother into a happy death. But much to Army’s surprise, Ofik didn’t trust them to be authentic. For Army, the connection to Mary was nothing other than a matter of trust. A matter of faith. Writing that first, harried letter had been the best thing she’d ever done. Next to having Elijah, of course. “Mommy’s home, Boaz,” Army rang out as she locked the front door and slipped off her shoes. The cool of the parquet floor was a blessing but the chill of her kitchen tile was magnificent. Army planted herself for a second as the keenness crept its way up her body. After a second or an hour - time had become oilier during her eight years of empty nesting - she went to the fridge. The ring on her index finger pinged against the metal of the door handle and fluted a high D, Boaz’s favorite note. Army grabbed a carton of oat milk as the English sheepdog drifted in and exploited his eyebrows in a fashion that slew Army every time. “Oh, here,” she said, tossing Boaz a wad of string cheese. Libation poured, Army lifted the the cover of a cake dome. Boaz barked his fancy and caused Army to jump. She turned to admonish. “Now, Bo, don’t be ridiculous. Let’s use a gentle voice, alright? Almost made me drop this, silly mutt. You don’t get anything by barking, do you?” Army couldn’t help but grin - it was a shaggy Elijah. “Listen here: I’ll cut you up some chicken when we sit for dinner, understand? And in any case, it is a well known fact that you, sir, are no fan of coffee cake-” The frayed envelope on the countertop hadn’t been there a second ago. Her fingers groaned on their hinges and lost all strength, surrendering the glass to freefall. No letter of Mary’s had ever materialized inside the house. Always it was the garden wall. More, their arrival conjured feelings of gladness in Army. Today’s surprise placed in her heart a weighty angst. Did people attribute visions to the third eye? Army couldn’t remember, didn’t have the bandwidth in her gray matter to conclude. Whether it was her third, fourth, fifth, whichever eye, her aperture was tearing wide open, like it did in this same kitchen long ago. Army was seeing Mary, a hunched and twisted form clutching herself at the elbows. She was rocking, penduluming on pounded earth, the dust of it plastering her sopping mouth. Mary’s robes were heavy with blood, such quantities they had sponged. She had been similarly gore-covered when she became a mother, only then, it had been her own and it had meant life. Now, with each squeeze of herself, Mary’s hands wetted anew, freshets of her baby’s death dribbling crimson across her wan skin. She’d held him so close at both moments, his hopeful entrance and his hopeless exit, inhaling that first sweet breath and the final dying exhale. They’d killed her child, hammered him to a tree with dull and rusty nails for the pleasure of vultures. Army was hearing Mary now, understanding in the uncanny way she had for thirty years, and she was mumbling about how Jesus hadn’t listened, how he never listened, wouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t listen, how he never fucking listened. Army joined her tears with Mary’s and wreathed their cries into agonizing harmony. She wept for her companion, for the pain no parent should suffer, and for the foolishness of children. And then it stopped. The light outside hadn’t much changed and from her place on the floor, she could still see the angled tip of the envelope. She reached out a tremulous hand and seized the string of draping twine. Army read and reread and read again. They’re going to execute him. Please tell me what to do, Army. She got up and saw Boaz sitting there, whimpering. “Good boy.” She scratched the inside of his ear with an arthritic knuckle. There, faithfulness. The fulcrum Army’s entire existence depended upon. It had done away with her husband, it had brought her boy to bloom, and it had inexplicably led her to Mary. She knew that Jesus was meant to be sacrificed but how could she in good conscience tell Mary that? Certainly not as a mother and definitely not as her friend. Army took her oat milk and banged it onto the writing desk, facing north. She pressed pen to paper too hard and caused black ink to burst. Her motions were emphatic, razored strokes. Army implored Mary to take her son and run, to fade into the nighttime wilderness. She reminded Mary of her third cousin, the bounty hunter from Armenia who’d helped locate Jesus when he was studying abroad in Nepal. The man was resourceful and useful - contact him! Tell Jesus to wed Magdalene and give you grandchildren and just drop all that nonsense about God. He was her son and no one else’s. If Army took even a moment to proof her rant, she’d trash it for fear of perdition, so she stuffed it into an envelope and let it be. Army’s oatmilk had grown tepid, undrinkable. Ofik had been right: Armenoohi was a heretic. No, nuts to that. She was a mom. Army dropped her letter in the nearest mailbox as she’d done so many times before, not with a stamp, but with a prayer. She hoped he would do the right thing and keep Mary’s heart intact, as any son should. But Army no longer had such faith. She walked back home to Boaz under soft twilight. Robert Nazar Arjoyan was born into the Armenian diaspora of Glendale, California. Aside from an arguably ill-advised foray into rock n roll bandery during his late teens, literature and movies were the vying forces of his life. Naz graduated from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and now works as an author and filmmaker.

Most Days, Dystonia is a Background Hum Most days, dystonia is a constant background hum, Others, a Beethoven symphony But episodically, it’s a death metal concert– Neck muscles pulling so violently My teeth clash together. The tremors And spasms unrelenting, causing Fluid buildup in my face, drooping eyes My back a metal sheet, barely bendable I’ve experienced abdominal spasms So strong that I’ve thrown up, Rib muscles so tight it’s hard to breathe– Like an anxiety attack, and I have to Talk myself down: “it’s just the dystonia.” These are the things other people Don’t see. The DBT group therapist says, “With disabilities, radical acceptance Might be needed on a daily basis And it might involve accepting You see what others cannot see.” I’ve tried to rest today, only doing: The course evals, emails, laundry, Cooking, driving my teen to school, Out of spoons by 11 AM And the 2nd shift is coming: Driving kids to martial arts after dinner, The promised stop for groceries For the promised holiday party. The rest of the month stares me down. I said “yes” to too much, somehow. I want to say “yes,” again, and again. Yes to the holidays, yes to outings To concerts, walks, coffee dates, Teaching more classes, volunteer work– To life itself I think about all the upcoming “no’s,” Try to reframe them: Instead, I’m saying yes To afternoon naps with the cat Self-care, warm blankets, books Space to think, maybe Sometimes poems only come to me During the middle of a migraine. Sometimes I wonder: Are my good weeks the stolen ones? Or is dystonia stealing all the other weeks From me? The tai chi teacher in me Says…my life is equally Made up of both the good weeks and the difficult ones They don’t exist without the other. I look at the holiday cards accumulating From my spoonie penpals The ones who feel good enough To send them. They make me feel Less forgotten. And I know they’ll understand Both the words I’ll send someday And the silence in between. Composite Sketch Someday we'll be the last ones left To remember what life was like before internet, cell phones, smart phones, texting, social media As our parents' generation dies off Then it will be just us You said there was a magic to the frustration Of being a kid in the 80's & 90's , Of wanting more, knowing more was out there And that you had to wait to touch it "But," I said, "there was a slower pace of life And precious serendipity And don't you remember How when you hung out with friends or family No one was checking their phones?" Back then, it seems, to me We were either alone, or together Not so much in between And now we're mostly all alone together Most of the time Less alone And less together How in high school we'd stay til midnight at the Greek diner And no one's mom was texting No one was looking for us at all And you said, "that wasn't me Your memory's already unreliable We didn't even know each other then" And I said "That's because it feels like we've always known each other" And you often cite When I get all Luddite again That we met on social media And stayed in touch all these years via texting Not, apparently, by the grace of God And I say, "that wasn't me Your mind's already going We first met in person, I remember the day" And you said "That's because it feels just like yesterday when we met, I still remember us young." And I said, "do I know you? Aren't you the one with the kraken for an avatar? Do I know you at all? I know I used to have a thing for you But now I can't separate the online you From this person in front of me. Didn't I used to go to your house to play Mario Bros? It was just down the block." "No, no, that wasn't me at all. That was Davie, and like all the kids you grew up with He's not online, really. He's dead, or incarcerated, or working 4 jobs Or he has 12 friends on Facebook And hasn't changed his profile picture in 7 years." And I said, "I remember Jumping on AOL after every X Files episode To chat about it with a friend Even though I'd see him at school the next day That's my 1st memory of the internet I was 17 and it was all new Email was romantic The romance of it was in the extraneous Which has largely been cut out today." As for that X-Files friend, We still like each other's Instagram posts... Once in awhile. And I guiltily thought about how I checked my phone Precisely twice on our last walk in the woods (It's a pandemic! I'm a mom! What if my child got sick at school?) And I silently vowed to myself Not to check my phone even once The next time we were together 2 Gen Xers Who'll someday be the last ones left. Just a Bird I message you and tell you I need to talk to you about death That I have some questions I'm walking in the city we've met in so many times There are sirens going by And there's a sidewalk that goes to nowhere I'm walking in the street I've had to park far away Things look different but yet the same but yet different All the parking rules have changed The mailman is the only other one out And looks at me questioningly, not unkindly Like I'm a curio shop novelty Who's left a window display To sashay grandly down a mythical American lane In a ruffled frock and swinging a parasol About to break out into song and dance like in a Hollywood musical I think about all the things we did when we were young How you biked across the city to meet me Almost getting your ass kicked at a stoplight How hard I laughed when you recounted the tale How many things we laughed off Back then That don't seem funny at all now That permeating undercurrent of hard-edged menace That was a constant childhood companion That sometimes gave our lives The thrill of danger, adrenaline-- There's a continuous wall of traffic And I patiently wait for traffic to clear or cars to stop In my twenties I would confidently walk out into any traffic Making it all halt These days Maybe it's the age of distracted driving Or the sheer increase in the number of vehicles on the road But it's at least in part the growing chronic awareness Like a fly buzzing around my head Of my health, my limitations, my mortality, my chronic pain I'm not so confident crossing the street anymore I thought women were supposed to become more confident with age But these days I think about how much more fragile things seem The world, our health, our bodies Life of all and every kind The older I get, The more I feel everything constantly hangs in the balance Here is a long, curving hill with a narrow curb I always used to walk on as a child, balance beam style I do it again, and don't falter, barely looking down But the vague image of twisting an ankle Is pounding at the gates of my mind Whereas at 4 or 5 years old All I thought about Was how magical the trees and rocks looked all the way down Dirt flies into my eyes Somehow getting past the barrier of my glasses But it's still COVID era and I don't want to wipe my eye without hand sanitizer But hand sanitizer will burn my eye So I walk with the dirt rubbing my eye And I think about how It takes my eyes a lot longer to adjust to the light But also to the dark I think about the last time we walked On the lake bluffs A blackbird flew out of the brush Into your face, hissing, And you started, though I thought Nothing in nature could faze you "Just a bird," I said As gently as I could.