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Are you thriving? The social pressure to flourish—to be living life to the full, to be happy with life and love and work, to be seizing every moment—seems to get stronger by the day. Perhaps that is just how it feels for someone in their mid-thirties, navigating a career path and relationships, but the expectation that one thrives is ever-present. In your thriving life, are you: eating five (or more) a day, drinking three litres of water, doing yoga and going to the gym, meditating first thing, reading the Booker Prize shortlist, hanging out with old friends and making new ones, doing Wordle every morning, finishing the newest Netflix show, going out on dates every weekend (if you’re single) or being spontaneous and buying sex toys (if you’re in a couple or throuple, or more)? Are you doing all of the things to make sure that you feel as though your life is full and that you are giving yourself permission and space to flourish, to take flight, to live—cringe—your best life? If you use the Harvard University Flourishing Measure(1), you can find out just how much you are. You provide personal scores to questions like, ‘How satisfied are you with life as a whole these days?’, or ‘In general, how happy or unhappy do you usually feel?’ Then you are asked if you agree with the following: ‘I understand my purpose in life’. I am not sure about you, but these questions freak me out. I do not think I could begin to put a 0-10 number against them. ‘As a whole’ or ‘In general’ feel so vague as to be unhelpful in this context. In general, I am neither fully happy nor unhappy—I am an ongoing cluster of conflicting feelings and emotions. Depends on the day, on the minute, on how many Teams meetings I have been in that morning. To take the broad view demands a kind of reflexivity that I do --------------- 1 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/04/well/mind/languishing-definition-flourishing-quiz.html not have. Or, perhaps, it takes a kind of self-belief and certainly to say, ‘I know my purpose’ and carry on unimpeded. I also do not have this ability. I have been thinking about what it means to flourish after recently hearing the word and its synonyms used a few times in quick succession. First, my therapist mentioned it in relation to one of my friends. This person is incredibly close to me, even though they live far away. Perhaps, indeed, it is the distance that enables us to be so connected and (emotionally) proximate. My therapist said, offhandedly, as if this was something I already knew: the reason they are so important is because you enable each other to flourish. This took me aback in the moment, as do most of the things my therapist says. That was not how I had framed this friend in my head. Second, an ex-student of mine said on Twitter—apropos of my travels around Paris in the late autumn sunshine—that I looked as though I was ‘thriving’, even though my image caption was ‘sorry for being obnoxious’. Third, when I noticed that most of my houseplants were crawling with fungus gnats (who knew they existed?) I delved online to find out why my plants were not—and this was the word used frequently—flourishing. Was it over- or under-watering? Too much light, or too much shade? Not enough drainage? Or, worst of all, were gnats breeding beneath the surface of the damp soil, only to emerge in constellations like some alien spawn. My friend told me that the gnats in her plants ended up biting her and her housemate, so I guess I got away lightly when only a few avocado plants withered away. In a short space of time, I was confronted again and again with the idea that I might or might not be flourishing, in part because of the connections to others, to the spaces that we can move through, or the literal and metaphorical soil in which we take root. 2 ‘To flourish’ derives, of course, from ‘blossom or grow’ (Old French and Latin), where blooming and flowering morphed from the literal to the figurative: to prosper and thrive. Its transitive meaning—of brandishing a weapon, which is waved about—comes a little later, which in turn gives way to a sense of the ostentatious. Here, the sword also becomes the pen, with embellished handwriting and inky flourishes. And from there, other flourishes—musical, artistic—take hold, so that to flourish is to grow and blossom, but also sometimes in a camp or over-the-top way. Flourishing moves both up and out, then: as the growth of the flower stem, the opening of its petals, and then the swish of beauty in the bloom. To grow, here, means not simply growth toward upwardness and straightness(2), but also a lush unfurling, a bend towards the light. 3 What does it mean to flourish in an anti-queer world when we are told that ‘it gets better’, that equal marriage and adoption laws are passed, and Queer Eye and RuPaul’s Drag Race are watched around the world? What if it does not get better? What if, amidst the growing anti-queer sentiment and anti-queer legislation levelled against all people under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, not least trans people and queer people of colour, things get worse? Or simply feel like they’re getting worse, which is just as painful. I say this not to be negative or pessimistic, nor even realistic, but to state plainly that for some queer people in the world they do not see a way forward where things improve, or that they might, indeed, flourish. Queer flourishing, we might say, is the potential flourishing of queer people, spaces, and desires in an anti-queer world. It is the vitality of queerness, the possibility of thriving, --------------- 2 Kathryn Bond Stockton, The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century (2009). even when the deck is stacked against you, and when the world which you inhabit is consciously and unconsciously designed for people other than you. To flourish queerly or to flourish as a queer person—they might not be identical—is, in some ways, to flounder amidst joy; to find momentary bliss or fragmentary breath; to see an open horizon with a gaudy sunset while realising that said horizon is just a photograph with edges and, thus, limitations. To grow and bloom and prosper as a queer person—and here I am not suggesting all queer people are the same or face hardships equally—might mean to flourish away from the sunlight, or only in private and safe spaces, or only after one’s work uniform has come off, or only on a dancefloor where no-one knows your name. Sure, anyone can feel this way, but the experience of queerness as a kind of social negativity, an otherness, an excess that is materially pushed aside, is I think quite singular. Yet even that singularity is differentiated by the intersections of race and gender and class and disability and so on. As a cis white gay with a good job—depending who you ask—I know that my experiences of curtailment are not the same as a trans person’s, or a Black drag king’s, or a young poor lesbian living far from a city. Yet. There is something in our shared or common fate of queerness, outside of the norms, that means when we flourish it might only be in fits and starts. To think of flourishing outside of heteronormativity and white capitalist heteropatriarchy is almost oxymoronic. How does one get outside of those toxic waters, as many queer critics and critics of colour have argued, when those limiting normative forces are the water and not merely in it? 4 The late queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz writes about the ‘brown commons’, which is that nebulous non-hierarchical gathering of browned people and places and nonhuman objects. By ‘brown’ and ‘browned’, Muñoz is talking about the processes of racialization, the general ways in which certain populations are rendered brown and other. Brownness, for Muñoz, is partly defined by the way that these subjects and objects ‘suffer and strive together’, the ‘commonality of their ability to flourish under duress and pressure’. Muñoz is talking about the ways that brownness emerges both in its relation to normative society’s devaluation of anything outside of whiteness, but also in its resistance to that devaluation. While brown people and things withstand attempts to ‘degrade their value and diminish their worth’, brownness nonetheless ‘smolder[s] with a life and persistence’. I want to think about this idea in relation to queerness more broadly (though of course Muñoz is writing about brownness as, and with, a kind of queerness). What might it mean to see queers of all kinds—those outside of heteronormativity—as flourishing under duress? How might we even attend to and celebrate flourishing when it is curtailed so thoroughly and violently? Does degradation (or attempts at it) hinder flourishing from taking place in certain ways? 5 Contrary to the maxim ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’, the eponymous character in James Baldwin’s novel Giovanni’s Room (1956) says ‘maybe everything bad that happens to you makes you weaker, and so you can stand less and less’. Giovanni is slowly losing the meaning that he has had in his life—ushered in primarily through the love and attention of the American, David—and thus frames existence as a slow depletion. In his mind, when bad things happen, they gradually wear us down to the point of no resistance. And that is what happens in the novel. From the very first scene, David is looking back on the past, and on Giovanni’s life, as Giovanni is about to be killed at the guillotine. The spectre of that death lingers over the rest of the novel, especially those heady and tense moments when David and Giovanni first meet and talk into the early hours, and something like love or lust takes hold. We see them flirt and have sex, knowing what horrors are about to snub out their flourishing flame. In my darker moments, Giovanni’s statement rings vaguely true. I try to resist the feelgood and (oftentimes) religiously inflected notion that we only get what we can stand in life; that everything happens for a reason; that we can never take on too much. I do not necessarily believe that. Sometimes people are worn down—by life, by others, by institutions, by the very command to live life to the full, to pull yourself up—so much so that they cannot stand it. Standing up becomes less and less viable. What happens when we take Giovanni’s point seriously: that when bad things happen, they can stop us from standing, from withstanding so much? If things do not get better—even if you come out, or meet your ‘person’, or find the job to end all jobs—and in fact sometimes get worse—because your coming out is met with rejection, or your person leaves you, or you do not feel comfortable being ‘out’ in the office—then flourishing is a kind of sick fantasy, an unachievable goal. Again, this is not pessimism or needless negativity, but instead a queer skewer in the side of social injunctions to feel good and thrive. Read this way, we have to look after ourselves and each other in more specific and attentive ways. Not in the framework of the good-life-as-ideal, but in the sense that flourishing can only happen from a position or grounding of honesty and, perhaps, instability. What would happen if we helped each other thrive without the necessity to thrive always, and only in recognisable ways? 6 As a young person entering adolescence, I did not see many versions of flourishing for gay or other queer people. There were moments of happiness when a gay couple kissed on Eastenders or Corrie but it never felt fully liberatory. Plus, there was always someone in the background looking on with disdain, or, indeed, members of the public writing in to Points of View to complain about the liberals ‘shoving sexuality down their throats’ (people who, in using that phrase, highlighted their own sexual frustrations). There was Queer as Folk, for sure, but I did not get to see that show until way later. It was near-impossible to find moments to watch TV like that at home. Something like Will and Grace—tame, problematic, and often not very queer at all—did show the difficulties of flourishing but I was not allowed to watch it as my mother found it off-putting (she’s different now). A show like that, which I could occasionally grab moments of when my parents were out, offered a view of thriving and curtailed gayness—just look at Jack, who is carefree, sexually confident, and living his best life; and Will, forever frustrated by his dependency on Grace, his best friend. On Sunday nights on BBC Radio 1, though, the show Sunday Surgery aired, where young people wrote or called in with their emotional and sexual problems. The two hosts—in between the latest hits—would offer advice and solutions to these dilemmas. It was the first time, I think, that I heard queer people like me (i.e., young people, not necessarily living in London) speak aloud out their fears and anxieties. They talked about dating and kissing and sex and STIs and fitting in. It was on so late that I could not listen to it live—for fear of waking my parents—so I recorded it onto my Minidisk player (dated reference) and listened the next day as I walked to school or did my paper-round. This show was a rare moment that I glimpsed something like a flourishing queer life that might, at some point, be available to me. The people calling in asked how they might lead a life that was authentic, or, if not in those words, a life that would not be stalked by sadness and bullying and that gut-level fear of standing out. I still have that fear sometimes. To flourish, we are told, is to let go of those fears and be you, live your life. But what if, as a queer person, your ‘life’ is scripted ahead of time, by people who do not recognise your life as one worthy of living? 7 He grabbed my hand this one time and would not let go until we reached the train station, even when groups of men, who would otherwise have caused me panic, by virtue of their massing, walked past. I do not even remember if people clocked that we were two men holding hands, or if they cared, because I did not care in that moment, and that was such a new experience for me. For sure, I was thinking about the fact that we were holding hands and marching down the street drunk on wine and horniness, but the experience of touching his cold fingers and showing the world that I was locked in step with him (queer? happy? flourishing?) was transformative. I do not mean that flippantly. It was not something I had done with men before this, because of fear, because of shame, because of an inability perhaps to see beyond the limitations placed upon my identity. Handholding was the thing that other people did: straight people, people in love, people who did not mind PDAs, people who wanted to flaunt what they had. But in this moment, on a cold winter night in London, as we swayed (gayly) down Tottenham Court Road, not knowing what was ahead of us—in all the senses—I felt like I was temporarily flourishing. I would not have called it that in the moment, but that was the feeling: of blooming, awkwardly, in the knowledge that someone could throw insults or bottles at us at any moment and that I did not really care. 8 We might think that flourishing happens when we have what we want—a stable job, a friendship circle—and we then use that platform to lift off and bloom, to mix metaphors. Of all the critical discourses, psychoanalysis has helped us most to ask better questions about who we are, where we came from, who we might want to be, and, indeed, what we want. As Freud and many writers after him have suggested, we might not know what we want in life, even if we think we do(3). That is the first thing: acknowledging that what we think we want might not be what we really want (whatever ‘really’ means here). Or, noticing that we might not know what we want altogether. But the second problem, if it is a problem, is that our desires outstrip our objects. In other words, what we want always exceeds the possibility of getting it—our wants and our wanted objects are not fully compatible. The things that we desire (people, objects, fantasies) cannot completely satisfy us, not only because they might not be the thing we truly desire, but also because even if they were what we desired, our desires would always overshoot those things. Psychoanalysis, put another way, tells us that flourishing might be possible if only we gave up on the idea of tying that flourishing to particular states of being, or people, or ideas of living. For example, whatever our visions of ‘the good life’ are, i.e., whether those involve kids or family or life in the suburbs or weekends of hedonism, there is something about the idea of the good life which will always slip from our grasp. Think about Olivia Pope in Shonda Rhimes’ Scandal (if that’s not too dated a reference): Olivia’s vision of the good life shifts often in this series, even within an episode, so that in one moment she wants to make jam with Fitz in Vermont, and in the next she wants to ‘stand in the sun’ with Jake on a desert island. (To even backtrack and explain these scenes of the good life would take many --------------- 3 Adam Phillips, On Getting Better (2021). thousands of words). Though, all the while, we know that her other version of the good life is one in which she dons the ‘white hat’ of moral clarity and helps others, because that’s who Olivia Pope is and that is what she does best. Providing a service to help others get out of trouble, or secure justice, or just to get back that which was taken from them—that is Olivia’s real good life, but she does not always want to confront it because that version of life is one in which she is alone, not tied to a tall white hunk, and thrives merely through her job/role and co-workers. It is the good life curtailed. To flourish might be to give up on certain ideas about ourselves and others altogether. 9 ‘A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing’. That is the opening line of cultural critic Lauren Berlant’s 2011 book Cruel Optimism. Berlant, in one swift sentence, destroys our conventional ideas of optimism—as happily wedded to good objects—by suggesting that these relations can go awry. Whether the thing you desire is ‘food, or a kind of love’, or ‘a fantasy of the good life, or a political project’, the relation becomes cruel when ‘the object that draws your attachment actively impedes the aim that brought you to it initially’. In Olivia Pope’s case, the men who sustain her desires and the fantasies of living that accompany them (jam, the sun) are simultaneously those unavailable objects that actually impede her flourishing. How can she flourish with men who are not viable love interests? The fantasies and stories about the future, about love, are just that—stories. But they also sustain Olivia’s desires even though she knows that such optimism might be her undoing. In Cruel Optimism, Berlant is thinking not simply about the objects we become attached to—people, political projects, fantasies of living—but also the ‘conditions under which certain attachments to what counts as life come to make sense or no longer make sense, yet remain powerful as they work against the flourishing of particular and collective beings’. The relation of cruel optimism exists in context; we desire the fantasies of the good life, of properly flourishing, in light of the dominant fantasies of our age and culture. Ideas of the good life today are not the same as those of our grandparents or their grandparents, of course, though sometimes we might pretend that they are. Put differently, what if the fantasies of flourishing that sustained previous generations are cruelly optimistic because they no longer function in our contemporary world? What if, too, these fantasies are cruel because they are heteronormative? What if, after all, to flourish is the domain of only certain people who are able to traverse social scenes in particular ways? An obstacle to our flourishing: a description of queerness curtailed. 10 Are you thriving? Do you have a sense of what it might mean to thrive? As a queer person, I cannot have faith that the society in which I move is also signed up for my flourishing, whatever that could look like. When homosexuality is criminalised in over 70 countries, and Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill is signed into law, and anti-trans laws around the United States proliferate, and LGBTQ+ hate crimes have tripled in the UK since 2015, and ‘gender critical’ ideology is working to undo equality law—how are we meant to go on, other than haltingly, or in fear? To flourish under duress is still flourishing, but nonetheless amidst confinement and curtailment. To flourish as someone attempts to degrade you (directly or indirectly) is to flourish with the mark of negativity. These are not bad things. This is not a critique. Queer folks have always flourished in dire circumstances; they, we, continue. Flourishing, to take the flower metaphor further, is not a single state or even simply a progressive one. A flower grows, sure, but it also dies off and comes back another year; it opens and closes depending on sunlight; it arches its stem as light moves across its field of vision; it helps with pollination and allows bees to flourish, but the pollen also gets in my eyes and nose and stops me in my tracks. Flourishing queerly, amidst violence and trauma and history and shame and subjection and subjugation and slurs and nonnormativity, is perhaps a set of positions, a non-linear process, rather than some fixed trajectory. But really, I guess, what else is there? Christopher Lloyd (he/him) is a writer and academic, teaching in the UK. He is the author of two books, a micro-chap, as well as poems and stories that have appeared in Fruit Journal, Queerlings, The Cardiff Review, and elsewhere.

According to Yelp, most tourists depart the haunted hotel downtown in disappointment, but you’ve always been luckier than most. You knuckle the elevator’s R button, hoping this rooftop happy hour will be different, though it feels like another man-child selecting a risqué setting to impress. I don’t believe in the supernatural, challenges your online profile. Tinder dates don’t care that it’s not proof you’re seeking. Their predictability offers a nightly reason to traverse these shafts. After waiting for an empty car, the sliding door dissolves the art deco lobby. A waft of tangerine, then a disembodied inhale vacuums up your next gulp of air. The performance begins. Like past journeys, the snail of your ear tunes a tiny harmonica. You tamp down the urge to peek over your shoulder. How did your piano instructor run scales, and why does this aural memory strike you on the conference mezzanine like a cartoon anvil? Your soft palate lifts in a Do, your lips mimic the peel of a Re, but no sound escapes. Vibration hovers under nostrils and peripheral vision buzzes. Warbling in soft, then growing, ascending, as if all noise in the universe was this noise, as if your ears were fiery asteroids entering into the atmosphere with this listening, this hearing like you never heard before, the ghosts sing in turn. First, it’s the workout bop repeating across your playlist algorithms in the last month. Next, the indie folk band’s encore at their reunion concert last week, that ballad that made high school survivable. Next, the nursey songs your grandmother mouthed as she let you win Pretty Pretty Princess. Third floor, twelfth floor, twenty-seventh floor, the serenade propels you against the railing, scrabbles you into corners. Orange car air freshener, lemon verbena hand cream, key lime pie, the afterlife odors walk you to a cliff edge of nausea. The emergency stop button you always attempt around floor thirty-six, but up and up you rise with this invisible cabaret for one, panting in time to the beat. And as the car slows, your stomach dropping with momentary weightlessness, the finale always buckles your knees. An echo of the song you’ve avoided for twenty-three years, the one your mother would put on the stereo when chopping stew veggies, the one she’d slow dance to in the hallways with dad before bedtime. The same song on an album in her six-disc CD player, pulled from the wreckage after the drunk driver neglected the stop sign on Red Onion Hill. The door telescopes open. The twilight breeze whisks away the citrus. Half-turning from the bar, a man waves you over, his clothes more rumply and smile less shiny than online photos. Your mother doesn’t like this one. Staccato whispers ricochet off the car’s mirrored walls, but you distill your mother’s subtext. Don’t waste breath on someone who won’t love you like their favorite song. You could believe in the spectral chorus until the men of the internet shapeshift from sarcastic to serious, until you have courage enough to harmonize with the spirits, but belief won’t bring your mother back. Hitting the L button, a tuning fork A note and grapefruit gusts close the door. You rub your ears for the descent. All the better to hear. Lauren Kardos (she/her) writes from Washington, DC, but she’s still breaking up with her hometown in Western Pennsylvania. The Molotov Cocktail, Rejection Letters, HAD, (mac)ro(mic), Best Microfiction 2022, and The Lumiere Review are just a few of the fine publications where her work lives. You can find her on Twitter @lkardos.

I pose, arms in the air, hands haloing the moon. You draw star maps on my body unlike the charts you sketch in your closet: red crater rings blue dust basins silver spiked ridges. You outline my signs - sun, rising, mid-heaven: Capricorn climbs one calf Leo’s tail wraps around a thigh Pisces splashes in the crook of my neck This route carries my heart closer to yours. Two left feet, you stumble sideways. A note from the author: Forthcoming chapbooks: True North (Origami Poetry Project), Coyote in the basket of my ribs (Alabaster Leaves).

Vivienne is pregnant. She shares her news with the office before she's even taken off her coat. People crowd round her. There are hugs and kisses and even some tears. Sarah calls congratulations across the room but doesn't move from her desk. At lunchtime, everyone goes to the pub to toast the miraculous conception. Sarah goes to the park and sits under the leafless trees, eating her sandwich and watching the children play on the swings. Vivienne organises a gender-reveal party. The cake has pink icing. Sarah contributes her share towards the present, and eats more than her share of the cake. The office is full of baby talk – the best type of pram, what colour to paint the nursery, breast versus bottle. Sarah doesn't venture an opinion. People are invited to put their hand on Vivienne's abdomen to feel the baby shift its position or stretch its limbs. Sarah pretends to be on the phone. Over the next few months, Vivienne and Sarah gradually expand until both are the size of barrage balloons. Vivienne is glowing and healthy, with glossy hair and unblemished skin; Sarah grows pale and pasty, with crusted red spots on her chin. When Vivienne goes on maternity leave, Sarah buys an expensive gift for the baby, signs the card, and wishes her luck and happiness, even though most of the extra work her absence causes will land on Sarah's desk. Perhaps this is her penance for being less than enthusiastic about the impending birth. When the baby is born, the office sends flowers and a massive teddy bear. Sarah hopes it doesn't crush the tiny girl or suffocate her in its overstuffed arms. She would have chosen something the baby could hold in her little fists and cling to in the night for comfort. Vivienne brings her daughter into the office. Cue a further wave of hugs, kisses and tears. Sarah stays seated at her desk. The infant is handed round to everyone in turn to be cuddled and admired. As Sarah passes by on her way to make tea, Vivienne holds the baby out to her. Sarah mumbles something about being afraid she might drop her and turns away. Instead of the kitchen, she rushes to the toilet and vomits up her desperation. The baby is screaming. Sarah suspects she doesn't like being passed from hand to hand, or perhaps she is hungry or needs changing. She stays in the toilet, her fingers in her ears to shut out the sounds of distress until she is certain Vivienne has taken the baby home. When Sarah returns to her desk, she doesn't think anybody has noticed her absence. She eats a packet of crisps and a bar of chocolate, but they don't mask the bitter taste in her mouth or fill the child-shaped hole inside her. Hilary Ayshford is happily childless, but is currently mother to an elderly Labrador called Morgan.

Vanessa logged out and picked up her keys. Garrett, a “team leader” was leaning into the next cubicle and his lower body was blocking her exit from her own.. He was talking to a woman named Marcia in the next cubicle over. Marcia was twenty-four and devoted to Crossfit. On casual Fridays she always wore yoga pants. Garrett was talking in that kind-of sort-of maybe this-or-that manner about the impending weekend, hoping Marcia would offer up the tiniest affirmation of her own weekend plans so that he might impose his own thereby. Marcia, too smart for Garrett by half, offered nothing. “Ahem.” Vanessa had to clear her throat to get Garrett to stand up to let her pass. “Hey” he said, without ever looking away from Marcia, straightening up to let Vanessa by. Alone in the elevator Vanessa spoke out loud to herself: “I am invisible . I am forty-five years old and invisible . This should not have happened yet.” Who said that first, she wondered. Vanessa had a son in high school and a father in assisted care. Two men to whom she was visible, the former more so than the latter. To all others it might as well be as if she never were. She left work at two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon. “Where are you going V?” her boss asked. “Meeting with my son’s school,’ Vanessa said. “I asked you this morning, remember?” “No, but alright,” he said. “Hey, can you come on Saturday?” I’m going to need you to come in if you can.” “I’m going to need to come in on Monday,” Vanessa said. “Thanks Val,” Tom said. “I knew I could count on you.” Ten years here and he still gets my name wrong half the time, she thought. She was ten minutes late leaving for the meeting with the school and by the time she arrived, she was fifteen minutes late. Scott was suspended from school for one week. The principal and the drama teacher had set the meeting with her after school had let out to explain their decision. He was being suspended for a short-film he created along with another student– a “student-led” project. It was supposed to be a section of dialogue from “Waiting for Godot” and that’s what they had presented to the drama teacher, who had approval. What they had done was present a satire of the Harry Potter movies in which Professor Snape attempts to seduce young Potter. They had, of course, filmed this on the sly and had most definitely not presented it for any approval save for the roars of laughter from the class when it was shown. The principal loaded the file on his monitor and turned it around for Vanessa to see. The video began with Scott dressed in some sort of a dark robe, with a long black wig on, standing in front of another boy whom she recognized as a boy surnamed Jensen. She thought him the sort that might start fires when no one else was around. The little arsonist was seated at a desk, wearing a similar dark smock to her son’s and wearing thick-rimmed black glasses without lenses. The presentation’s dialogue started immediately, with Scott (as Snape) telling the Jensen kid (as Harry Potter) that “The love between Slytherin Master and Gryffindor apprentice was the purest love of all” and ended with Scott (as Snape) telling the Jensen kid “Don’t be fragile like your friend Weasley now, this is a ‘sorting’ of a different sort, and you don’t want to be a thumb-sucking bed-wetter like him. He cries himself to sleep every night.” There was much in between, all of it wildly inappropriate, and every time Scott (as Snape) said “but” the Jensen kid responded with “heh-heh, you said “Butt.” The video ended and the conversation started: “You see,” said the principal, “We can’t have that. So, we are suspending him for one week effective today. He can return to classes next Friday, 8:20am sharp. We hope nothing like this ever happens again.” Vanessa turned to the drama teacher; a short, thick woman named Greene. Greene had on the same kind of thick-rimmed glasses the Jensen kid (the arsonist) was wearing in the video, only with lenses in them – progressives by the look of it. “Is it the content you object to or the costuming?” Greene was very quick to respond. “The patriarchy institutionalizes indifference to other people’s suffering - particularly women’s and children’s - by mocking it. I won’t stand for it.” “No points for originality?” Vanessa asked, resigned to the suspension now. “Costumes? Set design?” “Ma’am,” Greene said, “Conflating pedophilia with the Harry Potter Franchise is hardly original. It started fifteen minutes after the first film. It’s the same with Dora the Explorer or Power Rangers or any franchise you can think of. I do not want to tell you what I’ve seen in regards to Twilight. I warn everyone in advance. I also warn about scatological interpretations, but scatology only gets you an “F” on one assignment. Pedophilia gets you one “F” and one “suspended.” Vanessa turned to the principal, who had nodded emphatically at the Twilight reference. “What about the other kid? That Jensen boy?” What about Greene here calling me “Ma’am” she thought, but did not say. “He’s gone too,” the principal said. “One week, same as Scott. In fact, you may want to suggest to Scott that he be more careful of the company he keeps. That Jensen kid is a real shit-starter, if you’ll excuse my French.” Greene walked Vanessa out. “Please take it seriously,” said Greene. “Whatever you say to him the first thing Scott will ask you is if you laughed. If you say even ‘a little’ the Patriarchy wins. That’s all they are looking for. They do these things and for them ‘a little’ is like being valedictorian for a day.” “Well,” Vanessa said. “It was a little funny.” “Sure, it is,” said Greene. “But that’s all they aim for. A little. They practice a kind of deliberate and unrefined callousness in the hopes of getting hits on YouTube - and the video is on YouTube already. So, they think ‘Whoo Hoo - I win.’ But anyone with a cell phone can post a video to any number of social media on the internet. These boys, these ‘ballers’ and ‘bros,’ they come into my class thinking it’s easy credits, and where once they recited Shakespeare, now they incite reaction to the lowest common denominator they can imagine. They are going for cheap laughs, and all my girls who dream of the stage are afraid to get laughed at, so no one does anything.” “I work in a cubicle, Ms. Greene,” Val said, “I get up with caffeine and go to bed with two-buck Chuck. If I can do that, why can’t some kids get through your drama class after seeing one silly video? I thought it was a little funny and a lot stupid, but not worth a week’s suspension and certainly not worth my time to come here about it. It is most definitely not worth the condescension your facial expression tells me you are about to express. Tell me Greene, what did the principal tell the Jensen kid-who-probably-instigated-this’s mother?” “Not to hang out with Scott.” Greene said. "I thought so.” She left the school and didn’t look back at Greene standing there, her arms folded across her chest, eight minutes away from posting to social media herself about the need to forgive those who refuse your wise counsel, forgive honestly and without expectation, and about how the patriarchy is made up of all genders. # Vanessa got home and walked in to the living room without taking her shoes off. “One week, smartass,” she said to her son, “do you have anything to say?” “Did you at least laugh at the video?” “How about, ‘I’m sorry mom. It was a stupid thing to do, mom. I’m very, very sorry I embarrassed you and got suspended from school for a week, and nothing like this will ever happen again, mom’.” “That too,” he said, “did you at least laugh?” “It wasn’t that funny,” she said. “But a one-week suspension? Unfair. I bet nothing like that ever happened when you were in high school .” “No, it didn’t,” she said, “but only because it hadn’t been thought of. In my day boys used to snap our bra straps and nothing at all was done about it. Just ‘boys being boys’ they said.” “If anyone did that now they’d get their ass kicked” Scott said, “By me.” He unconsciously assumed the posture of a man about to sit down to a video game to kick no one’s ass, ever. “Well, that would be your father’s ass then,” Vanessa said, “Because he did exactly that, many times, and I married him anyway.” Scott had turned back to the video game muttering “I’ll kick everyone’s asses,” and had not heard Vanessa’s comment about his paternal parent, far enough away now and so removed from Scott that she hadn’t even bothered to call him or email him about the suspension. There were two voice-mails waiting for her. One from the assisted care facility where her father was living saying that there had been an issue with her father and that she needed to get in touch with the facility promptly, the other from her brother Dan saying he’d received a voice mail from the assisted care facility saying that there had been a problem with their father and that she needed to get in touch with the facility promptly, and then to let him know if she needed any help. She called Endless Vista Village, identified herself, and was told that her father had been seen having a “physical relationship” with another resident that appeared to also involve marijuana use, and that it would be better to discuss this in person. Could she be there at ten the next morning? They would say nothing further over the phone. She made the appointment for two the next day and phoned Dan. “Dan, the Endless Vista people called and said Dad has been having a “physical relationship” with another resident and that there is marijuana somehow involved. They want to meet us tomorrow at two in the afternoon. I already took off early today to go see the school about Scott’s video. Can you do the meeting with them?” “ I saw Scott’s video on YouTube,” Dan said, “Funny stuff. I can’t do the meeting though. Can you just go and then give me the scoop when you have time?” “Why can’t you go?” Vanessa asked. “Well, two reasons. One is that I don’t do those kinds of meetings well. I’m a numbers guy, and not a people person. Two is I can’t book off on a Friday on short notice. I don’t have that kind of a job.” “Dan, you are an accountant in a one-man shop. You work for yourself. It’s not even tax season.” “Hey, when you work for yourself, you don’t own the business - the business owns you,” Dan said. “I’m chief cook and bottle washer and all positions in between. Just do the meeting and let me know if you need anything from me. Remember to tell Scott not to get too down. His video was some funny stuff. Real funny. The school needs to grab a Xanax or two and a cold beer and chill out a little.” “It wasn’t that funny” she said, but Dan said his good-byes over her and hung up. Later that night she sat down with a glass of wine courtesy three dollars and Mr. Charles Shaw. Even Charles’ company cost more than it used to too. She sipped and watched some real-life unsolved murder cases expertly edited and presented on TV so as to inculcate a kind of creeping paranoia in the viewer that stayed through sleep and followed them upon arising, imbuing them with a pessimistic sense of the world’s wrongness in place of any optimism that otherwise might be found. In her own twilight hour, half asleep in her bathrobe on her couch with the solid value taste of Mr. Charles Shaw, Esq. on her lips, and his fairly-priced after-scent in her nostrils, she had a vision somewhere between dream and prophecy, of Marcia at work. In the dream Marcia was older now with grey in her hair. She was still wearing her black yoga pants, only now they were starting to pill. Marcia got up and had to edge past Garrett, who looked the same as he always looked. He was talking animatedly to a woman Vanessa could not see but could hear in a cubicle next to Marcia’s. Garrett murmured incoherently and the unseen woman laughed and Marcia had to say “Excuse me” twice before Garrett stood up straight to let her past. He did this without looking back at her. Marcia turned to Vanessa and rolled her eyes. Vanessa shrugged. Marcia walked into the elevator but Vanessa did not follow, instead waiting for another elevator so that she might go alone. She was sure, very sure, with the strange logic of dreams that Marcia was walking into that elevator only to be murdered within minutes of exiting it, and that the case would never be solved. In the documentary about the case Vanessa was sure to be interviewed, so she had to think about what she should wear, and what she should say. She woke from this somnambulant vision and picked up the empty glass. “What’s next Chuck?” she asked herself. “What could possibly happen next?” “Menopause.” She imagined Chuck whispering, and then, “Soon enough. You can count on it. But hey - I am here for you baby, always and forever. You can count on me too.” She set the glass in the sink to wait for the next day. # Friday morning with drive-through coffee running through her arteries to animate her soul she stopped by Tom’s office before anything else. “Tom, there’s some kind of emergency with my father at the assisted care facility. There is a meeting at two this afternoon. I have to go so I’ll be out this afternoon.” Tom looked up over the edge of his glasses, progressives by the look of it, although his manner suggested he’d never adapted to use them as intended. “Sure thing, Vicki, he said, “I understand these things. Let me tell you about my own dad sometime. Circling the drain, prays for death every day, but still hangs in there. I think that in a strange way it feels like an accomplishment to him. He now spites even himself. But whatever, you take all the time you need, and hey – while I’ve got you here shut the door and grab a seat, there is something I need to discuss with you.” Vanessa shut the door as directed and sat down. "Look Tom,” she said, “Before you start, I want to say that I have been here a long time, there has never been a complaint, and that two family emergencies in one week could hardly be predicted. It won’t happen again.” “What are you talking about?” Tom said. “This isn’t about you. You are safe. You are a fixture here, like the furniture. If you go, I go, and that’s all there is to it. No – this is about Garrett. To make a long story short there’s been some complaints, so we’re going to transfer him out of customer service and into analytics. We’d like you to take over his team and be the new “Team Lead” for us. Will you do that?” “What happened?” She asked. “I mean, I know Garrett could be a little overbearing with some of the team members, the ladies especially, but ...” "What?” Tom interrupted. “Nothing like that, it was the customers. Garrett just doesn’t return calls promptly, or sometimes, at all. I asked him about it and all he said was ‘I won’t babysit clients, Tom; we’re all supposed to be adults now.’ But client service is one of our core values, and that means babysitting. The upshot of all of this is that he will move into analytics, and you’ll take over his team, if you are willing. “Money?” Vanessa asked. “Well, the wage freeze is still on, so not at first. However, I hear rumors from the higher-ups that they may remove it in eighteen months or so. You should be in good shape for a raise then. Also, we’re taking on a couple of interns. They don’t get paid of course but you and the other team leaders can share the interns to chase files, take messages, do anything you think they can do in the six months that they are here and we aren’t paying them. Maybe the hiring freeze will end before the wage freeze, but I have not heard anything at all about that.” Vanessa got up to leave. “Well alright then, I guess it’s decided.” “Thanks Vi,” Tom said. “I knew I could count on you. You’re still coming on Saturday, right? We have to play a little catch-up on some of Garrett’s stuff. Mostly unreturned calls/complaints and that kind of thing. Going to have to kiss a little customer's ass.” “I’m coming in on Monday, like usual, for the same money as I did this week,” Vanessa said, walking out, but Tom had already picked up the phone. # At the assisted living facility, she was ushered into the Client Care Manager’s office along with a sturdy looking woman in pink scrubs and crocs she introduced as “Grace, one of our client care specialists. The office was tiny, almost too small for three adult women. The client care manager, whose last name was Van Buren, spoke first. “I believe it best to be direct. Your father has been having a sexual relationship with another of our clients, and the two have also been using marijuana. Both are grounds for terminating our contract of care with them, but we’ll just say that this is the one warning we’ll give. If it happens again, he’s out, and you’ll have forty-eight hours to remove him.” “Do you have proof?” Vanessa asked. Van Buren turned her monitor around. It was immense, twenty-two inches at least. Vanessa had been raised on smaller televisions. “We have security camera video, and I’m afraid I have to warn you, it can be disturbing.” Where had Vanessa heard that phrase? Yes - on the unsolved murder documentaries. At least a hundred times, if not a thousand. “Sweet merciful Jesus,” she said under her breath, “not another fucking video.” “Pardon?’ said Van Buren. “Let ‘er rip” said Vanessa. She leaned forward. There were two videos. In the first, her father, naked except for a pair of thigh-high red vinyl boots with three-inch steel heels, walked with admirable ease arm-in-arm with a tall woman with short white hair who wore only a stiff looking set of white panties, panties that Vanessa quickly realized were adult diapers. The woman leaned her head on his shoulder and they looked like any other couple, walking in any other place, except they weren’t. They were decrepit, and here in an assisted care facility, and dressed as if for a fetish party no one should ever imagine, let alone see. In the second video the white-haired woman was totally naked and straddling her father on a bench in the open-air atrium between the wings of the facility. She rose up off of him and sat at his side, her head on his shoulder and he looked down at her and she looked up at him and they kissed softly and slowly and held the kiss for a long time. He then produced a small joint from inside the cuff of his red vinyl thigh-highs, and then a lighter and they lit it up, each puff-puff-passing adroitly. Her father leaned back on the bench, stretching out the length of his lanky body and crossing his ankles and Vanessa thought that she too lay like that, lay when watching TV. The short haired women settled in against his shoulder and they were sublimated into one another, a moment not stolen but taken, even though it was now owned by security cameras and some portion of their children’s sense of shame. “Can you put a black dot on that or something,” Vanessa asked. “I can’t look at my dad’s junk.” “I’m sorry” Van Buren said, and she reached out to place the tip of her finger on the screen over the offending aged genitalia. Without prompting, Grace placed the tips of two fingers over the short-haired woman’s breasts, adjacent to without actually abutting, her navel. “Enough,” said Vanessa. I understand. “We’d like you to speak to your father,” Van Buren said. “We already have, and he knows the deal. But it would be best if you reaffirmed our position. We all need to be on the same page on things like this.” Grace walked Vanessa to her father’s room. “You father is one of my favorites,” she said. “Never a problem. You know ma’am, it’s like this: If our male clients get up to a little something, the families roll their eyes and look away. “Boys will be Boys’ they say, whether the boys are nineteen or ninety. With our female clients well now, that’s a different thing. Some people don’t mind mom having a little fun too, but some are unhappy. And unhappy children sue. And truth be known, I don’t care if he, or any of our clients, indulges in a little weed, here and there. If they can stay mellow it makes all of our jobs that much easier. It’s better than the prescription medications they all take. That stuff is what makes ‘em crazy.” “Where do they get the weed?” Vanessa asked. “Family members mostly,” Grace said. “Or some staff. Some will sell it to the clients to supplement their income. I don’t hold with that, no one does it with good intentions; they do it because they can charge more for it than they can out on the street. This is the long goodnight of generation weed, and they have to have it, have to have it, and they’ll pay. I don’t care if your dad, or any of our clients, indulges in a little herbal therapy, here and there. If they can stay mellow it’s better for everyone.” “Good to know,” said Vanessa, and walked in to see her father. She refused to ask about how her father had acquired the kinky boots, and Grace was very kind not to bring it up. Grace shut the door behind her and Vanessa could hear Grace walking away and moving down the hall. “Hey buttercup,” her dad said. He sat in a chair watching TV with the sound off, oddly upright compared to his, and Vanessa’s, usual posture of slouching back to watch TV with their chins on their chests. “Hey, dad.” They sat in silence for a while. “Well?” Vanessa finally spoke. “I thought you were a goddamn Republican.” “I still believe in fiscal responsibility, if that’s what you mean,” he said, without looking at her. Vanessa sat in silence. “Don’t worry, buttercup. I know I’ve gone and shit on my dinner plate. It won’t happen again,” he said. “That’s all I need to hear.” “I miss your mother,” he said. “Terribly. You too. Dan sure, but in a different way. How is Scotty? It’s been a while since he’s stopped by. I miss him too.” “Scott is doing fine,” Vanessa said. “He’s been making videos for a drama class. Playing his video games. He’s looking for a summer job at the mall. Busy with his own life these days.” “I no longer remember dates and times like I used to,” her father said, “but I do remember that after your mother died, I spent months alone in the house. I would not, could not, go out. One day I saw a commercial for a movie on TV and thought it looked good. I remember taking Scotty to a matinee to see that movie and he loved it. Really loved it. Something about a boy wizard. It seems like a long time ago but of course it can’t be - it’s just how I remember things.” “I know the movie dad, and Scott loved it too.” They spoke then of nothing, of weather and documentaries, of old family dogs long since running unfettered by door and fence and gone to dog heaven on four flying feet, and of the week’s coming weather. She sat with him until five, the same time she would have normally left work at, before she left to return to her place and to Scott and Charles Shaw. That night, with Scott out to a movie with friends, and with Charles Shaw at her side, she watched the unsolved-murder-meant-for-you channel and she lay on the couch with her head back against the back and her chin on her chest and with her eyes half-closed she understood that the narrator of the documentary was the real Charles Shaw, Sir Charles Shaw, guiding hand and ancient oracle, keeper of murderer’s secrets, behind the documentary. He now spoke of the murder of a quiet high school drama teacher, one Ms. Green, who vanished after walking across the high school parking lot after a student reenactment of Waiting for Godot, and all that was found of her were her glasses, lenses missing, a pair of black yoga pants, well-worn and starting to pill, and a pair thigh-high red vinyl boots. She awoke in her room the next day, up with the sun, dressed and drove to get a drive-through coffee, large, with three cream and three sugar, and went into the office to put in a few hours catching up on Garrett’s problems. Dan had texted her during the ride - a single “?” - but she did not reply. She’d made up her mind to tell him something he could handle, after work, when she, in the voice of Sir Charles, had time to compose it for him, just so.

I smell lily of the valley scent—mamas’ perfume — from the flower bouquets in the dayroom. We sit in washable armchairs wearing our spotless bibs. Here comes something white and round with flickering candles. A nurse pounds out ‘happy birthday’, off-key on the old piano. A man comes up to me; holding out flowers and says, “Happy eightieth birthday Mom, I’m Peter, your son.” But he isn’t. My thoughts balloon and shrivel like the echoes of mama’s laughter. On my seventh birthday, I remember gift-wrapped paper, bound with rainbow twine, ripped off presents by my impatient tiny fingers. Our Billy shot sparks with his dart gun, and Dandy, the white terrier, dived with fright under the long tablecloth. Granny Edna sat corseted, sipped Earl Grey tea, tut-tutted, and nibbled finger sandwiches of spam and cucumber. The box camera steadied in daddy’s hands to make smiles and memories. I call mama’s name again and again and again. The nurse advances with the drug trolley. Why doesn’t she give me a hug instead and ask me about her? “Your mama died, shush now dear,” she says. The nurse wants to make me cry again. My debs’ ball,- decked out in my cerise -pink ball gown, and a corsage of orchid pink roses, pinned to my waspish waist. Waltzed in a cloud of pink yearning. The time I saw my Frank — the moment our eyes met — our souls spoke. Sixty years together, till cancer took him. Our son Peter, aged seven……………. “Be calm, dear,” the nurse says. I try to rise, but I am harnessed to my chair. I cry. They wheel me to my room and tuck me up in bed, securing the bedclothes underneath the mattress. I rattle the cot sides; I try to get free— I hate tight spaces. Mary Anne Mc Enery is an Irish and Dutch citizen, a senior—who does not act her age— living in The Hague, The Nederlands. She has fun writing micro, flash fiction, and longer short stories. Some of her words can be found on the Friday Flash Fiction and Roi Faineant websites.

*This poem references Plaint of the Poet in an Ignorant Age, by Carolyn Kizer (1959). On a late summer morning, I ventured into Rocky Narrows as the sun peaked the horizon. Flora’s cool darkening crowded the trail, and deeper, I pushed. In the shade, dewy ferns overreached to deposit deer ticks onto my tall socks— stopping to sweep them away, a bird I’ve never heard squawked a song from the treetops. It was then I thought of dear Ms. Kizer— slinking about in a jazzy housecoat, perplexed and sucking on a green olive— trying to wake those dozing metaphors. And I would I were a botany-boy or a bug-boy with a backpack full of books, but no. I am, at thirty-nine, a poetry-man with little time to learn. So I forgot the no-bird singing in the no-name tree and stomped my way down the path, scaring squirrels and kicking pine cones— bruising my arches on paunchy acorns. A link to an audio recording of Plaint of the Poet in an Ignorant Age by Carolyn Kizer - https://t.co/tFqQGBxIak?ssr=true

Blue at sunrise I set down that portion of me and whisper to the room “Not yet,” and this is how it is for at least the long length of another day or two I remain, knotted up against desire— the thread-pull of leaving Int[e]r[l]ude The machine sputters to silence; black coffee steams cupped anticipation, and it has taken long sips of this early morning to be, completely, here, turning before the brightening day, burning, and then to remember (it shrieks itself into being –a hard start) that it is not the dead but the buried who slip backwards into the cold smallness of hard shapes (I come back into being) and the morning’s warm quiet sharpens to jagged half-light, emptying-grey, and waits… and stays… (and who is it that has fallen away?) The morning unanswered; The coffee undrunk. Endings By evening, we’ve already forgotten. What needs saying waits with its wings tucked under. Beneath the field of heartlong glances a speckled silence grows. And the lightning bugs remind of summers lost, remind of the when past why of this all. Night words, dusted with gold and crackling, remind of a future—time beyond reach. And the lightning bugs— (I think I can catch the sweep of their frenzy behind my eyelids. I think I can keep something for once.) Mothers/Daughters You are in the den starching linen. I am six years old, your girl, come in to prove myself. Backyard birds warble in time to your belt. Later, you stand astride the front lawn, brick in hand, and cigarette, his new car careening backwards down the drive. I must prove myself. I am fourteen, or twelve, or six, shaking the birds from their branches. You are here and there a lifetime. We never get too far from one another. I love colliding with you. The tumor spreads its fingers around your throat and I am six years old again. I must prove myself. The birds won’t leave their perches. There are no birds or branches. There is only you, now, disappearing beneath the white waves of your deathbed. You are gone. The sea is roaring quiet. Those birds are far off now. Those birds and their sturdy branches. Passages I am going north, I say to her— It is like a little code between us. Me, with my ungainly heart, and she, full settled and circumspect. I imagine she grants to us every cliché of young and stupid love, unknowing, as she does, the way our minds catch fire with each crackling cut. The way the evening meetings of our bodies bloom like brief flowers. Abigail Weathers is a teacher and copy editor living in Beijing, China. A member of the Spittoon Literary Collective, she facilitates the Spittoon Poetry Workshop and is a poetry editor for Spittoon Monthly. Her work appears in A Shanghai Poetry Zine, Sky Island Journal, SAGINAW, Trouvaille Review, and Identity Theory.

Ly Faulk has loved reading and writing for as long as they could read and write. They still believe in the power of the written word to change lives.

7,000 acres of incinerated forest suns burn through holes in my eyes fingers rake light through my skin of leaves every moment scalds inside with my mouth sewn shut by your hands wielding centipede thread and needles of luminous flame. juno, soaring summer cups my back with warm hands, like yours. my heart is fishing line pulled by your tides lay between my flowers and purr again. drown out drone echoing through the dark halls inside me. Síofra is an artist and worker from the mid-Atlantic. She can be found on Twitter or her website, https://eelchamber.neocities.org/

Albert grunted as he rowed the last hundred feet towards the blank shore. It wouldn’t be blank for long. Soon it’d be teeming with more life than beads of sweat on Albert’s body. At least he was working off the cheeseburger. The water grew shallow and the oars buried themselves in sand with each stroke. Finally—and with the crunch of sand against the bow—he arrived. Albert slung his bag across his shoulder and planted his feet on the shore. Barren island stretched out ahead. He peeled open the bag, searching for his notebook, spiral-bound and pristine. His fingers met its spine and sharp corners instantly. Transcribed in Albert’s own neat handwriting were the Planner’s specs: Beachgrass, scattered palms, deciduous trees, small animals. NO PREDATORS. Satisfied, he hung the notebook from his belt. This would be his first gig, thanks to his fellow Placer and mentor—Howard—after another arduous training session and the customarily boozy lunch which followed. # Training with Howard was grueling. He’d ask for a kiwi and grow upset when Albert produced a kiwi, chiding him over how he wanted the one with the tiny wings, not the more edible kind. “Hey! Would He screw this up? Why should us Placers be any different?” Howard took the kiwi from Albert and took a bite. “Sure we’re taking over for Him, a lot of stuff on His plate recently, but it doesn’t give us the right to be sloppy.” Howard sighed. “Okay, here’s a hint: six dots.” It took a few moments for Albert to put three and three together. He opened the bag again and deftly found the bird pocket without ever needing to take his eyes off Howard’s leering grin. It still impressed him how each pocket expanded, how the tiny pouches inside with their studded flaps stretched well beyond the limits of each pocket that held them and the bag that held the pockets. Albert had learned not to question the why or the how of it, just accept that it was part of His design. The studs on the flaps told him what each minuscule pouch contained, and he spent months memorizing patterns. Eventually—and through much trial and error—the dots sank in and Albert had earned his Pouch Identification Proficiency certification. He’d hung the plaque over his collection of rulers. He produced the confused bird for Howard’s inspection. Howard nodded, complained about his feet getting tired, and suggested they go to the Eastern for lunch. Albert stooped down to let the kiwi hop off his palm. It scurried away into a patch of tall reeds. A few wooden tables were scattered around the pub. Placers and Planners clustered in cliques. Howard changed to his off-duty attire: jeans and a graphic tee stating that IF IT AIN’T PLACED IT AIN’T LIVING. “A little out of the way, but we need it done soon to meet deadline,” Howard told him between bites of stew. A little piece of carrot clung to his two-week beard. Albert resisted the urge to wipe it from his chin. “Otherwise it’s pretty standard fare. I’d pick it up myself if I didn’t have so much else on my…bowl!” Howard ripped into a loud guffaw and clapped Albert on the shoulder, sending his fries flying. “I wish you’d laugh, heck I’ll take a smile. Even once. All those gotchas I threw your way and not even a chuckle!” “I’ll laugh when you say something funny,” said Albert. He took another bite of his burger. The tomato slid out and plopped onto his plate with an unappetizing splat. Why couldn’t He have made the tomato so it didn’t slide all over the place? Howard grinned with fleshy cheeks. “That’s the Albert I know, all right.” He waved his hand and Sophie came by. Albert straightened himself out in his seat, throwing back his shoulders to make himself seem taller than he already was. He kept coming to the Eastern in the hopes that someday he would find the courage to ask Sophie out. In the process of finding that courage he became a regular. Albert caught Howard catching the plunge of her neckline. Sophie caught Howard as well, sighing as her tunic expanded across her chest. Somewhere in the pub a groan resounded. “Another ale, then? If He hadn’t forbid cannibalism, I’d offer you some bacon.” She rubbed the same spot of her chin where the carrot had nested itself in Howard’s beard. The morsel dislodged itself, plopping into Howard’s beer. It drowned in a ring of bubbles. “Guess I’ll need another now, won’t I?” “As long as He approves.” She pointed a finger out the door. Technically, she should have pointed just a little bit to the left, past the pinball table in the corner. Beyond that was His house, perched upon the first hill He had ever made as a child. “He doesn’t need to worry,” Howard replied, “because Albert here is taking the job. His first solo one, too. I can drink ’til I puke.” Sophie beamed at Albert. “That’s great!” She looked like she was going to hug him. Maybe after this job she would. Her smile turned flat as she turned to Howard. “Sometimes I wish you would spew. Then maybe finally He would toss you out like the bum you are.” Howard shrugged and killed his beer, swallowing the chunk of carrot whole. It was going to be Albert’s first real job as a Placer, and he was feeling fine. # Currently, he felt a little less fine. The island held no companionship except for his notes and his thoughts. Still, it was a job to do and Albert wanted to do it well. Further up the beach the sand rose into a small dune. As good a place to start as any, he thought. As Albert climbed the dune the squish of his water-logged socks made him wonder why he thought sneakers would be a smart choice. He made a mental note to wear sandals for his next beach job. The whole of the island stretched out in front of him, nothing but sand and rocks for now. He was after Beachgrass: three dots—two aligned horizontally, one just below and to the right. He found it in a few seconds. After plucking just a single seed from within he smiled and felt its oblong shape between his finger and thumb. He continued to worry at the seed, feeling it multiply until they overflowed in his palm. Albert sprinkled the wad of seeds in his hand with deliberate nonchalance across the dune. He waited. After a few short moments spurts of green emerged from the sand, pointed optimistically towards the sky. Albert nodded and continued. He remembered his first time he had ever Placed something under supervision. Howard clucked his tongue. Though Albert had a few inches on Howard he always felt a bit shorter when Howard went on one of his rants. “You forget? You dummy. Plants can’t grow on rocks. Not this one, anyway. You know how much paperwork your mistake is gonna land me? Two forms for the Planners. Not one, two. One for why this choice was made despite common knowledge that hydrangeas don’t grow on rocks and another for why the hydrangea need unPlacing. Never mind the fact that I still have a strike from that poodle incident! He’ll send me to mandatory Hydrangea Placing Awareness now and…” Albert got the point. While he didn’t have to go to Howard’s training, simply hearing about it was enough—a forty-minute seminar by a man who chose to be balding, claiming it made him look like a thinker. The island was one of the most remote remaining. The Planners left it until the end, citing its remoteness and sheer boringness. Even if He came down from His house on the hill for a white-glove inspection, He wouldn’t give this island more than half a glance. So, why bother? Albert ran through his Fifty-Two Creeds. They were the reasons he needed to do the best job he could and do it as often as possible. He created the first fourteen while sitting alone in bed one quiet night, and the rest followed over time. He repeated them every morning since, whenever he was unsure of a choice which needed to be made. Should he Place a Fir or Spruce? Run through the Fifty-Two. Soup or Salad? Fifty-Two. A good spot for a Water Oak appeared. Three dots across and one beneath. He stooped and placed the seed on a small mound of dirt. A little splotch of green emerged instantly. These Placed florae grew faster than their offspring would—another way that He made things easier on the Placers. It beat standing around for twenty years, not that Albert couldn’t do that if he wanted to. Feeling a little daring, he groped a little further down his bag and found the animal pocket. His instructions had been very clear: NO PREDATORS. He sat on a rock, and continued walking his fingers down the flaps until he found what he was looking for. He felt the warmth of short fur beneath his fingertips, the minute twitches of muscle. Gently hoisting it from his bag he inspected it for a few moments. The squirrel held curiously still, sniffing at his fingers. The squirrel’s coat was full, no bald patches anywhere. The last thing Albert wanted was a defective squirrel running around. He let it go. It landed on all fours and sniffed the dirt beneath its feet. Hearing some nonexistent noise off in the distance, it bolted for the shrubbery Albert had planted. He smiled, brought out a few more squirrels, and started his first lap around the island—sprinkling squirrels as he went. It had been a few millennia ago when He began on his first uneasy foray into creation, one which ended with a particularly troublesome species making their planet too hot of all things. Upon His return He found a hot, lonely, smelly wreck of a planet, completely devoid of life. He discontinued Placing the species responsible and sent out a memo shortly thereafter. Until further notice, bovine were to be relegated to cheeseburger-related purposes only. Albert finished his lap around the island, sowing trees and brushes and flowers along the supple earth bordering the sand. Soon he had some shade he could rest beneath. The rest of the island couldn’t take more than a few hours to finish so he plopped himself on a rock (no hydrangeas here) near the water. He removed his shoes, luxuriating in the feel of wet sand and cool water sloshing between his toes. He couldn’t be sure how many minutes had passed, when a voice came from behind. # “Enjoying the breeze?” Sophie stood behind him, silhouetted by the sun. “Oh, Sophie, you…you’re down here.” “Can I sit?” Albert said nothing and Sophie took that as a yes. She wore sandals with a pastel floral pattern on the soles. “Should’ve brought something better than those things,” she said, pointing at the sandy sneakers leaning against Albert’s rock. “You knew this was an island, right?” “They’re better for walking around than sandals.” “That may be, but can you really put your feet on the ground? Feel life spring between your toes and kiss your ankles? And can you do all that without getting animal crud all over your feet?” Albert chuckled. “You might be right. What brings you down here anyway? How did you even get down here?” “Nothing really, just wanted to see how you were getting along. Here, let me get those for you.” Sophie twisted her face a bit. Albert’s sneakers were now on his feet, letting in more water than they should. When Albert looked down he realized that they had turned into sandals. They had the same dancing flowers as Sophie’s pair. “Isn’t that better?” Sophie asked. “Yes, but how did you didn’t answer my seco—“ “So,” she continued, “what’s in that magic sack of yours?” “Just the usual. Some plants and animals needing Placing. It’s pretty standard.” Albert hoped he sounded just the right amount of casual. “Got the Planner’s specs and I’m gonna get started—really started—here in a minute.” “I’d love to see you work your magic, if you’re not shy about it.” “There’s not much to see. You’ll get bored in a minute.” “Not with you around.” Sophie stood, brushed the sand clinging to her pants. “Oh, you’ve got something on your shirt.” Albert followed her finger towards the hem of his white shirt. A few dried tomato seeds clung like burs. Tomatoes strike again, he thought. Even after they were brushed away the seeds left a few reddish blots on Albert’s otherwise pristine shirt. They talked as they made a lap around the island. Albert didn’t bother slinging the bag around his shoulder again, carrying it loosely by its strap. Worried that he was boring her, he asked how things were at the Eastern. “Oh you know, about the same. Gets kind of boring serving you Placers all the time but it is what it is, I guess. Howard’s kind of a prick though.” “He can be.” Albert rummaged through his bag again, found a few more seeds. He was about to Place them, but had another thought. A better idea. But was this really a smart choice? Run through the Fifty-Two. The Fifty-Two came back with a big thumbs up. No way they would fail him now. He put the seeds in Sophie’s hand instead. “Want to do a few?” “Only if I’m allowed. Is it okay?” Sophie tossed some around without waiting for Albert to respond. A swell of green appeared on top of a small mound of dirt. It flourished and a few yellow flowers stood bravely against the barren soil. One came dangerously close to a rock. It wasn’t a hydrangea, sure, but Albert was fairly certain that most other plants couldn’t grow on rocks. He’d have to ask Howard when he got back. “Ohhh that was fun! I want to do some more!” “No, I think that’s enough for right now.” “Don’t be such a downer!” Sophie swiped at his bag. She got a hold of the strap, while Albert’s hand wrapped around the other side. The piece of leather, tested to withstand ten-thousand snags and pulls, had just encountered its ten-thousandth and first. The strap tore and the bag went sailing. A seed flew beneath a rock. An elm emerged from beneath, splitting the rock in two and spurting fiercely towards the sky. A sparrow shot out from the bag. It circled confusedly until it decided on a direction and darted. Just as the tree rose above Albert’s shoulders, the sparrow collided and exploded into a poof. Brown and white feathers fell gently to the ground—a stark contrast to the chaos of ferns and fish, petunias and pill bugs. Albert grazed the flap of the bag with his fingertips, barely missing a firm grip. Something felt off—the way the canvas moved. It was too late when he noticed. It hadn’t been latched. The bag pitched forward and yawned. As it hit the hard clay the little pouches inside began spewing their contents. “No!” Albert shouted at the seeds and animals. Some childish part of him hoped they would heed his words, go back to their homes and stay there until plucked. Instead they scattered. A whole ecosystem in microcosm began to spring forth around them. Soon it’d be a forest contained in the space the size of Albert’s modest broom closet. Sophie shrieked as dozens of rodents scurried between her legs. For a moment he thought of asking Sophie how her sandals were holding up now, thought better of it. The fish took priority. They were the easiest to grab hold of as they spasmed, gasping for water. They went back in easy. “Come help me!” Albert shouted. Sophie obeyed, and together they grabbed fish by their tails and shoved them back into the bag. Albert, struggling to keep a rainbow trout from escaping his grasp, stood directly over the bag and stretched the mouth of the sack open. A brilliantly white claw shot out. Albert yelped at the immense limb which followed, as thick as a trunk and covered in a substance he’d not seen before. The thick, viscous texture reminded him of hundreds of over-snotted handkerchiefs wrung out into a jar. He dropped the trout in surprise. It flopped on the ground, helplessly seeking water. In one of its spasms, it brushed against the limb he could only assume was a forearm. The trout didn’t bounce away, instead clinging in place like a refrigerator magnet. In one swift motion the thing in the bag swept the fish inside. Soft smacking noises and content growls came from within, twisting Albert’s guts into a knot of terror and nausea. The arm shot out again, feeling around for more snacks. Bits of sand stuck to its secretions. A long, pink, uncomfortably articulate tongue followed. It swept the arms and gathered up the sand. The creature Albert straddled made a discontent noise, and the maw of the bag widened. This would be a Bad Thing. Very Bad. If the bag burst then all the plants and animals within would be scattered about the island, something the Planners would not excuse, something which would doom that project, requiring a full reset and reconsideration of the budget. These things didn’t grow on trees, after all. Even the trees had to be manufactured. Sophie shrank into the background. Albert had to do something with this sticky, snotty beast, but what? Think, Albert, think! He had it. “Sophie! Move my shoes like you did before! To my hands!” “What in His name are you doing?” Sophie shouted. “Taking him out!” Albert considered this. “Of the bag. No way to put him back in now!” Sophie considered this request. It was like he’d asked her to put a scoop of ice cream on his steak. She shrugged, wriggled her eyebrows, and put Albert’s sneakers (now sandals) on his hands. A circular mouth, lined with concentric, threatening teeth, emerged from the bag. Two muscular, gooey arms pulled the drawstring taut. Albert used the makeshift gloves to wrench the arms free. The rubber soles sunk in, but were not consumed. Good so far, Albert thought. He straddled the bag and pushed his welterweight strength to its limit. Soon a pair of white beady eyes followed. It was coming out. The seams were at their limits, bulging between each stitch. “Take it easy, don’t force it out,” Sophie said, her voice cool. “If you do it’ll just get angry.” He knew that already, remembering his training course on Removing Large Predators from Tiny Bags. Now the chokepoint was around its neck, if such a beefy creature could even have a neck. “Come on!” Like yelling at it would help. But, oddly, it did. Whether through circumstance or skill or something else the beast seemed to understand. It wiggled through the opening, slowly shifting left to right. There was little he could help with. It emerged from Albert’s sack on its own. As the greatest part of its bulk exited, it lifted Albert into the air. He grabbed whatever goopy love handles he could find. His forearms and legs stuck to the beast, but he kept his torso aloft, looking like a koala bear straddling a Eucalyptus tree. Aside from the whipping pink tongue brushing Albert’s arms, the beast plodded along as if nothing had happened. A few insects inched out, curiously, only to be snatched up and ground into a paste with startling efficiency. Sophie sprang forward, pulling the string shut and latching the bag. Nothing more sprang out. The bag was sealed once again. Albert wanted to throw a fist towards the sky and whoop and holler until his throat grew sore. But his arms were glued, and he’d never been much for celebrating. Maybe a pint at the Eastern, but nothing more. “Well, what do you think?” Albert asked. Sophie cocked a grin. “You did pretty good,” she said, rubbing the side of the animal. She looked at her hand in disgust and wiped the mucus on her sleeve. The fabric of her shirt doubled in on itself. Shouldn’t she be glued to it? Like I am right now? “Lemme ask you something. Do you remember the specs of this island? What the Planners wanted you guys to do.” He thought back. Assortments of deciduous trees in the center, nothing too fancy in terms of animals. NO PREDATORS. His stomach dropped. How would he explain this one? How would he explain the other predators? The huge influx of life on this tiny island? Would they buy it? Should he try to cram the creature back in the bag? He looked down at the loping figure, felt the shoulder blades move beneath his thighs. No way it would go along with that plan. The Fifty-Two, the crux of his decision to let Sophie try this at all, had failed him. He’d have to come up with a new rule. When a woman you’re interested in asks if she can try Placing seeds, don’t let her. You might screw everything up, nearly spill millions of plants and animals on a tiny island, and wind up riding a snot monster along the beach. He turned to ask her if she wanted to hop on. But when he looked back Sophie was gone. # Albert blinked. In her place stood Him. Him in his stereotypical chastity-white robes, flowing as gracefully as His chest-length beard. Him with His unusual gait, now floating alongside Albert, Him in all the training videos and the photoshoots, Him which never left His house, not even for a beer with the working fellas, Him alone in His high castle. Albert’s throat went dry. He made all the rules and He held public shaming for all the Placers who had screwed up. He made them walk laps around His hill as Placers threw whatever rotten fruit they could get their hands on. Albert remembered Howard bragging about how he hit a Placer who had screwed up bad right between the eyes with an overripe borojó and how he didn’t even know what hit him. “Don’t worry about the Grignax. I think he likes you,” He said. Albert wasn’t worried about that. It was the impending punishment that made him sweat. Could Grignaxes (Grignaxi?) smell fear? “So you didn’t quite follow instructions on this, did you?” He asked. Albert could do nothing but stammer. “I’m not even mad about the Grignax, more that a Placer dropped their bag like that. Isn’t that what the latch is for? And before you say anything else—yes, I do this to all the rookies so hush, please. Can’t let this get out to the other scrubs. Sorry, but you’ll have to go through some of those horrible training videos. Nearly put me to sleep watching them myself. Anyway, let’s just enjoy this walk, shall we? I don’t get out enough.” “Wait, so I’m not getting punished?” “Oh, you’re getting punished for this, believe you me. Probably not the walk of shame, not for a first offense, but all this needs to get cleaned up, unPlaced. Let’s just walk for a bit for now, shall we? I don’t get out much these days.” So they walked in silence for a while, listening to the waves hit the shore and the gentle gurgles and snorts of the Grignax. Albert thought of asking Him why tomatoes were so slippery, but decided against it. The sky turned a hazy orange. As they walked past a rock, He noticed a fish flopping helplessly against its side. With a quick motion He swept up the fish and tossed it` into a mouth as wide as Albert’s arm was long. The Grignax chomped down on it graciously. Albert felt the creature’s muscles working to digest its latest treat. He’d do without dinner tonight. “So was that also you at the Eastern, serving us drinks?” Albert asked. He nodded. “So Howard was ogling you, then.” He sighed. “Yeah, he was. What a prick.” They were silent for some time, instead doing laps around the beach and tossing seeds haphazardly left and right. He didn’t mind, in fact He encouraged it by flinging a few towards the center of the island. A hydrangea seed bounced against a rock and started to sprout around it. He chuckled. “That brings me back to that stupid ‘no hydrangeas on rocks’ rule I came up with. What was I thinking with that one?” Albert still wasn’t sure why that could be. Eventually He started to complain about his feet cramping up. The sun touched the horizon. “Well, I guess it’s time to go. I need to give my feet an ice bath after all this walking around,” He said. “I guess I’ll see you around then, Albert?” “Uh, I’m kind of stuck to this thing, sir.” “Oh! Sorry about that. I’m still working on him. He’s not ready for prime time yet.” He made a noise somewhere between a groan and gargle, and the Grignax’s skin turned to glass. Albert climbed off easily. “Thanks. Guess I’ll see you around?” Albert said. “Good, that’s the…spirit! Get it?” He ripped off into a loud guffaw, then He was gone. Albert asked the Fifty-Three one last time whether he should bring this up to anyone. The Fifty-Three remained silent, and so did he. Tim Brown has been writing for a few years in a variety of genres. When he’s not writing he can be found tending to his plants, kowtowing to his cats, and attempting to clear his backlog of books and video games. Tim currently lives in Queens, NY.

I think of her when I enter my kitchen. I think of her when I see fresh beets, used ashtrays, gleaming Oldsmobiles, or bright red hair dye. I think of her when I see myself in the mirror or hear Russian spoken in passing. I miss her daily, but I won’t ever get the closure I truly need to lay my grandmother, Zayne, to rest. She was the original unapologetic, Grade-A, Bad-Ass Bitch in my life. Standing less than 5 feet tall, my grandmother was the first person I ever knew who traveled abroad and who picked up a foreign language as a hobby. She enchanted new people, made easy friends, and kept a steady job. As difficult as she was, I loved her. Like the adage says, I miss her more than ever knowing I will never get another chance to talk to her again. Despite her tendency to berate anyone who didn’t fit into a size 6 dress or “loudmouths,” during her life, my grandmother was remarkably helpful to others. Following her death, I learned that she had helped several families by sponsoring and petitioning for their citizenship. She tutored people in her community and taught numerous people how to read. My elderly grandmother swung a hammer many times building homes with Habitat for Humanity. Rumor has it that she even swung her manicured fist at her family members on more than one occasion. I don’t doubt the stories. I am just grateful it was never directed at me. So how can it be that this mish-mash of qualities also drove me absolutely nuts? That Zayne alienated caregivers, family members, and restaurant workers more than she enchanted them? How could this tiny little lady in a size 5 shoe have caused grown men to cower? And how could she literally, this year after she passed, come to haunt me too? Families are like that, I suppose. Or are they? When I received the final death certificate, one bold word stood out to me: Schizophrenia. That her illusions of grandeur were maybe not just visible to me, but to her also. The boldness of her actions and voice amplified by unseen forces governing her mind. And sadly, this diagnosis wasn’t something I was aware of prior to her passing. The word hit me with fierceness. I knew of dark depression, looming memories, violence, sadness, yes. But to have one’s memories or mind betray them entirely? This was news to me. Alone in the dark of the night with my son, I often reflect on what my children will inherit from me. Zayne’s exciting yet compulsive behavior? Her off-putting racism directed towards others? Or her generosity? Her ease in crowds or museums? The truth is that I don’t know the entirety of her legacy quite yet. My baby, suckling in my exhausted arms, points at her paintings hanging in my kitchen. I affirm his growing curiosity with my own hope. Maybe our legacy isn’t mental illness. Maybe our legacy is something more, something pure. “Yes baby,” I find myself saying. “I miss her too. Aren’t those colors pretty?” I turn to the pantry and think of her. I think of the unopened box of Chex that will perpetually remain on my shelf--a testament to the staying power of my grandmother. Melissa Wabnitz Pumayugra is a Texas writer and photographer. She began her career as a small-town journalist and has recently dabbled in poetry, memoirs, and creative fiction. Her writing and photography can be found in Emergent Lit, Emerson Review,Roi Faineant Press,Hobart Pulp, Vox Poetica, Oklahoma Today as well as in print publications throughout the United States.