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I. Fill my belly with the arsenic and old lace. Let me carry you down the lane To the field where the flowers fled After the warm spring rain. I'll put my head against the old rocks And whisper an old song to you Lay we still all through this night And awaken fresh with golden dew. Tops and toys spin round marbles in dirt - In circles drawn with brittle sticks Against the meridian we tried to find But what is left to build with crumbled bricks? Find me - I beg you - tomorrow's morning Before you've boarded that creeping train And read me sweet words from magazines That soak down deep in sleeping veins. II. Raise high the tumblers until we tumble down From our waterbeds of barley and of rye. Those glass keys shall unlock the world And tumble it smooth as silken skin Of the arms and elbows that touch the table. Raise the cherry blossom to my lips - That they may find the sunken gold Beneath the waves and lace that try to hide My never ending want of you. III. All of the old ways are gone now Buried six feet down In an old apple crate and wrapped in muslin With the dead dog I put there last year. Don't cry, not now nor ever again Open your nostrils thick And breathe in the smell of the dirt Held by the chicken scratch that took root. Burn the old clothes now And bed sheets soaked in sweat and vacancy And send the plague beyond Near where we both know I belong. Near enough still is want Just beyond thickets of need And let the rain water the crops That in time will be cut and dried. Drive on in that phaeton Let it be pulled by the geldings Who wrap us in the twine that captures Everything we wish would fall away.

Sylvia Santiago's work has appeared/will appear in Bureau of Complaint, Crow & Cross Keys, Cutbow Quarterly, Honey Literary, and elsewhere. She lives in western Canada where she writes sporadically, worries frequently, and wishes upon stars almost never. Find her on Twitter @sylviasays2

Content Warning: this poem references mental disorders, disordered eating, and sexual assault. that afternoon the therapist said two words body dysmorphia that was all my ears could hear so I examined my thighs and I criticized the shape of my knees and I ignored her as she laid it all out there her words fell out of her mouth and into my lap a lap that always felt too much because the way that I feel when I sit bare-legged the vitamin deficiency that made little dots form the dry winter skin that made me grow scales the divots left from weight gain and loss because of course I never learned what health felt like body dysmorphia she went on for a few minutes and I imagined a swift 34 scenarios maybe if I didn't see my body the way it was maybe that means I can't hear the way someone says it maybe of course I can't trust my instincts on living maybe of course this was how my heart so often betrayed me maybe the body dysmorphia was how I didn't see anything how it was every single I love you every single compliment every single criticism that afternoon she gave me words for the part of me that explained all the other parts of me that were always at war with each other and every well-meaning person that had felt the need to make a comment of my changing body over the years like the year I only consumed peach iced tea and white cheddar popcorn until my shoulder blades became razor-sharp like the year I was assaulted in a bar and gained as much weight as I could so that men would stop addressing me with their hands and eyes like the year I surrendered the war and let my thighs breathe free because he said he loved every part of me before he could touch me body dysmorphia two words for all the ways we fuck ourselves in the name of control in the name of protection body dysmorphia for how we live in a body that carries more shame than cells for how my brain tells me lies about my thighs when really my thighs just hold the rest of me up all the trauma so I can stand so I can live so I can be loved so I can be here even on the days when I can't stand in front of the mirror especially on the days when I can't trust myself to see myself body dysmorphia two words for war and lies Margot Stillings is a storyteller, photographer and cocktail napkin poet. She resembles a housecat most days: paws bare on hardwood floors and lounging in sunbeams.

A small crowd of England soccer fans nursed plastic cups of local German beer while singing God Save the Queen. A couple of hours before kick-off the Munich riot police kettled the fans into a small patch of tarmac outside the Olympic stadium, and eventually the supporters became weary, falling into hopeless chants. Behind the armoured foot police were officers on horseback, looking formidable with vacant eyes masked by visors. “Keep singing, we’ve done nothing wrong,” Simon said to his sixteen-year-old son, Jonathan, who was smoking his fifth cigarette of the day. Both wore sweat-soaked England replica shirts, long shorts and sneakers. The sun beat down hard, singeing their exposed skin, turning it a deep shade of red. Simon had seen it all. He’d sunk pints in stadiums all across the globe and had followed his team to San Marino — the minnows of international soccer— to the Mecca of football in Brazil; the Maracanã. Now Jonathan was old enough, he could join his father on his soccer odyssey. “One World Cup and two world wars!” Simon yelled, but the police remained calm — a balmy breeze swirling around the captive fans, raising a flurry of dust. Simon got to his feet and took a few steps towards a mounted police officer. “Dad,” Jonathan warned. “Go easy.” Simon placed his head near to the horse’s nostrils and yelled, “No love for the other side. Die fuckers!” The horse twitched, whinnied and then reared up violently. The police responded by spraying tear gas from canisters, sending fans scrambling over one another, howling in pain. Simon and Jonathan’s eyes burned and streamed with tears and it wasn’t long before they couldn’t open their eyelids at all. Screams continued to erupt from fans all around but then suddenly everything became quiet — no noise from the England supporters, no ruckus from the advancing police. Simon yelled, “Johnny, reach out for my hand, I’m here!” But in the pitch black, there was no sign of Jonathan and for a split-second Simon had the strange fear he would never see his son again. Then there was light. Simon and Jonathan found themselves in an empty soccer arena, dressed in waiter’s outfits replete with serving cloths and platters of food. Before them were two football teams — the English and the Germans — seated at tables by the halfway line, wearing tracksuits, sipping orange squash from plastic bottles. Without being prompted, father and son served sushi to the footballers who tucked in with their hands, smearing soya sauce and wasabi paste across their faces. The footballers ate until they were stuffed and clutched their bellies from indigestion. A voice from the tannoy addressed the father and son, saying, “You must have valid tickets to be allowed in the stadium. Please show them or you shall be ejected.” “Oh, it’s like that is it you fuckers?!” Simon yelled, pulling out his tickets from his back pocket, waving them at the sky. “Here you go. But we won’t take this lying down. I’ll tell the British embassy! Don’t worry kiddo,” said Simon turning to his son, “We’ll get out of this somehow.” “Doesn’t matter,” sniffled Jonathan. “I’ve had enough.” “I know, I totally get it,” said Simon. “Clearly you don’t,” the announcer said, as the players crawled off the pitch and proceeded to vomit into the dugouts. “Jonathan hates the so-called beautiful game and everything to do with it. Why can’t you see that?” “Bullshit! Tell him that’s rubbish Jonathan.” “You wanna know the truth? Ok, I’ll tell you the truth. Ever since I was born, I’ve been forced to choose — the team over my girl, the team over my music, the team over my mates. The truth is I want to kill myself with cigarettes and booze because I hate you, the queen, and everything to do with bloody football!” As if waking from a lucid dream, father and son slowly prised their eyelids open, the crusty sleep in their lashes feeling like concrete. They were on a train shooting through the mountainous region of the Bavarian countryside with hundreds of other sulking England fans. They’d lost — defeated by the Germans. Simon gave a muffled and dispirited rendition of God Save the Queen while his nose was jammed up against an old man’s flabby armpit. Back at the hotel, Simon splashed some water on his face in the bar toilet, then got blasted on fourteen pints of English draught beer. Sitting on a stool he felt a lump in his back pocket. He reached inside and found a squished salmon and avocado maki roll. As he played with the chunk of sticky rice between his fingers, his mind was ignited with memories of gluttonous footballers staining their football kit with puke and his son crying while dressed in a waiter’s outfit, and although none of it made any sense, he thought maybe he owed his boy an apology, or a tearful hug. After one last pint, that is. Tim Frank’s short stories have been published in Bourbon Penn, Eunoia Review, The Metaworker, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Menacing Hedge, Maudlin House and elsewhere. He is the associate fiction editor for Able Muse Literary Journal and lives in North London, England. Twitter: @TimFrankquill

We didn’t think anything of it when the chickens started dying. There were always problems with animals hunting our birds. We lived on a farm in the middle of woodlands- there were coyotes, foxes, feral cats, other farm dogs, all kinds of creatures that would like to sink their teeth into our little egg factories. There was even the occasional weasel. It didn’t bother us too much- despite the fact that nothing had ever gotten them before, we started closing up the feathery nuisances a little more securely each night. We double-locked the door, added a piece of wood here or there, and made sure that every single chicken was accounted for and safely roosting in the pen before we went to bed ourselves. Nevertheless, we woke up to feathers and blood every morning for a week, and our flock was starting to look dangerously small. We would go out and the door would be listing to one side, a board would be wiggled aside or pried up, the lock would be twisted in on itself from the force with which it had been hit, a hole would be dug. Always something, every time. I noted the uneasiness of my grandparents at this reality every morning as whatever was killing our chickens was not in the slightest bit deterred by our locks and nails, but I thought little of it and assumed that they were upset about the loss of stock and good egg-laying chickens. It wasn’t until two of our bantam silkies were killed that my grandmother started to really get angry. The deaths of Fancy and Bilbo (the first her favorite, the second my own beloved dark-feathered hen) were too much for her to take lying down, and so she commissioned my grandfather to sit vigil in the truck outside one night, his shotgun in his hands. At the age of eight, I went along. I was too young, really, to understand what we were there to do. I understood that we were going to catch something that had eaten my sweet Bilbo, but it never occurred to me what the shotgun was for, the amount of blood that would be shed. Luckily, I was too young to make it long and fell asleep curled up beside my grandfather in the truck as he smoked and watched for whatever had been hunting to show up. I was never woken by a blast from his gun because the animal didn’t come that night, or the next night when he sat out there again. He ignored my grandmother’s wishes and slept in ‘his own damn bed’ the night after that, and we woke to find feathers and gore splattered across our doorstep, as if to say, look what I can do. My grandmother cleaned it, sour-faced and cold as my grandfather puttered around the yard, cursing. He replaced the hinges, put out live traps, poisoned food (and accidentally one of the feral cats that sometimes got into our trash), and still no wily coyote or clever weasel appeared and our flock decreased by the day. If he or my grandmother sat in the truck and watched, nothing was killed, but they had to work for a living and my grandmother was afraid of the darkness that crowded around the truck in the vigil she would have to keep alone. And so our chickens kept dying. My grandmother, in a fit of rage, stormed into my room early one morning, feathers in her hair and blood staining the sleeves of her blue shirt. We are going to move these damn chickens, she snapped at me. Get your clothes on. That day, we moved all of the chickens into my grandmother’s closet. We lined the floor and walls with plastic and made nests with newspaper on the shelves, and the birds clucked and fussed and tore the paper and some of the plastic to shreds, but would be safely ensconced in my grandparents’ bedroom during the dark hours where they would normally be killed. Satisfied, my grandmother sang and whistled for the rest of the day while my grandfather grumped that it was ridiculous and he wasn’t going to get any sleep with those goddamn birds clucking and scratching at the door all night. There was no whistling or grumping the next morning, though, when we went outside to find the chicken coop destroyed. Wire and boards were thrown across the yard, straw almost like snow across the ground and the few eggs that had been left in the nests by accident shattered and smeared on the stones. Forty-pound cinderblocks were tossed into the long grass like they’d weighed nothing. I went to look at one of the blocks and the scratches carved into the concrete were deep enough that my eight-year-old fingers could almost entirely disappear into the hollows. I followed the shapes with my nails and felt cold in the early-morning air. My grandfather was a quiet and grumpy man, my grandmother a sweet and slightly nervous woman, but both were struck dumb as I wandered through the destruction and walked along what had once been the roof but was now a crumpled piece of tin. They stood and stared at what was left of the coop that had stood for the better part of twenty years in the same spot, outlasting storms and hail, even a tree falling in the mid-eighties, and every predator that it had encountered until this moment. That night, my grandmother released the chickens to the darkness. She cleaned up the carnage the next morning without saying a word, and they never kept chickens again. Emmy is a bisexual disaster who is probably reading comic books and eating leftover challah instead of writing or working on grad school. She lives in Cincinnati, OH with her partner and way too many cats.

I’d like to gather my children and their children’s children and we’d meet by the shore at dawn. We would watch the horizon burn as the sun makes her climb. Out of the water, our ancestors would rise up, from the jungles behind us, they would come, until we are surrounded by our lineage of warriors, of rebels and resistors; of queens and kings of a forgotten lineage; of gods and goddess, along with several deities we know as heroes in our fables. I would look at each of them in turn, In reverence and in hope, that one day, my children And my children’s children would keep their legends by heart. “This is the story,” I would begin, “of my life and it begins with you all.” I look to find the one face I have wanted to see: my Lolo – story teller, grandfather – and I would hold his hand with pride and gratitude. “It began with you: your love, your lumpia and your words.” Leila Tualla is a Filipino-American poet and author based in Houston, Tx. Leila’s books include a YA contemporary romance called Letters to Lenora and a memoir/poetry collection called Storm of Hope: God, Preeclampsia, Depression and me. Her poetry is featured in several mental health anthologies and she is currently working on a poetry collection based on Asian American stereotypes and identifies. Her chapbook “PMDD & me,” is out now.

He says we’re just bags of meat, metabolizing until we die no meaning, no purpose no meaning, no purpose no meaning, no purpose unless we make it ourselves These words will never be seen on tokstagram never be a pretty girl who cries about not being pretty never be a pretty girl who laments about not being pretty enough never fit the algorithm, fit the algorithm, be a pretty girl There is a head in the noose in the gallows in the city square smiling, spitting, crying smiling, spitting, crying waiting for the world to do its thing waiting for the world to love again smiling, spitting, crying Grab a pillar of flame, let it burn, smoke into the sky a pillar of flame that is your arm, that is your face, that is your eye a pillar of flame to light a pyre a pillar of flame to feed a fire burning away what’s already gone, what’s already dead I am meat, sinew, bone and spark meaning purpose made I am me I am a pyre I am me I am a crier I am me Timothy Direlle Batson is a Seattle WA, based writer and weirdo.

He stood outside the Guggenheim, panicking. The light was about to change and his thoughts raced down 5th Avenue like a yellow taxi. God, I love her, he thought. Then, you’ve never spoken to her. Why’d you have to stalk her through the museum like an incel psycho? God, I’m a loser, he thought, twisting his baseball cap more tightly on his head. She was fumbling through her large tote bag, through which objects were poking angrily, masked in canvas. It was Fall and the light on her red hair was more frightening than any of the art in the museum. Beauty unsettled him (as did Chaos, and excessive Orderliness). He didn’t know what he was thinking—going to the museum when he was in the dumps. But he had seen the girl again and he barely noticed the art. She lit a cigarette, leaning against a pole. Smoke spun around her head, and the greyish white against the white sky, like a haiku, he thought, made his head swim. Biting his cheek, hard, he touched her on the shoulder. She jumped and turned around. “Yes?” “We met at Sam Esterhazy’s party a couple of weekends ago…I saw you earlier in the museum and was going to say hi but you seemed very into the art and here we meet again. I’m James Wu.” Now, outside, in her long blue coat and her hair the color of blood, she carried the image of a battlefield; he wanted to hand her a musket and lay down on the pavement waving a white flag. She was frowning, she was looking at the street lights changing. It blinked WALK and she took one step, hovering her foot above the curb. “I don’t know a Sam Esterhazy,” she said. “Was it that party in the basement? With the bad DJ?” “No.” He crossed the street with her. “His apartment is in the Upper West side, on the sixteenth floor. All white. Danish modern. It has that broken…umm…buzzing system.” “Oh, that party.” Her voice was clear and bubbling and cold. “I don’t even remember how I got there. Was swept along.” Swept along. He was being swept along. Dust in a pan. If only she could hear me, he thought, then she would know I love her, stupidly and without reason. We’re walking together now, he thought. Just two New Yorkers walking at a New York pace. Ten years in, he was still trying to get comfortable calling himself a New Yorker. It made him feel awful, like a teenage poser. This was the kind of thing he thought about when he wasn’t thinking about food or art. They kept a brisk pace. He was looking at her feet, which were encased in tiny black boots, the kind you see at the vintage clothing stores in Brooklyn. Like they used to belong to Victorian children. He got the impression, watching her feet, that she was not a girl at all but some elfin creature that lived in a cupboard. “I waited a long time in that vestibule. Someone kept answering the buzzer and forgetting to buzz me in,” she said. For a second, he didn’t know what she was talking about. “The buzzer? It was broken. It’s always been broken. It’s been broken for years.” It was warmer then, the night of Sam’s party. He had noticed her at once, in a long summer dress with blue flowers and skinny straps. Her hair a burning star. He had nodded to her across the room, out of embarrassment, when she had caught him looking. He had even raised his plastic cup to her a little bit as if toasting to something. That night he had drunk like a demon and vomited on the subway. She had left the party midway. His courage shriveled up, he couldn’t say a word, then. Now she smiled at him. “I was supposed to meet someone at that party and he never came,” she said. They were waiting for another light to change so they could cross the street. “You know what’s wonderful, though? I met someone else that night. A girl. A very smart and charming girl that I’ve kept in touch with.” Ah, he thought. There’s the rub. She’s a lesbian. Then he slapped the side of his head. “What’s wrong?” “Oh, nothing,” he said, dropping his hands. They crossed the street and now they were walking along the Park. It was a different New York from his usual New York. His New York was Crown Heights and fried chicken with a bulletproof window at the counter. At night the roaches from his apartment crawled down the building to lick up whatever was left to eat on the restaurant floor. During the day, the roaches lazed about his place. His New York was very long subway rides and the excitement and guilt of gentrification, one coffee shop at a time. His New York was a rat. Its name was Fred and his favorite food was donuts. This New York, the New York they stood in, was a wide, clean avenue, with autumn light crashing between the leaves and making lace of the ground. It was trees and birds and women in yoga pants that cost a tenth of his rent and light that bashed him over the head. Now the light made the store windows into a river of glass. It was so bright he could not see into the shops. It was the kind of brightness of something about to die. What time was it? Soon the awful blue would be filling the trees. Light was what made him want to be a painter. Light that made you cry and black that asked intolerable questions as he lay awake at night. He tried very hard not to have the conversation move to what they did because that was death to any conversation in New York. It usually happened very early and then it was all over. “Oh Hey Nice to Meet you What do you do Oh that’s cool It was nice meeting you.” Or maybe it was only like that because he was a painter and no one has anything to say to a painter anymore. He got the girl talking about the new exhibits at the Guggenheim, then that faded and they walked in silence, along the Park. She knew too much about art. It made his heart ache. Here she was, a girl who knew the masters, who clearly read books. How could he explain himself? I spend my days at cafes educating myself? I went to Yale but now I’m on food stamps? He let it slip that he was an artist, and the girl didn’t latch onto it, asking him how he made money or what kind of things he painted. Instead, she said the thing that was the problem of his life. “It’s very hard to be an artist, isn’t it?” “Yes, very,” he said. “There are no promises.” “None at all.” “It’s hard to keep going, all on your own.” “Yes, yes,” he said. “Are you an artist, too?” “No.” She smiled at him. “Thank god.” Though the time to ask had long passed, and he was afraid in case she struck out her hand and said It Was Nice Meeting You, he asked her name. “Virginia,” she said. “Virginia,” he said. He peeked at her face. The light above her lip was snow piling at a hanging cliff. Virginia, Virginia, Virginia. Her eyelashes, the color of dirt in Oklahoma, cast two long shadows on her cheeks. An expanse opened up in his chest and he was ready for crushing deflation or marriage. This was what marriage was for. He had not understood it before. “Shouldn’t we shake?” she said. Her hand was delicately formed but strong, like it could pull him through the abyss. He studied her face in case this was the moment she would walk away from him forever, into this New York that was inaccessible to him, even as he stood in it, the rolling greens, the perfume, the specialty salmon, the lake, the swans, all of it. He could hear the lake, suddenly, beneath the swell of other noise. “Let’s go to the lake,” he said. And he turned from her, holding his breath. “Let’s see what kinds of ducks there are.” He was trying hard for the first time in his life to be wonderful. Like Gene Kelly. Promising, like he was about to tap dance away at any moment. A tall, gangly Chinese Gene Kelly. She probably didn’t like Asian men. Intrusive thought, his brain yelled. He injected a pep in his step as they entered the Park. The lake was right there, waiting for them. He sent a prayer straight to God, in whom he did not believe. Thank you, he said, for putting the lake here. That I wasn’t just hearing the sewer sloshing. There were black ducks with iridescent purple and green around their faces and white ducks with green faces and ducks with pink beaks. God, he said, thank you for all these beautiful ducks. They sat on a soft, worn bench, and he talked of his father, who owned a coin laundromat in Atlanta, and his mother, who was bitter and mean. The closest he could come to describing his mother was Tony’s mother on The Sopranos. It was hard for him to watch that show. Everything that came out of his mother’s mouth was vile. But James couldn’t bring himself to hate her. His mother folded clothes all day, clothes that she washed, clothes that belonged to strangers. In their last phone call, she had been screeching at him; he was her biggest disappointment was the gist of it. James had pulled the phone away from his ear, walking down 2nd Avenue on the way to get a falafel sandwich. Still, beneath the breath of cars, he heard it. 失望, 失望, 失望, she repeated, in her voice that was full of rage tears, the voice that had made him shrink as a child. While he talked the sun weakened and cold rose from the concrete below their feet. His toes numbed. His socks were thin. Virginia seemed unbothered though the tip of her nose was red now. She was twisting a gold ring around her pinkie. He wondered why in the whole two hours that had passed, she had not once taken out her phone to look at it. “You’re Girl X,” he said because he had run out of things to say, and he had been thinking it since the first time he saw her. “Like Madame X in Sargent’s painting. The one of the pale woman in the black dress looking back. The very famous one. You have the same red hair and the same lavender skin.” “Maybe I am,” she said, looking out at the lake. “I like that painting.” “I wish I weren’t a painter.” “Why?” “Because I’d die to paint you now, in this light.” He wanted to say a little more. That a small part of him would rather paint her than sleep with her, that a small part of him wanted to die because being an artist was somehow the same as wanting to die, that it was not about living but the past and future, which were nothing, dead things, only dreams. There was nothing tying him to the present, not toothpaste, not a dog, not his cold mother and newspaper-reading father, nothing. Nothing but a roll of canvas to stretch, a box of materials that traumatically pulsed in his closet. There was only painting or not painting, and when he was not painting, he was dead. “Let’s get closer to the water,” she said. They walked along the lake and came upon some steps that led straight in. They sat on the highest step. A swan slowly moved from one end of their vision to the other. Now it was all blue. Sad evening blue. If they left the park, they would separate. He would start the long journey home to Crown Heights. Thinking of the subway ride filled him with despair. “If I told you that your muse was in the center of the lake, holding all your fame and fortune, would you swim in?” “Oh, yes,” he said. “I’d jump in right now.” “Don’t you ever get an idea like that? Like that might be how life is?” “Uhh, yeah, probably.” “Like don’t you ever think, if I don’t go out right now, and go to X place, and meet X person, I’ll never become who I need to become?” He wanted to say, if you were in the center of the lake with everyone I know, I’d save you first. He was looking at her fingers, loosely intertwined between her knees. He could turn and kiss her. Be brave, he told himself. He lurched his body towards her with his eyes closed. He fell straight to the floor, his nose smashing stone. She was gone. He got up and looked around the trees. Warmth was trickling down from his brain, over his lip. His nose was bleeding. Maybe she was hiding. Virginia, with her red hair and blue coat and lavender skin! He began to jog. She couldn’t have gotten very far. He circled the lake, then it was night. Back in Crown Heights, the smell of fried chicken on his stairs demolished the crazy idea he had had during the subway ride—swimming to the center of the lake. Instead, he went into his closet and took out his paint, and an old canvas he had stretched. He started with the purple of her eyelids, he mixed the color of her hair. A word from the author: My work is forthcoming in The Columbia Review, Hush Lit, The Harvard Advocate, and X-R-A-Y. And here’s my website: christinekwonwrites.com.

Now onto nights when the silvery moon extends its monochrome to anything pale and prepared to reflect, absorb, and forecast the cooler nights that once the sun retreats further afield will chill to the marrow our already white bones, all ready for the dead of winter. Jarrod Campbell is an author living in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC. His stories, essays and reviews have appeared online and in print. He is currently working on a new collection of stories, a novel, and a play to be performed in 2023.

Acting My Age I am the crone who craves Naked skin against mine Who yearns giving in to gravity The safe, strong cradle Of a lover’s hold I am the soul who dreams of freedom Who burns through barriers Cool wind on my cheek As silence enfolds me And yet I am the woman who fears Handing in her keys When my few short moments Spent in the belly of bliss Are done And will I still dream, when I’ve left this room? And will I still smell the sweet scent of sex? Or will I miss the pull of gravity And naked skin against mine A Momentary Crossing I remember us downing cider and ploughman’s lunch after tramping across Sussex fields, singing Those Were the Days, My Friend. I remember day turning to night as we kicked stones under stars. I remember wearing that mini dress, pulling its hem down over thick, amber-coloured tights as we listened to the sounds of silence. I remember us getting high in St Ives, holding each other close in two thin sleeping bags zipped together. I remember carrying the warm blanket of your amity with me long after we morphed into friends. I remember our paths crossing the tracks of time, then running parallel and casting off in an elegant country dance. I remember presents of books and vinyl, your voice inked into them, shortening miles and years. I remember our boys born five weeks apart - yours the colour of milk chocolate, mine vanilla ice cream, playing together as brothers. I remember you telling me you’d had a funny chest all winter, and no it wasn’t asthma but you’d had an x-ray. I remember holding breath and tears, my heart running like a wayward child, the day you rang to report the diagnosis. I remember you walking uncertainly round Manchester’s Christmas lights, me clinging to our too-brief moment, wishing I could stow it somewhere safe as it slipped like sand through my hands. I remember wanting to lead you away from the MacMillan unit so we could go on one last mad adventure. Instead, I said I’d look out for your kids, my voice snagging like torn nails on nylon. I remember hugging you, the familiar soft contours of our bodies filling each other's hollows, conversing in a language all their own. I remember peeling my body away from yours, leaving my imprint in your spaces, and yours in mine. I remember flying home to a halting message about things that needed to be said, but at the hospice the thought had butterflied away from your morphined brain. I remember splinters in my body left by the shrapnel spray of losing you, and the needle stuck on my record-player, singing Mary Hopkin’s song. Bonnie is normally a writer of flash fiction, with occasional forays into memoir, poetry and novels. Her work has been published in several literary magazines, including Reflex Press, Briefly Zine, Dribble Drabble, and in an anthology by Ad Hoc Fiction. She lives in Greater Manchester, UK, with various family members who refuse to leave.

Content Warning for references to suicide, child abuse, and self harm. My wife tried to arrange an escape room for my fortieth birthday and I ruined it. I refused to escape my locked bathroom. Why do you hate me? she kept saying. Why do you hate me? I kept saying. We’d both been drinking. She said I was getting meaner every year. What else do you want from me? I shouted. I was already going to therapy twice a week. Taking my Risperdone, Trazadone, Lorazepam, Escilatopram, Clonazapam, Cilatopram. Pretty much all the dones, pams, and prams. I was doing my workbooks about CBTs and ACTs and DBTs and TMs. I was listening to audiobooks about school shooters and serial killers. All these sociopathic hetero-cis-white guys taking the same mood stabilizers I was. But all I ever wanted was to kill myself. But instead of trying to kill myself, I’d taken to punching myself in the eye. For my wife’s sake. It was my go to move whenever I’d be losing an argument. Why do you hate me? Eye punch-eye punch-eye punch-rip my shirt off like Hulk Hogan. My therapist says I have abandonment issues. But all I’ve ever done push people away, I tell her. My whole life I’ve been scheming to kill myself in good conscience. Without crying. Or hurting anyone. My therapist says I don’t understand what fear of abandonment means. That’s my whole problem, I say. Nobody ever understands anything I try to tell them. My therapist says, Let’s unpack that, shall we? I used to think therapy was where you went to talk about masturbation and death dreams. None of my therapists have ever asked me about masturbation. I do fantasize about dying. But I don’t dream about it. It’s been over thirty years since my brother killed himself. I was twelve. He was a day shy of eighteen. And here I am still whining about it. My therapist thinks I have PTSD. I say, That’s a bit melodramatic, don’t you think? Even for me. My brother was just one asshole who died one typical death for a guy his age. It’s not like I witnessed genocide. And I don’t remember anything traumatizing from that night other than what I don’t remember. My therapist says people like me with trauma at such a young age will repress it. For thirty years? Sometimes a whole lifetime. Honestly I never liked him that much. He was mostly a bully. He’d call me a crybaby, a candyass, a pansy, a pussy, et al. Whaa, whaa, whaa, whittle Bennyboy, he’d say. Why don’t you go cry to Mommy? How often was your brother abusive to you? my therapist asks. She doesn’t say sexually. But there’s a tone. It’s not like he molested me, I say. My therapist nods, says mm-hmm, scribbles things in his notepad. These aren’t all the same therapist, my therapists. I’ve had five over the last four years. It’s feels like dating on Tinder. Which I’ve never actually done, but I’ve heard things from people who have. But when I imagine dating on Tinder, it feels like what it’s like to try to find a decent therapist. My first psychologist was a child psychologist. I’d just drafted my very own first suicide note. It was an extended poker metaphor. I plagiarized multiple lyrics from the Gambler by Kenny Rogers. The psychologist asked me if my brother had ever touched me. I started sobbing and said no no no. I never went back. For thirty years. For some reason my mother was okay with that. My last therapist before my current therapist said I should write a story about her. So I’m writing this story about her. She liked to tell me about her other patients. How crazy, how needy, how stressful. She said they were going to kill her one day. So far as I know she didn’t get murdered by one of her patients. She had a mental breakdown and quit. Or got fired. If I had abandonment issues, I think that would’ve really fucked me up. My therapist asks how my mother feels about all this. I say, She emails me often to tell me how proud of me she is. And how proud my father is even if he’d never say it. And to fact check all my stories. It wasn’t always that bad, she likes to remind me. Your brother loved you so much. Your father loved you so much. I tried so hard. We all did. I just wish you could keep that in mind when you write all your sad stories. Which is the theme of every story I’ve ever written. All the people who’ve tried so hard to love me. And how I’ve failed them at loving me. My therapist says, Don’t you think that’s a very solipsistic way to look at things. Yeah, I want to say, but isn’t that what I’m paying you for? Instead, I nod and start to cry, start looking for a new therapist. It’s like I always say: No one can abandon you if you abandon them first. If you can’t escape your escape room, you can run off your friends and your wife, hang up on your mother, continue not talking to your father. You can buy yourself your own birthday cake and forty candles, a sad little party horn. You can light up an empty house. Sing to yourself: I… am… a… man…. I… am… a… man…. As you punch yourself in the eye. As you rip your shirt off. Did that make you happy? your new therapist will ask you later. Which then you’ll have to explain this was all a fantasy. Explain that this is the wish you were wishing for when finally came out of the bathroom and acted surprised when your wife and all her friends who are also your friends cried Surprise! And you went about escaping from all of them anyway out of guilt and obligation. Drevlow is the managing editor of BULL, a lit mag exploring toxic masculinity and the author of Ina-Baby: A Love Story in Reverse (Cowboy Jamboree, 2019) and A Good Ram is Hard to Find (Cowboy Jamboree, 2021) as well as Bend with the Knees and Other Love Advice from My Father (New Rivers Press, 2008), which won the 2006 Many Voices Project. You can find these and other works linked at thedrevlow-olsonshow.com or on Twitter @thedrevlow.

We The human-ape A god-like misfortune A worm-like manifestation Stricken with consciousness Dangling from decaying bags of skin Entangled in a paradox Of the human condition Our intellects soar to the heavens We dream of things yet come to pass And sometimes actualize them We conceptualize infinite hierarchies of infinity We achieve a kind of divine sublimity And in our tenacity and audacity We are gods But the sun beats down on our spoiling flesh We are beings tethered to Earth We Breathe in and out Each moment, consciously or subconsciously We sublimate that We eat We piss We shit We fuck We age We fall ill And in the end When sublimation fails And the ego crashes against reality’s shores We Return to the dirt from which we sprung In our impermanence and fragility We are worms We The human-ape A god-like misfortune A worm-like manifestation Caught in the unfortunate position Of unreconcilable contradiction Of being a divine putrefaction Death takes us all And regardless of form Maybe it’s amazing that Though our existence but a cosmic blip Transitory and fragile We even got the chance To witness the strangeness of it all Sebastian Vice is the Founder of Outcast Press devoted to transgressive fiction and dirty realism. He has short fiction and poetry has been published in Punk Noir Magazine, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Outcast Press, Bristol Noir, and Misery Tourism, and Roi Fainéant Press. He contributed a chapter to Red Sun Magazine's book The Hell Bound Kids (May 1st, 2022) and writes a regular column called "Notes of A Degenerate Dreamer" over at A Thin Slice of Anxiety. His flash piece "One Last Good Day" was nominated for Best of The Net 2021. His debut poetry book Homo Mortalis: Meditations on Memento Mori was released April 4th, 2022 through Anxiety Press.