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The gas station is holding a squirrel cooking contest (prize: a plaque and a taxidermied squirrel trophy). It’s wearing a little flannel jacket– the squirrel, not the gas station (if the gas station were wearing a coat, it’d be a beat-up beige Carhart, with specks of motor oil and a flask duct-taped to the interior). You take your dog into the gas station– not the motor-oil-wearing-flask-taping-Carhart one, the nicer one around the corner, with the orange Welcome Hunters! banner and the 10-cent dog treats, the one where USPS drops the mail— and so you take your dog into THAT gas station, and they know him by name (Lil’ Pup). He’s six-months old and sixty-five pounds, feet pounding prints in the snow, and you could swear that they’re from a bear. A Great Pyrenees, like everyone has around here (you like to remind him he’s not just a good pyrenees, and he likes to remind you that he’s your best friend– like you’ve got many other choices, but still). Cold-hardy, hardy enough to at least put up a fight with anything else that lives out here. Tough dogs for a tough place, except when the neighbor’s 120-pounder gets out and pads down the road, crosses the train tracks and gets side-swiped by some hunter’s ATV, then bunkers down under a pine for a few nights. It’s getting down to ten degrees, and the whole community turns out, little foster-children girls crying this dog’s name (Tucker), peering into the woods, holding their own pups close at night, weaving fingers into fur that’s denser than snow drifts. And while the little girls are cuddling their dogs, yours is out hopping around in the snow, chasing down the neighbor lady, who’s yoked herself to a sledge and is cross-country skiing down the road, toddlers tugged behind her. The whole street is holding its breath, waiting on you to buy a plow truck, because they’re digging their way to the main road by hand, gloves patched with duct-tape, the geriatric wielding shovels like walkers. So you’re stacking firewood all day, hoping that burning that will save you from burning dollars, what with the weather this cold, and now your overalls are crusted in dirt from rolling logs on hands and knees, a method you switched to after your legs gave out, after your shoulders were so bruised you could barely keep anything hoisted onto them. All that, and you haven’t even put in the wood stove yet. You leave your overalls in a heap by the front door– no sense washing them– and pour a glass of whiskey, hope your kidneys don’t give out the next day (they do), and watch darkness sink into tracks criss-crossing the fields. You message your mother about squirrel-cooking recipes, make a joke about your cousin (Stanley), and wait for the reply. Selena grew up in the woods, making things. Now, she lives on the prairie with her husband and their 18 very excellent chickens. She still likes to make things. You can find her work in Cheap Pop and Autofocus, or find her online at selenalangner.com.

Father threw me off the sailboat, gripped the rudder with his left hand, did something with the rope in his clean, right palm. The boat swung around and went away, leaving me cold, kicking, sinking. Mother waved from the shore in white shorts and the blue-striped tee she had sewn in preparation for the trip. Sister, naked except for the diaper that sagged to her knees, squatted on the beach, shook her head, no, no. Come back, Katie, thought Sister at me. Sister picked up a handful of coarse sand, threw it. Each grain of sand became an animal in flight, a bird arcing and falling; several hundred sparrows swooped in the air over the lake, leveled their beaks to the surface to scoop a small, brief ring from its plane. Several hundred sparrows collected gray lake water in their bills, then spun, vanished into their own cool shadows. How many birds were required to drain the lake so that I might live? I didn’t know. I urinated, and the warmth felt good on my thighs. Come on honey, swim! called Mother. She held her arms out, fists raised. Sister sat on the beach, shook her head, no, no. Sister threw more and more sand at the water while I shivered, kicked. Eighty yards beyond me, Father fumbled with the rope in his clean right palm and swamped the boat. I could hear the tone of his curse but not the words. It wasn’t long afterwards that I was up in the sky, watching myself—my little chin above the lake’s surface, hair fanning behind, legs treading stiffly. I had no desire to return. Instead of reentering my body, I drifted toward the farther shore, where, up on a small rise in the mixed pine forest and in between three crisscrossed fallen trees, I found a boy crouched in front of a squat, concrete obelisk. The boy was about my age, possibly younger. He had straight brown hair that flopped into his eyes. The boy held a rusty nail in his right hand, pointed at me, then to the obelisk, a shape I had never seen before. Is it magical? I asked, and the boy nodded, crouched low, and scratched the image of an eye into the obelisk’s east-facing surface. When I asked him what he was doing, he pointed to a winter deer coming at us on the path; the deer had this bulbous, leathery growth on its face, and it approached us so closely that I thought it must be blind. Rain fell in the leftover spaces. The deformed deer picked its way along a chain-link fence containing a private graveyard. Let’s go, said the boy, and stood up. He threw the nail into the woods; it was then that I saw that the boy carried a plastic bag containing a brown box pillow—it looked to belong to someone’s sofa. I followed the boy along a gravel path until it split. The boy pointed to the path with the steeper slope. Does this path lead to the water? asked the boy. It’s a secret, I said. Then the boy pushed me to the ground, covered my mouth with the pillow. His hands were around my neck, too. Stop hitting me, I said. His hands softened, became my mother’s. Mother wrapped me in a large white towel and draped me over her lap in the front seat of the station wagon without a seatbelt and with the heat on high. At the cabin, I took a scalding shower, stole a bottle of vanilla extract, drank it in two gulps, and slept on the nubby brown sofa while Sister waited for me to thank her for saving my life. Sister squatted next to me and rubbed my chest: wake up, Katie! Hands on my legs and my feet, hands lifting my own above my head. What’s wrong with her? asked Mother. She’s pretending, said Father. He opened the front door—it was a knotty pine, flimsy. The sun was setting at the bottom of a hill behind the two small timber frame cabins across the way. The radiator whistled and the record skipped. On the carpet, Sister squatted rhythmically. I remember the low thud of the drums—da-da-da-da, da, da-dum. I remember the scratch of the needle on the record, and I think now about how difficult it is to describe what it is that I felt then. How we laughed at my sister, my small dancing sister, while she scowled, set her chin and clenched her fists, squatted deeper and with great control! She can do things with her body that no one else can do, said Father. A little of this, a little of that, sang Sister, and Mother turned to stare. Sister sang that song in a low voice, a man’s voice. A little of this, a little of that, sang Sister, squatting and bouncing. My parents approached each other, nodding, fingertips out, as if to dance. My father didn’t believe in God, said Mother. She touched her husband’s left hand with her right. My father didn’t believe in factors outside of his control, though everything was, said Mother. I’m sorry, said Father. This ambition, this arrogance. This testing of the world—what if you two had been alone out there? asked Mother. You’re a good swimmer, said Father. I should divorce you tomorrow, said Mother. I lifted my head off the brown, nubby arm rest and saw Father standing in the doorway of the small cabin, saw Father sitting in the sunfish on the lake, sailing away, away. Holding a rope in his clean palm, he looks back at my small wet head sunk to the nostrils forty yards from shore. The dry green leaves and the new evergreen shoots of the tree line on the far shore, they wink. Come back, Father, I gasp, but he’s off to the races toward the farther shore, doing something with ropes, and cursing. Looking back at me, looking at his hands, looking at the sky. Do it! says Sister, and she throws a fistful of sparrows towards me with her left hand. Several hundred sparrows arrow across the brown-gray water, swarm my eyes. Don’t ever forget the this and the that, sister whispers into my ear. She smells like sunflowers. I have a headache and my cold legs pain. Mother screams on shore, a hoarse and bloody noise. Mother’s fists in the air, white shorts wet now in the cold brown water. Mother dolphins into the space between us. Swim, Katie! Sister’s fingers in the coarse wet sand, flinging fistfuls of sparrows across the water to save me. Several thousand sparrows coalesce, transform into a large, diamond-shaped fish with blue and white stripes; it bites me on the neck and rafts me to shore. Years later when I was a teenager and no longer lived in that cold place but in another place nearly as cold, I would come home from doing the morning paper route and run hot water in the porcelain bathroom sink. I would perch on the countertop with my cold feet dangling in the hot basin, sipping vanilla extract. The thaw excruciating, joyous. Barbara Lock is a writer, editor, teacher, and physician. Her work appears in Invisible City, Superstition Review, Cold Signal, and elsewhere. There's more about her at barbaralock.com

John Stanley had a tear-off monthly calendar, the kind auto-repair shops give away. He’d taken off the cardboard backing or it had torn off, leaving a stack of paper the size of a business card stapled twice at the top. He kept it in his breast pocket. When I learned the date, I felt better. Each time I picked out John’s shape, standing as though he had one leg short a few inches, I’d ask. Even if I already knew. I did the math over and over. The Chinese were clever. Endless. They’d swoop down the frigid night, clanging and hooting deafening, confusing, banging off the ice, cracking and whipping flares flaming, trailing, staining the center of our vision. We could barely aim. Didn’t know where to aim. We thought of our deaths only when the first line topped the mountain ridge, bugles, horns, whistles blowing. By the fifth or sixth wave, they climbed over bodies three high. We didn’t think about death anymore. Just running. “Shooting fish in a barrel,” someone said. General Smith said, “Gentlemen, we’re not retreating. We’re just advancing in a different direction.” Night temperatures negative-eighty wind chill. What negative eighty feels like, couldn’t say. That low, you can’t feel anything. When we got there, we had different ideas. No doubts. We’d crushed enemies in two world wars—two fronts, the second. We’d do it again. Then we met Korea. Fell back from jump. This Patrick kid, though. Two weeks in Chosin, 10,000-plus forms slip-sliding down valleys past mountaintop encampments of Chinese with machine guns and mortars, longest retreat in American history, constant chaos, rarely saw the same guy, but this Patrick kid, always this Patrick kid. Somehow. Dirt’d settled into hollows a face his age shouldn’t have had. In the dark, you couldn’t distinguish the blue of his irises, pupils holes in his skull. He talked. Even in the fighting, he’d talk. Then we’d return to pick up the dead, throw them on trucks. Half-naked bodies congealed midmotion, struggling to get up when turned to ice or pedaling feet and beating arms when their world froze. The Chinese would loot, then retrench. No appropriate clothing for the weather, either side. And Patrick, he’d talk. About his eighth birthday party, say. The cake, a frog a neighbor’d whittled, his mom’s flowers. Generic man in overcoat, hood, helmet: “Shut up, kid. Just shut up.” Patrick said he’d meet the right girl in church, where his mom told him any boy’d do right finding a wife. Generic guy—same one, different one, same time, different time—pressed his eyes closed, looking inside. “Hey, Patrick,” I said. No one wanted talk about wives. “You know it’s December 20?” Then he’d go back to birthdays, maybe, about one year his fell on Sunday, about how that year he’d had a joint birthday–first communion party. Generic guy held himself on the edge of the truck: “Please.” Stories passed how someone’s nose dropped off. I carried awhile a soldier with legs frozen to midcalf. Later, a whole town of men front and behind, one guy stood so still I thought we’d stopped and he’d kept moving. I peered into his eyes. “I can’t feel my face,” he said. Patrick was talking about Christmas. Had been since I’d said it was Christmas Eve. Mom hung red glass globes. Dad bought flocked trees, the kind with powder snow. The soldier said, “I can’t walk.” We weren’t leaving the dead, so I grabbed him and had Patrick grab him. We got back in line. Five minutes or two hours later, the Chinese again. We held the soldier like a hammock, tossed him behind rocks. Found him again after. The adrenaline had warmed our ears to throbbing, screaming. Grenade’d got him. Pieces strung the rocks. Blood in the snow looks black until it fans, dilutes. Blood didn’t dilute much at Chosin. Froze first. Two-three days later, a valley. Blinding vastness. We’d slithered for days through serried mountain crevasses, peaks blocking the sky. Here men and trucks had space. Here we huddled. Felt safer. Could see things coming, we figured. The sun beamed but didn’t warm. The air breathed shallow. We had cold-thick skin, insensible limbs, fingers. Caravan halted to let laggers arrive, tighten the line. Some men talked. Most stared. We passed cigarettes, lighting them end-to-end. Down a ways, John Stanley stood alone. I lumbered up. Asked the date. He didn’t extract the calendar. He squinted into the sun. “December 30,” he said. His lips refolded around his lit cigarette; he held the index finger of one hand hooked over. The thumb rubbed the scarf snaking to his chin. Sister’s birthday, December 30. Until she died, I’d sometimes stand alone at her parties. Everyone had conversations about it with their eyes. John Stanley must have gotten my address from the Marines. He wrote how it’d been forty-five years and he couldn’t quit thinking about me. He didn’t mean me, meant “it.” Some people think talking pales ghosts away. Second paragraph, I dropped the letter behind my worktable. December 30 in Chosin, I stood with John Stanley and watched men, trucks slide into the valley. Black beetles, white landscape. Patrick stood catty-corner behind, talking about his past, or his family, or home. Soon enough we had a circle, each man looking into his distance. We adjusted and readjusted scarves and helmets. One man flung his rifle over his shoulder, hand gripping muzzle, stock pushing past neck. He had a dense brown moustache distinguishable from an unshaven face for its length, volume. The guy opposite me had his barrel in the snow; he leaned against the stock. This man said his feet hurt. All our feet hurt. All our canteens belted our waists. All our duffels hung from our shoulders or lashed our backs. Groups of guys at a short distance, bundled, clustered, a murder of scarecrows. A horde of boys stacked three-high under matching overcoats. Lumpy. Synonymous. My palm wrapped my hand guard, held the rifle against my hip. I moved to pass it across my shoulders, rest my wrists over the ends. Thumb looped the trigger. Rustling through the masses. I wondered at my firearm, the recoil in my wrist, elbow. Looked up. Out on one arm now, the guy who’d said his feet hurt. Our circle observed for a slowed-down time. The point-blank dot on his olive overcoat grew into a black half dollar. His mouth worked, teeth red. His jaw parted, stretched a sticky crimson line. Reaching fingers clutched the mustached man’s pant leg, one-arm wrenched up the torso, tumid eyes on a wobbly head seeking, needing, pupils vibrating. Scared. The guts let go. The cold air fell back for the warm smell. A moment. Then retrenched, shoved the remaining blood from his face. Snapped him to wax. Patrick flumped in the snow, an unsteady toddler. Stopped talking. The men looked at me, the lips of their helmets curling, exposing their eyes. Leslie Farnsworth has published short fiction, journalism, and essays in literary journals and national publications. To discover more of her work, visit www.lesliefarnsworth.com.

Roland Nevins adjusted the waistband of his shorts, rearranged his gut. There was a second band of flab down there these days, the skin a shade greyer than the rest of him. It was cold in his front room and goose pimples bumped beneath the liver spots. “All bought and paid for, Rollie. Sign of a life well lived,” said Danny the Neck. Danny had been there since 6AM, having drifted over from the festive lock-in at the Brown Cow. Waves of whiskey kept washing by, and Roland suspected his friend was there less for support and more to keep the hangover at bay for a few precious hours more. “Life well lived,” he replied, his smile faint. The sad thing was that his bulk wasn’t proof of anything beyond poor diet and exercise. A well-lived life would have seen his wife and daughter with him that morning rather than the neighbourhood alcoholic. It would have given him more than this inherited bungalow besieged by black-backed gulls. There had been times when he had been flush, it was true, times of high living and expensive dinners, but now he was stuck in an out-of-season seaside town, freighted with half-memories, mildew and adipose tissue. Roland Nevins. King of the polar bears. As he pulled on his towelling robe and hunted for flip-flops, Roland tried to count how often he’d done this event. The first time was in ’98, when Mira, his daughter, was still small enough to be swaddled and carried to the beach, her grandma fussing over her. There had been a few times he hadn’t taken part – six months in Pentonville, the aborted fresh start in Ibiza – but otherwise this had been a Boxing Day ritual every year since. At first it was a natural addition to the Christmas visit to his parents, and then a kind of remembrance after he moved alone into their empty home. And even though the crowds were smaller, and the horizon was dominated by wind turbines and the sea a dirty brown, it was still a thrill as he strode across the promenade down to the shingle. Danny the Neck stumbled along behind him, wafting in and out of commentary. “Will TV be there, do you think?” he asked, before breaking into a bronchial cough. Roland scanned the crowd. No sign of media, although that didn’t mean much. Mira had explained the workings of these fancy new smartphones during the last of their civil conversations, and it seemed like every other person holding their device up could be a reporter from the local paper or one of those websites. “Rollie!” A high-pitched squeal. Barbara Andersson. He had been to school with Babs, had spent his life bumping into her on shopping trips and hospital visits. She had never moved beyond the street of her birth and had the convict’s delight in seeing others come home. Babs was one of those women who would touch you instinctively and share local gossip without waiting for invitation. “Your beard looks majestic, Rollie,” she said, shivering in her swimsuit. “Like a king of old.” “I told him. He looks like Grizzly Adams,” said Danny. Barbara flinched when she noticed him, all too aware of the Neck’s reputation. Aside from Barbara and Danny, there were only a few other familiar faces. Devon from the Cow was there (changing out of his barman’s clobber right there on the beach, a towel for modesty) and Winston with the yellow eyes, still drunk from the lock-in. Blinker, who used to be a policeman, and Turkish Dave. Fewer in number than previous years and older. Not many supporters, either. Blinker had brought his family with him, which was a relief since children generally made this event feel less futile, although the two boys were both sulky and clinging to their mother’s legs. It wasn’t really their town any longer, Roland thought sadly. The Brown Cow was the last pub standing after The Dominion and Empire had given up the fight. People like Blinker and Devon were doing their level best to find work elsewhere, desperate to abandon the hopeless cases too rooted to escape. Hard to say who it all belonged to now. The hotels along this part of the seafront all had ‘No Vacancy’ neon glowing in the windows beneath the fairy lights, but they weren’t welcoming holidaymakers, not anymore. Instead, the Home Office stacked each one with asylum seekers in lieu of alternative accommodation and placed security guards on the doors. Runaway people from faraway places – Eritrea, Uganda, Afghanistan, Ukraine. Roland knew what his neighbours thought of the situation, heard their gripes in almost every other conversation. (“You should complain to the council,” Babs had said. “People respect you around here.” “We should get paraffin and some matches,” Danny slurred one time. “Give them a proper welcome.”) But why fight a losing battle? The tourists weren’t coming, not anymore, and the attractions grew shabbier year-on-year. They’d closed the crazy golf and the boating lake would be next. At least the hotels had found purpose, and the refugees a home, however frigid and temporary. Everything else was nostalgia and ritual. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the annual Boxing Day Polar Bear Plunge.” Turkish Dave was this year’s commentator, standing on a stepladder that had half-sunk in the sand. He had one of those portable speakers they use at street markets, although it seemed unnecessary when the throng was this sparse. “Our rules are very simple. The polar bears need to line-up behind the markers and wait for my whistle. You can only take the plunge in your bathing suits. No everyday clothes, please – no t-shirts or trousers,” he said. There was a groan at the back, some newcomer unused to the almost alpine conditions. “You can walk or run into the water, but no diving – it’s not that deep. If you see anyone get into trouble, make some noise, point them out. We have lifeguards ready to help.” Roland looked at the assembled support staff, jowly-looking men in Santa hats. He sent up a silent prayer that no-one needed them. “Keep your heads above water. No horseplay. When we blow the whistle a second time, you must get out.” That was smart, thought Roland. Last year, a foolhardy couple had tried to last more than 10 minutes out there, and an ambulance had been called. “Now, if I could ask our polar bears to assemble. As a reminder, we are raising funds for the lifeboats…” That raised a boo, from people so embittered they were offended at the idea of saving specific lives from rough seas. Roland shot the offenders a hard look, watched them go silent. “…for the lifeboats,” continued Dave, “so please give generously in the buckets.” Turkish Dave had done a decent enough job. Roland was pleased. He strode to the centre of the starting line, smiling as the others filed in behind him. Babs was there, jostling to be as close as she could, and Winston with the yellow eyes, breathing raggedly already. The collective noun for a pack of polar bears is a ‘celebration,’ but there wasn’t much to celebrate. Around 20 people in total, pink and vulnerable and exposed, and a fraction of what this event used to attract. “All right,” echoed the speaker, feedback fizzing at the edges. “I am going to blow the whistle in 10… 9…” Roland crouches into a sprinter’s pose, alive in the moment. He doesn’t move fast, he knows that, but people are generally happy to stand back and let him take the lead. He never has a heartbeat’s hesitation, never lets the anticipation of cold shock prevent him from experiencing it. “8… 7… 6…” For one intense instant, it feels like a bolt of lightning, each nerve ending suddenly alive and howling. Then your body compensates, redirecting blood flow to your core and away from the skin, pumping out dopamine to prevent a full shutdown. “5… 4… 3...” And the fact that he still does this, that people buy him pints in the Cow after and slap his back, is proof of something. He thinks of his ex-wife, his daughter, how proud of him they had been. That period of his life, when he was both father and son in parallel, was the best of times, he knows that now. It had to mean something that he could still do the plunge, could still show the world what he is capable of, despite everything it has taken from him. “2… wait, wait, wait.” Another group has arrived, latecomers. He hears Barbara’s angry tut, sees Danny the Neck try to remonstrate with them. It is a group from the beachfront hotel, younger than the polar bears by at least a decade, and darker, less vulnerable. They begin stripping, there on the beach, organising their clothes into neat piles on the pebbles. Men and boys who arrived by small dinghies, who risked drowning to get here, ready to face the sea again. “It’s not right. They can’t swim in their underpants,” says Barbara, but the men move with determination and outnumber the organisers by three-to-one. Roland sizes up the one he takes to be the ringleader. He is a big man, almost as tall as Roland himself, and built. There is a belly there, sure, but his arms and chest have a concentration to them, a tautness that speaks to years of hard labour. He has a beard, too, not as groomed and imposing as Roland’s perhaps, but capable of making a statement. He senses the crowd is waiting for him to pass judgement, can see Turkish Dave pause, the microphone limp in his hand. There are far more bodies on the beach now, a full colour palette of skin tones, and none of the newcomers are laughing or jostling, none of them are drunk from the night before or doing this for a dare. The ringleader turns and looks at him. There’s just this flash of connection, as Roland recognises the pleading in the man’s eyes, the urgency. He has a swirling pattern of old scar tissue on his chest, as though someone has taken a rake to a zen garden. “Let’s go,” Roland shouts, turning back to the waves as they break upon the shore. “We’re catching our deaths out here.” “OK. 3… 2… 1…” The pack moves with him, ready for the plunge, holding its breath in unison. After so much time, it feels like a celebration. Edward Barnfield is a writer and researcher living in the Middle East. His stories have appeared in Ellipsis Zine, Retreat West, Third Flatiron, Strands, Janus Literary, Leicester Writes, Cranked Anvil, and Reflex Press, among others.

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.