Windward Review Vol. 20 (2022): Beginnings and Endings

Beginnings and Endings 

Windward Review 

Volume 20, 2022


X 

Windward Review Volume 20, 2022 

Beginnings are usually scary and endings are usually sad, but it’s 

everything in between that makes it all worth living. . 

-Bob Marley 

Windward Review Volume X 

2

Managing Editor 

Dylan Lopez 

Assistant Managing Editor 

Raven Reese 


Windward Review, Vol. 20 

Senior Editor/ Creative Director 

Zoe Elise Ramos 

Copyeditor 

Celine Ramos 

Associate Editors 

Logan Alves, Jasmine Aran, Elida Castillo, Kimberly Epps, Brooke Free, Daunte Gaiter, 

Jamie Grime, Alexa Mendoza, Allora Montalvo, Halli Peltier, Rolando Villareal, Joi’ 

White | All Students of ENGL 4385: Studies in Creative Writing: Literary Publishing, 

Windward Review, Spring 2022 

Social Media Manager 

Amanda King 

Event Coordinator 

Kindel Casey 

Assistant Social Media Team 

Dr. Chris Andrews | All Students of ENGL 4320: Writing for Social Media, Spring 

2022 | Elida Castillo, Kimberly Epps, Alexa Mendoza, Halli Peltier 

Design Team 

Dr. Catherine Schumann | Students of ENGL 3378: Document Design and Publishing, 

Spring 2022 

Logo Design 

Indigo Rodriguez 

Faculty Advisor/ Senior Editor 

Dr. Robin Carstensen 

Assistant Faculty Advisor 

Dr. Lizbette Occasio-Russe 

Cover Artist 

Gibel Amador 

Front cover: “WHITE RABBIT” Model: Samantha Chacón 

Back cover: “LE MUSE” Model: Oriann Mcdermott 

(Follow them: IG @gibeel TW @Gibelamador) 

WR is a not-for-profit journal established by Robb and Vanessa 

Furse Jackson and managed on a voluntary basis—out of a love 

for the work—by students/ faculty out of the Texas A&M U.-Corpus 

Christi English Department and Islander Creative Writers. We are 

generously funded by the Paul and Mary Haas Foundation. 

Follow us: 

FB @The Windward Review 

IG @thewindwardreview 

FB @Islander Creative Writers 

IG @icwriters 

www. tamucc.edu/liberal-arts/windward-review/ 

Windward Review Volume 20 

3 Windward Review Volume X X

Contents 

Letter from the Managing Editor 6 

Nehemiah Flores 

Jukebox Heart (Illusions of War) 7 

Joseph Tyler Wilson 

The Craziness of Love 8 

My Story Begins on Interstate 69 

Near Humble 9 

Dezarae Martinez 

Metamorphosis 10 

Ava Coronado 

Sibling Harmony 11 

Anna Strickland 

Goodbyes 16 

Raye Bailey 

She Remembers 17 

The Last Leaf 17 

Nancy Spiller 

A Brief History of Donny 18 

Aliah Candia 

Black Sheep 23 

Me, Her 24 

Kaitlyn Winston 

You’re Hungry 25 

Natasha Haas 

A Gnawing Empty 27 

Edward Wang 

Embers of Ambition 28 

Cianna Martinez 

The Tainted Painting 32 

Dee Allen 

La Bestia 33 

THE BLACK SHIPS 34 

Morning Alarm 35 

Swapna Sanchita 

Banality 36 

M. Alis Spencer 

la génesis 37 

Zev Edwards 

Here Today 39 

Steve Brisendine 

circuitous reasoning 43 

The Green Man in Autumn 44 

Nativity 45 

James T. Grissom 

The Water 46 

Gibel Amador 

Love’s immortality 47 

Marathon 47 

Fleurs Violentes 48 

Leonard Duncan 

An Epilogue 49 

Charity McCoy 

Denial: Blurry 56 

Anger: Complexities 57 

Bargaining: Stolen Moments 58 

Depression: Clean Breaks 59 

Acceptance: Slow Fade 60 

Jessica Grissom 

The Book with a Cup of Tea 61 

Jesus Fernando Ochoa Arreola 

Me Acuerdo de Ti 63 

En las Ruinas del Pensamiento 64 

Routine Staccato 65 

Mi Almohada ya no Ladra 67 

Liz Torres Shannon 

A Beautiful Goodbye 68 

Thảo Ðinh 

Rebirth 71 

Coryna Trevino 

chrysalis 72 

ocean blue eyes full of love 

and promises of forever 73 

Elizabeth Motes 

The Five Stages of a Near-Death 

Experience 75 

Bitia Alanis 

“For the mockingbird that was 

shot 17 times” 81 

“10 things I hate about you” 82 

Alyssa-Rae Barrera 

My Last Dream 83 

Eva Buergler 

EulogyforDr.BfinalFINAL.docx 85 

Beginnings X Endings 


4

Barrio Writers’ Project 2023 

Letter from Raven Reese 89 

Athena Armijo 

Untitled 90 

Sophia Chapa 

Only Human 91 

Don’t Grow up too Fast 91 

Ethan Clarke 

Alligators 2 92 

Jacob A. Clauch 

Book of The Reader’s Life 94 

Janet Doe 

Ignorance’s thievery 95 

Let Them Be Heard 96 

Restlessness 96 

K. Elise 

Whisper I say. 97 

The Wild Woman... 97 

Raison D’etre. 98 

Evolvere (Derek) 

World of Wars 99 

Sophie Johnson 

Existential Procrastination 100 

Tiny Little Creature 101 

Jasmine Martin 

Finding Something Positive 102 

Leo Monsavais 

Falling 103 

Blind Sins 103 

Relationships 104 

Isadora Pak 

Sparks 105 

Aleena Roy 

Zombie carnival 107 

Nadi 107 

Alisha Roy 

Disgust 108 

Emily Hargitai 

Esther ‘98 109 

John C. Mannone 

una lección 115 

A Lesson 116 

Tinted Glasses 117 

Ariana Esquivel 

Diversity in Two Cents 118 

Corita Fernando 

Mourning Loss 119 

Kelly Talbot 

Meta Merging 122 

Jacob Benavides 

Deep in the Heart 123 

hereafter 124 

To The Grounds We Trample, 

The Skies We Are 125 

Amairani Llerena 

And So Lived Dad 127 

Woe Is Me 129 

Tiffany Lindfield 

Enough: 1968 130 

Suzette Bishop 

The Manta Ray 136 

After Class 137 

Mose Graves 

When I Die Just Let Me Go To Texas 138 

Rod Carlos Rodriguez 

Coyote Lullaby 139 

Spill 140 

Martel Deserts 141 

Jesus of Three Gazes: 

Martel Deserts II 141 

Soil and Ash 142 

Ron Pullins 

Reiner 143 

Jean Hackett 

Elegy for the One Who Got Away 147 

I Watch too Many Movies 148 

Arik Mitra 

Arid Beast 149 

Let’s leave for those to come 149 

Peace talks with locust storms 150 

The rose returns to bloom 151 

Robin Latimer 

Comber 152 

Daniel Rodrigues-Martin 

A Grain of Sand in an Hourglass 153 

Azrael Montoya 

Some Poem 165 

Dinosaurs (A Fragment) 165 

Egypt 166 

Laura Treacy Bently 

Still Life 167 

Cellar Door 168 

Sai Varshini Chinnasani 

Twas the Journey 169 

Jo Bowman 

When a poem first finds you 170 

Contributors’ Notes 171 


5 Windward Review Volume X X

Letter from the Managing Editor 

Dear Readers, 

It is my pleasure to introduce to you our latest edition of the Windward Review, 

the much-anticipated Vol. 20, Beginnings and Endings. Our team of student editors have 

worked tirelessly to put together this collection of fine fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, 

flash fiction, plays, works in translation, and hybrid genres of writing. We’re also 

fortunate to have included a number of beautiful art pieces that add to this creative 

conversation with inspired visual and narrative flare. 

The theme, Beginnings and Endings, came about at the beginning of my tenure 

as the managing editor. I felt that the next theme following Vol. 19, Empathy and Entropy, 

should be something quite simple, yet indescribably broad—something everyone could 

contribute to. At this time, I was reading Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island for a class on 

the numerous environmental crises currently taking place throughout the world. In his 

novel, a rare books dealer must come to terms with the power of stories and culture, the 

impact that words may have on the world, in shifting beliefs and enacting real change. I 

wanted Vol. 20 to explore in some way, this nigh-elemental power that storytelling has 

throughout our world, and in our more personal lives. 

It’s my belief that every story contains in some way a lesson, proportions of 

truth, beauty, and goodness that illuminate, and connect us together. Our stories, the 

secrets we share, are both indelible and unique to us, and yet not dissimilar from the 

experiences of those around us. The more we share—the more we write—the more 

other people understand, and wish to share their own stories. Vol. 20 contains stories 

from around the world, and celebrates their courageous storytellers, who cultivate the 

inexplicable magic of the written word. 

We are thrilled to feature both new and familiar voices in this edition, including 

works from teens in the Barrio Writers creative writing program, and winners of the 

Robb Jackson Poetry Awards from the People’s Poetry Festival. It has always been a part 

of our mission at the Windward Review, to showcase emerging, and established voices 

alongside one another as equals. No writer is lacking a story to tell, especially those who 

have been overlooked, forgotten, or shunned for daring to share their beautiful, diverse 

voices. In some small way, the Windward Review seeks to amend the countless years of 

literary inequality and, with the help of our contributors, publish fearless works that 

challenge the present state of affairs. 

As always, we want to thank our contributors for their trust, their beautiful 

words, and their dedication to their craft. We are proud of each and every piece in this 

long-awaited volume, and cherish our fortune in being able to showcase you in our 

humble, but growing journal. Thank you for being part of this burgeoning community of 

warm and accepting writers. Your voices are much-needed in our current times, adding 

to a global conversation on human experiences, and remind us of the power of stories 

well-told. 

To our readers, we hope you enjoy reading this journal as much as we enjoyed 

putting it together, and we hope that the work speaks to you, and inspires you to share 

your voice as well. People are at the heart of our work at the Windward Review, and we are 

so grateful to our readers who help us celebrate and encourage the tremendous work 

these writers are doing. Thank you all for sticking with us! 

With love and gratitude, 

Dylan Lopez, Managing Editor 

Beginnings X Endings 6 


6

Nehemiah Flores 

Jukebox Heart (Illusions of War) 

When I see legends, I try to see myself 

But I’m nothing like them 

The musical dreamers and revolutionaries 

The ones who wrote the songs that tore this world apart 

But what have I done? 

I can’t write if I can’t comprehend the human heart 

It’s a process which I can’t seem to understand 

Why is it so hard to reach my Promised Land? 

I can’t wonder like Stevie 

I can’t imagine like Lennon 

Dance for Satisfaction like Jagger 

Or Take It to the Limit like the Eagles 

I can’t Jump like Van Halen 

Can’t be no Smooth Criminal like Jackson once was 

I don’t Let It Be like McCartney 

Yeah I’m Livin’ On A Prayer, but that ain’t worth much 

Sure I was Born in the U.S.A. 

But I ain’t nothing like good ol’ Springsteen 

I don’t Dream On like Aerosmith 

I’m Under Pressure, but I ain’t no Bowie 

No elaborate rhymes 

No Sign o’ the Times 

No Sweet Child O’ Mine 

Is gonna change the way I feel inside 

If I just keep dancing in the Purple Rain 

Just keep livin’ with Love On The Brain 

Maybe then, something will shift inside me 

But I deceive myself, These Times They Aren’t A-Changing 

I am forever to admire 

That which I cannot produce 

Like lookin’ through a Window In The Skies 

My heart feels terrorized 

I’m just Blinded By The Light 

Time After Time, My Foolish Heart 

Can only rewrite, reuse, and recall 

Never Make Songs Out Of Nothing At All. 

Robb Jackson Highschool Poetry 1st Place (2021) 

7 Windward Review Volume 20 

7 Windward Review Volume X


The Craziness of Love 

My love is like a campfire burning too high on a cold dry night 

My love is a footpath lined with river rocks from the hill country 

My love is a chair with one broken leg that with weight collapses 

Because wood screws have worked their way out 

But the distance between me and my love’s lips 

Is easier to erase than the emptiness I feel when we separate 

Sometimes I shut my eyes to touch her 

Not just to touch skin 

But to simply touch her to feel her within me 

The not so static electricity that is like the perfect jolt 

I shove my favorite books off my desk 

To make space for my love’s framed picture 

Much like the afternoons I freely give up tennis 

So that I can meet her after class for green tea 

Her oldest friends may disapprove although from the rooftop 

Of the Omni I can see beyond the Captain Crunch bridge 

And beyond the shimmering green bay 

To the far-off island that holds my heart 


8 


8


My Story Begins on Interstate 69 

Near Humble 

I drive skittishly through Houston 

This morning shuttered by vertical layers 

Of flashing singing rain showers 

The vivid grey panels scream down from 

The vanishing sky 

Mute the sounds of seven 

Lanes of crawling cars and 

The bestial four-wheeler lugging oil 

That I follow closely for seven miles 

Because I cannot see anything but close grey 

I sit in the Menil Museum right now though 

Safely on a solid mahogany bench 

Staring for a time at an Agnes Martin 

Seven foot by seven foot square oil painting 

The same greyish color as the storm 

But her inscribed seven lines are horizonal 

Subdued greys so I am at peace 

Resting and immersed in this room 

Filled with other Agnes monochromes and yellow lines 

On the floor marking where I cannot go 

Just yesterday at lunch at BK Thai on the patio in the overcast 

Grey my friend Mark Strand says “Pu Chou, Pu Chung Chu” 

Which he claims translates to 

“Without coincidence 

There is no story” 

9 Windward Review Volume 20

Dezarae Martinez 

Metamorphosis 

There is a time when the path you’re on stops and it’s time to start anew, 

When Barney & Friends becomes Grey’s Anatomy 

And your favorite color changes from pink to red. 

Things around you were changing constantly, 

You didn’t know how to wrap your head around all the things going on. 

From being with two parents, now to one, 

Always laughing with your grandma and 

Late night adventures with your uncle, 

It’s. All. Over. 

You grew up, and your parents grew apart, 

Your grandma and uncle, they passed away. 

Now you love to wear black and write about your feelings. 

Instead of birthday parties at Peter Piper Pizza 

You lay in your room, eating a tres leches cake by yourself. 

You’ve watched the people you love fade away 

And you kept all that feeling inside. 

You don’t know how to tell the person who loves you the most that 

You are not okay. 

Not all of it is bad though, 

There are still those happy moments when the entire family gets together, 

We barbecue and enjoy each other’s company. 

You’ve grown up and you’ve learned. 

Even though you had to grow up fast and help raise your siblings, 

You’ve learned that family has your back no matter what. 

You know what familial love is 

And even though you don’t know how to love you, 

It’s okay. 

You’ll figure it out one day 

When the path you’re on stops and starts anew. 

Robb Jackson Highschool Poetry 2nd Place (2021) 


10

Ava Coronado 

Sibling Harmony 

Summer 2015 

When I was fifteen, Eleanor was finally home from 

the University of Texas, and it was a summer where we 

unexpectedly bonded over love and friendships… 

We reconnected with brothers—Noah and Dean, our 

friends for over ten years. It was a peculiar piece of time as 

Eleanor and I were filled with butterflies by these smooth 

dancing siblings. That summer we met up at Sonic every Sunday night, facing our friends, 

wondering when the brothers were going to walk in—eventually blushing at their red caps, 

as their tall physiques strode past the metal door, into the sand filled volleyball court. 

“How did you get that cut? Oh yeah, SAND,” Dean joked as he threw the volleyball 

at the ground, reminiscing over last week’s tragedy of the Sonic sand cutting his knee. I 

laughed, admiring his humorous energy. 

Sometimes instead of the volleyball courts, our sibling 

harmony motioned the waves and kindled the flares on the 

beach… As the bonfire crackled in front of us, Noah’s hand 

reached for Eleanor, tangling his fingers in her curly blonde hair 

as her face blushed with a pink undertone… Dean looked at me 

excitedly, switching the two step music to The Weekend while we 

danced on the bed of Noah’s red truck, looking up at the bright 

stars, interlocking hands as we sung our lungs out. “I can’t feel my face when I’m with YOU, 

but LOVE IT, but I LOVE IT.” He danced smoothly like Justin Timberlake, and my bare face 

flashed a smile. 

Fall 

Fast forward a couple months, I was falling in love 

with Dean as I watched Eleanor and Noah bond over their 

reoccurring movie theater dates every Thursday night--The Grand 

Budapest hotel, Interstellar, Boyhood… I left Eleanor a note every 

time she had a date with Noah, just because I wanted her to 

know when I went to sleep and that I hoped she had fun. I never 

and I mean never texted her when she was on a date with Noah, because she was so caught 

up in cinema talk, she did not have a chance to be on her phone. Who could blame her 

though? Noah was attractive, smart, funny. He was tall and made funny jokes and they 

both had intellectual talks only they could understand. I mean they could talk for hours, 

and they did. About life, about movies, God, relationships, love, family, each other—so 

much. 

For months, Noah and Eleanor had met up at the Alamo Draft-house theater, catching 

late night flicks in the black leather seats, picking each other’s minds afterward, as they 

discussed elements of movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—that made it 

worth it. 

“Do you think we’ll ever want to erase each other from our minds?” Noah asked. 

“Huh. What a sad thought… I hope not,” Eleanor replied. 

“Ahh, relationships…” 

“What about them?” 

“It’s just sad, you never know when they’ll go up in flames,” he said. 


… 

It was my first dance, and my first date. Dean—the boy I’d had 

a crush on since I was nine years old, was my homecoming date… 

We waltzed into the venue, where strobe lights blinded our eyes, 

and country music rang. He interlocked with my hand, and I tried to 

keep up with his long strides with my small heels, as we walked to 

the table where his friends were at. “Sup guys, this is Dawn,” Dean 

said to his friends. They all perceived the same energy—outgoing, 

loud, sweet, fun. I dropped my purse on the table, as all of us stepped on the dance 

floor with the rest of the sweaty student body. Dean was tall, and many of his girlfriends 

seemed somewhat jealous of me. He was a varsity wrestling captain, and I felt proud that 

he was mine… He was very loud and excited. As we danced on the floor, he grabbed my 

hips and got behind me as I was nervous to grind. It was something every single student 

did at dances, so I didn’t make it much of a deal. It was fun—he kissed me on the cheek 

multiple times, as I prepared for him to kiss me, while Eleanor’s voice ran through my 

head. 

“Don’t be surprised if Dean kisses you tonight…” 

The music transitioned from Lil Jon to Thompson Square, and Dean’s eyes gleamed 

into mine, “I’m so happy you’re with me tonight,” he said. 

“Are you gonna kiss me or not?” Keifer’s voice rang through the speakers. 

And just like that, my first kiss happened with the boy I crushed on for six years— 

my karate kid—Dean. 

The excitement of first kisses overwhelmed our emotions as I told Eleanor what 

happened homecoming night with Dean, and she told me what happened on her and 

Noah’s recent movie night 

“Ahhhhh, oh my goshhhh, I knew it was gonna happen,” she said. I blushed hard. 

“Just don’t go any further, please, you’re my little sister.” Her facial expression was a 

funny crying face as she was joking but was trying to give me solid advice. I laughed and 

was happy to have her around again… 

October 

Another danced rolled by, and this time we waltzed to tunes in the Veterans 

Memorial High School cafeteria. This time he met my friends, and sometimes it felt like 

he knew more people from my own school than I did. We wore blue and took photos in a 

Photo Booth where our strips read “written in the stars.” He truly felt like my moon, and 

I was his stars…. Once again, we had my parents take us to Whataburger, and sometimes 

when I visit the one on Cimarron, I still picture us sitting in the cold booth, where his 

hands grasped mine, and the dazzling eyes of a fifteen-year-old boy locked into mine. 

Three words. “I love you.” 

Come Sunday night, we waltzed into the church gym, as we played music on the aux, 

and Eleanor and I watched our crushes play basketball, like every Sunday. Their athletic 

physiques sprinted across court, Noah made smooth yet funny expressions towards 

Eleanor, and Dean was afraid because I wasn’t sure if I loved him yet. I knew I did, but I 

was only fifteen—and I loved him so much. It was terrifying. 

Winter 

On December 13th, the church goers paraded across town for our 

annual Christmas parade and festival. Noah and Dean both waltzed along 

with Eleanor and I, just like they did six years before that. It was like deja 

vu, and I asked God why they suddenly came back into our lives, and 


12

why everything felt so right. I loved Dean; Eleanor loved Noah. Their movie nights turned 

into intimate dates, and their hands grazed, and lips touched, falling deeper into a love 

that set the stars on fire. Their brains were linked, and their souls were truly attached… 

And at the same time, Dean and I had movie dates of our own—I always called him 

Karate Kid because for one, his name was Dean and two, he did Jiu Jitsu… Not only 

did he do Jiu Jitsu, but his entire family was specialized in fighting—boxing, Jiu Jitsu, 

wrestling, you name it. He loved Karate Kid and always called me his Ali… 

We were fascinated by our connections, the five of us, including their 

sister, who fit in like a matching puzzle piece to our compulsive parallels. 

Often, people thought we were strange for dating brothers, but in depth, 

our friends understood our sincere interrelation as it made sense with 

the universe. 

The intertwined love of each pairing wasn’t just “strange” and intimate—it was 

truly harmonized. The oddity of time within our connectedness between us and these 

brothers pestered my mind between every landmark the four of us made in each other’s 

relationships. I stared at Eleanor as an older version of me, a mirror of my descent, where 

I was headed, yet also there in the current time—kissing Dean, the younger version of 

Noah as he danced with glee. 

Summer 2016 

By the next summer, after an entire year of dating brothers, the five of us became 

more like a family. We attended church events together, still went to sonic during the 

weekends, and fell more and more in love with these people we thought were meant 

to be in our lives. Sometimes we drove around in Noah’s white BMW. Me, Dean, and 

their sister sitting in the backseat as Eleanor and Noah sat in the front. Drake’s new 

record blasted through the speakers, as we now associate the album with the summer 

of twenty-sixteen to this day. I held Dean’s hand as our siblings laughed in the front, 

making jokes with twinkles in their eyes. Once they were supposed to go on a date after 

church, but dragged us siblings along, making a memorable night. Everything had felt so 

completely right… 

In June, we went to Houston, and ice-skated side by side at the Galleria, listening to 

the word of God, while also developing contrasting opinions—mostly originated by the 

older siblings. Noah had his doubts, as did Dean… Eleanor believed in God, as did I. We 

wanted the brothers to be better, and wanted them to succeed, they had been a part of 

our lives and our church forever… They loved us not only as lovers, but as friends. 

In July, we spent our second Independence Day together, popping fireworks at 2 am, 

laughing as we snapped memorable polaroid’s that just sit in a dusty box underneath my 

bed now. 

Strangely, they both opened up to Eleanor and I about past relationships, their 

trauma, and their parents’ struggles. We prayed for their family always, encouraged 

them daily, and loved them to an extent we didn’t believe was possible… My sister and I 

genuinely thought this was our future family—everything felt so right. 

As an inexperienced teenager, frequently I talked 

to Eleanor about Dean, and strangely she went 

through the same things with Noah—in a different 

way. The brothers were similar, they both had similar 

emotions that changed very frequently. When they 

were happy, Eleanor and I felt like we were on cloud 

nine… But when they were emotional, everything shifted to a storm—and 

most times it got taken out on us… I believe it stemmed from personal hurts 

and damaging pain from their past, and I felt sad. It still took a toll on us 

though, but we still believed it was meant to be. Not everybody was perfect. 

“He just gets so angry sometimes, I don’t understand. And I can’t leave him Eleanor.” 

“Noah doesn’t want to commit to me Dawn, he says he loves me, but can’t commit 

to me.” 


By the end of summer, Eleanor, Noah, and I went to Dallas for a Coldplay concert. In 

twenty fifteen, Coldplay had just come out with a new album that talked about “brothers 

in blood, sisters who ride… if you love someone, you should let them know.” I watched Eleanor 

and Noah stare at each other as Chris Martin sang their favorite song… I watched them 

fall in love, and I hoped one day he would be my brother as it already felt like he was… 

When I was ten, I was a lot smaller than when I was sixteen, and I always felt a big 

brother connection to Noah. Every time I saw him at church, I ran up to him and he gave 

me a big hug and picked me up and twirled me around… I always thought he was cool, 

and still did when I was sixteen… The Coldplay album is still an association with our 

relationships with them, and Eleanor and I still think about how fun seeing them with 

Noah was. It was her favorite band. 

Fall / Winter 

In November, we took a trip to Austin altogether, and they wore their red caps as we 

strolled down to home slice pizza, experiencing Eleanor’s past life (she went to UT). We 

caught a movie, as their parents and sister sat beside us. We were good for them, and 

they were happy to be in our lives… As December creeped up on us, we celebrated yet 

another church parade and festival, wearing beanies and singing as the brothers stood 

in front of us. The five of us matched outfits as we wore red and white on Christmas Eve. 

“Well, this was unplanned,” Eleanor said as Noah joked 

about his red tie and her red dress. For some reason red was 

always a thing between them… He bought her a movie ticket 

charm that she wore on a necklace with a red bead beside 

it, and she always associates her past feelings with him to 

Taylor Swift’s song Red. 

Loving him was like driving a new Maserati down a dead-end 

street, faster than the wind, passionate as sin, ending so suddenly. 

Dean and I wore white, and took a picture where I was head over heels for him. 

Although I was sixteen, I loved him in a way I didn’t believe a sixteen-year-old could. 

Perhaps it’s just because he was my first love, but I never imagined him out of my life… 

That picture was one of my favorites, and I still have it… Eleanor still has the ticket. 

… 

Dean and I hung out a lot during the weekends, and almost every day during 

winter break. Most of the time we liked to stroll to the newly opened Bahama Bucks 

on Saratoga, eat the tasty tiger’s blood shaved ice and compete against each other in a 

game of Jenga. 

“Dean, stop you’re making me laugh,” I said as I shakily removed a block from the 

wobbly Jenga tower. 

“I want my fifty cents,” he laughed. 

Spring / Summer 2017 

While Eleanor and Noah continued their weekly hangouts, sometimes on weekends 

happy for me when I made the cheer team. In June, we attended another trip in Houston, 

and had more volleyball nights than ever. I turned seventeen in July, and the brothers 

wished me happy birthday in our group message. We cheered with Joy as we watched 

Noah walk the stage during his college graduation, extremely proud of him for being the 

first of his family to be a college graduate. 

Sometimes emotions roared through the brothers’ bleeding 

hearts. Dean being only seventeen, sometimes became manipulative, 

and angry when we didn’t do things his way… which left me sad. I had a 

hard time trusting him—he always said words to make me happy, but 

sometimes his eyes were on other comets… Being the emotional boys 

they were, Eleanor and I would come home from dates—frustrated 

often, as tears filled my eyes and rage rushed through her voice. 


14

We’re all the same, yet so different—older and younger versions of 

each other, playing games and switching narratives from euphoric 

bloopers to serious cinematic scenes that leave each other bleeding. 

I had always thought Noah and Eleanor made sense, and that maybe one day they’d 

be married. But he could never say he loved her, even though he truly did. 

“I’m sure you know how I feel about you; I just know you want to head towards 

marriage soon, and I’m only twenty-one,” Noah said. 

“I’m not asking you to marry me Noah, I never have, I understand the place you’re 

at,” Eleanor said sadly. She only wanted him to be a committed boyfriend. 

He never was. 

The stars were aligned the first couple of summers, in June and July, and various 

planets formed long lasting retrogrades throughout the fall and winter season, turning 

directions not only in the sky but in our relationships at the same time as well. 

Fall / Winter 

As another homecoming came around, Dean was a senior and I was a junior. “I want 

to be engaged to you by the end of the year,” he said. This was something that scared 

me as I was only seventeen, but it made me feel good that Dean didn’t want to leave 

me… I had always thought I would end up with him, as my naive self thought our history 

was God’s plan… Except two weeks later, he left all our memories in the past, and simply 

changed his mind about me, and started dating another girl—she went to my school. 

Dean was young—therefore he was interested in other girls, which at seventeen is 

understandable, but ultimately my presence had made a difference in his life—for the 

better. Nobody wanted him to lose me, perhaps if he didn’t, he’d have a better life now… 

“I’m sorry Dawn, I want to be with other girls,” he said. 

Once flames smoldered the enhanced attachment between Dean and I, it wasn’t 

too fast before the flames caught up with Eleanor and Noah, as if our sibling harmony 

diminished like a pair of shooting stars… They came to an end in January, because Noah 

was simply a noncommittal man. 

“Isn’t it strange? We started dating them at the same time, now we’re trying to get 

over them at the same time,” I told her. 

“I don’t know what the point of all that was,” she said. 

2018 

After a hectic year of seeing Dean create new memories with 

the softball girl from my school, and another retrograde causing 

him to orbit around the hallways I walked, I tried my best to put 

our memories in the past. I flirted with new faces, and cheered in July, despite the 

heartbreaking news of the softball girl’s pregnancy. Dean was going to be a father, and 

we were nothing but dust. 

Still, so strange, the sibling harmony—gone in a moment… As Eleanor and I face 

being alone and time moves quicker than ever before, soon that summer in July and the 

two years after are nothing but old polaroids and pictures on memory cards... 

“Maybe we were star crossed lovers,” Eleanor said. 

We reminisce on that time, standing together three years later, this time growing 

closer to new faces, that perceive the same energy, this time not related—but falling in 

love with us, again. It’s strange, it’s intoxicating, startling, and yet another harmony set 

in motion. 


Anna Strickland 

Goodbyes 

Saying goodbye is hard. 

It may be a hug. 

A pat on the back, 

A grimace, 

A whisper in the dead of night. 

And sometimes it happens without you even knowing. 

But what makes it hard? 

It’s forcing yourself to move on, 

Making the tough decision to walk away from something, 

Despite how good it may have been. 

But sometimes goodbyes are good for you, 

Although everyone hates change. 

Sometimes the people you love 

Just aren’t good enough 

And they don’t put in the effort to love you back. 

You deserve to receive the same love that you give others. 

So, no matter how many years you’ve known each other, 

Leaving them is for the best. 

Because, if you don’t leave them soon enough, 

They might just leave you. 

And that makes it so much harder. 

You’re left alone thinking you were the problem, 

Saying “I should’ve loved them more.” 

You look back at photos of past good times, 

Wishing that they came back. 

But YOU DON’T NEED THEM. 

You never have. 

The ones who gave an effort, 

Those are the ones that matter. 

And even if you’ve parted ways with them, 

They’re the ones that stick with you still. 

Because they’re the ones that changed you; 

Whether in a small or large way; 

They changed you for the better. 

Of course, goodbyes are hard. 

But they can also be a peaceful release. 


16

Raye Bailey 

She Remembers 

Impressed between my pages 

Here lies, a moment’s memory 

A stolen fragile moment 

When you belonged to me 

Plucked fresh from some spring meadow 

That place soon lost from sight 

I kept a moment hidden 

I held it safe, nurtured, contrite 

Now entombed, withered in pages closed 

Our memory fades until forgotten 

And to my only growing despair 

Our bud never did seem to blossom 

The Last Leaf 

From her branches, the solitary leaf descends 

Released is the final remnant of Autumn 

And with a dreamy sigh of resignation and relief 

She weaves one last story to no one in particular 

A motion so graceful and honestly mundane 

She waves her last farewell with no sense of finality 

A dance so careless and silently divine 

Welcoming the chill, at long last, 

She rests 


Nancy Spiller 

“As the massive star contracts, it’s gravity becomes so strong that light can no longer escape. 

The region from which light cannot escape is called a black hole and its boundary is called 

the event horizon.”- Steven Hawking 

A Brief History of Donny 

I did my best trying to get along 

with my son, Donny. He used to be a 

real mother’s helper, picking up the dry 

cleaning, emptying my ashtrays, the 

little man of the house. Saturdays were 

soccer days. Sure, I had to yell for him to 

keep his cleats off until he got to the car, 

but he so loved clickety-clacking down 

the driveway. My fondest memories are 

of him running the full length of that 

impossibly green field, the one built over 

a former waste dump—they’ve only had 

to close it twice for methane explosions 

from the rotting garbage below. My boy, 

kicking the ball, leaping in the air like a 

baby Billy goat, feeling the full wallop of 

his life force. 

But all that changed in the 

bitter morning hours the winter of his 

seventh-grade year. He’d snuck out of 

the house with a group of like-minded 

delinquents, his “crew,” to spray paint a 

freeway overpass. Tagging, they called 

it. I had to get out of bed, throw a coat 

over my nightgown and drive to the 

police station for the little booger. That 

was what he became to me that night, 

no better than a noisome waste product 

headed for a tissue and the Big Flush. He 

was in his crew uniform, a T-shirt, baggy 

jeans and a stocking cap, his bare arms 

scabby from self-inflicted burns. I told 

him I’d knock the stuffing out of him if 

he ever did anything like that again. Of 

course, you could whack a kid like him 

all day and he’d still manage to say or do 

something, or just give you a look, that 

made you want to keep whacking him. 

I’ve thought about this a lot. 

I’ve had the time to, now that things 

have quieted down. All those volcanic 

explosions claiming he never asked to 

be born, making me wish he’d come 

with a return mailing label. Sometimes 

I wonder if he just did that to make 

himself stronger, like they do with 

steel blades, heating and cooling, then 

heating and cooling, until it’s tougher 

than whatever it needs to cut through. 

I treasure my son, don’t get me 

wrong. His Spirit. God knows I wish his 

little sister had a tenth of his spunk. 

Sometimes when I’m yelling at her I 

worry she’ll just dry up and blow away. 

Even worse, I won’t notice. I’ll be paying 

too much attention to Donny. Only now 

it’s a different kind of attention. 

I first got the idea of how to 

deal with him from Steven Hawking, 

you know, the late twentieth century’s 

Einstein. Einstein invented the theory of 

relativity. Something about a train going 

a certain speed and out the window 

everything starts to stretch out, or 

maybe moosh up, like a yeast dough left 

too long to rise. Or something. 

Einstein didn’t talk until he was 

four years old. His mother claimed 


18

he had nothing to say. Donny still 

doesn’t like talking, at least to adults. 

Unless they talk trash about his father. 

Then he’ll gush on for the man who 

abandoned him when he was five. 

Who sent him home from visits with a 

bruised buttocks. Who moved across 

country for work, gifting me a second 

career chasing child support. Mention 

that bastard and Donny wins a Top Pop 

essay contest. 

But back to Steven Hawking, the 

black holes from collapsing stars guy. 

He proved black holes exist, saw how 

everything disappears into them except 

for two atoms dancing on the edge, 

what’s called the event horizon. That’s 

where you fall in and disappear. You 

don’t see the event horizon, you just 

disappear. Hawking wrote “A Brief History 

of Time” about this stuff. Sold a million 

billion copies. I waited for the movie. In 

it, they break a tea cup to show how the 

past is different from the future: the tea 

cup won’t ever put itself back together. 

Time goes forward, never back. 

Got it. 

The second thing I got from it was 

when he was a boy, Steven Hawking was 

a booger. It wasn’t until he got stuck in a 

wheel chair that he started figuring out 

the universe. 

At Oxford, he drank and goofed off. 

Then he fell drunk out of a tree. Doctors 

diagnosed him with a degenerative 

nerve disease. He’d spend the rest of his 

life in a wheel chair. He started paying 

attention, cracking the books, thinking 

big thoughts and inventing world class 

theories. He needed a synthesizer to 

talk. It focused his mind. Let his genius 

out. 

Donny refused to watch the movie. 

How was his genius ever coming out? 

He did say he’d watch if I sat through a 

skateboarding tape. Punks shooting up 

one ramp and down another, up, down, 

up, down. Hopped up music. Forget it, I 

said. Run off and find some trouble. 

He got arrested earlier than usual 

that night. 

What could I do? A backwards 

baseball cap covered his shaved head, 

flannel shorts big as a pup tent and 

XXX-Large T-shirt making him look 

like a pinhead. His skinny legs wrapped 

in snake tattoos made with ball point 

ink and cigarette ash. The ex-cons at 

his continuation high school taught 

him that. At least he was learning! But 

his eyes were blank when he told me, 

looked like something biology students 

would have to share on dissection day. 

I got pregnant without even 

thinking. The easiest thing. I didn’t 

worry about raising a kid. Being a 

parent. Or Parenting, like everyone calls 

it now, making it sound so complicated, 

like you need to get a college degree in 

it. I just loved to push Donny’s carriage 

through the park. He’d stare up at the 

trees, wave his little paw, and say “Twee. 

Twee.” I’d coo back and we’d both smile. 

I’ve often thought since of that 

needlepoint sampler behind the juvenile 

court judge’s desk: “Mighty oaks from 

little acorns grow.” Maybe if I’d cooed 

that to my baby back in that park, 

it could have done some good. As it 

stands now, he’s beyond the reach of 

any threadbare old saying. 

Or maybe it’s more like the acorn 

explodes to make the oak. Maybe the 

oak’s emotional and psychic self, like the 


court ordered psychiatrist said about 

Donny, just gets overheated, violent, 

expands too rapidly. A spontaneous, 

irreversible collapse. Scattering pieces 

about the universe, like the clothes in 

Donny’s room since the day he turned 

13. 

Maybe the soft-boiled boy 

becomes the shattered man. All I really 

know is I’m tired of thinking about it. 

Seventeen is the last year in 

which to save your kid. Kids know 

this. They know about sealed records, 

juvenile court, community service in lieu 

of incarceration. That ends at 18 when 

they can be tried as adults. 

For Donny, 17 was the year he’d 

use a gun. 

The psychiatrist said drugs were 

controlling his life, threatening it. Not 

to mention our lives. A knife to his 

sister’s throat? Twice. The second time 

he landed a 72-hour psychiatric hold. 

He told the judge he “understood” the 

gravity of his actions. But did he? If 

that sumo-sized guard hadn’t held me 

back, I would have throttled him. If he 

understood—then explain it to me! Was 

a couple of nights in a psych cell a rite of 

passage for the modern teenage boy? 

Anti-depressants the doctor said. 

Clear his mind of anger. “Buckets of 

anger,” the doctor said. “Buckets he’s 

dealing with.” 

“I could kill you now,” he said 

looking stone hard at me in that joint 

session, his dark brows anvil flat. My 

baby boy. My Donny! The stinker. Where 

did these buckets come from? 

I’d been abandoned by my parents. 

Dad took off with another woman and 

mom went to her room for a couple of 

decades. I never got angry enough to fill 

a screw cap’s worth of resentment. In my 

day, abandoned children stayed sweet in 

hopes their fleeing folks would return. 

We didn’t have spray paint, or crews, or 

guns. We had nice. We remembered them 

on all the holidays with gifts and cards 

and cards and gifts. And we never forgot 

Father’s Day or Mother’s Day, even if they 

tried to. None of it ever made a lick of 

difference. They had fled the crime scene. 

Dear God, I said that night Donny was in 

the psych ward, if we can just get through 

this—anything, I’ll give you anything. 

Did Steven Hawking believe in 

God? He figured everything else out. 

“Observations of distant galaxies indicate 

that they are moving away from us,” he 

wrote. Or maybe he said it in the movie. 

“The universe is expanding. This implies 

that the galaxies must have been closer 

together in the past...” Run film of the 

shattering cup in slow motion and the 

pieces float away from where the whole 

cup was. The whole cup is just a memory. 

What went wrong with Donny? Was 

it too much high fructose corn syrup? 

Not enough spankings? Leaded house 

paint? The bad air from living so close to a 

refinery? Was it genetic? His father never 

talked about his own teen years. I couldn’t 

get him to offer any excuses for his son. 

It was that brief lull between Donny’s 

stay in the psych ward, and being picked up 

for armed robbery and attempted murder, 

that I started seriously considering the 

benefits of confining him to a wheel chair. 

That Superman actor didn’t do so bad 

after a horse jumping accident stuck him 

on the sidelines in his big wheels. Without 

the money for riding lessons, a motorcycle 


20

might do. But Donny wouldn’t wear a 

helmet, so it might kill him, as well. 

Not the goal. 

Simple solution: a week out of 

the psych ward, I told him to get his 

piles of Nintendo, Power Ranger, and 

Transformer knickknacks into the 

basement before I threw them out. 

While he packed boxes, I loosened a stair 

near the top of the flight. He accused 

me of trying to kill him as he lay on the 

basement floor. Couldn’t move a finger 

as we waited on the ambulance. It wasn’t 

true. I didn’t want him dead. I just wanted 

his attention. 

Once he was in the wheelchair, 

I thought we pretty much licked the 

problem. He’d be at least 18 by the time 

he ever walked again. My job was done. 

Got him alive, if not kicking, to the age 

of majority. 

The wheel chair did get his 

attention. Unfortunately, it was focused 

on those buckets of anger. His birthday 

was a few weeks off when it got really 

quiet. A scary quiet. No yelling from the 

TV room for another soda or his phone. 

His father had called. He’d heard from 

his side of the family that his son had 

an accident. When he got the full details 

from the source, he cut the conversation 

short. Said a birthday gift was on its way. 

Last Donny heard from him. 

No news there. 

As for what came after, never in a 

million years could I imagine his leaving 

his room in that condition. He couldn’t 

get that wheel chair out a front or back 

door without my hearing the snap of the 

screen. 

Wrong. 

He swears his punk friends 

cooked up the idea, an armed robbery 

from a wheel chair. Who would guess 

that poor soul rolling towards you was 

dangerous? Jeff, a soccer bud from his 

Billy goat days, filched his father’s gun. 

Donny held it on his lap, hidden under 

the afghan his grandmother knit for 

his christening. When the woman they 

were following heard the wheel chair 

near, she stopped and turned. 

“Excuse me, Ma’am,” one of them 

said. “please give us your purse.” 

According to the court record, she 

saw Donny holding the gun underneath 

that blanket, panicked, and threw her 

purse at them. When she began to 

run, Donny shot her in the back. Laid 

her flat on the sidewalk wet from rain. 

Those idiots crossed a lawn to get away, 

then backtracked home. The police 

were at our door in no time. The wheel 

chair made muddy tracks straight to 

his bedroom. He was inside shaking 

and crying and smoking a cigarette. 

I walloped him upside the head for 

smoking in his room. He asked if the 

woman was alright, which showed some 

remorse. His lawyer ran with that. While 

he couldn’t get him a juvenile trial, he 

did snag a reduced sentence. 

Donny’s little sister, Maya, turns 

13 next week. Her father’s better than 

Donny’s dad, but not much. He’s in town 

but does enjoy his drink. That’s how we 

met. I got sober long enough to leave 

him. Maya will be fine. I’ve been checking 

her regularly since she was 12 to see if 

she’d pierced, poked or burned any part 

of her body. As best as I can recall, that’s 

how her brother got started. I wished I’d 

paid closer attention then. 


Sitting in his wheel chair in prison, 

Donny did finally watch the video based 

on Steven Hawking’s book. And then he 

called. I picked up the phone to an old 

familiar silence. I knew it was him, his 

ragged breath, struggling on the other 

end of the line. 

“What is it, Donny?” I asked, trying 

not to sound impatient. I really do want 

him to call. Still, I’m always surprised by 

my reaction when he does. Maybe I have 

buckets of my own. 

The outside light’s bulb was dead. That 

was the kind of repair I used to depend 

on Donny to do. Now the glass door 

panel was like a portal, an opening onto 

a dark future I couldn’t imagine, let 

alone see. “Mother understands,” I said 

to my son. 

His last words to me were as soft 

as light from a dying planet. 

“Do you, mother. Do you really 

understand?” 

“I watched Steven Hawking today,” 

he said, his voice taking on the old 

familiar sound of spilled molasses. Like 

he’d just been poured out of a thick 

crockery jug. My Boy. 

“It made me think,” he said. I 

wondered what his words would sound 

like filtered through a synthesizer, 

thinking of the hesitant, broken metal 

of Hawking’s voice. What a lucky woman 

Mrs. Hawking must have been. So proud. 

“What Donny, what did you think, 

dear?” I tried to sound sincere, even 

though I could smell a pot of leftover 

pasta burning on the stove. It was bad—a 

two-day soak and scrub smell. And I 

confess, I felt a whiff of rage coming on. 

His putting me through all that he did. 

“Mom, sometimes I feel like a 

tea cup on the edge of a table. Like 

somebody hit the pause button. Like 

time’s suspended, and I don’t know 

which way to fall.” 

“I understand, Donny.” If I didn’t 

get to that pot, it would be a three-day 

project. Where was Maya when I needed 

her? It was pitch black in our yard as I 

looked through the aluminum patio slider. 


22


Black Sheep 

I am the black sheep 

The air surrounding me burns white 

Outcast. 

Leper. 

Outsider. 

A pariah. Purposefully picked and prodded. 

Gawked at. Questioned. Resented. 

Now, pitied. 

The look on their faces… 

Familiar. 

A child, small, eyes wide, surrounded 

by sinister-smiling adults. 

I’d run. 

Escape into a castle in the sky or a traveling circus act. 

(Later, I’d find out they were well-structured 

halfway houses that could never be mine.) 

My home in the clouds drifted away from me. 

I visit and knock, but no one is there. 

The castle is empty. 

The circus act remained the same, I did not. 

I no longer fit into my expected role. The costume 

cut into the soft skin of my shoulders. (It hangs in my 

closet, untouched but honored.) 

I still argue with myself if it was me who left or 

if it had left me a long time ago. 

Now, where do I run? 

I can attempt to use my newfound strength 

and independence to act untouchable. 

I am not. 

I am touched by pangs of disappointment, anger, 

disbelief, nostalgia, and whispers of a love I once knew. 

Castle in the sky… 

The shuffling of slippers 

and Telemundo news broadcasting 

Traveling circus act… 

90’s R&B waking me up in the morning 

Tight hugs 

Harmonizing laughter 

I have been grieving the absence of sound. 

Proof that they existed. 

Evidence of my safe havens. 

I am running. Lost. Aimless. 

Pitied. Resented. Eventually, 

I’ll soar. 

But, for now, 

please, let me rest. 



Me, Her 

How vast my heart expands when 

I allow it. Permit it. Grant it my 

approval. Smiling, I know, let her 

bask in it… while she can… 

Let it illuminate her cheeks. 

Blushing the corners of her smile… 

The roundness of her face 

growing like the fullest of moons. 

Soft hairs brushing across her ears, 

reaching for the sky. 

Breathy laugh, teeth shone. 

Arms clutching her small frame…. 

Hold her… She wants the love 

and to be loved… her heart 

palpitates, fighting and allowing, 

gentle and willing… 

Vicious and telling, 

something teases. 

No. Let her feel it, 

let her. 


24

Kaitlyn Winston 

You’re Hungry 

When you were young, you thought you were the most beautiful girl in the 

world. 

And that was because you were. You had no concept of what society’s 

definition of ‘pretty’ was; your mother had always told you beauty was in your 

heart, and that was how you understood it. You were kind, and you were smart, 

and you were everything that you thought was supposed to be beautiful. Your 

family praised you for the good things you were, and that made you beautiful, 

you thought. 

When you were in the third grade, one of your classmates called you a twin 

tower. 

You stood in line in your elementary school cafeteria, your other tall friend 

to your left and your short friend in between the both of you as you talked 

about cartoons and books. You were seven months old when September 11th 

happened, but you and all your classmates knew how traumatizing the event 

was for everyone older than you, whether they were in South Texas or halfway 

across the country. That’s why it hurt so much when your classmate, the known 

school bully, and his posse came to you and your friends, pointing and laughing 

at the three of you because, “Look, it’s the twin towers and the plane”. Were you 

a tragedy? 

When you were in the fourth grade, the other girls in class laughed because 

your boobs bounced. 

You were jumping rope in gym class; in the first grade, your school had a 

competition for jumping rope, and you were in the top three, your shoe laces 

proudly showing the beads that marked your accomplishment in different jump 

roping skills. It was something that made you proud. But on that day, when you 

were jumping rope, one of the girls in your class (a friend, you had thought) 

pointed and laughed at you because your chest moved in a way she didn’t 

understand. It’s been over a decade, and you still haven’t touched a jump rope 

since that day. It wasn’t for you anymore, remember? 

As you grew up, you developed an eating disorder. 

No matter how much your stomach ached for food, you convinced yourself 

that no, you’re not hungry, you’re not hungry, you’re not hungry to a point in which 

it had become the truth. Your parents would joke with family and friends, telling 


them to be careful because you’d “eat all that food in one sitting” if they had given 

you food that you liked. By the time you were in middle school, you had stopped 

liking food all together. It had become a liability, a constant reminder of the things 

that made you disgusting in the eyes of everyone else around you. You became a 

picky eater, only eating some things because they were the only things that didn’t 

make you feel like the pig you thought you were. You felt trapped in an ocean, 

constantly wading between never eating enough and binging way too much, stuck 

in a dreadful loop that felt like it would last forever because food was evil and 

disgusting and was the reason you were the way you were. 

No one would listen to your problems. Your inner self would claw at your 

insides and beg for comfort, for food, for anything at all, and no one could hear 

her because you swallowed her down like a hard pill and buried her six feet under 

the ground from which you stood. 

You were only met with advice when you’d finally tell someone, because that’s 

what you were taught to do when you needed help. Eat more (you did, when you 

binged). Eat less (you did, when you starved). Go on a diet (you could barely keep 

yourself eating regularly). Work out (you did, even though no one believed you). 

You were eight, nine, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen; even now, at 

twenty, you’d be reminded of it. Even now, when you lay in bed at night in the still 

silence of your room, you can hear the little voice in the back of your head remind 

you that you’re disgusting after all these years. Even now, in the middle of class 

when your gut would gurgle and you’d take a sharp breath because that was your 

natural reaction now, your inner self would crawl from the depths of your mind 

and remind you no, you’re not hungry. 

No. 

You’re hungry. 

You’re starving, actually, and you’re not afraid to admit it anymore. 

You’re learning to cook good meals that your mom happily lets you know 

how to make because maybe then you’ll have control over the demons that keep 

you up at night. You don’t binge or starve yourself anymore, eating when you’re 

hungry and having big enough meals that are finally deemed normal. You’re no 

longer trapped in the ocean; instead, you’re standing far from the sea’s shore, 

watching the waves as they crash against each other with a bottle of water in one 

hand and a piece of pizza that no longer makes you feel guilty for holding in the 

other. 

And, though it’s hard, you’re not hungry anymore, and that’s the hardest 

thing to admit. 


26

Natasha Haas 

A Gnawing Empty 

Everyone has such a gnawing empty. 

That bottomless blank in their breadbasket, 

needin’ to gnaw, seekin’ a full belly. 

Whatta greedy little fuck though, aint it? 

Oh...bottomless blank in my breadbasket, 

blinding light, colossal cannibal rage. 

Shit, such a needy fucking monster, aren’t you? 

Come closer vittles sweetbread, I’ll explain. 

Whites wide blind eye, cannibal rattle cage. 

Vittles alone can’t sate ravenous ways! 

Closer still little sweetbreads, understand? 

Isn’t it simple? Plain: Eye want to eat you. 

No vittles satisfy our vulgar ways. 

Give tongue, barbacoa. Such savory spice. 

It is simple, right? You eat my eye too. 

We gorge on vicious fluid, broken bone. 

Tear my tongue, my teeth gnaw on your cheek 

needin’ to grow, seekin’ a full belly. 

We gorge on vicious fluid, broken bones… 

Everyone is such a gnawing empty. 


Edward Wang 

Embers of Ambition 

It stood perfectly upright and 

centered in full view when she opened 

the door to the new place. In every 

respect, a monkey’s paw was a strange 

thing to encounter, certainly nothing 

that Antimony remembered ever 

purchasing or being gifted, and definitely 

something that the white-glove moving 

service failed to notify her of when they 

moved and unpacked the bulk of her 

items. Box in hand, she skirted around 

the disembodied limb to set her burden 

down and went back to the moving van 

to retrieve everything else. Then, she 

locked the door on her way out and drove 

off. 

The macabre thing was still 

present when she returned. She squatted 

down to almost eye-level and stared to 

confirm its existence. It was definitely 

a desiccated hand of some primate or 

another with bristled, dark hair around 

what was left of an arm, thick padding 

on the palm, and five fingers slightly 

too long to belong to a human. That 

Antimony couldn’t identify the species 

to which it could have belonged was no 

concern. She was more preoccupied, 

however ridiculous the notion, about 

whether the thing before her was merely 

a monkey’s paw or The Monkey’s Paw of 

literary horror. A matter to ponder later 

when she wasn’t still in the process of 

moving and settling in. 

Antimony strode over to the 

kitchen and returned armed with a pair 

of metal tongs. She gingerly grasped the 

monkey’s paw, noted it felt very much 

like handling a light length of wood, and 

deposited it deep into a nearby alcove 

where it was out of the way but clearly 

in full view. There was no visible residue 

or hair on the tongs but she washed them 

with hot water and soap as a matter of 

course. 

She didn’t bother much with the 

monkey paw beyond moving it around 

as she cleaned and organized the rest of 

her possessions. Ill-fated, wish-granting 

item or decidedly not, she wasn’t much for 

touching it in general and gladly sacrificed 

one of her tongs to keep it at length. 

Nothing seemed to happen while she 

handled it and it thankfully didn’t move 

itself from day to day. The idea of tossing 

it out was considered and dismissed, 

being more reassured in keeping it in 

sight and harboring the slight paranoia 

of it reasserting itself back into her life 

somehow. The novelty of its appearance 

soon wore thin against the more menial 

tasks in her life. Most of those came with 

moving to an entirely different place, 

but there was still much cleaning to do, 

figurative fires to put out, a new job to be 

bored at, and every other adult thing to 

deal with in daily life. 

Social interactions were not one 

of those things. Work people stayed as 

work people and none of her neighbors 

stopped by to say “hi”. To be fair, she chose 

a residence that was just remote enough 

that people had to try and she had little 

initiative to introduce herself. Online 

groups satisfied her low minimums for 

interactions and the only people she saw 

more frequently than her coworkers were 

the various couriers who made the long 

trips to her property. Antimony supposed 

that, were she to ever entertain visitors, 

the monkey paw didn’t particularly stand 

out among her collections of books, 

figures, trinkets, and generally interesting 

clutter she failed to curate during the 


28

move. The display of it was wanting but 

easily fixed with the purchase of a glass, 

bell-shaped dome on a wooden platform. 

The dedicated tongs also had received a 

stand of their own in the same stroke. 

Many months later and on her 

many idle days, Antimony contemplated 

the monkey paw. It became an exercise in 

pondering her unsatisfactory life. Of all 

the things she needed, of all the things 

she wanted, and of all the things she had 

to change. There were only five fingers 

and she supposed that this was why 

wishes often reached for broad effects— 

to make the most of them. Perhaps the 

consequences that followed were less the 

result of malice and more attributed to a 

lack of power to cleanly fulfill a wish. It 

was clearly not comparable to something 

like Djinni who often possessed the 

power and scope but could intentionally 

twist wishes towards their own desires. 

If it were the genuine article, 

Antimony figured it would have done 

something by now. It’s how the stories 

went anyhow. Her life circumstances 

were no worse than before, no convoluted 

circumstances compelled her to wish 

them different, and she certainly wasn’t 

squandering anything on easily fixable 

inconveniences when the backlash could 

be so disproportionately dire. 

The malcontent toward life and 

its daily grind returned to the forefront 

of her mind. No matter how many new 

skills attempted, vision boards made, 

visualizations mediated, gratitude 

journals filled, social circles joined, or 

new experiences rendered, she felt that 

nothing moved forward. Not even the 

move to an entirely new location with a 

new job afforded her any significant or 

fulfilling change. It merely resumed as 

another environment with all the old 

trappings. Perhaps all her efforts were 

too halfhearted or the discipline of her 

endeavors too wanting, Antimony didn’t 

possess much of a drive to keep pace with 

modern life, and that she acknowledged 

of herself. 

As ridiculous as it was, she began to 

seriously consider the monkey paw more 

and more as her weariness festered over 

the months. Antimony felt exhausted in 

her efforts at self-improvement and her 

bank account was all the weakened for 

them. 

Wealth. That she could certainly 

use. Money could not outright buy 

happiness, but it was the great facilitator 

and the tremendous remover of 

limitations and obstacles. Antimony had 

no need for the excess of the super rich 

to sit upon and growth for the sole sake 

of growth. It would be worth enough 

to simply liberate herself from the 

dependence on the daily grind to provide. 

Sufficient wealth would give her more 

freedom to invest in her hobbies and 

wants. Greater than that, it would enable 

her to throw money at all the artists, 

artisans, self-starters, independents, 

and general creatives she admired and 

appreciated without any compromise to 

her own circumstances. After all, they 

had the courageous passion to pursue 

their own avenues and deserved to have 

their financial concerns alleviated in full 

favor of bringing more to the world as 

well as flourishing as individuals. Yes, 

wealth would certainly set her free. 

She stood over the monkey paw but 

did not remove it from its glass display 

until she fully and carefully considered 

her wish. The best approach was not 

to reach too far and also to localize the 

imagined consequences to herself. It was 

through a restrained selfishness that she 

could help herself before helping others. 

With an odd gravitas, she removed the 

monkey paw, grasped it with bare hands, 

and wished in all its stipulations. None 

of its fingers so much as twitched, and 

Antimony hastily set it back down before 

she had any errant thoughts. In the dead 

quiet of her home, she felt nothing but 


a private embarrassment in the act. She 

reached for the tongs and returned the 

monkey paw to its display before hurriedly 

walking to bed. 

There was no lottery to be won, 

sudden inheritance to gain, unfortunate 

accident to collect insurance from, 

obsessive patron to keep, or mysterious 

funds spirited into her bank account. 

Antimony did however receive a significant 

promotion at work. It was well-justified in 

the words of her supervisor and apparently 

long overdue, and it was a definite boost 

to her finances with the paradoxical 

bonus of lessening her workload. This was 

nothing Antimony could attribute to the 

monkey paw, but it was amusing to think 

her efforts coincidentally bore fruit after 

the brief madness of one night. 

All her debts were cleared in 

shorter order than they would have been 

otherwise. Antimony began to think less 

of her monthly bills and more about all 

the things she could better afford. Rather 

than a luxury car, Antimony gathered more 

books, figures, and trinkets along with the 

proper displays and storage for it all. Rather 

than a hi-tech mansion, she commissioned 

various creators for anything she was yet 

capable of making herself. Rather than 

a fully staffed yacht, she contributed to 

various content creators with a satisfied 

smile and to crowd-funded projects, with 

pleasant surprises when the final products 

made their way into her hands. 

Antimony also delved with greater 

interest into her myriad of hobbies, 

everything from writing to model-making 

to instrument playing. And yet, in spite 

of it all, those pursuits still ran hollow for 

her. Whether it was due to her inability to 

focus on one craft to its utmost refinement 

or due to a restless curiosity that had her 

work on a bit of everything, Antimony 

saw no progress in light of increased 

investments. 

Her thoughts turned towards 

the monkey paw. The item was still 

foolishness to be sure, but—through 

either coincidence or a strong placebo 

effect—it evoked better than the daily, 

motivation creeds or law of attraction 

guidelines she once subscribed to. 

Antimony stood before it a second time 

and considered it. 

Simply asking for knowledge was 

out of the question. The worth of any skill 

laid in the journey moreso than the ever 

distant destination: a beautiful measure 

realized only in reflecting through 

the prism of personal perspective, in 

combination with the tempering of 

experience. It was meaningless to skip 

the journey and she was extraordinaryily 

hesitant in doing any tampering with her 

brain. 

Artificially giving herself better 

habits or purging all her hang-ups fell 

into the same forbidden territory. In 

the absence of medicine or therapists, 

Antimony had some decades of practice 

in strangling her inner demons into 

submission. Perhaps it wasn’t the 

healthiest way to deal, but she always 

stubbornly emerged as someone 

functional enough. Ample time was what 

she needed and there was not enough 

time for any comfort in a human lifetime. 

Immortality. The best answer 

without broaching something more 

nonsensical and troublesome like time 

manipulation. To be unbound by the 

pressures of time was a tremendous idea 

long pursued by humanity. She always 

thought lowly of the immortals she 

saw in media, specifically the ones who 

squandered their infinite time to wallow 

in self-inflicted negativity as opposed to 

something productive or simply living. 

True boredom did not occur to her. She 

wanted to be present for every small 

glory and wonder found in humanity. 

The passing of those around did not 

perturb her. She would simply be happy 

that those relationships and experiences 


30

occurred as opposed to being sad that 

they ended. Freedom from the tyranny 

of time was a pleasant thought and if she 

didn’t leave Earth in about 7 billion years, 

that was really her own fault. 

With all in mind, Antimony removed 

the monkey paw from its display and 

wished for an immortality without age. 

Not a finger moved but she mentally 

confirmed her second wish and set it back 

down. 

Though now that she was on this 

train of thought, there wasn’t much else 

that she wanted. The usual wishes of 

power, fame, and attractiveness held no 

appeal and were not as useful as wealth 

or immortality. Antimony figured that she 

may as well use the rest of her wishes now 

in order to give closure to this flight of 

fancy. She couldn’t keep using the monkey 

paw as a macabre stress ball for every 

introspective occasion. Immortality was a 

tricky concept anyhow and there was no 

harm in tailoring it further. 

When she picked it up a third 

time, she wished for at least a minor, 

rejuvenating aspect. Immortality would 

be pointless if she was still beholden to 

the chronic diseases, cancer especially, 

that came with age as well as anything 

lurking in her genetics. The third finger 

was unmoved as she counted the wish. 

When she picked it up the fourth 

time, she wished for reduced daily 

maintenance on her body. Antimony 

would abide by sleeping and eating but 

things like oral care she could do less of 

or without. It would also be nice to better 

keep fitness gains and have them degrade 

at a slower rate. The fourth wish was 

counted, and the fourth finger was as still 

as all the others. 

If Antimony was morbidily honest, 

she was very certain that an immortal 

life, with all of its perceived sufferings and 

burdens, was deeply preferable to the void 

that was death. Of all the greatest and 

oldest unknowns to fear, the complete 

cessation of awareness loomed above 

all else. So of all the things in life to 

procrastinate with, death was something 

to be put on hold forever. 

With the fifth and final wish, she 

thought about how immortals in media 

tended to switch identities or disappear 

ever so often, so as to not arouse 

suspicions or investigations into their 

longevity and affairs. It was something 

that would be increasingly difficult in the 

digital age or with annual tax returns. 

Having no desire to pose as her own, 

young relative ever so often or deal with 

that paperwork, Antimony wished that 

she would pass discretely from view and 

simply not deal with it. Considering the 

number of forms and online accounts 

with her name, she had no idea how that 

would be fulfilled but it used up the five 

wishes of the monkey paw and she could 

finally be done with the whole affair. 

And then all the fingers of the 

Monkey’s Paw curled up at once and 

punched her in the face. 


Cianna Martinez 

The Tainted Painting 

There’s a gallery, 

Paintings on the wall. 

You paint this picture, 

But it’s not like that at all. 

You paint the beauty 

Of what you want people to see, 

But why does it have to look bad on me? 

You paint with thick strokes 

That hide thin strokes of pain, 

Just like umbrellas 

Keep us from the rain. 

The shutters cover 

Everything you hide, 

No one sees what’s 

Really inside. 

Inside these walls 

Are screams of 

Sadness, 

But you hang your paintings 

And they hide the madness. 

Inside the gallery 

Sits a painting you hide. 

A painting, 

You want no one to find. 

It speaks so clearly 

It ruins your image, 

The most important thing to you 

that gives you privilege. 

You get exasperated, 

when the paint starts to fade. 

I’m your masked painting, 

That you can’t portray 

Robb Jackson Highschool Poetry 3rd Place (2021) 


32

Dee Allen 

The Southern poor—La Raza** 

Climb & ride on a rather long back 

Of a large lumbering beast 

Rolling along the iron tracks 

Swiftly & steadily, colossal 

Heavy metal serpent chugs 

Far away from lives in disarray, 

Corrupt cops, thugs running drugs 

La bestia* 

Any life’s better than that— 

The Beast—sure means of transport 

Thoughts cast on money they will make 

Working in cities of the North 

Honduras, Guatémala, Mexico 

Long in rear view— 

More people climb & ride aboard iron skin 

Risk mortal danger they’ll run into: 

Injuries, deaths, deportations 

Could happen anywhere 

Prices they pay to see a better day 

Craving freedom from economic despair 

Despite their own hardships, Patronas*** 

By the railroad tracks help riders on their way 

Bags of food & bottled water hold 

Deprivation at bay for each stowaway 

May fortune go to migrants, should their feet touch 

The domain of dreams immense 

Land of star-spangled expectations 

Separated from the South by border fence. 

*SPANISH: The beast 

**Spanish-speaking [and by extension, Portuguese-speaking] Catholic 

Brown people. Literal translation: “The race.” 

***A group of volunteer women in Veracruz, Mexico, usually twelve, 

who give food and assistance to Central American & Mexican migrants 

travelling northbound on top of export trains leaving from Chiapas. 


_

Dee Allen 

THE BLACK SHIPS 

At least nine in all: 

Six with vast sails 

That captured the wind, 

Another three powered 

By coals, released from stacks 

As billowing trails of engine exhaust, 

Left America’s grandiose 

Shores, touched down 

On the edge of Edo Bay 

And brought with them 

Iron cannon diplomacy, 

An end to isolation 

And the age of shoguns, 

A commencing to trade, 

An opening of seaside ports, 

An acquiescence to a supreme 

Naval might local leaders 

Secretly longed to possess, 

A start to the 

Shared thought-train of 

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, 

An introduction to 

A future in 

Flowing gowns & bonnets, 

Suits & tophats, 

Ladies’ corsets, 

Gentlemens’ capes, 

Alongside yukata* & geta,** 

Silk-made cravats, 

Walking canes with hooped handles, 

Shoes with spats, 

European-style 

Ballroom waltzes, 

American-style 

Constitution 

Government 

Capitalism, 

Horse & carriage, 

Steamboats, 

Engines & turbines, 

Railroads, 

Factories & refineries, 

Wine & beer, 

The telegraph, 

The telephone, 

More reliance 

On the gun— 

Slowly, 

The Far East 

Began to look 

Like the land 

Of the nanban*** 

_ 

*JAPANESE: “Summer robes.” 

**JAPANESE: “Sandals.” 

***JAPANESE: “Westerners.” 

Usually Americans. 


34

Dee Allen 

Morning Alarm 

It’s morning again 

And the first 

Sound I hear 

Rousing me from dreamless rest 

Pulling me back into consciousness 

Comes live and direct 

From nature 

From sky 

From long, pointy black beak 

Swift as the crow will fly— 

Short, sharp repetitions of caws, 

Calling the sleeping world to awaken. 

Sounds from a black bird’s throat, 

More effective than 

The round, battery-powered 

Clock on the shelf— 

Morning alarm 

From Brother Crow 

Stirs my limbs into rather sluggish movements, 

Enables my body to rise 

From the mattress on the cold brick floor, 

Take six steps to the lavatory in half-light, 

Flick of the light switch and my ritual begins, 

From towel rack to wash cloth 

To soap bar to hot shower to towel 

To sink to mirror 

To can of Barbasol cream to razor— 

Afterwards, I look 

Forward to 

My favourite 

Part of this new day: 

Meatless breakfast. 

Hash brown patties, 

Seitan bacon strips, 

Bowl of applesauce, 

Hot cup of peppermint tea 

And cherry-flavoured 

Liquid vitamin 

B-12 drops on my tongue, 

Vegan’s best friend. 

Savouring it all 

Like a soul kiss 

From a fine sister. 

Topping off the routine: 

Discussing the crow’s call 

During the blue hour 

With my pen 

Through adding the next poem to my 

notebook. 

_ 

In response to the poem “Young African Man” by The Unrated Poet from Kenya. 


Swapna Sanchita 

Banality 

The constant whirr of the fan 

The fan that hangs from wooden beams 

In the glass ceiling of the conservatory 

Keeps me from thinking 

Thinking all that I should create in my mind 

Keeps me from feeling 

Feeling the sting of empty, barren evenings 

And so, I let the fan be… 

Let it hang above me, playing out the incessant whirr 

The whirr that brings me the banality of peace. 


36

M. Alis Spencer 

The painting depicts 

a western version 

of creation, but the 

technique jumbles 

the story to show 

an alternative or 

companion version, 

the chaos that 

danced and settled 

into our environment. 

The elements are 

separation of light 

of dark, firmament 

swirling up from 

the waters, and the 

face of man with 

his flawed vision of 

right and wrong, 

symbolized by the 

apple. The gold is 

both blessing and 

greed. The texture 

forms pools and 

ridges, evoking the 

cartography of life. 

Inspired in part 

by Carl Sagan’s 

“Pale Blue Dot” 

thoughts and the 

corresponding 

photograph of earth’s 

position in space, the 

almost-postcard size 

of la génesis is an 

intentional reminder 

that we are but 

aspeck of stardust 

in a vast universe, or, 

in the words of Mr. 

Sagan, “Everyone you 

love, everyone you 

know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, 

lived out their lives, on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” 


la génesis 

2018, 5 x 7 Alcohol ink, modeling paste, and gold leaf on canvas board 


38

Zev Edwards 

Here Today 

Who would’ve thought that 

something so small could cause such 

a stir? Ten years ago, T.J. wouldn’t 

have believed it either—he would 

have said nah, no way, man—but 

things had changed. Times were 

different. Social media and all. The 

internet. Instant information in the 

palm of your hand. 

“Ain’t that right,” T.J. said. The 

wind answered by whipping against 

the faded brick walls, kicking up 

stray cans, and sending empty 

bags blowing like leaves. There 

was more trash in the streets than 

there used to be. Nobody cleaned up 

after themselves anymore. Sign of 

the times. Back in T.J.’s day, young 

folk had more spit. Theirs was a 

generation of doing, not sitting 

around waiting for somebody to do 

something they could do themselves. 

Nowadays too many people let 

things slip. 

T.J. bent and gathered up 

the scattered pieces of trash. He 

stopped only when both hands were 

full, emptying them in a nearby 

dumpster. He scanned the street. 

Gems of broken glass and metallic 

objects glimmered like stars in the 

night. Too many to count. It’d take 

the better part of an afternoon to 

gather them all. 

A thankless job, a lesson in 

futility, but that didn’t stop T.J. 

from picking up a few more. Life 

wasn’t about completion. Life was 

a process. One step in front of the 

other. In the end, nothing left this 

world complete. 

“Ain’t that right,” T.J. said again, 

stretching. 


His little exercise in garbage 

collection had awoken pings and pangs 

in his back. Was it his grandfather 

who said old age was just a metaphor 

for aches and pains? T.J. couldn’t 

remember. Memory, just another 

casualty of getting older. 

“Ain’t that right?” T.J. shook his 

head. “Christ, there I go sounding like 

a broken record again.” 

T.J. put on his work gloves, yellow 

cotton speckled in a myriad of colors, 

and folded up his stepladder. He took 

one last look at the brick wall of the 

abandoned building, not a single 

window unbroken. Not his finest piece, 

he had to admit, but another day’s 

work done. 

Cradling the ladder under his arm, 

T.J. walked back to his truck. Along 

the way, he whistled an old Sam Cooke 

tune, “Bring It on Home to Me.” 

That song always brought him 

back to Cheryl, the first girl to let 

T.J. slip his hand up her shirt. From 

there it had been hot and heavy until 

the song’s conclusion and then she 

asked him to stop. Her eyes pleaded a 

different story. 

Why, sugar? 

Because if you don’t, I don’t 

think I can control myself. 

T.J. had wanted nothing more than 

for her to lose control. That was all 

being a teenager was, losing yourself. 

Her words only got him more worked 

up and T.J. would’ve pressed it too, but 

his mama raised him right. 

Boy, if a girl says stop, you stop. 

I don’t care what those boys you run 

with say. A real man treats a woman 

right. You ain’t no animal. I raised 

you a man, not a dog, and you’ll 

behave like one or I swear I’ll take 

you outta this world faster than I 

put you in it. 

His mama wasn’t kidding either.

She had him when she was only 

sixteen, worked two, sometimes three 

jobs to support them. His daddy split 

right after hearing he was about to be 

a father. So, yeah, his mama knew the 

ways of men, the thin line separating 

them from the beasts. 

It wasn’t until later—when he was 

a man going on twenty years—that T.J. 

saw the worst of mankind. War was a 

terrible thing, especially for a black 

man in the sixties. Denied basic human 

rights in one country, he was sent off 

to another a thousand miles away from 

home to fight for those same rights he 

was denied. 

Poor folk killing poor folk, while 

somebody made a profit out of it. 

Whole history of the world was just 

one big fish swallowing up a smaller 

one. In the army, there was always a 

bigger fish in the sea. 

“Don’t you go off being no hero,” 

Mama had said. “Heroes die. This 

here’s a white man’s war so let him go 

fight and die for it. You just keep your 

head well hid and do your time and 

come back to me, ya hear?” 

T.J. told her he would, but if the 

stories were true, those who came back 

were shells of their former selves. The 

streets of the east side of Detroit were 

littered with poor souls, wandering the 

streets late at night, making threats 

out of ghosts, and losing themselves 

one bottle at a time. Even if war didn’t 

kill you out right, it still left its mark. 

In the army, color didn’t matter. 

Everybody bled equally. You were just 

a number, a body to be grinded up in 

the machine. Yes, sir. No, sir. Get in 

line. Shut up. Don’t think. Just obey. 

Follow orders. 

T.J. survived the war, barely. 

He was injured twice. Received two 

purple hearts. One just a flesh wound, 

but a real bleeder. The other, more 

permanent. T.J. still had pieces of 

shrapnel stuck in his back. They were 

the only things he brought back with 

him from the war besides his two 

purple hearts. T.J. still felt them too, 

especially when the weather was 

cold and rainy. 

Hell, he felt them now, his back 

crying out to be itched or rubbed. 

“Almost there.” T.J. shifted the 

weight of the ladder, thinking for 

every Cheryl in life, there were two 

or three pieces of shrapnel. 

What she was up to now? 

Married? Kids? Hell, T.J. didn’t even 

know if she was still alive. Sometimes 

he pictured the life they would’ve 

had together if they hadn’t gone 

down separate paths. Thoughts of 

Cheryl were sweet and dreamy. More 

of a hopeful teenager’s longing than 

that of a tired old man looking at the 

back end of his life. Nobody ever saw 

themselves in their fifties, sixties, 

or seventies until they were actually 

there. 

Cheryl. Sweet Cheryl. 

“If you ever,” T.J. crooned, his 

voice a low tenor. “Change your mind 

. . . about leaving, leaving me behind.” 

They sure didn’t make songs like 

they used to. Where was the talent? 

Nowadays anybody could churn out 

a beat on a machine, recycle an old 

song, auto-tune the hell out of their 

voice and call it music. Where was 

the soul in that? Sam Cooke would 

be rolling in his grave. 

With a satisfied grunt, T.J. placed 

the stepladder in the back of his 

rust-bottomed Ford. He patted the 

chalk dust from his gloves, stuffed 

them in his back pocket, and wiped 

the sweat from his forehead. The day 

sure was a hot one, especially for late 

October. That was the trend lately. 

Longer summers, tamer winters. 

He had trouble remembering the 

last time he saw a white Christmas. 

When he was kid, not having a white 

Christmas was a rarity. 


40

Last Christmas, it rained. 

Shaking his head, T.J. slowly 

climbed into the cab of his truck. 

It took a few cranks for the old 

Ford to fire up. T.J. rolled down the 

window and lit a cigarette. It dangled 

loosely from his lips as he surveyed 

his work. Looks even better from 

a distance, he thought and then 

frowned, noticing in the rearview 

mirror streaks of red and yellow 

powder along his face. He wiped them 

clean with a handkerchief. Satisfied, 

he put the truck in drive and ambled 

down the street. 

The city sure had changed during 

the past few years. Old, decrepit 

buildings torn down to make room 

for trendier apartment complexes. 

A crack house replaced by a Whole 

Foods. Construction barriers just as 

numerous as abandoned homes. The 

only thing that hadn’t changed much 

was the condition of the roads. 

T.J. swerved to the left lane to 

avoid a deep pothole. Soon, he was 

swerving to the right to dodge a bad 

patch job. The only way to get around 

Detroit was to take it slow. 

Detroit was one of those cities 

where location mattered. Park your 

car here, safe. Park it two blocks over, 

broken into. Walk on this side of the 

sidewalk, fresh concrete and cleancut 

grass. Cross the street, barely 

walkable. Street lights worked on 

one crosswalk and were out the next. 

Signs of prosperity kitty corner to 

poverty. 

Detroit, a once thriving city in 

decline, but still struggling and always 

hustling. Writers spoke of New York 

like an old flame, but nobody felt such 

tenderness for Detroit. Like Cheryl, 

it was mostly thoughts of what 

might’ve been. Whereas New York 

was one big dream, Detroit was too 

close to reality. And nobody wanted a 

constant reminder of that. 

“Ain’t that right.” 

Most people got Detroit wrong. 

Not many people got past what they 

heard on the news. Crime. Bankruptcy. 

Poverty. Corruption. Decay. What 

the headlines missed were grit and 

determination. Detroiters had lived 

through the hardest times and yet 

carried on. “Detroit v. Everybody” the 

t-shirts read. More like Detroit is 

everybody. Who hasn’t struggled or 

been kicked around? 

Only people who were born 

and raised in Detroit—people like 

T.J.—understood it. Detroit didn’t 

need saving. Those who thought a 

city needed saving had too much 

Superman shoved up their ass. 

People and places endured whether 

anybody paid attention to them or not. 

Mama said you could always tell 

a real Detroiter from an outsider. If in 

passing, they looked you in the eyes 

and said hello or a greeting, then they 

were from Detroit. If not, they were 

from somewhere else. Simple as that. 

Mama was a wise woman, and like 

most wise women she never got the 

credit she deserved. No big obituary in 

the paper. No statue or monument or 

street named after her. Good people’s 

deaths were much like their lives. 

Ordinary and overlooked. Important in 

the everyday, barely a footnote in the 

pages of history. 

“Ain’t that right.” T.J. stamped out 

his cigarette in the truck’s ashtray and 

pulled up next to a corner store. The 

sun was just a distant speck above 

the building tops. T.J. left the window 

down and truck unlocked—nothing 

worth stealing—and made his way into 

the store. 

“Afternoon, T.J.,” Halbert, the 

clerk, called. “Another beautiful day. 

Won’t be too many left. Got to enjoy 

‘em while we can.” 

“You can say that again.” 


“Say, my old lady said she saw you 

on the evening news.” 

“What for? I ain’t do nothin’.” 

“It was for something good. Those 

murals you been working on. You know 

the chalk ones that get erased every 

other day.” 

“Right, that.” T.J. made his way to 

the back where the beer was kept. 

“I still don’t understand why you 

waste your time with chalk,” Halbert 

called after him. “Why not paint them 

murals so they last longer?” 

“That’s the whole point, Hal!” T.J. 

opened the cooler and pulled out a sixpack 

of Stroh’s. “Nothing lasts.” 

“Some things last longer than 

others. And it ain’t every day you 

make the national news. You oughta 

be thrilled. My little niece Martha 

said they was even talking about it 

at school. I guess one of her friends 

posted on that Instagram.” 

“I don’t even know what that is.” 

“What? Instagram? Doncha got 

one of them smart phones yet?” 

“If a phone that flips open makes it 

smart, then yes, I got one.” 

“Oh, hell no, T.J. One of them 

flip phones ain’t no smart phone. It’s 

outdated. I tellya what ya need is one 

of them screen touchy things like I got.” 

Hattie held up a black rectangle 

for T.J. to see. 

“What’s that thing, a calculator?” 

“No, man, it’s a smart phone.” 

“That thing even fit in your 

pocket?” T.J. placed his beer on the 

counter and reached back for his wallet. 

“Barely. Kids got it for me. Got the 

biggest one too. You know how my 

eyes are. With this thing, I don’t have 

any trouble reading things like I used 

to. Martha thinks you’ll be trending 

by the end of the week.” 

“I don’t even know what that 

means.” 

“Means you’ll be internet 

famous, T.J. Just look, that news 

video already has over 20,000 views 

on YouTube and the Instagram 

picture has 500 likes.” 

Halbert held up the rectangle for 

T.J. to see. 

“I still don’t understand what the 

big deal is. Just doing what I been 

doing for the last thirty years. Ain’t 

nothing special about that.” 

“Whoa, I misspoke. 501 likes now. 

Here, let me show ya something—oh 

shit! How do I get outta this screen?” 

Halbert pressed his fingers 

to the screen. The movement was 

reminiscent of how secretaries in 

T.J.’s day used to work a typewriter. 

T.J. held a ten in his hand, waiting 

for Halbert to figure out his device. 

Damn thing was only as smart as its 

user, T.J. thought with a smile. 

Ain’t that right. 


42


circuitous reasoning 

you ask me whether 

silicon might be the next 

building block of life, 

and programming give way to 

sentience; I say call me 

when a machine can 

contemplate (not calculate) 

one plus one, arrive 

at both infinity and 

zero, shrug and live with it. 



The Green Man in Autumn 

This metaphor business 

starts to wear on a fellow 

some nights. 

My joints are all stiff, 

creaking like old-growth oak 

in a strong wind, 

and my hair has gone brittle, 

crackling with a sound 

that never fails to remind 

of that first kiss, soft 

yet ravenous, of flame 

against stubble. 

Come three in the morning, 

I can feel my eyelids 

freezing shut. 

There is, I must confess, 

a sweet familiar rhythm 

to the slow onset of these 

brown days, the first turns 

of chill earth. 

My cheeks glow, even as 

they draw and wither, and 

there are those to whom 

I look best in red and gold. 

Still, it is no easy thing 

to turn my back – weary, 

wind-bent, gnarled as 

it might be, 

upon a world of ripened fields, 

laden vines, lovers sharing 

orchard-fruit... 

No matter. My bed of earth 

calls; whether I will or no, 

I cannot but answer and 

draw close my coverlet of 

frost-tinged leaves. 

I will dream of cracking 

river-ice, a first shy opening 

of peony buds, 

the scent of bread on the final 

morning of my next life. 


44


Nativity 

Identical, Eileithya said when she delivered twin 

brothers out of Night’s shadowed labors— 

but their mother knew better, even before they 

first drew in unlit air and wailed it out again. 

Sons of Darkness and grandsons of Chaos 

on both sides: These two would not flee her 

embrace, as Brightness and Day had done in 

the instants of their births. These are good boys, 

she thought; they will never leave me. Hypnos 

cried a low soft music, and a black cat in the 

corner blinked twice and curled into itself. 

Thanatos flung out a tiny hand in his hunger; 

a passing moth circled it, counterclockwise, 

then flew off on silent wings to find a candle. 


James T. Grissom 

The Water 

Take a dip they said 

And be brand new 

So I dove in head first 

But my feet never left the deck 

It was just water, after all 

Walk along the shore she said 

The waves will wash you 

Again and again 

But the riptide stole me 

And drowned my nerve 

Learn to swim he said 

This happens to everyone 

Learn to not fear the sharks 

But they ravaged me 

Left me bleeding 

They circled me 

A multitude of anguish 

On the precipice of consumption 

Take a drink someone said 

Surrender to the salt 

Quench your thirst 

On poison so sweet 

I fought 

Somehow survived 

An old one offered 

A bottle of joy 

Pure from a mountain stream 

As fast as it filled me 

Refreshed me 

It poured from the open wounds 

As I gave up the will to try 

You said 

Spread this on your emptiness 

Inside and out 

I choked on the iron tang 

Wiped sticky maroon all over 

Then I died 

And rose again 


46

Gibel Amador 

Love’s immortality 

I find sanctuary within water 

yet the flowers did not 

Like lifeless fish in a bowl. 

I look back on what this once was 

And imagine its beauty with violent colors. 

Each petal is brought alive 

Continuously in my mind, 

I create my own fountain of youth 

And yet the flowers still die. 

Reminding me of our love. 

Why can’t I throw away these flowers? 

Their purpose is over, 

They are no longer alive nor beautiful 

right? 

Marathon 

Torn ligaments scatter towards the edge 

No time to cleanse 

A marathon that came to an end 

Words of affirmation 

Poured out ahead 

Drowning my thoughts 

Because I could not comprehend 

How love pushed me towards the edge 


Gibel Amador 

Model: Aparna Mangadu 

Fleurs Violentes 


48

Leonard Duncan 

An Epilogue 

It’s a cold and rainy day. I can imagine 

it’s befitting of a gray, storming ocean, 

or a thundering night sky – like the ones 

you’d like to watch on TV – even if it’s just 

a drizzle right now. It’s been a year since 

your memorial, but I can’t lie to myself. 

The weather is really like all those funeral 

days we saw in the movies on your father’s 

old VHS tapes; positively black-umbrella 

worthy. And yet I sit here with no umbrella 

in hand. The only thing that protects me 

from the rain is the tattered plastic shelter 

of this bus stop, hundreds of miles from 

where you died. I forgot my umbrella at 

home (or did I even mean to bring it?). I 

forget many things, now. 

But not you. Never you, even though 

maybe it would be better for me to think 

less of you. That’s what mom says, anyway; 

did you know I stopped mentioning you 

to her not long after the memorial? (I 

suppose you wouldn’t, since it’s not like 

I talk to her much at all). She tolerated 

it, but I could see the disgust in her eyes 

every time you were mentioned. I think 

that was worse than not talking about 

you at all, so I started holding you closer 

to my chest. It was easier to keep our 

precious memories untainted that way - to 

keep them untouched by the judgment of 

people who wouldn’t understand. 

And, I suppose, that’s part of the reason 

why I’m leaving. I know my doctors 

certainly wouldn’t recommend it this soon 

—I’ve still got another CT scan scheduled 

for Friday, after all, and then my neurology 

appointment on the Wednesday after, 

and then there’s another one after that… 

I can’t recall, but that doesn’t matter too 

much now. I won’t be here for it, anyway. 

Medicine doesn’t matter too much when 

it doesn’t truly heal. I know you’d agree 

with me on that point, at least. After all, no 

amount of painkillers could heal the damage 

done to you after what your father did. What 

happened last year shows that, but don’t 

worry. I’m not bitter about it. I know that if 

I had tried a little harder, things might have 

been different. Of all the people to blame for 

what happened, I know I’m pretty high up on 

that list. 

Well, maybe that’s a lie. Not the blame, but 

the bitterness. After all, I could count on one 

hand the number of people I had in my life 

who I loved, and you took them all out in 

one fell swoop. I have a right to be a little 

bitter about that, don’t I? Don’t begrudge 

me this. Not when you made me wake up like 

that. You said you’d never leave me alone, 

but by the time I awoke there was nothing 

left for me but the unfamiliarity of distant, 

demeaning hospital staff. 

I wish I could remember it better, just to 

hold on to the clarity of the pain. That pain 

was better than anything that came after. 

But things are fuzzy from back then... There 

was astringency, sure; muted impressions 

of white, and hospital-scrub-blue; but 

everything else was kept hushed and warm 

under a blanket of morphine, or fentanyl, or 

whatever opiates they decided would keep 

me mollified for the day. 

One of the first things I do remember is 

seeing my mother for the first time since I 

was nine, and for the second time in my life. 

I thought if I ever saw her again, you would 

be there with me, a barrier between me and 

the world; but, no. (I’m sure you see the irony 

that you were the reason I saw her again). 

I didn’t even recognize her, for a while; part 

of that can be attributed to the sorry mess 

that was my brain, but she also seemed like 

a whole different woman than when I first 

met her, more in manner than in appearance. 


Oh, but that’s not to say she didn’t look 

different; she did. There were crow’s 

feet crinkled around her eyes, day-old 

makeup applied hurriedly (so unlike in 

that single image I had of her, the one 

you and I furtively peeked at when my 

dad wasn’t around). Her hands were 

clenched anxiously around her phone; 

white-knuckled, but long-fingered and 

willowy, just like mine. I hadn’t recognized 

it when I was nine, but my hands were 

one of the things I inherited from her. 

All the worse for me. 

There are many things that have cycled 

through the list of things I don’t like 

about myself over the years, but my 

hands have always been a constant. When 

I was a kid, it was because they were too 

spindly to let me grab onto the bugs and 

lizards we chased down in the woods with 

the same ease yours did. (Your hands were 

broad, and wide, calloused and could grip 

a skink with the same ease that you would 

grip my hands so that I could hold on to 

whatever you gave me; but they always 

slipped through my fingers.) 

In high school, it was because they looked 

too feminine; though I doubt it was my 

hands alone that made me look queer 

to that small population of immigrant 

children, rich kids and trailer park 

descendants,... they contributed to the 

general everything that made me feel like I 

wanted to crawl out of my skin when I got 

an uncomfortable side-eye from a jock or 

a nervous titter from one of the prep girls. 

Now, though, I hate these hands because 

I feel like they weren’t strong enough to 

pull you up from whatever crevasse you 

were sinking into that I was too dumb to 

see. Or maybe see isn’t the right word; 

even if I couldn’t see it, I should’ve felt it. 

We touched every day, you and I; I would 

nudge you with my shoulder at school, give 

you a joking punch on the arm, brush our 

legs together for a brief, poignant moment 

when we sat across from each other at 

the cafeteria tables. And, when no one 

was around to look, or judge, I would feel 

your hand over mine, like when we were 

kids hunting lizards in the woods. But only 

sometimes. The winding mountain roads 

didn’t straighten out often enough for me 

to spare one hand from the steering wheel. 

I should’ve known, I should have known. 

It’s unbearable to me that your hands, 

familiar to me as they were, rested in 

mine nearly every day—and, through that 

connection we shared, my hands deem me 

someone too weak to hold you up when 

you needed it the most. I can’t tolerate it. 

I couldn’t tolerate it then, either, when I 

was finally conscious and not just awake. I 

spared no time asking after you. I couldn’t 

remember, of course, and they all knew 

that. My mother seemed hesitant to tell 

me anything, despite the fact that she 

was likely the one who had the most tact 

for it (at least, compared to your mother, 

who was the one who actually ended up 

breaking the news to me). The day she 

came in to tell me what happened is one 

of the few times from my months in the 

hospital that did not fade under that 

narcotic haze. There are times I wish that 

those crystalline details had fogged away 

just like so many other things I heard and 

said, just to lessen the pain of knowing. The 

true pain is all in the details of knowing. 

“Morgan.” Was the first thing she said, and 

then she stopped, as if all she could bear to 

do was say my name. 

I stayed silent in response, which was 

both a pointed choice and an involuntary 

reaction. I still could barely speak then 

without substantial effort, and when I did 

it was aphasic, garbled with a stutter or 

slur. Like always, your mother didn’t seem 

worth anything more than a small token 

attempt at politeness – let alone what it 

would require for me to greet her clearly. 


50

But she seemed so terribly tired, with 

her perpetually vibrant eyes dim, dark 

and sunken in. Impossibly older looking, 

much like my mother, as if I had been 

asleep for an eternity instead of a month. 

“Morgan,” She begun again, and I 

remember how she drew herself up 

straighter, stronger, like she always did 

on those occasions when your dad got 

mad; but not mad like yelling, those 

few times it happened, but like those 

stern, unbearable, disappointed lectures 

that came every other day. You always 

took them with an irreverent grace, but 

your mother made like she had to make 

herself sturdy, to bear the weight of 

what was coming. It was a posture I had 

never seen directed at me before. “You’ve 

already spoken with the police, right?” 

I had. It had been one of the first things to 

happen after the nurses deemed me safe 

for non-familial visitors. That frustration 

was all the more painful when they would 

tell me nothing about where my dad was, 

or where you were. “It’d be better to have 

his mom break the news.” I remember 

one officer saying in an uncomfortably 

loud voice, as if I couldn’t hear them 

rather than couldn’t speak. 

So I nodded. 

She took a deep, shuddering breath and, 

as if in response, the whole rest of her 

body began to shake too—fine, minute 

tremors that I can only see in my mind’s 

eye in hindsight. (Crystalline memories, 

and I still wish them gone). She walked 

– too slow – and sat, carefully, on the 

chair next to my hospital bed, as if to 

draw out the experience as long as 

possible. She shucked her purse from her 

shoulder, settled it on her lap, crossed 

and uncrossed her legs. My eyes were on 

her the whole time. 

Finally, she spoke again. “They told 

me you still don’t remember anything. 

Your mom wanted me to tell you, since… 

well, we’ve known each other longer.” She 

said this without any of her usual hemming 

and hawing. And for a glimpse: at the 

mention of my mother, her lips pursed 

in a disapproving line. Her expression 

smoothed out again shortly after – though 

I think more from tiredness than a lack of 

disapproval. 

She cleared her throat, and gently 

attempted to tell me. And her facetious 

gentleness meant nothing, then, just as 

it means nothing to me now. She told me 

about how you got your father’s Glock, and 

took it to the grocery store. She told me 

how you shot everyone there. My father. 

Your father. Monica, the single mother. 

And Monica’s daughter, Charlie, who could 

have done nothing wrong other than being 

there. 

And me. I was there. 

It was said so plainly, I couldn’t help but 

believe it. Even if the last thing I could 

remember before the hospital was 

playing some video game with you in my 

room back in November, right after a big 

Thanksgiving meal – it made sense. It 

made sense, even though you shooting 

up a grocery store was nothing I had 

even had a passing thought of, before. 

And yet your mother still sat there, 

watching. Waiting. Her eyes were tearful, 

and expectant. I still don’t know exactly 

what she was expecting from me, then. 

Denial? Anger? Hysteria? More halfformed 

and misspoken words? Nothing 

would come, and nothing could. My mind 

was plain and clear with the acceptance 

that you were gone, and that my father 

was gone, and that my life then may as 

well be gone. 

“Morgan? Do you understand?” She asked. 

I nodded. Her words rang unholy and true, 

just as they do now, recalling them for you. 


Things like tears and anger had yet to come. 

Ethan. You told me that one day, we’d leave 

together. You wanted to see the coast, and 

I thought I wouldn’t mind seeing anything 

as long as it was with you. You were always 

the one obsessed with everything nautical. 

It took you from when we were young 

and innocent and played pirates up in the 

treehouse your father built for us, to just a 

few years ago – an eternity too long – when 

you searched for bus tickets to Seattle 

with frenetic energy (a promise from your 

father for your birthday, never kept). I 

never understood it. We were mountainborn, 

you and I; true-blooded, raised-bythe-woods 

kids that didn’t know anything 

beyond the forests as our backyard until 

we were forced to learn otherwise. All of 

that innocence – like it never was – slipped 

away with an uncomfortable ease on the 

day your father shattered and broke. 

(And I do mean broke. No one ever called 

it that, but in all hindsight, with distance 

from his death, he broke. He collapsed 

upon himself, like some half-drunk flask 

of whiskey thrown at the edge of the yard, 

and the pieces got buried under layers of 

new grass, snow,... of rain and mud and 

newer earth, until it was just old glass in 

a backyard.) 

Of course I couldn’t understand it then – 

what six-year-old could? – but I can still 

choose to regret the way I never pushed 

further, or leaned in harder, to try and 

tease out more of the truth. I guess I was 

just as fooled as they were, even if we were 

practically raised hand-in-hand. But all 

I saw, like everyone else, was that when 

your father gave in, and left those little 

glass pieces everywhere, people have been 

cutting themselves on them ever since. 

Especially you. Maybe only you. I don’t 

know if anyone was ever hurt more by him 

than you were. 

I’m sorry. Does it hurt to be reminded? We 

never really talked about it, even when I saw 

you in the hospital right after the accident. 

You were wrapped up and stitched up, cold, 

alone, while your father a few floors up was 

surrounded by family, friends, parishioners 

and clergymen. The people who should’ve 

been rallying for you instead. That was 

the first time we ever saw life as it was 

outside of Featherville, and it was like being 

born again. Of course, it wasn’t like we 

had never left before. This was all before 

my dad ran the grocery, and you know my 

opa and oma were notoriously rigid about 

stocking “unnecessary” things (like my 

dad’s favorite beer) – so excursions to the 

dinky little Walmart in Fredericksburg were 

unavoidable. 

But they were just that – excursions. They 

felt like little visits to a far away world, one 

that was filled with a multitude of curious 

things like neat rows of houses and shops 

and neatly curated trees in parks. It was 

a scene fit perfectly for a snow globe. It 

wasn’t truly real. Not until were we forced 

out there by your father, but also we came 

to realize that the people out there were 

just as real and true and fallible and awful 

as they were in Featherville. 

And fallible and awful were what they truly 

seemed to be when I first came into that 

hospital room, startlingly empty. Except 

for you. You were bandaged and wired up 

with tubes, and utterly alone. I think even 

my father was a bit shocked, then, despite 

his empathy for the pastor; I know I at least 

thought that you shouldn’t have been the 

one alone after your father’s break, and 

my father and I were of the same mind 

on many things. The amount of empathy 

people can have for someone who they 

shouldn’t is astounding. After all, it wasn’t 

like the bottle tipped itself into his mouth 

on its own. But I suppose money talked in 

Featherville, just like it does everywhere else. 

And with that unspoken money you were 

there, left mostly alone except for a few 

token visitors who stopped by to leave a 

little gift or a pat on the head, or whatever 

adults give to hurt kids when they’re too 

ashamed to admit that they were wrong. 


52

(Apologies weren’t included— I can 

recall that much.) And me? I was too 

frightened to run to your side, like I 

should have. And it was frightening. 

One day, we were normal kids, playing 

in those woods and pretending we were 

pirates in our treehouse – and, then 

the next – the next you and your father 

were gone and nobody would tell me 

what had happened or why the whole of 

Featherville was in such an uproar. 

I remember trotting up to your bed with 

a careful slowness, saying “Hi, Ethan,” 

with a shyness that didn’t befit our 

friendship. Like we hadn’t known each 

other since we were in diapers. I couldn’t 

stop staring at the bandages wrapped 

around your head, your arm, your chest, 

and wondering what lay underneath. 

My father seemed to have the opposite 

reaction; he wouldn’t look you straight 

in the eye, even as he said “Hey, kiddo,” 

and reached out to ruffle your hair 

like he normally did. But then he had 

aborted the motion halfway through, 

withdrawing his hand like he was about 

to put it in a bear trap. I don’t think you 

even noticed; you were too invested in 

me, us in each other, to take too much of 

a notice of the outside world. 

And still you smiled back at me, then, 

and even if you didn’t say a word I could 

see the glimmer in your silver eyes, and 

think I knew what you meant. But I ruined 

it (very easy for me to do, it seems). I 

asked, “Ethie, what did’ju do?”, with all 

the naked bluntness of a child. Your 

smile faded, and you were silent; you 

wouldn’t say another word for months 

after. Not to me, and not to anybody. 

I would have to be told by my family, 

with Oma and Opa and Dad all sat 

around a table (to lie and pretend 

like everything was going to be okay). 

Pastor Jackson had an accident, I 

remember them saying; “He had a bit 

too much to drink, and that made him 

sick,” was something like what Oma said. 

“He thought he heard the devil raging 

inside Ethan, so he tried to get it out, and 

they both hurt each other. That’s why 

they’re both in the hospital right now.” 

There was that infallible emphasis that 

Pastor Jackson was a good guy; that what 

happened was an accident, and no one’s 

fault, and everyone would just be taking a 

bit of time to recover and then everything 

would be okay again. I believed them. It 

was an easy mistake to make, you know? 

A stupid mistake, and one I hate myself 

for, but an easy one. Six years old was 

too young for me to start to question the 

adults around me in any way that really 

mattered. But I still can’t forgive myself, 

and I don’t want to make excuses for it. 

I find it hard to forgive myself for a lot 

of things, concerning you – as if I even 

deserve forgiveness. I can’t forgive myself 

for believing the lie that your father was 

anything more than a devil himself, for 

seeing one in you. I can’t forgive myself 

for trying to sell the lie that you and I 

were anything less than what we were – 

whatever we were. Codependent almostadults? 

Almost lovers? I can’t forgive 

myself for not agreeing to leave with you 

when you wanted to, and for not listening 

(or maybe just not believing) when you 

said you’d be better off dead then stuck in 

some shitty little mountain town for one 

more year. I should’ve listened to you. I 

should’ve believed you. 

I try to stop myself from wondering if 

things might’ve been different if I had left 

with you in August, when you wanted. I 

try to stop myself because I know there’s 

no going back and changing things, but 

during moments like this it’s hard to 

keep that wall between what is and what 

could have been. Moments like now, 

when I’m alone under a bus shelter in the 

now-pouring rain, it’s nigh impossible 

to push away dreams of what might 

have been if we had run away together. 


Little glimpses of memories that never 

will-be keep haunting me, “Ethan. Ethan!” 

– and I wish it would just stop! 

I see things like us, together, on one 

of those beaches you wanted to visit; 

sometimes on the east coast, sometimes 

on the west, but always somewhere you 

had listed on the bullet-point list tacked 

to the corkboard in your room. We’d 

be there among the sand, and rushing 

ocean waves and gull cries and sea 

grass—all those things you yearned for, 

but never felt—and you’d finally smile 

at me again, scars and all, reflecting the 

ones you gave me. 

Or maybe in some big city somewhere – 

far away from everything rural that you 

ever hated. We’d walk together, brave 

and free, your hand broad and calloused 

and warm in my spindly can’t-hold-youup 

hands that ended up ending us. We’d 

be able to do all those things you always 

wanted, but were never able—visit those 

big maritime museums, see shipwrecks 

and ride on museum ships, live on the 

docks in a houseboat with two cats… 

Or – or, I’ll see us back at my dad’s grocery, 

back when things felt easier and freer. 

How we’d sit behind the counter with 

sodas and candies pilfered straight from 

the aisles, doing homework with sticky 

fingers and wide smiles on our faces. 

Dad always pretended not to hear us 

play our Gameboys beneath the counter 

between algebra problems for the first 

hour or so, but then he’d crack down on 

us and say “Okay, boys, it’s time to get 

to work,” and we’d put our games in our 

backpack to finish up. And he really would 

put us to work – especially when it got 

busy during hunting season, he’d almost 

always have one of us manning the second 

cash register while another stocked the 

shelves on the weekends. “You have to 

earn your keep somehow”, he’d say with 

a wry smile whenever we complained, 

but always send us off with more soda and 

candy to sit behind the counter if we really 

got too tired. 

I can imagine us there—finally graduated 

from high school, visiting from some city 

on the coast, maybe Seattle or Portland— 

and dad would embrace us, and ask how 

the drive up those winding mountain 

roads had been – 

God, I hate this. I hate that you did it, I hate 

that we can’t have any of this, because of 

you, because of me— maybe, because of 

each other. 

I never told you why I’m out here tonight, 

did I? Just that I was leaving. Well, I finally 

remembered. Remembered enough, at 

least, to know that you really aren’t ever 

coming back. Neither is my dad, or your 

dad, or Monica or little Charlie. It never felt 

real until I started remembering for myself; 

hearing that they were gone, that you 

were gone felt like some story everyone 

made up to fool me while I was too sick to 

fight back. Even when I took your mom’s 

words at face value, there was a part of me 

that must have always felt the unreality 

of it all, especially when I heard that I was 

there, too. 

That seemed to me the most unbelievable 

part, but I know enough now to accept 

that I was there. I was there, and I couldn’t 

stop any of it. I couldn’t stop you. 

Most of it is still fuzzy, and there are bits 

that aren’t clear enough for me to know 

that they really happened how they did. 

It feels dreamlike, misty, to think about, 

especially since the fog was the reason I 

was there in the first place. Nobody had 

told me that. It was December, and in 

preparation for the big winter storm, dad 

had sent me down to Fredericksburg to pick 

up some provisions from Walmart before 

the mountain passes were snowed in. 


54

I remember that half an hour down, 

the storm came early, descending in 

alarming rapidity from the dusky sky, in 

a flurry of clouds and mist and white. I 

knew it would only get worse from there, 

so I decided to turn back while I could. 

I don’t remember the drive back, but I 

remember arriving back at the grocery. I 

remember because I heard the gunshots. 

I arrived at just the wrong time, didn’t I? 

I thought it must’ve been some rogue 

hunter, or burglar, or really anyone but you, 

so I got the shotgun out of the back of the 

truck and ran in with boyish, heroic intent. 

I think I must’ve startled you, and that’s 

why you shot me. I’d like to imagine there 

was shock and recognition on your face 

when you turned and the gun went off. 

But I think it’s more likely that that was 

the expression on mine. I can’t remember 

what your face looked like, then. Maybe 

it’s because I haven’t seen you in so long, 

but even knowing it’s you— you, wearing 

your old puffy coat in that memory, 

the blue one that made that god awful 

squeaking noise when you walked too 

fast— your expression remains a mystery. 

It’s like there’s nothing there. Just the 

blur of your face, as if covered by mist, 

dark with some intent I’ll never know. 

From there, the integrity of my memory 

only deteriorates. I know there was noise. 

There was yelling, gunshots, and then 

all at once, quiet. (That must’ve been 

when I passed out.) I remember muted 

impressions of color – the whiteness of 

the overhead lights, blurred impressions 

of red, you with your damned blue coat 

with you standing over me. I think I 

might’ve heard my name – but if it came 

from your mouth, I don’t know. It might’ve 

been my dad. I remember there were rows 

of Campbell’s Tomato Soup on the shelf 

above where I fell, just within eyesight. 

I remember my hand spasmed around the 

barrel of the shotgun that came from the 

back of the truck— the only part of it I 

could reach. Still cold. 

Even with these memories waning back 

into my broken brain, I still don’t know why 

you did it. Nothing and no one can tell me 

why you thought you needed to take your 

dad’s gun to the grocery and kill everyone 

there. (Or maybe why you wanted to – 

perhaps it’s too naive of me to assume it 

was a need.) But they tell me that even 

then, you were the same boy I always 

knew. As much as I would like it to, nothing 

about that night stands out as “not-you”. 

I can’t imagine it was anyone else in that 

coat, standing over me. 

And now, in the end, all I’m left with is 

those dreams of the ocean. If I really want 

to try and discover why you did what you 

did, I may as well start at square one, your 

lifelong obsession and one true love. If I’m 

to imagine that you did this for any good 

reason at all, I want to start somewhere 

we’ve never been before. I don’t even know 

where I’m going—Atlantic, Pacific, gulf or 

sound—but I can’t stand it here anymore. 

I can’t stand the not-knowing, so I’m going 

anyway. I’m going to the ocean, Ethan. And 

if I’m lucky, what I see there will explain 

things well enough for the two of us. 


Charity McCoy 

Denial: Blurry 

Blurry mornings 

Are one of those days 

That you wake up 

And remember, 

All over again, 

That something in your world 

Has collapsed - crashed - 

And all is not good and well. 

Blurry mornings, for me, 

Begin in tranquility; 

Nothing on my mind and 

No understanding of where I am or what context I exist in. 

Just peaceful bliss and total ignorance. 

Bliss which, usually, is short-lived. 

… 

A sinking of the heart 

Or dropping of the stomach 

Soon follow, 

As either what I have done 

Or what has happened to me 

Resurface back from the oblivion 

And into my conscious thought. 

Leaving me with remnants of regret 

Or pieces of pain 

From what has happened in prior days. 

… 

This is why 

The blurry mornings kill, 

Especially today 

When the absence of you 

Is my new reality. 

And because of that, I’d rather be asleep 

So that dreams of you could comfort me 

While I rest in the bed of my ignorance - 

Tucked into my subconscious world where emotional cohesion is all that I know. 

Where everything is still beautiful and whole, 

And you are here. 

Because you were never gone 

And you never had to leave 

To begin. 


56

Charity McCoy 

“The complexity of human relationships 

is never simple to follow; It is like intricate 

lacework, but lacework made of steel.” 

-Mignon G. Eberhart 

Anger: Complexities 

How can I miss someone 

I don’t want to be with? 

How can I love the way he is 

But want him to change? 

You are exactly what I wanted, 

Yet you missed the mark, 

And I did the same. 

… 

Lately, 

I find myself 

Window shopping at the love of other people, 

Wishing it could be mine. 

Wishing I could finally get it right 

That I could be happily in love, for the first time. 

But here I am: 

Amongst the collateral 

Of what could have been. 

We met our end before we could begin, 

Which is why at times, I wish we didn’t. 

Because 

You showed me a beautiful love 

But left me feeling overlooked. 

I may have opened your heart to love again, 

But in the process, threw you into emotional loops. 

You were so gentle and kind with me, 

But in the end, left me so confused. 

Which is why I say: 

We were compatible, 

But we were not good. 

You wanted all of me 

And I wanted you partially; 

We stayed longer than we should. 



Charity McCoy 

Bargaining: Stolen Moments 

Things feel okay 

When you’re here. 

Even if just 

For a stolen 

fracture of a moment, 

That will inevitably 

evaporate into isolation 

From your departure. 

… 

When I steal moments with you, 

There are collapsing buildings 

And emotional car collisions 

That reverse in time. 

And restoration greets me 

Like a long-lost friend, 

Even if It has found me scattered 

under highways of concrete rubble, 

Or scorched by 

Graceful amber flakes - 

Set aflame in raging house-fires 

That dance like your lips do on mine. 

Those stolen moments are all I have 

To calm the raging house fires. 

Or stand up from under the ruin 

Of collapsed buildings 

And car collisions, 

that I relive over 

and over again, 

Each moment I realize 

That you’re gone. 


58 


58

Charity McCoy 

Depression: Clean Breaks 

According to Bella Swan, 

A full fracture is better than 

A partial 

Because 

Clean breaks heal quicker when 

There is no bone left intact. 

Standard medical practice says 

That the bone, then, must be held in 

The correct position 

To allow 

A blood clot to form and callus - 

Allowing bone cells to begin thread-like formations 

On both sides of the fracture line; 

Usually taking 6-8 weeks to heal. 

… 

Like bones in the body, 

Our partial fracture 

Became clean-cut 

Leaving nothing intact. 

You selflessly seceded your desires 

To align with mine - 

After days of hair-line fracturing - 

After days of clinging to small moments with you 

So the effects of withdrawal would subside. 

Unfortunately, there are no painkillers for heartbreak, 

No morphine for separation anxiety. 

Only, 

Holding myself in the correct position - 

Which is together - 

And swallowing the clot of tears back down my sore and tense throat; 

Waiting to be emotionally calloused 

So that maybe, I could feel something other than the painful empty space from your absence, 

From our final break. 

… 

And I pray 

That the Lord would be so gracious 

To thread my heart back together 

Like the gentle surgeon he is, 

And allow my joy to grow greater than my sorrow 

That my bones may fully function again. 

59 



Charity McCoy 

Acceptance: Slow Fade 

They say 

To those who grieve 

That it hurts until it doesn’t. 

That the agonizing thing will meet 

You each day until it departs. 

That you will feel that way 

Until you no longer do. 

And I believe what they say. 

I believe that it hurts until it doesn’t 

Because today is a better day. 

My stomach dropped a little lighter, 

My heart tightened a little less 

When the blurs of sleep dissipated 

And the realization of your absence 

Weighs back on my chest. 

Though it hurt, nonetheless, 

I am reminded that it lasts until it doesn’t; 

The pain aches until it dissolves away. 

I am reminded 

That though each morning 

I relive that same heartbreak, 

In due time, I will be okay. 

Because they are right: 

It lasts until it doesn’t, 

It’s there until it’s not. 

And one day you’re going to wake up 

And find that all your grief is gone. 


60 


60

Jessica Grissom 

The Book with a Cup of Tea 

Where do you go when you feel 

your heart breaking? Do you stay in bed 

under the nice warm covers? Do you 

find a solitary field to gaze at nature? 

Do you climb a mountain and scream at 

the top of your lungs? Maybe you don’t 

do anything and go through the motions 

repeatedly because that sense of normal 

is at least routinely comforting. 

She was one of those introverted, 

extroverts. She liked being around other 

people if they energized her. She loved 

helping others, but to do that she had to 

have alone time. Most often that meant 

reading a good book and drinking a cup 

of hot tea. 

She found both things 

comforting in normal times, but during 

times of grief she further escaped into 

the world of reading and drinking tea 

lattes. Thinking she’d isolated herself 

long enough, she decided to leave her 

home and head outside. The town had a 

quaint little shop in the downtown area. 

It wasn’t ever overly crowded, so she 

went to browse and quickly got lost in the 

stacks. 

Her eyes filled with tears when 

she came to the section labeled “Grief 

and Recovery”. It was the last shelf at 

the end of the aisle. She glanced around. 

I don’t want anyone to see me and feel 

sorry for me. I didn’t want anyone to 

ask me awkward questions. Not seeing 

anyone, she descended to the floor and 

began flipping through pages. 

The title “The Unborn” caught 

her attention. She picked it up and it was 

what she thought – a story of miscarriage 

and pregnancy loss. Again, she looked up 

and checked her surroundings. She felt 

like she was about to open a book that 

was scary and sacred. In doing so, she 

knew she would open a part of herself. 

Willing a deep breath, she opened the 

book and started reading. 

He moved slowly up and down 

the aisle reading every title. As he turned 

the corner, he saw her on the floor. Her 

head was bent over the book, but he saw 

her using a handkerchief to wipe away 

tears. She looked up at him and jumped. 

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t 

mean to scare you.” 

“I was caught up in the moment. 

It’s fine,” she murmured with mascara 

running down her face. 

“Are you, though?” he asked 

tenderly. 

These words caused a sob to escape, and 

she buried her face in the handkerchief. 

“May I sit beside you for a while 

in silence?” he asked hesitantly. 

No one had asked her that yet. 

People said they were sorry. They offered 

comforting phrases that didn’t help. No 

one had asked to sit with her quietly 

and simply acknowledge the grief. She 

looked at his eyes. His expression seemed 

genuine. She shook her head yes and he 

sat down a foot away from her. He rested 

his head on the back of the shelf and 

closed his eyes. She looked at him and 

more tears flowed. This time, she didn’t 

feel the need to wipe them quickly away. 

The book lay open in her lap and she 

bowed her head. 

After several minutes, he looked 

at her and whispered, “Who did you say 

goodbye to too soon?” 

“My baby,” she whispered with 

more tears flowing. 


His eyes moistened and he held out his 

hand to her. She placed her hand in his 

and he held it gently. 

“My wife passed away from 

cancer. We went through this journey too. 

Not that any journey is ever the same. I 

wished I could take away her pain, but she 

told me she just needed me to be there 

and hold her.” 

“Can you just hold me for 

a minute?” she asked as she moved 

towards him, not waiting for an answer, 

but instinctively knowing it would be 

okay. 

He opened both of his arms 

and she placed her head on his shoulder. 

Gently, he brushed the top of her head 

with his lips and whispered. “It is okay. It 

wasn’t your fault.” 

“Wasn’t it?” she sobbed and 

continued, “My boyfriend doesn’t want to 

be involved. I think we were on the verge 

of a breakup, and this happened. I was 

wishing I’d never ever gotten pregnant. 

Then a few days later, I started having 

horrible pain. No one had ever told me 

of the physical pain. I have friends and 

was aware it hurt them emotionally, but 

I didn’t even think about the bodily agony 

until I was right there in the middle of 

everything.” 

Her body heaved with sobs. He 

was glad he hadn’t heard the bookshop 

doorbell ring. The owner, Carol, popped 

around the corner and gave a sympathetic 

look. She mouthed the words, “Is she ok?” 

He nodded his head and Carol moved to 

the other aisle. 

They sat for a while in each 

other’s arms, and he whispered, 

“Beautiful, you are loved. This will always 

be a part of you, but you will be able to 

breathe easier again.” 

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know why 

I did that. I guess I’m not only grieving 

the loss, but also the comfort. My 

boyfriend has tried, but I don’t think 

he understands. We’ve been doing the 

long-distance thing for a while and this 

has made it worse. My best friend has 

been acting super weird too. Maybe 

just avoiding the awkward moments? I 

don’t know. Is it weird that sometimes 

the people closest to you seem the 

farthest away during grief? Here I am 

on the floor crying on a stranger’s 

shoulder.” 

“I understand that. People 

were hovering the week my wife 

passed, and then disappeared. People 

sometimes remembered to check 

during the first holidays, but then it 

was as if life moved on. I was still not 

okay.” 

She reached for his hand and 

said, “When did your wife pass?” 

today.” 

Sighing he said, “3 years ago 

A look of understanding 

passed between them. 

He gave her a soft smile and 

said, “Can I please buy the book for 

you? Also, want to get a tea? Or are 

you a coffee person?” 

She smiled and said, “Tea. 

Please. Yes, I’d love that.” 

He helped her off the floor 

and she held onto both of his hands for 

just a minute longer. 

She whispered, “Thank you.” 

He kissed the top of her 

forehead and said, “Thank you, too.” 

She managed a heartfelt smile 

and looked directly into his compassionate 

eyes. Suddenly, she moved away from 

him. 


62


Me Acuerdo de Ti 

Ahora que ya no estás aquí, todas las promesas de corazón, todos los días 

que no veremos juntos me pesan hoy. Las horas pasan y me acuerdo de ti. 

Aquellos días de verano cuando el sol solía salir y sonreír ahora no son más 

que un buen sueño del cual he despertado. Los días pasan y me acuerdo de ti. 

Hasta entonces no conocía que era el horror; como el enfermero miró su reloj, 

el doloroso cabeceo negativo del doctor. Las semanas pasan y me acuerdo de ti. 

Aún te veo en mis sueños; todavía te siento en mis brazos acurrucada fuertemente 

y a través de tu piel siento tus cálidos latidos. Los meses pasan y me acuerdo de ti. 

Al amanecer despierto y recuerdo; que no daría yo por poder mover el tiempo atrás 

y poder decir te amo, y besarte solo una vez más. Los años pasan y me acuerdo de ti. 

A veces se me olvida tu rostro. Odio recordar y admitir que ya me acostumbré a vivir 

sin ti; vivir con mi vida sin Alma y mi alma sin vida. El tiempo pasa y me acuerdo de ti. 

Alma, día a día, querida, aprecio el milagro de haberte tenido en vida. Y me alegra pensar 

que, con Jesús en el cielo arriba, o estés donde estés, sé que tú, también, te acuerdas de mí. 



En las Ruinas del Pensamiento 

El otro día recordé la escasez 

que abundó entre las riquezas 

en la ignorancia de mi niñez. 

Y así, desde mi ingrata infancia, 

hasta los falsos de la adolescencia, 

construí los estragos de mi conciencia. 

No existe la inteligencia 

que distinga su presencia 

sin humilde prepotencia. 

El otro día miré a mi padre en el espejo; 

sus mismas arrugas naciendo en mi reflejo 

compartiendo en mi rostro su silencio añejo. 

La apatía de la vida en ese momento 

me hizo sufrir perdido en pensamiento, 

ahogándome con arrepentimiento. 

No existe la ignorancia 

en plena abundancia 

que reconozca su existencia. 

El otro día descubrí las riquezas 

que en lo cotidiano quedan disfrazadas 

y que en mi mente dormían ignoradas. 

Me quedé sentado en las ruinas del ayer, 

entre los escombros en los que solía creer, 

contemplando hacía a donde ir o que hacer 

y me tomó toda mi inteligencia, 

y también toda mi ignorancia, 

para terminar con mi vida de decadencia. 


64


Routine Staccato 

I think it’s time for me 

to say, 

hello, 

to you, 

again. 

But, this time, 

I don’t want to come back there. 

Ring ring, ring ring, 

I ring the reception’s bell. 

Tap tap, tap tap, 

my fingers tap while I wait. 

Push, pull, 

the door’s open. 

Thump, click, 

the door’s closed. 

Nurse Mary guides me today. 

Tack tack, tack tack 

her high heels echo 

while we walk. 

Knock knock, knock knock, 

she knocks on the door, 

but there’s no one else 

but you 

in there 

lying on bed. 

Hey, 

I say. 

Won’t you 

forget? 

The laughs 

we shared, 

the tears 

we shed. 

Woosh woosh, woosh woosh, 

The wind outside goes wild. 

The silence’s so strong 

I can hear everything going on. 

Sigh... 


The clock goes 

tick-tock, tick-tock, 

while we’re both just stuck. 

Your heart goes 

Thump-thump, thump-thump, 

yet your eyes won’t open up. 

The screen goes 

Beep, beep, beep, beep, 

but I wait in fear 

for it to beep just once 

loud and clear. 

Every 

day I 

see you, 

hear you, 

but you 

still won’t 

respond. 

Please 

wake up! 

Wake up! 

It hurts— 

it hurts, 

and that’s why I— 

that’s why I give up. 

Give up on waiting 

for you 

to wake up. 

*** 

I think it’s time for me 

to say, 

goodbye, 

to you, 

again. 

But, this time, 

for sure, 

I won’t 

come back 

to see you anymore. 

moonlight beams dance 

along the crushing tide— 

sand castles rot 


66


Mi Almohada ya no Ladra 

Reposando en mi dulce cama 

duermo casi al nivel del piso 

escuchando en tus uñas como 

te acercas con cada pasito. 

El lento rechinar de la puerta 

delata tus tiernas intenciones; 

Brincas acurrucándote dentro 

del vacío entre mis brazos. 

Vienes con tus besitos mojados 

y me despiertas, pero me dejas 

acariciando mi almohada 

con una tristeza infinita— 

pues por fin me he dado cuenta que 

solo en mis sueños sigues aquí. 


Liz Torres Shannon 

A Beautiful Goodbye 

There is an endearing warmth in 

watching someone gracefully slide into 

their golden years, but there is nothing 

quite as heart-wrenching as watching 

a loved one gradually slip away from 

reality. My dad was a cheerful, charming, 

full-of-life person incapable of meeting 

a stranger. His energy was boundless, 

always walking at least twenty feet 

ahead of his children as our little kid legs 

struggled to keep up. 

My parents left Houston, their 

home of more than fifty years, and 

moved over three hundred miles away 

to Brownsville, Texas, to live out their 

retirement days. My mom started noticing 

little things, mostly forgetfulness at first. 

But, the week he repeatedly locked 

himself out of the house and flipped 

his SUV on the gravel road in their 

neighborhood, she realized it was more 

than just age-related forgetfulness and 

forced him to see a doctor—something 

he hated to do. After just one very telling 

office visit, the doctor diagnosed him 

with Alzheimer’s. 

“What day of the week is it?” the 

doctor asked. 

“Sunday,” Dad answered 

hesitantly. It was a Tuesday. 

“Who is the president of the 

United States?” 

“Ugh, um, ugh, I’m not sure. 

Dad pauses for a long time, then asks, 

Kennedy?” It was Bill Clinton. As the 

doctor explained what to expect in the 

coming days, months, and years, Dad 

began to withdraw, and Mom struggled 

to hide her panic. 

Dad continued to retreat deeper 

within himself, refusing to talk about 

what was happening to him. His sullen 

muteness drove Mom crazy. She’d never 

been very patient, especially when it came 

to Dad. It was evident that although Mom 

loved him, her feelings of ill will toward 

him were also apparent, stemming 

perhaps, from his past indiscretions. 

She had no idea how to deal with what 

was happening, and she began to treat 

him more and more like a child, and he 

continued to disengage. 

At first, hints of the disease 

were subtle. There was the usual 

forgetfulness associated with 

Alzheimer’s. ¿Donde esta el barco? 

he asked me one day, referring to the 

large ships he worked on as a Merchant 

Marine. I stopped answering after 

about the fortieth time that afternoon. 

I would often find him engrossed in 

another reality as he tinkered with 

small objects. There were small trinkets 

between books, small wooden boxes, 

pottery, family photos, and souvenirs 

from my travels on a large bookcase. 

He would fixate on an object from the 

bookcase and pretend it was something 

on the ship that needed repair. His hand 

would turn an invisible screwdriver and 

swing an unseen hammer for hours at 

a time as he reverted back to being a 

Merchant Marine in the middle of the 

ocean. As time went on, his behaviors 

became more unpredictable. Some 

days he would unbutton his pants and 

masturbate in a room full of people as if 

no one else was there. 

It became evident that Dad 

could not be left alone at home to his 

own devices. In fact, on a hot August 

afternoon, it became clear that we 

could not leave him alone—anywhere. 

It was an outdoor shopping mall, and 

by the second store, he was tired. As 

we entered a sporting goods store, he 

went straight to a chair in the shoe 

department and found respite on an 

oversized cushioned chair. I agreed 

to let him rest. “Do not get up from 

this chair,” I said in my most stern and 

authoritative voice. 

“No hijita, I’ll stay right here,” he 

assured me. I kept coming back to check 

on him every few minutes as I tried to 

shop with the rest of the family in the 

small store. 

I felt my heart skip a beat 

before it began pounding in my chest. 

My stomach immediately produced a 

wave of nausea so strong that I had to 



68

steady my breath. Dad was gone. I scanned 

the store—he was nowhere in sight. We 

split up into two groups and searched the 

store, but there was no sign of him. We 

moved outside and began to inspect the 

shopping mall. We searched the adjacent 

stores and parking lot, asking passersby 

if they had seen him. No one had. Fearing 

the worst, we decided to call the police. 

Hours passed, and when it became 

evident that he was not in the area, a police 

officer approached me and said, “Ma’am, 

go home and wait for a call from the police 

department.” I feared the worst as I walked 

to the car with tears streaming down my 

face and my double breathing teetering on 

the verge of hyperventilating. That’s when 

another police officer appeared tenderly 

cradling a bedraggled, elderly gentleman. 

It was him! Dad’s face was as red as a 

summer ripe tomato, and his bright white 

hair stood straight up on his head. He 

resembled a sunburned, disheveled Albert 

Einstein! I burst into nervous laughter. 

We never found out what exactly 

happened that afternoon. We imagined 

that Dad must have convinced someone 

that he needed a ride. Then, when it 

became apparent that he was not in his 

right mind, they returned him to the 

shopping mall. Or, maybe Dad just climbed 

into the back of a parked pickup truck, and 

once the driver noticed him in the back, 

they brought him back to the shopping 

mall. All we know is that he rode in the 

back of a pickup truck for god knows how 

many miles, white hair flying in the hot, 

stagnant, sticky Houston air. 

Later that year, Mom and Dad 

came to visit during the holidays. I knew 

Mom wanted to stay. I knew she wanted 

help with him, and being a stay-at-home 

mom, I felt I could offer her that. I thought 

between us, we could manage him. 

However, it quickly became apparent that 

taking proper, round-the-clock care of him 

was impossible. The time I was awakened 

in the middle of the night to find him going 

from room to room as he lit matches to see 

in the dark because he didn’t remember 

that he could turn the light on with the 

flick of a switch was the moment that I 

knew we had to do something. 

We began to discuss professional 

care in a nursing home. It took months 

of Dad’s crazy behaviors and many family 

discussions to finally make the painful 

decision. The decision was only made 

worse by my sister’s reaction to the news. 

She berated my mom as only she could 

do. Mom was devastated and depressed, 

but ultimately she knew what she had to 

do, and not even my sister’s hurtful words 

and actions would keep her from doing the 

right thing for her husband of over fifty 

years. And finally, after much research and 

government bureaucracy, we settled on a 

beautiful new facility just minutes from 

home. We knew it was best for him, but our 

hearts hurt from the thought of leaving 

him in a strange place with unfamiliar 

people. We explained, over and over, what 

his new living situation would be, but he 

just didn’t understand. 

We arrived at the nursing home 

with big smiles to disguise our heavy 

hearts. It was a beautifully decorated, 

serene place, and Dad loved all the 

attention from the female nurses. Mom 

and I spent the entire day getting him 

settled in and showing him around the 

grounds. Then, when it came time to leave, 

he resisted very little, but enough to drain 

us of what little we had left in us to keep it 

together. “¿Me vas a dejar aqui solito?” 

he asked us, and the question shattered 

my heart into a million pieces. That night, 

however, I slept like a baby, not having to 

listen for the sounds of him wandering the 

house or backyard. It felt good to know he 

was safe and in good hands. 

The nurses and staff became 

family, and as time passed, it became our 

home away from home. I could bring him 

home on the weekends for the first few 

years. Dad would enjoy home-cooked 

meals and outings with the family, and 

most importantly, he would spend quality 

time with Mom, cuddling, watching 

telenovelas, and working in the garden. 

The time came when he could no 

longer manage the step into the garage 

from the house. I watched as my husband 

tenderly picked him up and carried him to 

the car. At that moment, I knew this would 

be one of his last visits to the house. After 

that, the visits home began to dwindle. 

Every weekend turned into a couple of 

times a month, which turned into once a 

month, which turned into holidays, which 

eventually turned into one-way visits— 

from us to him. 

Dad began to share with me that 

he was ready to die. “Ya mija quiero 

morir, estoy listo,” he would tell me. Mom, 

however, refused to accept this. As a result, 

he would be in and out of hospitals for 

months. Finally, on one occasion, arriving 

69 

Windward Review Volume 20

DOA. The nurse escorted us to a private 

room. We had no idea why. The room 

was small, and the lighting was terrible, 

but it was nice to be in our own area. 

Mom and I had coffee and made small 

talk until someone finally came in. “You 

can go in and see him now,” was all the 

nurse said to us. It wasn’t until the next 

day that we were told he had arrived 

at the hospital without a pulse the 

day before. The hospital had managed 

to revive him, and he survived. Still, 

Mom refused to sign a DNR order and 

insisted that he be taken to the hospital 

whenever he appeared near death. So, 

the cycle began where he would be 

taken to the hospital when he became 

unresponsive, the hospital would pump 

him up with fluids, and Dad would be ok 

for a few days and then begin to decline 

again. Ultimately, we got the call that it 

was only a matter of time before he was 

gone. 

Mom and I arrived at his room 

that afternoon. He acknowledged our 

presence, and even on his deathbed, 

his face and eyes lit up when he saw 

Mom. He could no longer speak, but 

if he could, he would have said, “¡Ayyy 

me Negra!” referring to Mom. An 

endearment he, with his fair Spanish 

skin, would always call her because of 

her dark Mexican complexion. We sat 

with him and talked about the upcoming 

holiday. We watched CNN and the local 

news, and then I went to a nearby deli 

and got sandwiches. 

I remember being nervous about 

the hours to come. I had never seen 

anyone die before and wondered what it 

would be like. The nurses brought in two 

oversized recliners for us to sleep on. I 

positioned Mom’s recliner next to Dad’s 

bed and mine slightly further down 

from hers. We took turns sitting next 

to him and holding his hand. He could 

hear and understand us, and although 

he could not respond verbally, his eyes 

said everything. The way he looked at 

us needed no words. With his eyes, he 

told us how much he loved us and how 

grateful he was that we could be there 

with him in his final hours. His eyes 

conveyed that he felt loved and safe. “I 

love you,” I whispered to him. “It’s ok to 

go when you’re ready. I will take care of 

Mom; you don’t need to worry about 

her,” I reassured him. The night was long. 

I would wake up and find him staring 

at me, and I would reach for his hand and 

gently whisper, “I love you.” 

His breathing changed in the early 

morning, and each inhale became a loud 

rattling, raspy sound. It was the sound of 

death, a sound I will never soon forget. Yet, 

even as we were witnessing his journey 

come to an end, Mom refused to accept 

what was happening. Instead, she began 

to aggressively spoon applesauce into his 

mouth as if the applesauce was what would 

keep him alive—as if she was willing him to 

live. 

“Mom!” I screamed. “He can’t 

swallow; he will choke,” I tried to explain. I 

couldn’t stand the thought of watching him 

die a violent death from a choking fit because 

of her antics. But, she simply ignored me in 

her state of denial. Finally, exasperated, I 

called for a nurse who came in and removed 

the food from his mouth and explained to 

Mom that she shouldn’t attempt to feed 

him. Mom looked tired and scared, her body 

language expressing defeat. Within a few 

hours, it was clear that he was struggling 

to take a full breath. Then, around ten in 

the morning on the 4th of July, he finally 

took the last, loud, raspy breath, which was 

followed by complete silence and a look on 

his face of pure, infinite peace. 

Mom wailed over his lifeless body 

and into the morning. 

Spending those last hours with him 

was a limitless blessing and an extraordinary 

honor. It has been one of my most beautiful 

and profound experiences in life. I was 

reminded that, at any given time, we are all 

somewhere on the so-called circle of life, of 

birth, living, and death. However, that day 

I also understood that death could be just 

as beautiful an experience as birth and that 

everything we do in-between matters. 


70

Thảo Ðinh 

Butterflies are beautiful symbols of death and rebirth, from cocoons 

they shed their old selves to reincarnate into something breathtaking. In 

this acrylic painting, I tried the splashing method, something completely 

new to me that I was scared of trying. But I did anyway. The result was 

beyond my expectations. I realized that transformation can be scary and 

overwhelming, but it will be worth it in the end. 

Rebirth 

-Thảo Ðinh 



chrysalis 

eyes met from across 

a crowded room 

and time 

seemed to stop 

two hearts rejoicing in a synchronous cadence 

while no words were uttered 

their inevitability 

silent yet altogether too loud 

never had a single moment felt so 

earth-shattering 

green met blue 

in a cataclysmic waterfall both 

eroding the earth 

and granting oasis 

for those it shelters 

all it took was one glance 

as fragile as a 

butterfly 

causing a tsunami 

beauty and devastation 

filled the air 

in traditional love stories 

one glance would lead to 

green met blue 

heart met soul 

time froze 

love blossomed 

and then 

in an instant 

time marched away 

leaving that moment 

in a chrysalis 

but this was only ever 

one glance 

one momentfleeting 

never-ending 

devastating 

but oh so beautiful 

like a butterfly 

preserved foreverdevastatingly 

beautiful 

happily ever after 


72


ocean blue eyes full of love 

and promises of forever 

but She promised forever 

jumbled words inside my 

grief-stricken mind 

never has an emptiness like this 

taken root in my bodya 

corporeal despondency ravages my fragile psyche 

one that reaches into my very soul 

and rips it apartindifferent 

to the inconsolable mess it will leave behind 

hour after hour 

phantoms of Her 

invade my system 

Her smile 

Her inability to dance 

Her whispered vows of love as the sun slithers slowly into our safe haven. 

all i can see is Her 

all i can feel is an earth-shattering, world-crumbling, apocalyptic ache 

to hold Her in my arms as She 

smiles up at meocean 

blue eyes full of love and promises of forever 

every fiber of my being 

down to the smallest, inconsequential atom 

yearns to hear 

Her voice 

Her laugh 

Her incoherent, two am, sleep-deprived mumbles 


ut She promised forever 

jumbled words inside my 

grief-stricken mind 

ocean blue eyes full of love and promises of forever 

incoherent, two am, sleep-deprived mumbles 

hour after hour 

fight after fight 

slammed doors and empty drawers 

a corporeal despondency engulfs my entity 

a little blue box protecting priceless emerald carats of forever 

mocks me as i replay 

the multitude of memories i have 

of Her 

who would have guessed forever had an expiration date 


74

Elizabeth Motes 

“The Five Stages of a Near- 

Death Experience” 

One 

After nearly dying with her boyfriend, Rhiannon made herself promise to break up 

with him as soon as possible. 

Her second day of isolation in her bedroom gave her a lot of time to reflect, and 

she decided breaking up with him was a form of healing. She didn’t sustain any serious 

injuries from the accident itself - just a sprained wrist, chest injuries, and a concussion. But 

her mother insisted she stay home and rest. 

Her mother also had her still bedridden, though she could walk perfectly fine. But 

every time her mother brought up her meals, she gave a stern look to her wrist, then her 

face, wracked with bruises. Rhiannon gave in. 

“What?” she asked, feeling powerless to her judgment while confined to her bed. 

Her mother clicked her tongue. “That boyfriend.” Her thin brows knotted together. 

“This is his fault.” 

For once, Rhiannon didn’t disagree. 

Two 

Rhiannon and Jason weren’t even supposed to be driving far that night. In fact, she 

hadn’t anticipated them having plans at all until he met her at her locker, a bright smile on 

his face, and told her they were going to dinner to celebrate their eight-month anniversary. 

She hadn’t been sure if they would celebrate it. When she brought up their sixth month 

anniversary, he gave her a grin and asked if they were going to be that kind of couple to 

celebrate things like that. 

But if he was offering dinner - she suggested the nice Italian place that was fairly 

close to both their homes, and he said that sounded great. She spent the next period 

thinking about what she was going to wear. 

The anniversary came and Jason picked her up. She’d settled on a black dress with 

spaghetti straps and a frill at the end, and he told her that she looked nice when she got in 

the car. He talked the whole way to the restaurant in that way he did when he was in a good 

mood. They arrived, and when the two walked up to the restaurant, Rhiannon felt like they 

were a real couple. Anyone who saw them would think so. 

When they entered the crowded waiting area, Rhiannon learned that Jason had 

not made a reservation. 

“It’s an hour wait,” he said to her when he returned. She was sitting next to a 

mother scolding her two boys for being rowdy. 

“An hour?” she repeated quietly. She didn’t ask why he hadn’t placed the reservation 

last week. 


Jason shrugged his shoulders with a frown. “It’s never this crowded,” he said. 

“What do you want to do?” 

She looked down at her hands. She’d gotten her nails done the day before. “I don’t 

want to wait for an hour.” 

“Right. Yeah.” He nodded, glanced back outside, then at her again. “Hey, Matthew 

just told me about this great Thai place that he went to the other day. We’ll check that out.” 

His smile returned, amused, like they were on a quirky misadventure. He was at his most 

handsome that way, with his blond hair making him look like a teenager in a movie. 

She followed him back outside to the car. After she buckled up, she slipped off 

her heels while Jason tapped away on his phone to get the restaurant address, his screen 

lighting up the dark car. A few minutes later, he put the phone in his cup holder and pulled 

out of the parking lot. 

Fifteen minutes into the drive, Rhiannon put her arm against the window and laid 

her head on her hand. “How far is it?” 

“Maybe another fifteen minutes or so,” he replied. “It’s downtown.” 

“We should call ahead and make sure they have a table.” 

“You can if you want.” 

She put her arm down and looked at him. Her stomach twisted with hunger; she’d 

skipped lunch thinking they would eat early. “Why didn’t you just call ahead at the other 

place?” she asked, the words slipping out without thought. 

He blinked rapidly. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just didn’t think to. They’re not 

normally that crowded.” 

“It’s a Saturday night, Jason, of course they’d be crowded.” 

“What do you want me to do?” he asked. He glanced at her with wide, guilty eyes. 

“I asked if you wanted to wait.” 

“I wanted you to make a reservation last week.” Hunger made her bold, apparently. 

“Why are you getting upset over this?” he asked. The light ahead turned yellow 

and he sped up to reach it. “It’s not a big deal. Some people have, like, actual problems to 

deal with, you know? And you’re picking a fight because you had to wait a little longer for 

dinner?” He glanced at her again, then back at the road. “I was busy this week, too. I had 

practice and I was up late scrambling to do homework. So no, I didn’t make the reservation.” 

His anger echoed through the car. Rhiannon went silent. 

A few seconds passed, then Jason sighed. “Rhi, I’m sorry.” He spoke in a quieter 

voice, as if disguising the person who just snapped at her. Nothing to see behind the 

curtain. 

“It’s fine.” The fight had gone out of her. 

“I screwed this up. I always screw up.” 

“No, you don’t,” she muttered. 

“You know I do, Rhi. I was just trying to make tonight special for you, and I managed 

to ruin it.” His hands gripped the steering wheel as he sped through a light that changed to 

red. 

“Let’s just get to the Thai place and enjoy dinner.” 

He kept shaking his head. “That’s not what you wanted. God, I’m so stupid.” 

“Jason, it’s fine.” He pulled up to a light and put on his blinker. “It doesn’t matter.” 

He didn’t turn the blinker off. “We already came all this way. There’s no point in going back.” 


76

She’d been watching Jason, his brows furrowed with a stare cutting the road, so she 

saw that he didn’t look to the left before rushing into the turn. She also saw the headlights of 

cars speeding their way. She shouted at him to stop, and then there was the impact. 

To anyone who asked, she told them that she passed out immediately, or didn’t 

remember the seconds after the hit, but that wasn’t quite true. What she remembered was 

silence. Not a ringing, shocked silence, but pure quiet like she’d never heard before. 

Three 

Rhiannon hadn’t spoken to Jason in the week after the accident. They’d both 

been taken to the hospital, but she’d been dispatched before him given that he had 

taken the hit directly and got the worst of it. The phrase critical condition had been 

repeated around when she first woke up, weighing her down like an anchor. She wasn’t 

going to leave the hospital until he was alright, she decided. But the next day he woke up 

and began his recovery. She left without visiting him. 

He hadn’t reached out until three days after she went home, and in the 

meantime, she worried that he had gotten worse while she wasn’t watching. But she 

finally got a text from him: 

Hey. 

She thought about not responding. She thought about calling him. She 

responded, Hi. 

Are u ok?, Jason texted her. 

I’m fine, she wrote. Are you out of the hospital? That was something she 

should have already known, even if she was planning on breaking up with him. 

I left this morning. All good:) 

She wondered if he’d still be texting smiley faces if something had happened to 

Rhiannon in the wreck. She pushed the thought aside. Anger wouldn’t do her any good. 

He asked if he could see her, and Rhiannon agreed to meet him at the park by 

her house the next day. Close enough that her mother would let her go. 

After spending too long deciding what to wear - casual clothes seemed 

insensitive to the break-up, but then again she was still recovering and she couldn’t 

bring herself to dress nicely - she got in her car and drove to the park, with dread arriving 

in the pit of her stomach. 

Jason sat on a park bench staring down at his phone with his legs stretched 

out in front of him. He wore jeans and a t-shirt, and it took her a moment to register it 

as she walked up to him, but he wasn’t wearing any casts. No sign of injuries but various 

fading bruises and a scar on his left arm. 

He noticed her approaching and gave her a smile and a wave. “Hey.” 

She sat beside him. The breeze lifted her hair from her face, and she pulled it 

behind her ears. “Hi.” 

“You look like a million bucks. How’re you feeling?” 

“I’m okay.” 

“I got cut up pretty badly,” he said. “But I’m alright.” 

No apologies. Did he owe her an apology? He’d been the one driving. He didn’t 

check for cars before speeding into his turn. If the car that hit them hadn’t slowed in 


time, it could have been fatal. But she’d been the one talking and starting the fight about 

the restaurant in the first place. 

Focus. The break-up was happening either way. 

“Jason,” she said, looking down at the pavement and watching their shadows. 

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” The words sounded like a suggestion, 

not a fact. 

She didn’t look at his face, but she saw his shoulders drop. “Why?” 

“I don’t feel like things are working between us,” she said. “And I don’t want to 

waste either of ours time if it isn’t.” 

She turned to look at him and his sad face. He held out his hand, but she shook 

her head. His hand fell. 

“Is this because of the accident?” he asked, perking up with clarity. “Because 

I get it. Like, it’s scary, right? Things could have ended just like that.” He snapped his 

fingers to signify just how quickly things could have ended. Rhiannon winced. “It makes 

everything seem so tentative. But it made me realize how much I need you.” He shifted 

toward her. “That’s all I’ve been thinking about these past few days. To help cope, you 

know?” He scoffed and shook his head at himself. “I even thought - I started imagining 

how I would propose to you. Not now, obviously, but down the line.” 

This was not what she wanted to be discussing in a break-up. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t be that for you.” 

“But you already are that.” 

“You’re not the guy I marry down the line.” The words came out too fast. She 

pulled her hair back again. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.” 

“Wait -” He reached out and grabbed her wrist. She stayed sitting, not wanting 

him to pull her back down if she stood. “Can’t you just - give it a few day’s thought? 

You’re kind of rushing into this.” 

His fingers were cold on her wrist. “I’ve given it enough thought.” 

“But if you -” 

“Goddamnit, Jason.” She yanked her wrist free and stood, then stepped back. 

Confidence filled her - or rather, the fear left her, just for a few seconds, leaving a feeling 

of weightlessness. “I’m not - I’m not doing this anymore. It’s over. I’m sorry.” 

She hesitated, waiting for some sign she was doing the right thing. But there 

weren’t any signs. So she turned and walked back to her car. 

She kept on without looking back, not even when her surge of confidence left 

her alone with resounding doubt. She’d nearly died, her life was upturned, and now she 

was abandoning one of her few constants. A constant who loved her. Maybe the accident 

had changed him for the better and she was being selfish in leaving him. 

She neared her car, but she stopped walking to try to slow her breathing. Black 

dots appeared in the edges of her vision, feeding on her panic. She couldn’t pass out, not 

in some parking lot five minutes from her house. 

She forced herself to her car, ignoring the black dots, then placed a hand on it 

to steady herself. She was okay. She would be okay. Taking Jason out of her life was her 

only option to keep going. 

She shut her eyes, drew in a breath, and opened her eyes again. There. She got 

in her car and drove home. 


78

Four 

A week passed with no word from Jason. The first day, Rhiannon nearly jumped 

every time her phone buzzed with a text and was relieved to find it wasn’t him. Then the 

worry set in. It wasn’t like him to let go of something so quickly. If he wasn’t writing her, he 

was doing something else. 

She tried not to think about it. It wasn’t worth worrying over literally nothing 

happening. But her absence from school bled into spring break, so she was stuck at home 

with little to do. Friends visited, bringing hugs and decorating her room with flowers and 

cards. She didn’t go out, not after her dizzy spell at the park. And she figured her mother 

only let her leave knowing she was breaking things off with Jason. 

“Rhiannon!” 

She sat up on her bed and called back to her mother, “Yes?” 

“You have a visitor.” 

No one had told her they were coming. The thought made her anxious, but she 

told herself not to fear the worst. She rolled off of her bed and went downstairs, still in her 

pajama pants and tank top. 

Probably just Beatrice, she told herself. She’d asked her to bring a textbook for 

homework. 

Her steps slowed as she reached the bottom of the stairs, finding her mother 

gone and Jason standing at the front door, dressed in a white suit and brandishing a 

bouquet of white roses. 

She froze at the last step. 

He met her with his usual wide smile. “Surprise,” he said. “Are you free tonight?” 

“I...what?” 

He held out the bouquet to her, though she was still too far away to take them. 

“We have dinner reservations. At that Italian place?” he said, like he was taking her to prom 

after not speaking to her for the first time since... 

“We broke up.” she said. 

His smile faltered for a second. “I know.” Disappointment seeped into his voice. 

“But I just thought - well, we’re still friends, aren’t we? We can go out. And I’m making up 

for our last dinner, since that didn’t go as planned.” 

“I’m not hungry.” 

“Come on.” He lowered the roses and stepped further into her home. “I just want 

to understand what went wrong. I want to fix it.” He looked up at her with pleading light 

blue eyes. “Please, Rhiannon. Whatever happened, I want to make it right.” 

“I don’t…” Her breaths were coming in quicker, like an invisible hand was clutching 

her throat. 

“Neither of us wants to be alone,” he went on, stepping closer to her. “I’m going to 

make it up to you.” He reached out with his free hand and took hers. “Come on. We’ll talk it 

out at the restaurant.” 

He turned to go, still holding her hand, and for a second, she let herself take a 

step with him. It wasn’t a date, he said, and she could explain to him why their relationship 

wasn’t working. Just to soothe things over. It slowed her breathing for a moment at the 

thought of it. It would be easier. 


She jerked her hand out of his. Jason turned around in startlement. “You need to 

leave.” 

He didn’t move. “Rhiannon–” 

“No.” She took a step back. “I already told you no.” 

Then his gaze shifted. His usual pout and sad eyes were replaced with something 

cold. 

“What do you think happens from here?” he asked, his voice startlingly calm. 

“You’ll find a new boyfriend, and you’ll realize he’s just like me. Maybe worse. And if you 

manage to leave him, there will be another to take his place because you can’t be alone.” 

He shook his head. “You’re not upset with me. You’re upset with the fact that you’re always 

going to be stuck with someone like me.” 

The hand around her throat gripped tighter. But she said, “You don’t know 

anything about me,” and then her breaths were coming in again. I’m not leaving. I’m not 

leaving. I’m not leaving. 

“I know how long you actually wanted to break up with me,” he countered. “I 

know you wouldn’t let yourself admit it to yourself at first, because you knew you wouldn’t 

do anything about it. I know that you cry after I yell at you but you still thank me for my 

apology the next day.” His eyes were glued to her. “If you’re going to live with a rope around 

your neck, why not just jump?” 

“I’m not. That’s not–” Rhiannon forced herself to hold his gaze even though he 

didn’t seem like Jason anymore and the thought terrified her. “You’re the rope. I’m cutting 

you off here and now.” He started to speak, but she took a breath and said, “Get out of my 

house.” 

Again, he started to speak. Rhiannon was louder. “Get out of my house. Get out 

of my house.” 

Her vision went black. 

Five 

Rhiannon loved weighted blankets ever since she was a kid. She’d bury herself 

in blankets and her mom would complain that she was going to get too hot, but she 

didn’t care. She liked that it made her feel grounded. 

When she came to, that was what she thought of - a weighted blanket. Her 

skin was warm and she felt heavy where she laid, like she’d finally settled somewhere. 

There wasn’t a blanket on her, just a thin sheet. But there was a hand smoothing her 

hair from her face. 

“It’s alright. I’m here. I’m here.” 

She blinked her eyes open at her mother’s voice. A harsh white light greeted 

her, and she had to shut her eyes again. Her mind was still groggy and unfocused, but 

she processed where she was. Hospital. 

Shaking, she reached for her mother’s hand, and then squeezed it. 


80

Bitia Alanis 

“For the mockingbird that was shot seventeen times” 


Bitia Alanis 

“10 things I hate 

about you” 

I hate the way you grip my wrists 

and make me shiver and shake. 

I hate the fact you control my mind 

and fake the fact I’m alright. 

I hate how you make me fear the power 

of my ever-racing mind. 

I hate how my face and fingertips 

tingle and pound to the rhythm of your 

own sound. 

I hate you… 

I hate our constant match between 

paralyzing fear and adrenaline that makes me soar. 

I hate how sore you make me feel after 

you’ve gone away. 

I hate how I distract myself with colors, 

shapes and sounds. 

I hate and 

I hate… 

What am I to do with myself after you’ve gone away? 

Who will I be without you? 



82

Alyssa-Rae Barrera 

A soft, 

hummed, 

melody 

My Last Dream 

filled my ears as I gently laid my head on the pillow. 

My eyes closed to hear the breeze of the wind 

as it spun in circles outside my window with energy of a younger me, 

The crickets of the night chirped 

as if tonight was a joyous occasion. 

The fresh smell of rain and dew 

l i n g e r e d 

on the grass and in the ground, 

along with the new hand washed sheets, 

filled my nostrils, 

making me reminisce of older and brighter days. 

The humming continued and grew slightly 

reverberating through massive wide halls, 

like a turn of a knob on a radio 

Echoing 

over and over, 

skipping like a thrown rock on an ALIVE blue wave 

that has dwelled on our Earth since the beginning of time 

A single tear rolled down my cheek. 

My mother came to mind 

She hummed the same melody 

so many years ago, 

but sadly, 

it is the voice of the one who cares for me now. 

I breathed a deep breath, and 

E x h a l e 

all the worries of my lifetime. 


The monitor started to beep 

Slower And slower 

Another tear. 

My 

Last 

Dream. 

Robb Jackson Highschool Poetry 2nd Place (2022) 


84

Eva Buergler 

EulogyforDr.BfinalFINAL.docx 

Draft 1: Week 2 

Screw this. This is stupid. 


Correction: I feel like this is stupid. Apparently, that means I can’t rule 

out the possibility that this may be, in fact, Not Stupid. Dr. Barret, I have nothing 

worth eulogizing. I know we went over some things people say in eulogies in the 

session, like being a loving partner or generous sibling. These categories require 

other people in them. I don’t want to be defined by other people. I don’t want 

to have value because of other people. If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is 

around to hear it, is it even a tree? Was it even there to begin with? I can try to 

be as good, and it won’t be enough for some people. I’m going to make mistakes, I 

already have, and those define me more than anything else. I don’t think my sister 

will ever look at me and not see what I did to myself. I don’t think everybody who 

knows will ever look at me as anything other than that dickhead who tried to kill 

themself and couldn’t even do it right. I don’t think my mom can even look at me 

anymore. What I mean to say is that I’ve messed up a lot already, and if there’s 

one thing people do it is mess up. I’ve gotten good at it, just give me a source of 

ignition and some flammable material. Here’s my eulogy: “Here lies Logan Waters, 

they certainly screwed up a lot, and hopefully they’re doing what they liked doing 

most, wherever they are: beating dead horses and asking stupid questions.” 


I feel like this is stupid. You say that means I can’t rule out the 

possibility that writing this is not stupid. How you feel about things is not always 

representative of how they are. But it sure does sting, doesn’t it? Feelings aren’t 

facts but we still feel them, and you can’t take that away. I tried. You didn’t like 

my last pass at this so I’m doing it again but this time, I’m focusing on myself, not 

others, and I’m not allowed to use words like “ever,” “enough,” “always,” or “never.” 

Nothing permanent or fatalistic. Which means half of my vocabulary is shot, I 

guess, though that makes me sound like some Holden Caulfieldesque asshole. I 

want to clarify I am not a Holden Caulfieldesque asshole. I feel like this new rule, 

nothing permanent, is stupid because death is something that’s permanent. Or, 

well, it’s supposed to be. It’s the only thing that’s permanent. I think you asked 

me “How would you want to be remembered when you die?” I don’t want to be 

remembered at all. My ideal funeral would be none. Or maybe getting my body 

catapulted into space for Science Purposes. Or used in some piece-of-shit art 

student’s avant-garde project. That’s not really a funeral though, that’s just what 

would happen to my body, which is fine because I don’t think my body is really 

mine. 

85 



Being forgotten really isn’t all that bad, honestly, it’s preferable. The 

faster I’m forgotten and the sooner I die the faster everyone who has loved me is 

unburdened. Instead of throwing flowers my mourners will spit in my grave and leave, 

and everyone that mattered to me will play a game of loogie (do people play loogie 

anymore? I heard about it once, in some movie my mom and I watched). It’s just an 

idea that got stuck in my head and can’t leave. That happens to a lot of my thoughts 

these days. I think that’s what bothers me about it. I have all these thoughts and 

memories with nowhere to go but down with me, where it’s safe. There’s not much a 

memory of a person can do on its own. 

But I guess there’s a lot of things that were inspired by someone dying. Like 

those PSAs about Whip-Its or charities against drunk-driving. I guess when I tried to 

kill myself I had this idea in my head that my school would have to do something like 

that. Something like taking kids’ feelings seriously. Maybe some kid could organize a 

memorial or club for mental health or whatever and have a hell of an essay. I guess 

that was just a way to console myself. A way to absolve the guilt. It was nice to think 

that I could be more useful after I was dead. 

I think I broke the rules here, maybe “every” applies to “everyone” too, but I 

think that it’s a dogshit rule anyway. If there has to be people at my funeral then I’d 

want them to say: “Who?” and the tombstone to say, “Here lies Logan Waters, they 

were worth more dead than alive, but at least they weren’t a Holden Caulfieldesque 

asshole.” 


I lied, I said I didn’t do it, but I did. I think you knew I was lying, Dr. B. I just 

couldn’t show you this yet, maybe one day I can. As it is now here’s what I got: 

I guess I just don’t see the point in writing a eulogy for myself. What am I 

supposed to learn from this? Am I supposed to see the person I want to be in the 

future? Am I supposed to struggle but keep going anyway? Is it just an exercise in 

excessive symbolism? If I eulogize myself, as I know myself at least, then it would kind 

of be like this version of me is dead. Like I’m committing myself to living a new life 

or to be better, if I can even do that. I don’t think I can. It’s scary to leave something 

behind, even if you have a place to leave it. 

I don’t remember any eulogies, though I must have heard one somewhere. 

The last time I went to a funeral I was seven and it was for my grandfather. I met him 

first in a hospital bed and then in an urn. I don’t think there was much that could be 

said about him. He lived a sad life, not in the way that is inspiring or pitiful, but the 

kind where his kids and wife left as soon as they could. The kind of sadness that reeks, 

the kind that isn’t tragic, just sad. He lived alone and he died alone watching westerns 

on his couch. I never think about him. He never thought about me. It only seems right 

to return the courtesy. Maybe he was trying to be forgotten too. I never understood it 

but Mom cried and so did her sister, at his funeral. I guess people can still be forgotten 

about and loved, even if you need a reminder. I have his name. Sometimes I think my 

mom named me after him to spite him. Like she wanted to take something lonely and 

love it. Look where that got her. 

If I’m supposed to be eulogizing myself like I died tomorrow then I don’t think 

there’s anything I could actually say. If I’m supposed to be eulogizing myself after 

I’ve lived some full life then there’s things I could say but they wouldn’t mean a thing 

because I don’t know where my life is going to take me. The key part of that sentence 

is “where my life is going to take me” because I sure as hell am not leading the way. 


86 


86

In a way I’m supposed to be dead. There have been a lot of me’s that have 

died. The last death was just (almost) literal, and now I’m haunting. Really, I think 

that the me that could have gotten it right died already, or maybe never existed. 

I don’t know how to feel right. I don’t think I’m capable. Now that I’m not-dead I 

have to do therapy, I have to do the work. I know the work. I did it before. It didn’t 

stop me. I knew I would hurt people who loved me, and I loved them and I went 

ahead with it anyway. 

Maybe life isn’t suffering but that’s definitely a big part of it. So, it’s easy 

when you think about it like that, it’s easy to think killing yourself is rational and 

once you do it it’s hard to not think of it as a solution for every kind of suffering. 

Even the mundane kind of suffering. I want to make a decision and stick with it, I’m 

tired of going back and forth. At least when I’m dead I won’t have a choice. I know, 

in a way, that things can get better, that I can have that life worth eulogizing. The 

issue is that even though I can feel happy it can still be taken away. If I come to love 

my life then I can lose something I love and that terrifies me. At least here I have 

nothing I care about to lose. 

People talk about self-love a lot. I don’t think I’ll ever really be able to say 

that I love myself, but I think that saying it doesn’t matter so much as doing it. In a 

world where I would love myself, I think it would look like this: 

I’ll break something and forgive myself. I’ll look at a mirror and just see 

me and a mirror and keep going. I’ll feel pain and I’ll let it sit and then I’ll move on. 

I’ll live my life and not just look at it. I’ll do what I need to do but don’t want to do 

because it’s for me. I’ll be alright with unraveling something and starting over again 

and again. I’ll want to stick around. I’ll be able to open my eyes in the morning and 

see something that’s mine. This is how I would say “I love you.” 

In that world my eulogy would be this: “Here lies Logan Waters, they were 

a person and they loved themself.” 


When I was on the way to my grandfather’s funeral I was reading a book 

of fables for kids. I got to this one about a Persian king. He asked his wise men 

for something that would make him happy when he was sad and sad when he was 

happy. They gave him a ring inscribed with the phrase: “This too shall pass.” And 

when I read that I started to cry. Like bawling, snot dripping down my face and 

everything. My mom had to pull over and she couldn’t get me to stop. Eventually 

my mom just let it all out too, climbed into the backseat and held me as we both 

just wailed and screamed. My aunt drove us the rest of the way. 

Everything I can think of saying sounds cliché. I say I’m sorry (I am). I 

explain why (you won’t understand). I say goodbye (this is a goodbye). Every time 

I’ve tried to write something like this it ends a mess. I can’t do it. I know there’s 

something not right in me, something broken. Something that other people can 

have but I can’t. If I just knew what it was, if I just knew what it was then I’d be 

okay, because then I’d finally have an answer. 

This too shall pass; this too shall pass. I’m begging you to say it with me 

Dr. B, this too shall pass? Threat or promise? 


87 Windward Review Volume X X 87


Well, this is awkward. 

Let’s try again, why don’t we? 

I’ll tell you one last story. Then we can get to work. One day Logan was 

sitting in that chair they always liked and would compare every other chair they 

would sit in ever again to, whether they remembered or not. let’s say they were 

reading a book, or playing on their phone, or waking up from a nap. The important 

thing is they looked up and realized for the first time in their life they were happy 

they were alive. This was the first of many moments like these. 

It wasn’t because they found love, though maybe they did. It wasn’t because 

they found success, though maybe they did. It wasn’t because they found out all the 

secrets to all their inscrutable questions, they definitely didn’t do that. It was slow, 

and it hurt in that same commonplace way as when you bang your knee against a 

table corner. Some days it looked so close, and somedays it couldn’t be further away. 

And they would have hated everything I’m saying now because it sounds so simple 

when it wasn’t. To have everything fixed in the end. I’ll let you in on a secret, it wasn’t 

all fixed. The table corners of the world kept existing, and they had a knee still to 

bang against them, and the pain was there, so what changed? They never knew what 

exactly, the right combination of things that changed, and it became an inscrutable 

question they didn’t feel the need to answer. It was enough to be. How beautiful is 

that? 

Here lies Logan Waters: friend, child, sibling. They loved what they could not 

understand and understood it anyway. They were enough. 



88 

88

Congratulations, 

Barrio Writers 2021 

Athena Armijo• Sophia Chapa• Ethan Clarke• Jacob A. Clauch • 

Janet Doe• K. Elise• Evolvere (Derek)• Sophie Johnson• Jasmine 

Martin• Leo Monsavais• Isadora Pak• Aleena Roy• Alisha Roy 

Hello again! 

We are fortunate as editors of the Windward Review to feature poetry produced 

by the Barrio Writer’s youth workshop in our collection of work. For many writers at the 

camp, this is their first publication; this may even be their first time creating poetry 

or prose at all in a workshop setting. Throughout a whole week in summer of 2022, 

each writer practiced an extreme form of vulnerability in writing and submitting to 

an established literary journal. This feat is rarely attempted by most people, yet these 

young voices demanded an audience! As an attendee and mentor at a summer writing 

camp, there is nothing more exciting than the ability to project a writer’s budding voice. 

I started writing in a similar setting to the Barrio Writers camp: the summer 

after I turned 14, my mom registered me for a week-long writing workshop at TAMU-CC. 

Writing wasn’t an activity that I ever expressed interest in before, but because I needed 

something to fill time, she thought it would be worth a try. This was the beginning of 

something. Whether it was a lifelong love for poetry or an undying need to feel heard, 

this beginning is lush and fruited with so many beautiful experiences. I am now preparing 

for a MFA in Poetry at the Creative Writing program in Texas State, leaving behind a 

blossoming community of writers that extends all the way to the Antonio E. Garcia Arts 

and Education Center. Though the journey from that first summer camp has been long 

and winding, I know that I’m still at the start of something, something I can face with the 

support from those around me. 

“Beginnings and Endings” is such a provoking theme for this journal because 

there isn’t a clear difference between the two concepts; where an ending dries out and 

dies, a beginning springs up in its place. We are constantly in a state of flux, where 

boundaries are blurred and there may not be a clear vision of the path forward. 

Whichever direction you chose, I hope that you see the beginning of something take 

place. If you can’t find that beginning, create it. Create poetry, music, code, art, research, 

plans, schemes, or strategies to survive. Your imagination is the most powerful tool, one 

that people often forget to use once we dictate ourselves towards a certain goal. One 

step in the right direction could be the first foot down a rabbit hole of self-discovery. 

Above all else, remember that you are surrounded by a community of support at every 

point in your journey, and we are so lucky to see you be you in your primordial form. This 

letter itself is not an ending, but a portal to the beginning of a beautiful body of work. 

Thank you again to Dr. Robin Johnson of TAMU-CC and the Barrio Writers for allowing 

us to publish this next collection of pieces; your workshops sparked a connection with 

young writers that we cherish forever. 

Onto more beginnings, 

Raven Reese, Assistant Managing Editor 


Athena Armijo 

Bio: Athena Armijo really likes cats. Okay seriously, 

She really enjoyed barrio writers, 

She hopes to be back next year! 

Untitled 

Under the sun 

Covered in leaves, 

There I see what used to be me. 

Truly, I’m not dead, 

Its only in my head. 


90

Sophia Chapa 

Sophia Chapa has been creative since the day that they can 

remember. They have a passion for writing poetry, which they didn’t 

learn about until 2020. 

Only Human 

Crying and having so much pain, but smile. 

Angry because they want me to be something I’m not, but smile. 

Anxious and worried that it won’t work out, but smile. 

Exhausted, but smile. 

Smile, they say. 

Smile, don’t show your sadness. 

Smile, even when you’re angry. 

Smile, and you won’t be anxious. 

Faking it, but smiling. 

Don’t Grow up too Fast 

Don’t grow up too fast, but get a job. 

Don’t grow up too fast, but pay for your own things. 

Don’t grow up too fast, because you need to live your life. 

Don’t grow up too fast, but I can’t buy the things you need. 

Don’t grow up too fast, because you should enjoy your youth. 

Don’t grow up too fast, because adulting sucks. 

Don’t grow up too fast, but you’re so mature for your age. 

Don’t grow up too fast, they say, 

but I don’t know what being a child is so, 

Don’t grow up too fast, but I should have my life together. 


Ethan Clarke 

Ethan Clarke is a grumpy introvert who’s disillusioned with the state of 

mainstream storytelling. He only writes when he’s got an idea that has 

a lot of potential, so he won’t release content very often. However, when 

he does, you can be sure it’s got quality. 

Alligators 2 

“What a day,” Thomas said, in awe, to his friend, Jeffrey. 

“Yeah,” Jeffrey replied, “What a day.” 

There was so much traffic on the streets that neither of the two alligators 

could see more than five feet ahead of them, that traffic caused by a new seaweed 

stand that opened up just last week. How exactly the stand got so much publicity 

baffled Jeffrey, as good, fresh seaweed could be found anywhere in the ocean free 

of charge. He wondered just how the Alligator species had survived this long if 

most of them were stupid enough to purchase from that corrupt stand. 

“Hey, Jeffrey,” Thomas started, “Do you think we should buy some 

seaweed?” 

Jeffrey struck his friend with a glare that could freeze fire. Had he gone 

insane? To ever consider wasting valuable sand dollars on something that could 

be acquired for free was nothing but lunacy! Jeffrey already knew that Thomas’s 

family could be a bit delusional at times, but Thomas himself was always somewhat 

logical. Until now, at least… 

“What?” Jeffrey hissed, “If you want seaweed, we can get it off the ground!” 

Thomas wasn’t convinced, “I know that, Jeffrey. But there wouldn’t be so 

many people at the stand if it really had nothing to offer.” 

“No. Buying from that godforsaken stand is out of the question. You can go 

burn your own bridges.” Jeffrey spat. 

Thomas frowned while picking up a batch of seaweed from the floor, “Look, 

how about this. We’ll take a bit of natural seaweed and then buy some at the 

stand. After we’ve got both kinds, we’ll compare the two and see which one tastes 

better.” 

“Hmm…” Jeffrey said as he considered the offer. 

It would be a valuable opportunity to prove Thomas wrong about the 

seaweed stand, but if he had to purchase an item from there anyway, it would 

defeat the purpose or proving his friend wrong. 

“Fine, but you’re paying for both of us. If you’re right, I’ll give you your sand 

dollar back.” 

“Deal.” Thomas agreed as the pair began to walk toward the stand. 

Jeffrey grabbed his piece of natural seaweed as Thomas ordered two 

portions of the vegetable at the stand. It saddened Jeffrey that his dear friend 


92

would be giving good money to the greedy stand, but he realized that some 

people just learn quicker than others. Oh well. At least it wouldn’t be his money 

getting wasted. 

Thomas walked back to Jeffrey with two trays of purchased seaweed in 

hand, “Here ya go.” he said as he handed one of them to Jeffrey. 

“We’ll taste the natural ones first.” Thomas explained. 

“Sure thing.” Jeffrey agreed as he took a large, juicy bite out of his fresh 

algae, producing an extremely refreshing briny flavor. He relished the light taste, 

the satisfying texture, but most importantly, he relished the fact that his food 

was completely, 100% free! Ha. Thomas was in over his head if he thought any 

processed, faux seaweed would be better than this. 

“Now we move on to the purchased version.” Jeffrey spoke as he finished 

his snack. 

Jeffrey looked at the abomination with visible disdain. It pained him to 

pick it up, for he was getting one step closer to selling his pride. And for what? 

A piece of seaweed? No, it was worse than that. He was selling his pride, his 

very soul, for a slab of algae that would inevitably, invariably, taste the exact 

same as the one he plucked right off the floor. Jeffrey trembled as he brought 

the accursed object closer and closer to his mouth, finally daring to put it in 

between his lips. He could feel the wasted sand dollar crumble to ash inside his 

jaw. 

But before Jeffrey had time to examine the piece of sacrilege’s taste, his 

thoughts were rudely interrupted by an unhinged gobbling noise. Upon further 

inspection, Jeffrey realized that it was coming from his friend, Thomas, who was 

currently chomping away at the piece of seaweed he bought from the stand. His 

mannerisms were that of a starved gator who hadn’t eaten for 3 years. 

Thomas looked up at his friend and paused his devouring of the algae, 

“You gotta admit, Jeffrey, this is pretty good.” 

And by that time, Jeffrey had fully experienced the bursting flavor, and 

the unparalleled complementary texture of the purchased seaweed. And to his 

shame, he had to admit. It was good. Good enough to spend a sand dollar on. 

“Hehe!” Thomas laughed as he observed his friend’s expression, “I told 

you there was a reason people went to that stand!” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Jeffrey groaned as he handed Thomas a sand dollar, “You 

were right.” 

“You gotta have a more open mind, man.” Thomas smirked. 

“I don’t know about that,” Jeffrey said as he raised an eyebrow, “How 

many MSGs do you think they put in that seaweed to make it taste the way it 

does?” 

“Oh, come on, not this again.” Thomas complained, “MSGs are harmless.” 

“Hah!” Jeffrey exclaimed, “You may have been right about the seaweed, 

but not about MSGs!” 

And so the two alligators walked into the sunset, talking and bickering 

and laughing aimlessly. Nothing was certain in Jeffrey and Thomas’s 

conversations. However, there was just one thing that both of the gators knew 

for sure in the back of their heads. They would go to that seaweed stand again. 


Jacob A. Claunch 

I am a Barrio Writer and I want to be a teacher who has way too many 

thoughts for them all to be written down, but I am trying to get as much 

done as I can to inspire the future generations. 

Book of The Reader’s Life 

If you go to a library and find a book with your name on it, you 

will most likely open it, but what would you find? Do you hope 

that in it will be a list of all of your accomplishments, or of all of 

your failures? A memory that you have lost, or one that keeps on 

popping into your mind? Do you want it to be a portal that allows 

you to go to your past self so that you can give them advice, or to 

tell them about the test answers they need to pass? But this book 

has none of that. In fact, the book is empty, because you have yet 

to write your story. Once you start writing your story the book will 

be filled and you will feel a sense of accomplishment because you 

know that one day the book you have just written will make its way 

into the hands of someone who needs it, and they will learn from 

your life to help with there own. 


94

Janet Doe 

Janet Doe, an upcoming 9th grader, enjoys the abstract and creative light 

of writing. She also enjoys scribbling and doodling diverse characters 

from your average teenager to an alien from a distant planet. Doe aspires 

to be a planetary researcher in the near future. 

Ignorance’s thievery 

In the dark of the night, illuminated by only a lit, full moon 

A sly figure slips from roof to roof stealing and robbing from us all 

The children and descendants of culture rich nomads, and travelers, and 

immigrants, and foreigners all left in the dark 

No trace or sound of a fire lit by a torch that’s been carefully passed down 

Its name unknown but its affects worldwide to each and every house 

Burning the ends of hereditary ropes once woven oh so tight 

Ripping the once firmest of roots all in the dead of the night 

You’ve all said listen well, but listen you have not 

You’ve let go of an anchor holding the word family’s parts 

You’ve lost it all to this slippery, conniving snake 

Cunningly taking your family’s heart up, up and away 

Your identity, your color, your communication is gone 

Due to simple negligence, ignorance, ignoring among 

Your dances, left by the fire, your legends, left untold 

You’ve watched it take it from you all, it grasps a firm hold 

So get up, ask. Mom, Dad, who are we, what are we, and why 

For no longer let this creature’s gluttonous greed thrive 

No longer will this slippery snake, influenced by suppressors’ power, 

Cunning, conniving, covetous thief’s expert thievery linger 

You are who your family is, and your family is who you are 

Learn your identity to be it, don’t lose it in the dark 


Let them be heard 

Regardless of a voice or a passion 

These nimble and worn hands continue, 

Regardless of the many warnings 

A young ins’ youth inquires inquiries, 

Regardless of your mother’s, father’s and aunt’s and uncle’s 

You ran to this foreign light, 

Regardless of their manufactured teachings teaching you 

Meaningless meanings 

Did you ask “why?”, 

Despite the urge and hesitation 

To think nothing more than what’s given, 

“Regardless of what I have, and what I’ve got” 

Has never occurred, 

Regardless is not the question that should be asked or heard, 

It is the question your incredible and inexperienced voice, 

So quick to answer and quiver in fear, 

So bold to respond and dare to challenge, 

Must yearn to answer 

Regarded is what you are. 

Restlessness 

I am tired 

But I do not know it yet 

I am tired 

My eyes an appalling color red 

I am tired 

Like a lifeless leaf in the breeze 

I am tired 

Lulling me to deep sleep 

I am tired 

Like the hush of a voice in a hall where there is no sound, no noise 

I am tired 

Though I am still awake 

My eyes heavy 

At any moment I could break 

And return, and retire, and sleep and give in to the cushion of a dream 

and the bliss of a sin 

I am tired 

I am too tired to speak 

I am restless for the hours I can sleep 


96

K. Elise 

Homeschooled her entire life she’s had trouble fitting in with others her 

age, However she’s always tried her hardest. Creativity was something 

that really helped her out, and it still does. The wild stories she made, 

when she had no one to play with, were abundant. 

Whisper I say. 

Whisper at night when the moon shines bright. 

Speaking our worries, we cast out the light. 

The pond so big has filled to the brim. 

Whisper at night when the moon shines bright. 

Whisper, I say, let out those cries. 

The sun and smiles, can’t mock you now. 

Whisper, I say. 

You survived. 

The Wild Woman… 

Fireflies danced alongside the bright haired woman, 

her cold accessories laid heavily against her skin, 

and the fabric ever so soft spread out as she danced. 

Her graceful figure attracted the eyes of many, 

the moonlight highlighting her warm skin. 

Her ‘unruly’ dance, although silent, spoke many words. 

While cries of outrage and profanity were screamed out. 

Her smile only grew wider. 


Raison D’etre. 

Prologue... 

The cold morning dew splashed against her bare skin. Sharply she 

cursed in pain as she ran, hoping she could make it in time. 

If only she obeyed him, maybe then her brother wouldn’t be at stake. 

Her body finally gave into exhaustion, falling to the ground as she 

screamed in pain, her vision clouded and teary. 

Gasping heavily, she lifted her blood-soaked arms, attempting to 

crawl. 

“Give up,” a low voice nagged, “You’re too Late~” His words were 

laced with honey. 

A scowl, though short-lived, found its way onto her face. 

“No. No.. No! He can’t be gone. You’re lying!..you have to be!” 

He held a satisfied smile on his face, one she would have loved to 

slap off. 

“Oh, Mel…” He stepped closer to her crippled form as he continued, 

“This is what happens- 

When you decide you want to Dis-o-bey Me!” 

“Now, look at me. I want to see that pretty face of yours.” As 

stubborn as ever, Mel buried her face in her arms. It was her last attempt to 

defy him. 

His smile morphed into a scowl of displeasure. “I was going to allow 

you a painless death.” 

Mel’s eyes widened in fear, she knew what he had in mind, and it 

wasn’t painless. 

“But alas,” he continued, with false sorrow, “you’ve annoyed me one 

too many times.” 

“You’re sick.” Mel croaked out, her voice nearly gone. He chuckled 

darkly. He truly felt no remorse. 

A loud mutilated howl rang aloud across the town. “I’d say that 

would be My cue to leave.” 

. 

. 

He slowly walked away, smiling as the beast tore away. 


98

Evolvere (Derek) 

Evolvere is his pen name; he has interests in common activities such 

as playing video games and watching anime, with some uncommon 

interests such as martial arts, history, and self improvement. 

World of Wars 

Loud courses filled with youth, scared 

and brave these soldiers are made. 

White tents, stained in dirt, crossed in 

red, many will live, others may not 

have such luck. 

Trenches stamped in blood, riddled 

with bodies, full of crushed hopes 

and distraught horror. 

Caskets are full but the contents are 

empty, with them gone some may 

forget but others will remember and 

they will respect them. 



A lover of neutrals, classical paintings, and sometimes kids, Sophie 

Johnson is a 17 year old aspiring art teacher. For fun she draws and 

daydreams, but most of the time you can catch her in her bed or 

helping out at the Rockport Art Center. 

Existential Procrastination 

One day, I’ll have learn how to properly use the unit circle… and sine… 

and cosine and all of that dumb math stuff, but today is definitely not 

that day. 

One day, I’ll actually have to learn how to tell people no, because now 

I’m stuck in a dumb club, but I’m scared of hurting people’s feelings, so 

today is definitely not that day. 

One day, I’ll totally have to learn that giving people more than they give 

me is actually hurting me, but it hurts more to think about it, so today is 

definitely not that day. 

One day, I’ll most likely have to learn that talking about it is better than 

writing about it in my cute little diary where only I can see, but it’s kinda 

fun, so today is definitely not that day. 

Today, I noticed I do that alot… Push aside things for future Sophie to 

worry and bite her nails about so 

One day, I’ll probably have to sit down with my therapist Amanda and 

learn how to not do that, but today is for sure not that day. 


100


Tiny Little Creature 

I want to be a tiny little creature, 

but I was born a 5’9 girl with big feet and long freaky fingers 

Tiny little creatures can hide, and be tiny without say, but I poke out 

like a flyaway on my blonde ponytail 

And I can’t be tiny because I got handed down what my family calls 

their “Rowland thighs” 

But tiny little creatures get eaten and hunted and at least that’s not 

me 

I mean sometimes it kind of feels like it when it’s just a tad bit too 

late and I’m wearing a tad bit too tight tank top and I see an old guy 

looking at me in Wal-Mart 

But for a majority of the time I have that one up on the tiny little 

creatures 

Tiny little creatures can’t punch their brothers 

And tiny little creatures can’t sing while almost throwing up in front of 

a bunch of rich people, so maybe I’m glad I’m not a tiny little creature 

because those are very valuable life moments for me. 


Jasmine Martin 

Jasmine martin has had her first experience with barrio writers this 

year and found a love for writing while in this program she likes to write 

poetry and short stories and loves to read, especially historical fiction and 

mystery. She was born in Colorado, lived in New Mexico and then moved 

to Texas 2 years ago with her family of 10 (I’m not sure if that’s correct 

but I think its 10) she has 2 dogs and 5 birds a lizard and a frog. She has 

a couple hobbies, roller skating, reading, playing sports, baking, and now 

writing. Her dreams are to go through college and become a psychologist 

and a baker. She hopes to be a successful published author in the future. 

She also hopes to attend barrio writers next year to keep pursuing her 

dreams. 

Finding Something Positive 

Finding something good, 

In a world full of so much bad 

Finding something happy, 

In a world that’s turning sad 

Finding something colorful, 

In a world of black & white 

Finding something sweet, 

In a world that’s turning bitter 

Finding something positive, 

In a world full of negative thoughts 

Why am I searching for something so difficult to find? 

Am I waiting for someone to tell us the good news? 

Or am I just scared to come to the light and fight the darkness. 


102

Leo Monsavais 

Leo is fifteen years old. He is an experienced sailor. He loves his dogs, 

Panzon and Guera. Guera is a spoiled princess and Panzon is a little 

goblin junior. He plays the violin, video games, art, and makes music. 

For his profession, he wants to do robotics and coding. 

Falling 

Falling, falling, in the air with all despair 

Falling, falling, into endless abyss 

With all that I miss. 

I have fallen into this deep sea that I can’t escape 

Falling, falling, all I wish is for all these nightmares to go away. 

The pain won’t go away no matter what I do, this pain is like a knife 

That cuts endlessly into my heart. Falling, falling, in the air 

We will be okay don’t you fear. We may be falling apart but we are art. 

Blind Sins 

Cool shadows blanked dead cities, falling, electric anthills, where love 

was murdered. 

Sometimes life is crazy like me, the ashes of loved ones are tethered. 

Is life like the sea or is it pulling the ambition to fortune. 

Breathe into nothingness, I lie awake on the cutting edge of time, 

falling endlessly like a mountain. 

We live in a world that someone else imagined. 

Sins of lust, sins of death, sins of hunger and prosperity of greed. 

Humanity is becoming eroded into sins. 


Relationships 

Relationships can be friends, loved ones or actual love. 

Relationships can be sweet but also unsweet. 

Life is a bunch of unfortunate events; they can become madness or be 

the cause of where love was murdered. 

Eyes seeping into a river of nothingness. 

Fake friends are a stain like ink. 

Loved ones are a very complicated math equation, but actual love is 

like losing a loved one or like learning a new language. 

It’s very complicated when you’re older. 

Including adults as well. 

As a teen my life is complicated, 

Drifting pulling loose ends, tugging, on my dreams. 

Stitching memories of the good days, presence is a present, when its 

where you want to be. 

Relationships and confidence is a recipe to overcome what has been 

lost and carry on freely. 


104

Isadora Pak 

Isadora Pak is a first-time barrio writer, she loves animals and cute things. Isadora 

spends her free time drawing and sewing. She was inspired to write a children’s 

book, because of her many young siblings 

Sparks 

This is Sparks. 

She’s a little spotted gecko, and she sleeps all day. When 

she gets fed, she eats crickets. 

Sparks lives in a terrarium, she likes her glass home, but 

she’s always wanted to run around and explore. 

So, when all the humans are asleep, she escapes! 

She likes jumping from high places, and always lands on 

her feet. 

She lands in a room with tons of cabinets and shelves, that 

always smells good. 

In a room full of delicious scents there are bound to be 

roaches, Spark’s favourite food. 

She chases it all over the room and up the walls until 

*chomp* 

Sparks ran to find more bugs, but instead found a big 

fluffy puppy *sneaky* 

Better not wake it up... 

Uh Oh (*it wakes up*) Run! 


Sparks ducks under the couch out of reach of the scary 

puppy. 

She’s safe, but if there’s a rampaging puppy on the loose 

what happened to the humans? And why do they only 

leave at night? 

Sparks searches the house for her owners, she finds a 

room full of toys, stuffed animals, little cars and trains, and 

lots of plastic dinosaurs. 

There’re no humans in here, so she leaves 

The next room she finds is all white with a big tub and a 

sink, it’s also full of bottles and fake ducks. 

But she doesn’t see any humans in here so she leaves 

She slips under the door of another room full of beds. She 

climbs up one of them, and finds... 

Her Owner! Yippie! 

She jumps so high that she gets launched right onto the 

window. 

*yawn* the sun is coming up and the little gecko is very 

tired from exploring 

She slowly crawls back to her home, being careful not to 

wake the puppy up again. 

And when she gets back it’s good night! 


106

Aleena Roy 

Aleena Roy is a 17-year-old senior who lives in Portland. She hates 

horror but writes a lot about terror. With a reignited passion for writing, 

she comes to you today with two poetic pieces. 

Zombie carnival 

Tunnel of love for the undead 

Brain chili Frito pie, the usual sacrifice 

Rusty merry-go-round with finger flyways 

Bumper cars to steal their lover’s eye 

The abandoned carnival, a zombie’s perfect date night 

Hearts decayed but love is in the air 

Touching your carpal gives me butterflies 

Let’s have eyeball gushers, green’s my favorite 

We get on the Ferris wheel, I’m about to forget your name 

Guess I didn’t eat enough brains 

I swat the flies around us and look into your eye 

You lean in and I fall through your stomach. 

Maybe zombies shouldn’t date 

Nadi 

Murky drop off 

I see eyes in the water 

What souls we’ve lost 

Another floating body 

Life moves on and time beats us to it 

The race from the monster 

I wash my clothes here 

I drink water here 

People die here 

I still live here 


Alisha Roy 

Alisha Roy is a 14-year-old freshman attending Gregory-Portland high 

school, she also likes to hang out with friends and likes learning about 

history. 

Disgust 

They said it didn’t matter to them 

They always told her to find comfort in them. 

They always used her 

They always begged for forgiveness 

They always promised they’d get better 

They always said she deserves better, 

They always asked her to never leave for they had no one else 

They had an unhealthy attachment to her, struck with delusional 

fantasies 

They acted like they cared for boundaries 

Her heart sank further every time they came back 

She hated every “compliment” they gave 

She hated that they would only be available at night 

She hated how they knew about the glaring issue but said, “it’s not a 

big deal.” 

“Your just my best friend” they would say. 

End of Barrio Writers’ section 


108

Emily Hargitai 

Esther ‘98 

Ticonderoga and Staples are tied at 

first place for best pencils to chew, and 

the kind Anthony Abi-nanti uses that have 

the blue metal by the eraser—those come 

in second. In third place are the kind my 

grandma orders special every Christmas, the 

red ones with my name “Esther” on them 

in shiny gold letters. And in last place, way 

down at the bottom of the list, are the ones 

called Universal Economy. I would rather 

chew a windowsill than chew a Universal 

Economy pencil. My dog’s name is Oliver, 

like the movie about the gruel, and that’s 

what he put in his first place: Window-sills. 

Maybe we’ll chew them together when I’m 

home from school. 

My school is Tappan Zee Elementary 

and Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz is my teacher. She 

is dressed up as Violet Beauregarde from 

Willy Wonka for Halloween—with her red 

cap, navy button-up jacket and pregnant 

belly sticking all the way out like a blueberry. 

She has painted her hands and her nose 

with blue paint. In her mouth is a large 

wad of gum so that even her lips, teeth and 

tongue are tinged slightly blue. 

While I rank the chewability of pencils 

in my writer’s notebook, Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz 

takes attendance. She has just written a 

reminder on the whiteboard: That at 12 

o’clock, after we take our spelling test, we 

will leave for our Halloween field trip down 

the road to the Old Dutch Church. The 

Old Dutch Church is where Ichabod Crane 

taught Sunday School before the Headless 

Horse-man got him. He is buried there now. 

They all are, I think. Even the horse. 

“Julio Gonzalez?” says Mrs. Rodrigo- 

Díaz 

“Aquí.” 

“En ingles, por favor.” 

“Here.” 

Our class has the English people and 

Spanish people all mixed, which means we 

get to have two third grade teachers, not 


just one. Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz is the first 

teacher, and if you don’t dot the “i” in her 

name with a slash, she takes points off. 

She gives homework on Fridays and grades 

everything in red pen. 

The second teacher is Miss Eloise. 

She has giant, shiny black hair and five 

little Thing One dolls on her desk which 

she collected from the cereal boxes, but no 

Thing Twos. She says she’ll give a prize, a 

peppermint patty, to whoever finds a Thing 

Two, because if she keeps eating Cocoa 

Crispies herself, she might pop. 

“Daniel Fayette?” says Mrs. Rodrigo- 

Díaz 

“Here,” says Daniel, who is seated to 

my left and dressed up like a girl, while 

Anthony Abinanti is seated on my right 

and dressed like Elvis. I am dressed like a 

famous singer, too—in my grey T-shirt, tan 

jacket and black dreadlock wig—but the 

singer I am dressed as is not as famous of a 

singer as Elvis. The singer I am dressed up 

as is named Adam Duritz. He is in a band 

called Counting Crows and even though 

he is only a little bit famous compared to 

Elvis, he is still my favorite and my mom’s 

favorite. I think it’s a good thing that Adam 

Duritz is only a little bit famous because if 

he were a lot famous, it would make him too 

sad. I know this because of the song called 

“Mr. Jones.” Because of the way he sings: 

When everybody loves me, I will never be 

lonely. He repeats the words I will never be 

lonely three more times and the more they 

get repeated the slower the music gets, and 

the slower the music gets the lonelier the 

words become. 

As for Anthony Abinanti, he is drawing 

a diagram on his desk of what he saw his 

hamsters doing before they had Peanut, 

our new class pet. The diagram has labels 

like “whiskers” and “scent gland’. I make 

a diagram in my notebook of Anthony 

Abinanti making a diagram. I label the 

parts of his Elvis costume: “Hair gel”, “white 

jacket”, “red tassels”. I label the diagram: 

“Diagram”. And I add the caption: Anthony 

Abinanti knows everything there is to know 

about hamsters, covering my notebook from 

him with my arm. 

“Esther Menyhert?” says Mrs. Rodrigo- 

Díaz 

“Hamsters. I mean—”

I drop my pencil and cover my mouth 

with my palms. My earlobes burn. There’s a 

split-second of terrible silence in which I try 

to explain I meant “here”, I meant “here”, I 

meant “here”, but before I can get the words 

out, the volume turns up and the laughter 

begins. My classmates, my teachers all 

laughing. Miss Eloise, too. 

Somewhere inside me, I know their 

laughter is the friendly kind. I know they’re 

laughing at me the same way I laugh at 

Oliver when he does something cute and 

a little dumb, like walk into a screen. But 

ever since third grade began, I’ve had a hard 

time figuring out what the difference is—if 

there is a difference, if the difference even 

matters—between cute and dumb, mean 

and nice, laughter and laughter and laughter. 

All I know is that lately I feel people laughing 

at me all the time. I feel them on the inside, 

even after the real laughing stops. 

Chewing my pencils is the third worst 

habit I have. I chew them almost as badly 

as my little brother Theo chews his fingers. 

Not his fingernails, but his actual fingers— 

mainly the cuticle region—the place where 

the nail connects to the skin. Theo chews 

his cuticle regions so badly his fingers look 

grated like cheese. I help him put Band-aids 

on them when they bleed and they bleed all 

the time. 

My mom started painting his 

fingertips with a special clear nail polish 

that’s supposed to taste like rotten eggs. 

She does this each morning outside on the 

deck so the polish won’t stink up the house 

and every night she coats my pencils with 

same horrible stuff. But I don’t think the 

polish tastes rotten enough because I still 

chew my pencils as bad as before and the 

other first graders still won’t hold Theo’s 

hand in the line. 

Before I begin the spelling test, I open 

my manila folder and make it stand up in 

an L-shape on the right side of my desk. 

This is not a regular manila folder, this 

is a privacy folder, which is also called an 

anti-cheating device. Every person in the 

class has their own anti-cheating device. I 

invented the name “anti-cheating device” 

but I did not invent the device itself. The 

first anti-cheating device was invented by 

Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz back when she first quit 

her job as a lawyer to teach the third grade. 

The devices make me think of the cubicles 

in mom’s old office before she was laid off. 

This week, the words we study all have 

the long “a” sound. Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz 

reads them off one by one and we write 

them down on the blank lines next to the 

numbers. The words start off easy—Bake. 

Cake. Gate. Place. Angel—but they get 

harder and harder the farther she gets 

down the list. Placate. Tornado. Abomination. 

Alligator. Verbatim. 

But this part of the test, the spelling 

part, is not the hard part for me. Neither is 

it hard for me to make sentences using the 

long “a” words: The mean boss confiscated my 

mom’s job. The angel baked a cake to placate 

the alligator. Sometimes my brain is a tornado 

of abominations. I know each song in the 

Counting Crows CD verbatim. The sentences 

come easily like that. The hard part comes 

after I finish the test, when I have to share 

my answers with Anthony Abinanti so that 

he can get a good grade, too. 

Anthony says I must share everything 

with him—my fruit snacks, my pencils, my 

answers, even my own brain. Otherwise, he 

says, he will fire me from being his friend. 

Otherwise, he says, he will tell Mrs. Rodrigo- 

Díaz about the picture, the bad one that 

lives inside the chest in my basement, the 

one that he and I discovered by accident 

the time he came to my house. And if he 

tells Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz about the picture, 

he says, then she will tell her old lawyer 

friends and my dad will be taken away, just 

like his mom was taken away when he was 

in kindergarten. My basement contained a 

mistake that we found on a playdate. 

What Anthony doesn’t know is that 

my dad has depression disease. He caught 

it because of my grandma in Hungary, 

my nagymama, who is old and has a 

remembering disease, so she does not 

believe any more that my dad is her son. He 

is in Hungary right now visiting her as we 

speak. But he’s coming home soon, I explain 

in my head, to Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz’ lawyer 

friends, who are also in my head, when they 

come to break down the front door of my 

house in my head. Do not take him away, I 

tell them in my head. My habits get worse 

when my dad is away in my head. 

Those of us who finish the spelling test 

early are allowed to spend the remaining 


110

time deco-rating our manila folders. I am 

almost always in first place for fastest 

spelling test finisher, which gives me plenty 

of time to write down all the spelling words 

I can remember with a crayon on my manila 

folder. I write using big letters so that 

Anthony Abinanti, who is seated in the desk 

to my right, can copy them down verbatim. 

I can only share my brain with him for the 

words. To make the sentences, he has to 

use his own brain. As soon as he is finished 

copying, I color over the words on my folder 

with big, angry strokes of my favorite 

colors which are also Adam Duritz’ favorite 

colors—blue, red, black and gray—to make 

them disappear before anyone can see. 

The bus monitor who takes us to the 

Old Dutch Church for our field trip has 

two thumbs on her right hand instead of 

just one. It’s not a part of her costume for 

Halloween. It’s been like that since she was 

born. Anthony Abinanti had been telling 

me about it since the first day of school. 

I didn’t believe him at first, but there’s no 

denying it now that her hand is right in 

front of me, pressed against the back of the 

seat for balance. I can see everything—all 

her bracelets and both of her thumbs. I 

don’t look at Anthony, who is next to me 

in the window seat, because I can’t. I’m too 

embarrassed about his rightness. But I can 

still feel him staring at me staring at her 

thumbs. 

The bus monitor’s name is Gloria and 

she is the nicest one there is. She knows 

the best stations with all the best songs, 

like the song “Gasolina” which always gets 

stuck in my head. I feel rude staring at her 

thumbs and a little bit sick, so I look away. 

I pretend to myself I’m just staring at her 

bracelets, which I half-am. The first bracelet 

is made of wood beads and each bead has 

a tiny portrait on it. One of the portrait’s 

is of Jesus and the rest, I think, are of his 

friends. The second bracelet is gold and 

has her name, Gloria, in the middle in shiny 

cursive. All her fingernails are long and 

painted with little designs, except for the 

nail on her second thumb which is blank. 

The second thumb is smaller and pinker 

than the first, attached to first thumb with 

skin. The second thumb looks like it lives in 

the first thumb’s pocket. 

I am too invested in Gloria’s thumbs to 

realize I am pulling my eyelashes out again 

This is the second worst habit I have. It is a 

disease with a really long name that begins 

with a “T.” Dr. Choi wrote the name of it down 

on a piece of paper for me and my mom. The 

disease makes people pull their own hair 

out all the time. It makes them have to wear 

bandannas to school so they don’t get made 

fun of by Kiera Williams for having a bald 

spot. It also makes them pull out the lashes 

that keep germs away, so their eyes always 

sting and turn pink even when they’re not 

crying. 

I do not realize I am pulling again until 

I feel a tug on my neck and turn around to 

see Anthony Abinanti tying the fringe from 

the sleeve of his jacket to the chain of my 

necklace, which is a Counting Crows necklace 

that my mom ordered me for my birthday last 

year. It is a silver guitar pick with the words 

I want to be someone who believes etched 

into it. “What are you doing, Anthony?” I ask 

when he ties the knot. 

“I’m making a leash. Every time you pull 

your eyelashes I’ll tug it.” 

“You can’t.” 

“Why?” 

“Because leashes aren’t allowed on the 

bus.” 

His sunglasses slide down his nose a 

bit, but he nudges them back up with his 

shoulder, the shoulder of the arm that isn’t 

tied to my necklace. Then with the arm that’s 

attached to me, he pulls at the exact same 

moment that Gloria the bus monitor turns 

around. When she looks at my necklace, 

connected by tassel to Anthony’s fist, she 

shouts the word “No” so loud that the whole 

bus goes silent. She unties me and her 

fingernails tickle my neck. Her face is so close 

to mine while she does it that I can see the 

black makeup on her eyelashes. She has the 

longest, blackest eyelashes I’ve ever seen. 

“Up,” she shouts at Anthony. Anthony 

unbuckles his seatbelt and stands up. Gloria 

looks at him the way you look at somebody 

you are trying really hard not to hit. Then she 

looks at me. I try looking down at my lap, but 

she lifts my chin up with her finger. 

“Not ever,” she says, pointing to her 

neck, “The neck choking. Not ever. You 

understand?” 

I nod without looking. I flinch when 


she moves her hand toward my neck—the 

hand with two thumbs—to unfasten my 

necklace. “I give to your teacher,” she says. 

“Psychiatric Help: 5 Cents” is what 

the sign says that Miss Eloise has on her 

desk. We are lined up here at the end of the 

day to hand in our writer’s notebooks and 

get back our graded spelling tests. When I 

put my notebook on top of the stack, Miss 

Eloise looks at my costume and I look at 

hers. She has on a blue dress with a white 

collar. It reminds me of Wizard of Oz. “Are 

you Dorothy?” I ask. 

“Nope.” She shakes her head, smiling. 

“Lucy from Charlie Brown.” She kicks both 

feet out from under the desk so I can she’s 

wearing black and white Oreo shoes, not 

ruby slippers. “And how about you?” she 

says. “A pirate?” 

“Nope.” I shake my head so the 

dreadlocks of my wig dance around. “I’m a 

Counting Crow.” 

She slides herself back in her spinning 

chair, slaps her desk and laughs: “Of course, 

of course.” But when I ask, “Can I have back 

my test?” her smile goes away. 

“Esther,” she says softly. “About your 

test.” She leans over her desk and opens 

her mouth to explain, but then she closes 

it again. Then she taps my hand twice, 

mouths the words, Hold on, and calls Mrs. 

Rodrigo-Díaz over. 

Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz turns from the 

whiteboard and walks toward us. My heart 

races. I’ve never done badly on a test before. 

I’ve never done badly on anything besides 

attendance. I can hear her boot heels 

clicking in my stomach. If I did badly, that 

means Anthony Abinanti did badly, too. 

She bends down to make her face level 

with mine. I can see her tongue stained dark 

blue, can smell blue raspberry bubblegum 

on her breath. Up close, her eyes look more 

brown than black, more sad than angry. 

“Almuerzo mañana,” she whispers. 

“Tomorrow we’ll talk.” 

When Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz’ lawyer 

friends visit me again in my head, I tell them 

more and more good things about my dad: 

How when my dad is not in Hungary and 

not having depression disease he helps 

Theo and I both with our habits by letting 


us chop wood with him in the backyard. He 

bought a small axe for us to share, whose 

name is Barbie Axe. He shows us the right 

way to lift Barbie Axe using lower body 

strength, to hold Barbie Axe’s handle while 

her blade drops through the air, and let our 

own weight combined with Barbie Axe’s 

weight split the log in half—instead of 

pushing the log to split with our backs and 

our arms. That’s how you get hurt, he explains. 

But we’ve never gotten hurt chopping wood 

with him, or helping him pack the wood into 

the wheelbarrow, or rolling the wheelbarrow 

through the mud, or piling the wood in the 

trestle, or building the fire. We never get hurt 

doing any of those things with my dad. We 

only get tired and hungry and sometimes the 

next day we feel kind of sore, but the good 

kind of sore. The good kind, I explain. Case 

dismissed. Please depart from my head. 

Since I can’t chop wood during school, 

my mom started packing pipe cleaners— 

the sparkly ones—in my backpack every 

morning. That way, when I have the urge to 

pull, I can pick at the tiny little pipe cleaner 

fibers instead of my hair. We tried silly 

putty, stress balls, origami, herbal tea, even 

medication from the doctor that my dad 

doesn’t know I see. Finally we tried pipe 

cleaners—two different kinds. We found 

that the colorful, fluffy fibers on regular pipe 

cleaners are too soft and slippery to really 

pull out and therefore they don’t work. On 

the other hand, sparkly pipe cleaners have 

fibers that feel stiff and detach from the wire 

the same way my eyelashes detach from my 

lids: Easily with a “pop.” Easily with a “pop.” 

Easily with a “pop.” This is why my mom buys 

them, because they feel almost the same. 

After school, I right click the picture of 

Frank Zimmer—my mom’s boss from before 

she got laid off—and hit copy. Then I exit 

LinkedIn, open up Microsoft Word, right 

click and hit paste. I drag the top right corner 

of the picture as far as it goes, until Frank 

Zimmer’s face is wide as the entire screen. 

Then I drag the top of picture down and the 

bottom of the picture up in order to squish 

Frank Zimmer. Once Frank Zimmer is nice 

and squished, I right click the picture again, 

but this time I click “set as”, and then on the 

menu that pops up, I hit “wallpaper”. Then I 

leave the room until my mom comes back to 

her desk with her coffee. I wait outside the 

door for the sound of her laugh. 

112

Once she’s done laughing and the house 

becomes quiet, I quietly close her door and 

proceed down the hall. In right-hand corner 

of my basement, between the washing 

machine and the foosball table, there’s a 

shiny, wooden bench. My grandfather from 

Hungary built it a long time ago when he 

came to our house. The flowery pattern 

on the part where you lean up against—he 

carved that himself with a special knife. He 

built it so that when you lift up the seat, you 

find it is not just a bench you can sit on: It’s 

also a chest. It’s a place you can hide secret 

things beneath more secret things. 

I open the chest and carefully begin 

digging through the photographs inside it. 

There’s one of my mom in a white T-shirt 

hugging a blanket to her chest while she 

sleeps. Her belly is pregnant and the room 

is full of sun. Beneath that one, there’s a 

black-and-white one of my dad with the 

words “Red Army, ’79” written in pen across 

the bottom. In it, he’s lying in a cot with his 

arms crossed behind his head. He looks 

tired and sweaty but also a little bit famous. 

After that, there’s one of Theo and me riding 

our tricycles through some puddles after a 

storm. The Tappan Zee Bridge is behind us 

and lit up white. 

At the very bottom of the my 

grandfather’s chest is where I find “Esther 

’98”. I need it in order to do the worst habit 

I have. It’s the size of a post-it note. It’s little 

bit dusty from living inside of that chest. 

And the worst thing I do is I pull it out, hold 

it and look. 

“Why is my face like that, mom?” is what 

I asked mom when I first found the picture 

inside of the bench that my grandfather 

built that is also a chest. After we came 

home from dropping off Anthony Abinanti 

was when I asked mom. I was yelling but 

soon I stopped yelling and the glue on my 

fingers made it so little strings came across 

that were sticky and white like a web. I was 

looking at mom through the web, with her 

face in my trap. My mom said the truth 

which was my face was hit by my mistake 

by my dad. “Dad got mad and confused,” is 

what mom said. That is why he got ice and 

then took a picture to fit in his wallet. The 

ice was so my lip would not swell and the 

picture was taken so he could not get mad 

and confused anymore. 

The thing with my mom is that she 

has green eyes that look like they glow in 

the dark if you turn off the light. I love this 

about mom and also that she never lies. 

The next day at school for lunch, while 

the rest of the class eats in the cafeteria, 

I walk with Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz and Miss 

Eloise to Hollywood Pizza. Hollywood Pizza 

is right across the street from my school 

and they make the best Ziti slices in Sleepy 

Hollow. It’s where Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz and 

Miss Eloise take us for lunch at the end of 

the month if we do all our homework. It has 

a pool table and lemon sorbet that comes 

in a lemon. 

But today’s not the end of the month, 

it’s November 1st, and as soon as we sit 

down—me on the one side, both teachers 

on the other—I can tell this isn’t a party. It’s 

a meeting. 

“Esther,” says Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz, “Do 

you know why Miss Eloise and I brought 

you here today?” 

I wiggle a ziti with my fork and shake 

my head. 

“You have absolutely no idea,” she says. 

“You have no idea at all whatsoever.” 

I give up on the fork, lift the slice to my 

mouth, and take a bite. “I’m—” 

“Swallow your pizza first, Esther.” 

I swallow. “I’m sorry.” 

Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz blots her pepperoni 

with a napkin. “If you don’t know,” she says, 

“then how can you be sorry?” 

“I don’t know.” 

She throws her hands in the air and 

shakes her head in Miss Eloise’s direction. 

“I think I did bad on the spelling test,” I 

say, starting to cry. “I thought I did well but 

I guess I did bad.” 

“Poorly,” says Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz. “You 

did poorly.” 

“I did?” 

“No,” she says. “The correct way to say 

it is ‘I did poorly.’ Not, ‘I did bad.’ That’s what 

I meant. You scored very well on the test.” 

I am too confused to be relieved by this 

news. I look at Miss Eloise for guidance but 

she is busy with her pizza. When she tries 

to bite it, a long, blown-out curtain of dark 

hair falls in the way of her mouth. When 


she tucks some behind her ear, it bounces 

back out. “Good grief,” she whispers, and 

ties it up over her head. I asked her once 

if she even needed a pillow to sleep since 

her hair was so big. She said yes, and that 

her pillowcase had Snoopy on it, like mine. 

“We saw you sharing your answers 

with Anthony Abinanti,” says Mrs. 

Rodrigo-Díaz. “We saw you pushing your 

manila folder close to his desk so he could 

see all your answers and copy them down 

as his own. There’s a word for this, Esther. 

One word. Do you know what it is?” 

My eyes and throat swell up with 

shame. “It’s cheating,” I manage to say. 

“Yes,” she says. “Even if you’re the one 

sharing the answers, it’s cheating. It’s an 

automatic zero.” 

I cry for a very long time. She hands 

me a napkin to wipe off my eyes. Then 

she hands me my test. I’m scared to look, 

so I flip it over and focus on finishing my 

slice of pizza instead, chewing every bite 

for as long as I can. It’s not until the slice 

is completely gone that I flip my test back 

over and make myself look. 

The first thing I see on the top of the 

page is a glittery, star-shaped sticker. The 

next thing I see is the grade: 100%. Mrs. 

Rodrigo-Díaz didn’t take off a single point. 

“There is time for la justicia and a time 

for la gracia,” she says. “I have given you 

grace today. Do you understand?” 

I look at her, then at my test. I look at 

Miss Eloise, then at my test. I start crying 

again, saying, “Yes, yes, yes, I understand.” 

My mom picks up Theo and me early 

from Tappan Zee Elementary in the red 

Subaru. We drive to JFK Airport to pick 

up my dad—Theo and me in the backseat 

with Oliver in between us. Oliver lies so 

that I get his head and Theo gets his butt. 

The drive is so long that the CD plays 

twice. The CD is my mom’s favorite one by 

the band Counting Crows. It’s my favorite, 

too, especially the first song, which is 

the one that goes: On certain Sundays in 

November when the weather bothers me, I 

empty drawers from other summers where 

my shadows used to be. I like it when songs 

say the name of the month you are in 

while you’re listening to them. I like when 

the songs say the name of the place you’re 

in, too. 

“Remember when they played this 

song at Jones Beach?” I ask mom. 

“Of course,” she says. “Remember 

what happened when he sang the part 

about Long Island?” 

“Yes,” I smile remembering. “Everyone 

clapped.” 

While we sit in the traffic, I unzip 

my backpack and take out my writer’s 

notebook, which Miss Eloise handed back 

in the afternoon, full of her comments. 

Miss Eloise swears she’s the only person 

who reads them in the world. The reason I 

write the things I write is because I believe 

her. The reason I told her about Esther ‘98 

is because I believe her. Dear Miss Eloise, I 

had written that morning. One time there 

was a picture of a face that was hurt. The 

face in the picture was my own face that 

was hurt. I tried to stop looking but could not 

stop looking. I tore up the picture in millions 

of pieces to stop it. I did this because of the 

words of the Counting Crows’ song “The price 

of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it 

brings.” These are my favorite words of my 

whole life. 

When I had run out of my own things 

to say about the picture, I just kept writing 

that one line a million times over, because 

as soon as I wrote it once I just couldn’t 

stop. The price of a memory is the memory of 

the sorrow it brings...The price of the memory 

is the memory of the sorrow it brings...The 

price of a memory...I wrote until the page 

was filled up. And Mrs. Eloise wrote back 

in pen, That’s my favorite part, too. 


114


una lección 

Los niños juegan en la zona de juegos, inocentes 

del color de la cara o la tez 

de las diferencias culturales, pero son culpables 

de amor como lo demuestra el sonido de su risa. 

El muchachito se desliza hacia abajo un tubo rojo 

hecho del plástico, 

él choca contra su amiga que está de pie a la apertura. 

Ella cae a la tierra, su cabello rubio azotando, separándo 

en todo su cara pecosa con sonrisas rapsódica. 

La ayuda, y mientras ella cepilla la suciedad 

desde su jeans de color esligero, él la besa suavemente 

en la mejilla (así como él había visto a su padre besar 

su esposa tantas veces antes). 

En la misma manera, ella—cara con hoyuelos—le besa. 

Se ríen una risa tonta. 

Las madres vigilantes corren a sus niños 

llamando sus nombres virtualmente al unísono: 

“Katie! Ven aquí, ahora mismo.” 

“¡Juanito, sin vergüenza!” 

La mexicana se enfrenta a la madre americana, dice 

en su acento tímido y grueso, “Lo siento.” 

Pero la otra miró con desdén. 

Los niños no ven 

la hostilidad, ni siquiera lo entenderían 

... todavía. 

Mateo: 18: 2-3: Y llamando Jesús á un niño, le puso en medio de 

ellos, Y dijo: De cierto os digo, que si no os volviereis, y fuereis como 

niños, no entraréis en el reino de los cielos. (La Biblia Reina-Valera) 



A Lesson 

Children play in the park, innocent 

of skin color or complexion 

of cultural differences, but guilty 

of love as evidenced by the sound of their laughter. 

A little boy slides down a red tube made of plastic, 

bumps into his playmate standing at the opening. 

She tumbles to the ground, her blonde hair flailing, 

splaying all over her freckled face rhapsodic with smiles. 

He helps her up, and as she brushes off the dirt 

from her lightly color jeans, he kisses her softly 

on the cheek (just as he had seen his father kiss 

his wife so many times before). 

She kisses him back, dimpled-face. They giggle. 

The vigilant mothers rush to their children 

calling out their names virtually in unison: 

“Katie! Come here, right now.” 

“Juanito, sin vergüenza!” (have you no shame?) 

The Mexicana turns to the American mother, utters 

in her sheepish, thick accent, “I’m sorry.” 

But the other mother only glares. 

The children do not see 

hostility, they would not even understand it 

… yet. 

Jesus called a little child to stand among them. “Truly I tell you,” He 

said, “unless you change and become like little children, you will never 

enter the kingdom of heaven.” 

—Matthew 18:2,3 (Berean Study Bible) 


116


Tinted Glasses 

December 7, 2021. For Emmett 

Sometimes we must remove our eyeglasses to see 

that the purple- or rose-tinted world is colored 

with the a different kind of sadness, a wrong hope. 

Today is a day of remembrance. We think 

of Pearl Harbor and of bombs dropped 

on our ships anchored in O’ahu. Incindiary 

attitudes ignited by arrogance, incompetance 

and racial stereotyping all precursors. 

But on August 28, 1955, there were no military 

to blame, no sudden arrival of mass destruction 

weapons, but there was death, one of thousands 

in the deep South after the Civil War. Smoke 

from burning crosses and Black men’s ashes, 

and the ungentle wind that pendulumed 

the bodies in hate-filled lynchings. Even boys. 

Emmett Louis Till, 1941-born, was abducted 

from his family’s safe haven, beaten, mutilated, 

and shot in the head as a final insult before 

the body was discarded into the dirty Mississippi 

waters of the Tallahatchie River. He was 14 

accused of whistling at a 21-year-old white 

woman in a grocery store. Nothing new 

was found about his torture and murder 

though the killers confessed years later. 

They could not be retried, being protected 

against double jeopardy and a different kind 

of blindness—Janus too drunk to hold up 

the once silver, now tarnished scales of justice. 

Today, they closed the Emmett Till case. 

Nothing’s pure black, except the color 

of some men’s hearts. Nothing’s pure 

white, except the absence of hatred. 

Sometimes we should simply remove 

our eyeglasses 

to see. 


Ariana Esquivel 

Diversity in Two Cents 

Mexican or American 

Which one may I proudly identify as 

Do I flip to chose my pride 

is one more dull than the other 

Was one pressed into me before the other 

Was one worth more than the other 

Yet both have made me who I am 

Mexican? But I don’t speak the language 

Ancestors say I’ve fallen into the westernized ways. 

Ancestors say I don’t truly understand what effort it took to cross to America. 

Ancestors say I never truly will understand the struggles of being poor 

Can I still be Mexican and be proud of that identity? 

American? But my body had more melanin than most. 

They say I brought taco Tuesday but then they say we’re aliens. 

They say I brought workers but don’t want to recognize them as citizens. 

They say I brought great parties but I don’t appreciate all aspects of our culture. 

They say I brought beautiful dances but don’t want to learn my language. 

They say I have an easy language but avoid coming into contact with someone who 

speaks it. 

Can I still identify as American and be proud? 

I want to be American and speak My Language 

I also want to be Mexican and be seen as equal 

Am I allowed to bring parts of me 

BUT 

still have the American dream 

Can I have unlocked gates to both 

Which one do I choose to keep 

which one do I let slowly lose it’s hold 

amoug my heart. 

Mexican or American which do I be proud of?? 

Robb Jackson Highschool Poetry 1st Place (2022) 


118

Corita Fernando 

Mourning Loss 

“I miss you on some days more than others 

I envision your strong comforting hugs, and I manage to make this day 

about my loss of you...” 

My mother is in denial 

I too am in denial as we pull up through the all too familiar driveway (as 

familiar as one could get through brief annual visits) 

I see you standing in your long batik house coat 

With your hands on your hips 

Watching us drive in 

Full of disapproval and chiding 

But as we pull closer you fade away and transform into your next-door 

neighbor. 

A white-haired woman who has established herself as the MC of all 

mourning proceedings, 

She flits from one mourner to another, fabricating stories of a kinder you. 

I walk in feeling unwanted and sit on a cracked sofa and 

I try 

to limit 

my breaths 

afraid 

I’d smell death— 

Perhaps, 

more afraid I’d smell the vain attempts at preserving life. 

A bucket, rubber gloves and a man disappear behind the closed door. 

I watch my mother and her brother deeply in debate over which saree you 

should wear; 

They’re disappointed with the long-sleeved jacket... it should’ve been short 

and puffy. 

Once again, I think of him 

My own loss—a loss too insignificant to mourn in ceremony. 

What if he knew? Would he hug me? 

I angrily shrug the hugs he would offer me had he known. 

The day clocks by in a daze. 

Grieving people come by. 

People talk about their lives and their achievements— 

My mother recites where her children work. 


I stand by her feeling like a shabby trophy. 

Everybody is surprised that I am much older than I look, “you look too skinny 

to be a professor”, they tell me, 

And often these conversations end with them entreating me to eat more. 

I try to busy myself washing teacups and carrying biscuit trays... 

but when the monsoon rains made the ground muddy, 

I grew bored and disgusted and withdrew to the chair by the door next to the 

sanitizer. 

Love in the time of corona. 

Death in the time of corona. 

I grow exasperated watching people mindlessly trying to pump sanitizer out 

of a spray bottle, and I attempt to remedy it by spraying it onto the hands of… 

guests? Funeral goers? Mourners? I’m not sure what the appropriate term is. 

This too would have been incomplete without the drunk uncle. The neighbor. 

Insisting on bearing the weight of sorrow. 

I wonder how often we’d visit now... 

now that you’re gone. 

I realize that as long as your gut lays buried in the backyard, 

you’re not entirely gone. 

But I doubt we’d visit your gut. 

My father appears more insensitive than ever. 

I wonder if that’s his way of grieving... 

Or had he too grown numb after all these years of grieving. 

He’s afraid of germs and I feel angry. He demands to ride back home 

Before the rain 

Before the evening prayer service 

I ask him to join us from the doorway as I enter and stand beside you; 

violating PHI Something Health Regulations. 

My peripheral vision affirms my father’s luminous raincoated presence 

looming by the doorway growing anxious by the minute as the hymns draw in 

crowds like moths to a lamp. 

I also wonder how we’d be, 

My brothers and I, 

When we meet after long years at funerals. 

I realize your generation has left... taking with it some others, 

Like my uncle, 

He had been 23. 

Younger than me. 

I wonder how today would’ve been had he been there, 

I’ve heard wonderful stories about him 


120

Today I learnt that you weren’t always this way—the way I knew you, 

Grumbling and bitter about things and people. 

Something had changed in you the day your son died. 

I remember you talking about him. 

I feel childish when I wonder, if it would be a reunion for you... 

would you meet my uncle, your son? 

I know you’d be the happiest if you did. 

My mother tells me stories I’ve heard before. 

Stories I don’t grow bored hearing on repeat 

Her ponderings about her father. 

She believes he was a leader of a movement. 

And maybe he was in hiding. 

After all he had his own family before them... 

his first wife who, unable to bear his unfaithfulness, jumped in a well and killed 

herself. 

These are unconfirmed stories, 

Perhaps A Loch Ness monster, 

nonetheless I am fond of these stories. 

Once, at a very young age, 

you snipped my mother’s curiosity at the bud, 

and she grew afraid to venture into the same waters. 

So, the truth behind those stories will die with you. 

And maybe it’s a figment of my mother’s childhood imagination that grew too 

old with her. 

I look down at the time on my phone, 

Perhaps, for a message, 

Sympathy, 

For my loss, 

And also, 

perhaps, for an explanation 

for leaving me 

So unceremoniously. 


Kelly Talbot 

Meta Merging 

Droplets of now 

splash upon my face, 

spark in my why, 

meaning to be 

when there is no existence, 

only the humming 

possibility 

of quantum potential, 

dancing in maybes. 

In the next moment 

the world will change 

without being, 

neurons and synapses 

strolling hand in hand 

with the void 

in the stasis 

of becoming 

without doing, 

without meaning. 

If matter has no 

substance, we sing 

without melody, 

in rhythm with chaos, 

soundless in our 

vibrations, 

and permeating 

in non-reality, 

we coalesce 

in soul fusion. 


122


Deep in the Heart 

Winter reaches for this body 

and San Antonio equally. 

Tracing the Rio Grande 

Texas is a hand 

the outstretched crescendo 

bounding through Marfa lights into 

the land between you and your sweater. 

We’re mementos of our time, 

Sharing sighs with the cicadas 

but morning comes, I breathe alone 

pounding my own lungs out of stone 

Bruises from a cathedral hurling through the starry sky 

A lone star picking through the mouth of a memory 

Index to Oklahoma, thumb in the light blue bleed 

Wading through ghosts, bones and fool’s gold. 

I remember you instead of the Alamo. I’m told 

it haunts our memories like an umber underpainting, 

but I’m a bluebonnet painted into a highway 

packed into the jaw of a jackrabbit 

hanging from a coyote’s maw, 

Extracted from Texas like a rotten tooth 

morning dew sealing the socket 

in glistening sheaths and hues, 

Fragrant sage and bloom, 

Perfume dropped in cups of mud, 

Swirling with milky eyes of cowboys 

swaying in the moonlight 

drunken roses draped in Levi’s 

Both landlocked and forever. 

Texas is a phantom, 

The fingerprints between you and your skin. 

Winter reaches for this body 

and San Antonio 

silently. 



hereafter 

What beckons me past yet another stoplight? 

Skimming the road like a vein 

strapped to the flesh of some body of mine 

amid waves breaking the skin of a frigid lake 

Back onto the dingy patio where dead nicotine 

dances into homespun gossamer air, taken 

by tongues of wind into the bloodlines 

of fecund mesquites. 

The whisp of your simmered sigh, 

The catastrophic heave of your chest 

so tell me, Will you still love me tomorrow? 

You, the balmy carol for every beat of my heart, 

You. Like summer syrup coating every wall 

through the windchill like singing cellophane 

willing you to love me wholly right now 

before we are nothing once again. 

In a childhood bedroom sunrise rips through 

shredding the morning into ribbons untying 

our bodies seeking solace from the other 

releasing the albatross of a shivering truth 

shattering in the shimmer of a late winter lake 

my Lazarus touch and the shadow of you. 


124


To The Grounds We Trample, 

The Skies We Are 

I meet myself on that hill 

The hill rolls through you too 

That hill landlocked 

By the coffee shop. 

By the Ocean and a sea 

There was once a grass lit knoll 

Now, ravaged by a chemical golf course. 

In this industrial myth, 

Pollen screams, sinuses seek 

Reprieve from bodies we knew 

In deadening daffodils, reeking roses 

December winds through phantom snow. 

We know not ourselves anymore 

No. 

Red brick and rosy asphalt prunes 

Stamen, pulling petals 

Away- 

Yanking apart 

Tenuous leaves from fragile stems 

The manicured field is greasy, 

Its soil cold 

Waves of briny seagulls dive into, below 

floating amongst memory, frosty florals 

Burnt espresso 

Grass dried brittle, 

Rolling, a constant foil. 

In the tumult, running in its shadow 

Like a river 

The knoll, it dances, it shivers 

It remembers every skip, breath 

Languid liquor poured from you 

That December of perfect vision 

Remember the season, 

How a forecast 

Cut 

Us 

Down 

Gnashing thunder striking like you, 

Like me. 

pinning us down, 

Opening to scribbled out pages 

Pen me as a rolling wave on that parchment sea. 

What trickles 

What bleeds, 

Resounds in both you 

And in me. 

You remember that hill 

Two youthful moods 

Unspinning, salted and bloomed 

On open orchards, pockets of oleanders, 

sweet syrup down winter’s chin 

The soil soured now 

In seeping liquid, vascular, vapid 

Milk the honeysuckle before it spoils 

Strip and bleed its woody meat. 

Its bursting boils. 

Lucidity floods slowly, 

(Open the plains) 

(Drink them dry) 

Bursting towards the silent sun 

Stomata upon the knoll, 

Each cell, each nucleus lulls- 

Breathe in the senses, syphoning us free 

We weep and wallow in both 

Our burgeoning adulthood 

Our newly bloomed identity 

Haphazard with young blood. 


However, in that gap 

Nature that once was 

Every oxygen 

Every breath 

Every tear 

Ever wept 

Is mine. 

In the Oso, 

The wind tidal flats 

There are no woods 

No prey 

No predators 

To be misunderstood 

Undone is our “normalcy” 

(Which we’ve never had the pleasure) 

for we are the skies 

upon the grounds that we trample, 

ramming ourselves repeatedly 

down, into the whirl 

those repeated senses. 

Another caffeinated stain 

Two smashed hibiscuses 

On that hill, smashed into its dirt 

Amidst timely slaughter 

We found ourselves 

Nobody’s sons 

Nobody’s daughters 

In us, veins, earthquakes. 

Wanting, 

Anything but to stake a claim 

Wanting 

To forego making a secret of your name 

Wanting 

Still, I felt shame 

For I was the ground 

Before melting into the sky 

unwinding like a ribbon 

a sound. 

That body of grass, the special knoll 

Now, a commercial building, a busy street 

The only consistency in every storm 

Rain spread on our heads, buried in concrete. 

The sunset smokes, drowns 

In drifting peony intoxication 

The Corpus, our Colossus 

Lowers into faded emotions, 

bespoke in memory 

Its drowning not only confined 

To calcified motions 

To stagnant history. 

We are a living sea 

Undead with gulls and stinging rays 

Dulling with this Sparkling City. 

Two blue bodies 

Fading. 


126


And So Lived Dad 

I’m at the point where 

I want to bash my head against the wall until my brains are smeared. 

I want to rip my limbs off one by one by one. 

I want to reach into my chest and pulverize my heart in my hands 

so as to no longer hear the 

abnormally rapid beat. 

Anxiety’s become my lover 

Stress has become my friend 

Loneliness my mistress and 

Depression my husband 

But you see, I’m a mother 

I’m trying my very best 

To raise a better human being than all the rest 

It starts from day one. 

The kind of person they’ll be 

And the last thing I want is for him to end up like me 

I’m the epitome of broken 

battered and beat 

My heart’s been abused while my love’s left on the street 

yet, I had the awful habit of giving it all away 

but now that I’m a mother, I can’t afford the same mistakes. 

“Guard your heart,” I always preached 

while I wore it boldly on my sleeve 

and expected the rest of the world to respect that about me. 

So touching back on motherhood, you have to be more firm. 

Show them how to be tough 

in a world that’s twisted at each turn. 

Yet I’ve never learned how to stop 

from loving even when it’s wrong 

How to stop from singing when they’re tired of your song 

How to not let the gloom wash away any joy 


Because the moment you do, you’ll become a toy 

to your emotions and your thoughts, 

they’ll toss you out just anywhere 

And you’ll be left with the mess 

that was a hopeless dreamer’s cross to bear. 

Each day I wake with heavy heart, my soul more dark 

the sky won’t part 

there is no silver lining 

no sun among the clouds 

All I see is endless darkness 

all I hear are static sounds 

Until I look over at the face of innocence and remember 

what true love is, 

remember that sweet bliss. 

My frown becoming a smile 

My dark becoming day 

But that doesn’t mean this joy is forever going to stay 

Because 

Anxiety’s become my lover 

Stress has become my friend 

Loneliness my mistress and 

Depression my husband 


128


Woe Is Me 

I wallowed in self pity, 

Ate nuts out of a can. 

Formulated depressing names 

to title my grunge band. 

I stopped taking showers 

and wore Chanel drenched in depression; 

I forgot to water the flowers 

so they were dead by our next session. 

The expression 

that they had on their face 

was the same one I’d get from those 

who’d come visit my place. The disgrace 

that they feel as they walk in the door 

is the same one I saw in the mirror 

hours before. 


Tiffany Lindfield 

Enough 

1968 

Peggy opened a book: The Sot-Weed Factor, sliding her finger over a random line 

from the book: 

“Man’s lot? He is by mindless lust engendered and by mindless wrench 

expelled from the Eden of the womb to the motley, mindless world. He is 

Chance’s fool, the toy of aimless Nature - a mayfly flitting down the winds of 

Chaos!” 

She liked the quote, but only partially understood it. She pulled the book to her 

face. It smelled old; how many fingers had turned the pages, how many mouths hung in 

awe over its words, how many tears had fallen over its pages? 

Ink and tears. 

She marveled over the time the author must’ve worked, pictured him bent over an 

old typewriter banging keys, a cigarette in his mouth, a bottle of bourbon on his wood 

desk. They all drink, don’t they? Authors, that is. 

She went down another aisle. Self-help books. Psychologists—or the-rapist—on 

the covers smiling with glasses covering their eyes. Old men. A few women, but the 

women were pretty, and did not have glasses on. Women had to be pretty for someone 

to listen; Peggy knew that. 

Another aisle. Books on the human body, the bodies of gazelles, sting rays, and a 

book about a woman who lived with deer for ten years. Peggy squinted her eyes at the 

woman on the cover who wore a real cowgirl hat, and boots for rugged terrain. 

Some kid ran down the aisle she was on with a frazzled father behind him. 

“Sorry, ma’am,” the man wheezed, his hair a jet black. 

Peggy wished he would chase her down an aisle, walk her down an aisle, or just 

kiss her over wine. She bit her lip, pushing her pelvis against one of the books poking off 

the shelf. She was that desperate. No one she wanted had wanted her. She was an old 

maid, thirty a week ago, unmarried, and no bastard children to chase in libraries. A virgin 

against her will. 

She walked down another aisle to get a better look at the man. He was walking 

away with the little boy in his arms. Embarrassed probably. She could walk fast, catch up 

to him and pretend to trip. Would he help her up? 

She didn’t try. It felt pathetic, and she figured it wouldn’t work. Maybe if she had 

smaller hips, and a curtsy in her smile, but neither. Besides, he was probably an idiot, she 

told herself. Otherwise, he could control a toddler. 

She went down another aisle. Cassette tapes. She marveled over them. They were 

all secure in shiny new cases. She picked one up. 

‘You are Enough.’ 


130

She said the words, whispered them, and they stuck in her throat like honey. She 

said them again. 

‘You are Enough.’ 

She cradled the tape like an infant to the counter. At home, she fed her mom 

dinner, tucked her into bed, all the time, wanting to hear the words on the tape; the 

mystery luring her. She pulled a new cassette player from the entertainment center and 

dusted it off. It had never been used. 

“Honey, I need a glass of water,” her mother feebly called. 

Peggy sighed but went to her mother’s side with a smile. “Yes, Mama.” 

She pulled a clean glass from the cupboard and filled it with water, and three icecubes 

just as her mother preferred. Handing it to her mother, “now sleep, Mama.” 

Peggy went quietly with the cassette player in one hand, and the tape in her pocket 

into the yard. Her mother—before losing a lung—used to garden but now the yard was 

all growed up, but under a harvest moon, moonflowers elegantly bloomed. Their white 

faces were enchanting. Peggy put the tape inside, pressing play, dust on the button. 

‘You are the captain of YOUR ship! Take the wheel! Do not let anyone get in 

the way! You are Awesome! You are enough! No,’ the man on the tape screamed, 

‘YOU ARE MORE THAN ENOUGH. You are the best!’ 

Peggy repeated the words: I am MORE than enough. I am the Best! 

She listened to both sides, soaking in the words like a sponge. She went to stand 

after sitting for two hours, finding her body stiff. She kicked one leg out, then the other 

to wake them up. She then rubbed the sore spot in her back with a fisted hand. 

She put the player up, then her body in bed. She couldn’t sleep though. Her 

mind was spinning. She was ready to do what the tape said. Cut sugar from your diet. 

Exercise every day, stand in the mirror, and tell yourself how great you are! She 

sat up, nearly jumping out of bed, then jogged into the kitchen and wrote out her goal 

plan—just as the tape had suggested. 

1) Get married. Have a child--5 years (guy from library?) 

2) Have family home--5 years 

3) Lose weight--1 month to 1 year 

4) Get a job (someone else will have to care for Mama)--1 month to 6 months 

**** 

Peggy had only slept a few hours but had more bounce in her step than before. She 

returned tape one, picked up tape two, and used money she took from her mother’s bag 

to buy a smaller cassette player with headphones, and her first pack of cigarettes; ones 

she bought for energy. She sat outside the pharmacy. Smoked one cigarette, and then 

another, picking up the habit easily. She soaked up the warm air as the man on the tape 

rattled in her ear: 

You must love yourself! No one can love you better than yourself!’ 


She then tilted her eyes to the sun. The tape had said this would increase her levels 

of serotonin. She imagined her brain manufacturing the little neurotransmitter, making 

them a dime a dozen. A smile formed on her lips. She ran back inside the pharmacy and 

bought a tube of red lipstick. She applied it to pale, trembling lips. 

Then she arrived at her mother’s house, she spotted her sister’s car in the driveway. 

Her sister ran out of the house, “Peggy, where have you been? Mama nearly died 

getting out of bed trying to get food and water.” 

Peggy forced a smile. “I had to run some errands. I told her when I was coming back, 

and she was fed and all before I left.” 

Her sister shook her head. “Peggy, you promised us you’d care for her. You got free 

room and board, and Rich and I paid for your caregiving certificate, and—” 

“—I am taking care of her. I just had a few things to do.” 

“It’s almost one-o’clock though. She said you left early this morning!” 

Peggy sighed, walking in the door. Her nephew and niece were bouncing around on 

the furniture. Her mother was in the bedroom, consoled by her brother-in-law, who halfheartedly 

patted the old woman’s back. He looked to the ground as Peggy walked in the 

room, and then he ducked out. Peggy envied his ability to slide like water over the family 

terrain. 

Peggy’s sister was behind her, then at the old woman’s side. “Mama, Peggy’s here 

now and she won’t do this again. Will you?” 

Peggy nodded, remembering the man on the tape who warned against people 

expecting too much. He called them time wasters. Peggy looked at her sister and mother 

in this new light. 

When they left, her mother sat in the bed, and in between puffs of oxygen, whined. 

She had always been a sensitive woman who cried a lot. Before ,Peggy would console her, 

but now that she resented her as an obstacle, as a time waster, she refused. 

Peggy looked at her mother apathetically, “Stop bubbling like a child! I’ll bring dinner 

when it’s done!” 

She then put the headphones over her ears. She turned the volume so high; she 

could hear the man screaming in her ear: 

‘Stop taking care of everyone BUT yourself! Learn to say NO!’! 

She could see her mother from the peripheral of her eye dragging her walker and 

cord to the front room. Peggy ignored her, pulling a casserole from the oven. She smiled at 

her mother with a cigarette in her mouth. 

She then saw the old woman crawl back to her room, defeated, the cord dragging 

behind her. 

Peggy made her mother a dinner tray complete with a cookie for dessert. Peggy 

would have fruit. Her new slim figure was only a few apples away, she thought. 

Her mother took the tray. “Peggy, those cigarettes are making it hard for me to 

breathe. There can’t be cigarettes around my oxygen tank. Sweetie, you know that... 

sweetie...what is…?” 

Peggy couldn’t hear her mother, could only see her lips moving. She listened, 

instead to the man on the tape. 

‘What are YOUR dreams?’ 


132

That night Peggy began rummaging through the old woman’s papers until she 

found her mother’s insurance policy. She practiced the woman’s signature over and 

over, and then reworked the will to read that all her mother’s inheritance—not large 

but big enough to give her a start—will go solely to her because she had been the 

caretaker. 

She then sat outside, smoking two cigarettes with coffee, then exercised to a 

Jane Fonda tape. Finally, she fell asleep with the man still in her ear. 

‘YOU are so wonderful. You are capable!’ 

**** 

Peggy opened the bay window in her mother’s room. Her mother sat up in bed. 

“Sweetie, what are you doing?” 

“We need sunlight in this house.” 

Peggy smiled at the sun running across her mother’s bed. It sliced her mother’s 

face, scrunched in a helpless scowl. “Sweetie, I called for you all night. I... think…. oh 

dear…” Her mother began to cry. 

Peggy rolled her eyes. “Mother, what is it? I have a lot of work to do today, so 

whatever it is, tell me!” 

“I wet myself.” 

Peggy yanked the covers off her mother. Peggy gritted her teeth. “Dammit. I’m 

picking up diapers and you’re wearing them. No more of this.” 

“Why are you treating me so badly?” 

Peggy rolled her mother onto the mat, and wheeled her to the washroom, 

spraying her with chilly water. Her mother screamed, but Peggy just covered her ears 

with the headphones, volume turned up. 

‘Are you wasting time helping others when YOU have GOALS to 

accomplish?’ 

Peggy situated her mother back in the bed. “Now please stop getting in the way!” 

Peggy went into the garden, pulling weeds violently and picking up sticks, 

throwing them in the neighbor’s yard. The tape said to do something outside every 

day. She didn’t particularly like gardening, but it was something to do outside. She 

then gave her mother a slab of potted meat with stale crackers and left to get the 

third tape. 

She had more money from her mother’s cash box and would buy herself more 

lipstick, a dress, and perfume, too. These things would help secure goal #1, she 

thought, smiling. 

As Peggy returned home, her sister Donna and her sister’s terrible children were 

back at the house. Donna moved a cushion on the couch as if to look for something. 

“Peggy what the Sam hill is going on?” 

One of Donna’s kids, a four-year-old boy, poked his finger in the bird cage and 

got pecked. “Mama!!!” 

Donna patted him. “Son, leave the bird alone,” then she turned to Peggy, ``What 

the heck is going on here? Mama called me in tears. Says you are treating her badly, and 


twice I have come here, and you aren’t here. What is going on? Do I need to hire a nurse?” 

Peggy smiled, the lipstick showing on her teeth. “Nothing that I’m aware of. Was 

just about to get Mama her dinner when you walked in. But since you’re here, you can 

do it. I’m sure y’all want to spend the time together?” 

Donna cocked her head and squinted her eyes. “Why are you acting like this? 

Something’s off with you...what’s going on here?” 

Peggy sighed. “You are here. Do you see something going on?” 

Donna nearly dropped her son, her face going pale. “Peggy, you agreed to take 

care of Mama in exchange for help. We’ve all been helping you. Then suddenly you stop 

caring for her. I need to know—and now, what the hell is going on?” 

Peggy straightened her spine. “Would you and the children like to stay for dinner? 

There will be enough for everyone.” 

Donna stared at Peggy for a long time, as if to search her face for a clue, then 

disappeared into their mother’s room with the children. Peggy put her ear to the door 

but could only hear her mother crying and Donna’s children acting up. 

Peggy shrugged her shoulders, put tape three on and busied herself cooking 

dinner. The man screamed in her ear: 

‘Take the wheel of your ship! Is there something that You need to do to 

make YOUR dreams a reality? Do it! Do you!’ 

Donna finally came out of the room, her children tagging behind her. “Do you have 

Mama’s food ready?” 

Peggy pulled down the earphones. 

Donna sighed, looking over the tray of beef tips, peas, and potatoes. Peach pie for 

dessert. 

Peggy smiled. “Is this acceptable?” 

Donna grabbed the tray. “You better snap out of whatever cloud you’re on or 

you’re gonna be out on your ass!” 

Peggy laughed. “A hot bath calls my name. See yourself out after you feed Mama.” 

On that note, Peggy turned her heel, then swiveled back around like a ballet 

dancer, “oh, and please have a pleasant night.” 

‘Take the wheel!! Stop waiting!!!’ 

**** 

Peggy laid in bed until the moon peeked in the sky. This was planned. The house 

was quiet when she crawled out of bed, slipping her feet into warm slippers. 

She tiptoed to her mother’s room where she could hear the old woman snoring. 

The room was pitch black. Peggy turned the small flashlight she held ON. She shifted a 

pillow under her arm. 

She slipped the flashlight into her skirt pocket, so it would shine on the floor. The old 

woman coughed, then opened her eyes. Peggy could see the white of her mother’s eyes. 

Time Waster. 


134

“Who goes there?” The old woman said but Peggy rushed her, holding the 

pillow over the woman’s face. 

She held the pillow snug enough to make breathing hard. The old woman 

kept shifting her head back and forth, so Peggy used her arms to fence in her head, 

holding the pillow snugger. Peggy felt an ache in her back forming, and she wondered 

how long she could stay bent, but she knew she couldn’t stop until the woman died, 

and finally, after several fits, the woman gave up. 

Peggy held the pillow over her mother still, wanting to make sure. Waited until 

the ache in her back was unbearable and then she shifted upwards with a moan, 

rubbing her back with a fisted hand. 

She picked up the pillow, left the room and sat in the living room, waiting until 

sunrise. She would discover the body at sunrise, she planned. 

“Poor Mama...well, at least she died peacefully in her sleep,” she rehearsed to 

the pillow. 

**** 

Peggy and Donna sat across from the lawyer. Donna’s knuckles were white, 

rolling over each other as the lawyer once again explained that her mother’s assets 

would go solely to Peggy. 

Peggy touched her sister’s hand. “I was her caregiver.” 

“But we paid you. Me and Rich are still paying off—” 

Peggy smiled. “—I deserved it!” 

Donna’s mouth dropped. “Who have you become?” 

Peggy stood up. “I am more than enough! I’m the best!!” 

“You’re batshit crazy is what you are. You need a damn therapist!” 

“Speak for yourself,” Peggy said, exiting the lawyer’s office. She heard her sister 

screaming from behind her. 

“You are not my sister anymore. You will never see me, Rich or the kids again!” 

**** 

Peggy sat at the new breakfast table. The house smelled of fresh paint, new 

light fixtures hung from the ceilings. Her dress was new and starched. 

She walked to her bedroom where a new floor length mirror stood. Peggy 

pointed at the image in the mirror. 

‘You don’t need anyone! Just you! Be you! Do you! You are more than 

enough! You are the best!’ 

The words echoed as if she were in an empty cell. She sat on the bed. 

Everything was so quiet that she could still hear her words vibrating, bouncing off 

the walls, and contemporary furniture. 

She hung her head, mumbling the mantras from the tape to no one listening. 



The Manta Ray 

My body spreads and folds like a gray silk scarf 

Or hovers, a hand once stroking the ocean floor. 

When I pass the aquarium windows people shout to me— 

Their words passing through the glass and water 

Change to slight vibrations in the current. 

I am a dancer’s skirt spinning, the hem like waves 

Rolling to shore, a soprano’s voice spiraling toward 

Voicelessness. 


136


After Class 

A floating hallway, 

Dropped pendants 

Sinking into the lake under this Titanic, 

Lost in deep, poisonous water. 

An empty parking lot, 

Then South Texas brush, September. 

Over there, in another campus building, 

You are teaching, too. 

I won’t have to explain 

What this is like when we get home 

Because you know. 

You lost hours of work yesterday 

When your online test failed, 

Forty minutes of another class wasted 

Trying to get the recording going 

After it crashed. 

This time last year we sat in a windowless 

Doctor’s office holding hands 

As the doctor described the mass 

He found on your left kidney. 

We both taught against a riptide 

Of more scans, more doctor visits 

Until your surgery in December. 

This fall, a pandemic to teach through. 

What a year, 

People flooding into the hospital 

Right after you were released, 

One kidney gone, 

Your other kidney filtering poison 

Twice as hard for both. 

In here, there are ghosts in all of our classrooms. 

And failures. And crashes. 

Out there, quarter horses 

Land in a thorny brush, 

Their large bones drifting up from the sandy soil. 

During summer’s ever-so-slight turn 

To fall, it’s still too hot, 

But it breaks from the boiling sun, 

And rain you can smell gallops toward you, 

A pent-up, lashed fury. 


Mose Graves 

When I Die Just Let Me Go To Texas 

for Janice 

Forty years romancing Herefords and Gerts 

around snakeroot and sneezeweed all over 

the Rio Grande—branding the calves, 

gelding the bulls, doling out salt licks and 

hay bales in their season he must’ve looked 

to them like God, if God rode a buckskin 

and kept a plug of Red Man in His cheek. 

The first time his lasso missed its mark 

he chalked it up to too much Jack the night before, 

but then the numbness commenced to spread 

like resin oozing down a pine. 

“MS,” they said, and by and by 

even his pony knew better than 

to cut too quick at his command. 

Unhorsed, he took up saddlery, 

handcrafting mounts for others to ride. 

Slow work at best: carving the tree, 

stitching the gullet, shaping and 

trimming and tooling the cantle, 

layer upon layer of leather to holster 

the loss of his old rawhide nerves. 

“When the Lord closes the door, 

He opens a window,” 

the old saw goes, 

and soon 

savvy wranglers from 

Kingsville to Sheridan 

tipped their brims to his skill. 

His chart reads “90 yrs, irrit., conf.” when you 

answer the call. The only chaplain on the ward, 

the past two hours found you shrouding a body 

in linen and psalms as per the ancient rite. 

Inured to the hospital’s icy light, tonight 

the flatscreen’s lacquered landscapes and 

cool, curated soundtrack sets your teeth on edge. 

“What kind of music do you like?” 

you ask the old man as the TV blinks to black. 

“Country and western,” he smiles. 

“Both kinds,” so you sing him his favorite 

cowboy song. He closes his eyes, 

and in the morning you are not surprised to learn 

he never felt the need to open them again. 


138

Carlos Rodriguez 

Coyote Lullaby 

Dawn paints his cheeks 

in fluid pinks and greys. 

Handcuffed to the rusted car’s bumper, 

night before last, 

he listens 

to coyote lullabies that 

echo amid a Texas desert’s 

sandy-sweet fragrance. 

Water bottle, still half empty, 

rocks as a newborn 

next to the sage bush and the ocotillo 

ten feet away from a tongue swollen, 

a mouth frozen in hundred degree 

screams. And the dinero 

he borrowed in Juarez for this passage, 

it flies past the lullabies, 

sails between cerveza symphonies 

and topless lap dances 

two nights before last. 

Even as his breath is 

a child’s rasp, he caresses 

pitted, sunburned lips. 

If he’s found, 

maybe the blanqueador 

of his bones will match 

the pale stones 

at his feet... 

he wishes for one last lullaby. 



Spill 

There are poems in high gloss, silk satin, 

and mat finish—dribbled on the floor 

while painting the room 

in off-white and grey, 

these poems are small splats and 

bigger dollops in baby blues, rumbling reds, 

quiet chocolate, and cinnamon abbreviations, 

turpentine cannot wash them away, 

scrubbing only spreads their 

message, inuendo, and liminal 

reach to all corners, and now 

I’ve tracked their wisteria purple 

and dandelion yellow to other 

areas of the house, on 

stoops outside, in cobblestones 

of once immaculate streets, 

foxfire-red-verses invade police stations, 

cerulean-sky-blue-rhymes pepper 

town halls and once grey-neutral 

federal buildings. My haiku handprints 

celebrate on flag poles in sunset orange and hunter 

green. These poems stain sidewalks with 

lazy pinks, fuzzy-maroon-pantoums drizzle 

on Covid-empty arenas and 

cast a pall over silver sparkling highways, 

rainbow-plaid-rivers rush through 

valleys glowing in gold and copper sonnets, 

pour into luminescent lakes rippling 

over my iridescent living 

and breathing room 


140


Martel Deserts 

A broken Martel station 

by the tracks 

grips the desert sand, 

dark tattoos on its face 

smile at the camera, 

black birds flood a white cross 

as a woman throws bread 

next to empty wine bottles too many 

miles from Paris, 

too many lies 

from the suited businessman 

on a New York street corner 

while above them, 

in the high rise, 

another woman sits 

in an apartment she can’t afford, 

but the fruit drips on the carpet 

as she exposes herself 

to the tree of life. 

The floods warp the houses, 

the sky in Dali-esque colors 

as they carry her lifeless 

through the desert of roses, 

hills in the distance 

made of sleeping faces 

as she rests 

her legs across the 

lion grass, 

the air made of birds. 

Jesus of Three Gazes 

Martel Deserts II 

Jesus of Three gazes 

at their backs and 

freezes as Sabina’s 

puppy of cotton 

stares, surprised 

by the Man of Spiders 

taking his lunch break 

outside the prison. 

A paper-thin sports athlete, 

Jose glowers at 

old men walking 

toward gourmet hot dogs, 

but Maria keeps throwing 

bread at the birds 

in her cell, 

frantic to get 

out of the way. 

She cries at the injustice 

of Martel diners 

lost to age and deserts, 

and clouds hiding 

dancing children 

in flower print dresses. 

Who decides when 

borders are no longer 

cages for a Maria, a Jose, 

a Sabina…a Jesus of three gazes? 



Soil and Ashes 

Gets in the bones, icy tendrils deep in the marrow even before 

the machine has stopped. Even before prayers and nonsensical 

“lived a good life” or “loved by so many” or “hated like no other.” 

Then the soil, it makes a soul-deep thump, gathers and accumulates 

by degrees, granules assuming a deep frost en masse, black muffles 

“in o-r hea-ts a-d minds” or “Go- w-ll prov-de” or “a l-sson to -s all,” 

of gathering dirt punctuating the growing, chill stillness. Voices, 

distant, faint, understood more for their receding presence, 

than for any clear notions. Muscles begin to break down, mold 

takes root, blossoms in the mouth, the eyes, the heart. The arms 

that held: sons and a daughter, a belt to beat them, grudges against 

the children’s absence, these arms melt into cold fabric of the casket. 

Legs, which carried the body to one bar after another, one drink 

to the next, bow and darken, eaten from without by worms and 

bacteria. The brain: last to ashes, last to love, last to bring: surcease 

to childish scrapes or fights over why “you never deserved us!” or 

a mother’s accusing “Why didn’t you see him at the hospice?” 

It remains in these glacial, soundless frames of our regret. 


142

Ron Pullins 

Reiner 

Reiner’s father was a Nazi. 

They were all Nazis. You had to be a 

Nazi to work on Third Reich missiles 

— and he worked on their gyroscopes, 

their timers, their directionals, the radio, 

the signals. 

In the end our side rounded 

up their scientists and brought them to 

New Mexico to work on our missiles, our 

gyroscopes, our timers, our radios, our 

signals. We brought their families, too. 

Then begat, begat.... And in such a way 

Reiner came to be. 

She cheats on me. I know it. 

I’m pretty sure anyway. It feels like it. 

All signs point that direction. The time 

she spends away from me. The time 

she spends alone. The silences that 

punctuate the time we spend together. 

But who knows anything, 

really? Really knows? Unless a person 

sees a thing itself, witnesses a thing 

itself, an act, a cold, hard fact, how 

certain can one be they know it? A 

thing that one suspects is merely words, 

opinions. Mere supposition. And once 

you start supposing, there is no end to 

doubt. 

I will come home unexpected 

on a weekday, for instance — surprise, 

surprise — a change in my routine, to 

glimpse a bit of truth, but I have yet to 

find anything out of place, or suspicious. 

She’s either not at home. Where is she? 

Or she’s asleep. Why’s she so tired? Or 

she’s at work, waiting cocktails. What kind 

of job is that? Why must she commute to 

work in another city? Is that where, as she 

says, the money is? Or does that distance 

give her freedom? Safety? Which is why 

she’s away so many nights, she says. 

Which is why some nights she comes 

home so late, she says. Which is why she 

sleeps all day, she says. So, she can say 

that nothing’s happened, there’s nothing 

for her to tell, there’s nothing to confess, 

nothing to explain. She says. Etc. Etc. 

Why, dear, you’re home early. I 

was just leaving, she says. Goodbye. 

We live on a hillside in 

Morgantown, West Virginia, above 

the river which runs sometimes red, 

sometimes green, depending on the 

recent rains or snow melt which drains 

acid from the abandoned mines. 

It has come to this: I sit outside 

in the overgrown grass and shrubs on up 

that hillside above our house, in a place 

across the street concealed and level with 

our second floor, where I can look straight 

into our bedroom window, waiting, 

watching, to see if she’s inside, to catch a 

glimpse of anyone else. I sit there in my 

blazer and my khakis and my hat, up to 

my waist in weeds and shrubs, looking in, 

looking on, seeing nothing untoward, no 

clue of unfaithfulness, not yet. 

It’s dark inside the room. 

In the weeds up to my chin, I 

contemplate the nature of love, what it is, 

and does it last, and how do we measure 

the price that love exacts. I sit there in the 

weeds. I don’t mind the weeds. I spend 

the time imagining all the possibilities. 

Morgantown sits in the 

Appalachian Mountains, a college town 

where I teach. Darkness here creeps 


early across the valleys. The river cuts 

through moving slow. Long barges 

slide up and down the Monongahela 

River, fetching coal for Pittsburgh, then 

plowing back upstream to be refilled. 

It is autumn. The air is heavy, cold, and 

the leaves are darkening. Sitting in the 

brush on the hillside, I see a few corners 

of houses above the foliage, a widowwalk 

or two that seems to float across 

the treetops, the dark chimneys of the 

factories, the roofs of the buildings on 

the older campus. I live next door to 

Reiner who is always home. 

It is late afternoon when I 

climb the back steps to Reiner’s house. 

The back door opens to my touch. 

Reiner never locks his doors. Nothing 

inside is understandable enough to 

steal. An old television set drones in 

black and white the monotony of late 

season baseball. Piles of clothes and 

magazines. Technical journals. Financial 

strategies. A copy of today’s Wall Street 

Journal. A gallon jar of dark jalapeños 

floating in gray brine. 

A high-intensity lamp makes 

a small circle over Reiner’s dining room 

table. Smoke rises from a ciagarette 

which Reiner has lit but isn’t smoking. 

His thin pale fingers twist wires and 

solders them to boards. He smoothes 

the solder with his finger without 

flinching. Then he butts his nose into 

the cone of light, a gray pale nose 

between an ungracious and unshaven 

moustache and tired red eyes. He nods 

— to himself — approving his work and 

sniffs, then approves with another nod, 

and takes a drag from the cigarette. 

Reiner is always working on 

something. There are no empty spaces 

on his table, nor on his countertops or other 

surfaces in his dark rooms. Transistors, 

boards, clamps, resistors, diodes, dials, 

clamps, chips, boards, wires, nuts, bolts, 

the carcasses of dead and degutted 

instruments, computers; finished rough, 

clumsy things, some of which work, others 

not. Then, too, there is a pistol on the 

tabletop, bullets within reach, a rifle on 

the wall, guns parts, and powder, shells to 

be filled, a machine used to fill them, and 

shells filled and arranged in boxes. Scopes 

and lenses, tubes, pedestals, tripods, and 

telescopes with which Reiner surveys the 

night. Open boxes overflowing with tools 

and screws and parts of everything. Kitchen 

things. Things for cars. A Geiger counter. 

A machine for finding metal buried in the 

earth. Reiner is working on a radio. The 

room smells of burnt solder. Nearby are 

television tubes, cameras, a scattering of 

books, catalogues and manuals, and the 

jalapeñoes floating in a brine. From time to 

time, he grabs a jalapeño and chomps it off 

at its stem. 

“What are you making now, my 

friend?” I ask Reiner who shows no surprise. 

“Low power broadcasting.” Reiner 

sighs. “I’m setting my own station,” Reiner 

says. Reiner returns to his soldering. “I will 

be a voice in the wilderness. I will use it to 

communicate.” 

Reiner volunteers for the local Civil 

Defense. The walls of his living room and 

kitchen are papered with maps: of prevailing 

winds and anticipated nuclear strike zones, 

and where fallout from the bombs will fall; 

airways, river ways, highways, evacuation 

routes, flight patterns, stars; and all the 

known geological resources of West 

Virginia. They give him tools and internet, 

access to army surplus, pass codes. 


144

From time-to-time Reiner showers them 

with proposals which they never act on. 

Not that he seeks approval to start any 

project. They are too complicated and 

gloomy for the local self-defense. He 

does what he wants, does what he thinks 

needs to be done. Twice a year, the Civil 

Defense lets him test the sirens over 

Morgantown. This mournful exercise 

echoes far into the mountains. 

I think of her and imagine this: 

I will touch her lightly on the arm and 

say, “It’s all okay, my dear. That’s behind 

us now. Let’s forget the past and go on 

from here.” I imagine I will hold her then 

and she will cry, and afterwards we will 

go together, stronger for all the pain. 

A large black water bug races 

across a map of fallout spread across the 

counter. Reiner picks up the pistol and 

shoots. The bug no longer is. 

As the West Virginia fall turns 

cold, black waterbugs retreat up from 

the river. The end of their migration is 

houses. Mine. Reiner’s. At night from 

time to time Reiner will turn off his 

lights, then flip them on again and fire at 

the waterbugs who have crawled out of 

hiding. I can hear the gunfire next door. I 

think he prepares himself for the worst. 

What else can one do? 

Reiner reaches in the jar and 

grabs a jalapeño. It is little known that 

New Mexico jalapeños are the hottest on 

the planet. Reiner doesn’t flinch. Perhaps 

our man sees his eyes begin to water, as 

if Reiner’s eyes are in a universe distant 

from his tongue. 

I imagine what my first line will 

be to her. I will start with explanations; 

why I’ve spied on her, an apology of 

sorts, what it was — really was — I was 

doing in the weeds across the street. 

Then, second, I will say a line — some 

line — filled with my pain, said with such 

heart that she will know all I feel without 

me needing words of explanation. She 

will be overwhelmed with all my grief. Oh, 

perhaps I’ll have made her cry. Okay. But I 

will remain above such pettiness. Ready to 

forgive. Ready to move on. Then, third, I will 

give the coup de grace, in which I will give 

shape to equal bits of grace and wit, a line 

that will unravel all her lies, her defenses, 

and bring them tumbling down, ending in 

confession, her shame will be exposed, so 

the healing can begin, and love will arise 

forever more. 

A calmness has crept in like 

night from off the river. Shadows sink the 

mountains as day subsides. It’s evening 

now, and we grow old. 

Reiner has taken a break. He likes 

me, and even in Reiner’s solitudinarian 

heart, he needs a break from time to 

time and he has me, and only me, I think, 

to whom he can talk. He needs to touch 

another from time to time, as don’t we all, 

to remind himself that he is not alone. 

We stand on Reiner’s back porch 

which sits in the very center of the dome 

of night, for a moment letting the silence 

overwhelm us. 

“What should I do?” I ask. Reiner 

knows my secrets. 

Silence. 

“The way things are,” I say, “if they 

stay the way things are, they will just go on 

and on.” 

Silence. 

“Yet I’m also afraid of how things 

might change,” I say. There. I’ve said it. The 

reason for this stasis, for tolerating the 

moment. 

Reiner leans against the railings, 


his elbows resting on the railings, his 

head resting on his elbows. His cigarette 

is lit and glowing from its red tip, which 

glows brighter as Reiner draws on it, then 

lets smoke linger from the corners of his 

mouth. The smoke is sweet and comforts 

us as if the night should linger on. 

I man yearns for a response, 

and that’s not the way the two of us 

are normally, stepping into the other’s 

shadow. 

“You, of course,” I say. “You live 

with the enormity of how things might 

change. Watching, waiting for those 

missiles. Looking for the streaks as they 

decend. The thought of how it might end. 

You’d know. You’d be alone in knowing 

that it was ending. You’d have just time 

enough to get your hat and push the 

switch that turns on your darling sirens.” 

Next door a light comes on in 

my house. It’s the second floor. She must 

be home. She always comes back. It’s just 

how long I’ll have to wait. A silhouette 

moves against the orange curtain which is 

closed. Hers, I suppose. 

“There will be no time, then, 

for regrets,” I say. “No time then for 

apologies.” 

His voice softened by the rustle 

of the trees, the sounds of the night, 

the hum from the cars along the streets 

below, a man and woman in the house 

below them on the mountain arguing, a 

long train passing somewhere along the 

River. 

Reiner so gently, thoughtfully, 

expels smoke from his cigarette that 

sweetens the night air. 

“No,” Reiner says. “What I fear is 

that they’ll never come. Nothing will ever 

happen. That I’ll stand here night after 

night and wait.” 

Our man is silent. 

“But things will just go on and 

on. No sirens, for me. No final broadcast. 

‘I told you so.’ Just me out here waiting, 

night after night while things go on 

and on. Tomorrow will be the same as 

yesterday.” 

As usual I go home later that 

evening. I always do. She’s undressing 

from her waitress job somewhere some 

miles away. I remove my hat and sit and 

fluff the evening paper. 

“How was your day?” one of us 

finally says. 

“Fine,” the other says. “And 

yours?” 

“Fine.” 

Nothing changes as we go on, 

and we never know. 


146

Jean Hackett 

Elegy For the One that Got Away 

Jars of nails, burned-out radio tubes, and crumbling manuals 

concealed a carelessly placed confession, 

orphaned atop a dusty shelf in Grand pa’s workshop: 

The Story of My Life, 2002. 

Thirty-two pages of sadness sweetened by memory 

recounted by Grandpa the weekend Lily died, 

and Grandma was out of town. 

In 1954 Grandpa got his chance, 

met Lily at a marry-go-round picnic 

courtesy of First Baptist. 

Bravely dared to ask out the tall girl 

who always walked her smile to Sunday services. 

On restrained date nights, 

without hands held in public or questions 

about why she left her husband, 

their eyes and minds met across cheap burger joint tables 

to play what-if games of happily-ever-after. 

The well-paid bookkeeper, 

promising she could give up job and status 

for life with a World War II vet and his mother 

in a tumble-down duplex on one meager salary. 

A year later, she turned commitment-shy, 

cutting things off without explanation, 

leaving Grandpa heartbroken, 

then married to Grandma five months later. 

Leaving Grandma sitting unwittingly 

next to Lily in Sunday school for fifty years, 

never once entering Grandpa’s workshop. 


Jean Hackett 

I Watch Too Many Movies 

For a moment I believed 

I was viewing an outtake 

from a ‘70’s disaster movie, 

the soaring soundtrack would kick in 

as a plane hit the building, 

and the hero swung survivors to safety. 


aliens swooped down from space’s outer reaches, 

hid the Challenger Shuttle behind an Oort Cloud, 

absconded with it to a galaxy far, far away. 


Southside girls rushed up to hug each other 

because Selena survived, 

that no one would shoot a child 

armed with a toy gun, 

or lock babies in cages. 


sunlight rays would rouse us every morning, 

yellowing blinds and wallpaper, 

as we woke wrapped around each other 

for the next 50 years. 


148

Arik Mitra 

Arid Breast 

No great secret, 

No lost trench, 

Holding undecayed bodies still, 

To be found midst my memories.... 

Buried plutonium 

sends up its rays to stir my 

sleeplessness.... 

A war; another war, 

So many, so many wars, 

Sinks down the bloodshed, 

The crying faces, and I yearn 

for just another image.... 

More images, not war, 

Not perhaps even Man; 

Just leaves, 

That from my tears had dropped, 

That had found seeds 

Upon my arid breast.... 

Let’s leave for 

those to come 

Let’s leave for those to come 

a fresher air to breathe 


a richer soil to reap 


a home where nobody starves 


no profit-machines making war 


no religious conflicting streets 


no racial divinely feats 


a space to build serene minds 


lush green, nature’s intended wine 


an education for human pains 


to think beyond the quickest gains 


as we do, to make for after their time 


better than we received, a better rhyme 


Arik Mitra 

Peace talks with locust swarms 

Transversal, 

Stands the living code to be breached 

far across a terrain of sands. 

Barren — a lifeless struggle to live. 

Comes this infiltration like a killing storm, 

Dunes, to be made of massacre from brutal force. 

Takes Nerkh, 

the first doubtful wave. 

Zarang’s children will be born on roads. 

Their mewlings 

will feel the searing heat of escape 

their nostrils 

will feel refuge’s dust. 

Kunduz, Mazar-i-Sharif shan’t give to more pleasing fate, 

Pul-e-Alam, Jalalabad, 

The silence of the frothing fangs take the day-night space. 

Kabul, 

the shivers are felt — the convulse, 

Maniacal heavy engines grunt. 

Screams; baffled cries; 

The muffled cries, that sit upon those raped faces 

with noseless tremors. 

Marriage, peace, 

Funny terms laughed at over a campfire song; 

where roasted flesh and heavy rifles 

join the merry warmth. 

Merry 

for the silent torn moon dares not shed its tears. 

Gunshots; 

Gunshots echo into the endless sand-seams 

between the dunes. Respite 

as would an oasis tempt, 

merely a mirage in midst of the scorching stench 

Of blood and shock; 

Tongues have ripped out their words 

Now rustling screams, screech 

over the leafless realm. 

Escape, escape, 

the world again sees a deluge of running bloody feet and tears. 

Burning help-cries run in the shaking veins, 

A boiling thrash; 

Rises, embers of mortally wounded ink 

in anger by rebellion’s blood. 

Smiles, 

At peace-talks with the locust swarms. 


150

Arik Mitra 

The rose returns to bloom 

It was a day 

Yet to be, summer sworn 

The morning chill 

surfaced on my waking eyes 

My diary 

holds still the withered rose 

That kept your semblance 

under quiet trees 

Whereupon a grave 

I had seen your name 

Mine beside it 

in just a decade’s time 

A decade, 

a decade between our breaths 

For ten years 

I tread the path 

Till our union 

on the 13th night 

Centuries now, 

comes the auspicious date 

Old times again, 

the rose returns to bloom. 


Robin Latimer 

Comber 

Of nowhere, the shore is meager map- the gulls, 

the piper, the ray, where to run is 

to come to a walk, sounds out of shot, 

and the places groomed by wind and grit. 

Here, we pick up pieces of jaws, 

bone, pretty shells, and nothing 

we are looking for ends up in 

our sack, sliding against a 

broken sand dollar. 

But, oh that golden girl who 

said this sadness fell from 

your eye and handed me a 

pearl. –RML 


152

Daniel Rodrigues-Martin 

A GRAIN OF SAND IN AN 

HOURGLASS 

I don’t know when I first loved NB. I’d never met her in person before I PM’d 

her online in 2011, having seen a thread of hilarious comments she posted on my old 

roommate’s—her cousin’s—Facebook page that left me guffawing. She made me laugh 

before I ever knew her. 

I don’t know that I expected us to get along so well, or that she would have 

even bothered talking to me, but we did, and she did. That first PM turned into years of 

daily messages between us, each laced with clever words meant to make the other smile. 

Through all our late-night chats, our conversations on the phone, watching Miyazaki 

movies together on Skype, I loved her. From Chicago to Atlanta I loved her. 

I never told her that I loved her almost from the start, that I loved her despite 

the eleven-hour car ride dividing us, despite the skepticism of those who deeply cared 

for me. Nothing else mattered—where I lived, what I did for money—none of it mattered 

when I thought my life with hers. 

Everyone close to me knew NB. They’d seen our exchanges online. They’d seen the 

screenshots of us, red-faced, belly laughing at each other about some inside joke clothed in 

layers of nuance. They’d seen the photos of us with flat rate USPS boxes full of gifts we’d 

mailed each other across state lines and time zones. 

So when NB accepted my invite to Chicago in 2014, my friends practically went 

into a collective Star Trek yellow alert. 

Penny, one of my oldest Chicago friends, looked at me like I was a dog with a 

wounded paw when I told her NB was coming. 

“Didn’t you go see her in 2012?” she’d asked in her native Illinoisan accent, hardly 

masking her concern. “I remember you complaining about the heat.” 

True on both counts. 

“Why didn’t you guys get together back then?” 

I never told NB how I felt when I’d spent a long weekend with her back in 2012. 

We’d each been halfway through our graduate programs at the time, and I feared that if 

I tried to force the matter at the wrong moment, I’d lose her altogether. It’s possible to 

meet the right person at the wrong time, and I assumed that’s why our romance had been 

so long in limbo. 

I started writing at eighteen—mostly poetry, mostly about unrequited love for 

a dark-haired girl who danced ballet and never did properly break my heart (sorry for 

the cliché; it’s just the truth). My mother left me when I was a boy, which has plenty to 

do with unrequited love and unresolved emotions finding their way onto paper. Feeling 

unloved and misunderstood are recurring themes for me because they’ve been my life. It’s 

why I often dove headfirst into romances and had spent so much time in the deep ends of 

pools I had no business swimming in. Penny once told me I reminded her of some verses 

from the American poet Sara Teasdale: 

When I am dying, let me know 

That I loved all lovely things 

And tried to take their stings 

That I loved with all my strength, 

To my soul’s full depth and length, 

Careless if my heart must break. 


Penny had seen what it took me years to see in myself: relentless, selfdestructive 

hope placed where it did not belong. 

“I’m just giving her some breathing room,” I’d lied to Penny, careless if my heart 

might break. 

# 

In May 2014, NB emerged from terminal two at O’Hare, brown hair tucked 

up in a messy bun, mischief dwelling in her hazel eyes as she wore a sweatshirt that 

read, “No one calls it Hotlanta!” She reminded me of Jessica Day from New Girl not just 

for her looks, but for her genuineness and little peculiarities. I, on the other hand, was 

often compared to the tailor in Fiddler on the Roof not just for my looks, but for my 

kvetching and big peculiarities. 

She spotted me waving beside my Chevy and waved back. “What’s this come up 

from down South?” I said. Always a bit of spice and drama between us. 

NB came up to me, roller bag trailing her. “Danny!” she replied, cheeks flush 

with the smile she hid. She motioned at her feet. She wore the shark socks I’d mailed 

her a couple years back. “Don’t I look socksy?” she asked in her Atlantan accent, 

snorting at her own pun. 

“Oh.” I winced. “I’m gonna need you to turn around fly and back home with 

that mess.” 

“Haha! Shut it!” She slugged me in the shoulder and grinned. “It’s so good to 

see you!” 

The walls came down and we threw our arms around each other with nothing 

wrong between us. It was only the second time we’d met in person. 

We got onto I-90 and headed home. 

“Do y’all have a cat at Parsonage House?” she asked, referring to the 

remodeled church parsonage I shared with five other grad students. 

I side-eyed her. 

“Ugh! Why did I ask? You won’t change my mind.” She sipped from an airport 

Aquafina. 

“Look,” I said, “if you want a fuzzy animal that struts on all fours across your 

keyboard while you’re trying to work on your computer...I’ll move to Atlanta.” 

NB spit her water all over my dashboard. She silent laughed, hand to her chest, 

face beat red. It had been a gift to see her so comfortable in my passenger seat, sitting 

beside me in real time, no screens or speakers needed. She did some Lamaze breathing 

techniques and eventually stopped gasping. 

“Since there are no pets, what have you planned for my entertainment?” she 

asked, trying to sound like she came from money. 

“We’ll go to the house from Home Alone,” I said, mouth open with glee. 

NB clapped her hands to her cheeks. I snickered. 

“Obligatory Chicago deep dish,” I added. 

“Nom nom nom!” she mouthed, impersonating a hungry hungry hippo. 

The rest of it went like so. We chatted about work and school and poked fun at 

her cousin—a favorite pastime of ours. 

In the driveway at Parsonage House, NB sighed, and her hand drifted behind 

my headrest. 

My heart thumped as my gaze drifted to hers. 

I thought she looked at me like she wanted to kiss me. Something came over 

her and she snapped out of it. She took back her hand, her eyes avoiding mine like she’d 

crossed an invisible boundary. 

I showed a restrained smile. “Ready to go in? Everybody’s dying to meet you.” 

“Yeah,” she said, taking the moment in stride. 

It was always like that between us. Levity punctuated with ellipses and 


154

question marks wondering what our relationship really was. 

NB stayed for four days. We had a barbeque with my friends and she baked 

pies with Ginger, my housemate Doug’s girlfriend. NB fit with my friends without 

missing a step. They thought she was funny and smart and appropriately weird. My 

housemates clapped me on the shoulder and said I’d found a keeper. Even Penny 

finally understood why I’d been smitten for three years. There was something to all my 

relentless, hopeful uncertainty, after all. 

On the second day we rode the Metra to the Loop and took selfies by the 

Bean. I gave her my seat on the packed train and sat on the floor opposite her. A lady 

beside her watched us talking across the corridor as we traded glances and clever 

words meant to make the other laugh—that game we’d been playing since our first 

conversation. The lady tipped her chin at me, a discerning tenderness painted on her 

face. I’ll never forget how that perfect stranger looked at me. 

“Would you like my seat?” She gestured at her own seat beside NB, nodding, 

ready to offer it because had witnessed love. She saw my heart was locked in NB’s chest 

and wanted me to find the key. 

# 

The day before NB left Chicago, we stumbled through some awkward excuse 

of a DTR while we drove. I asked her if she thought she’d like to give us a chance 

without bother to tell her she’d owned my heart since 2011. 

NB was silent for a while and gave that same restrained look we’d shared in my 

driveway. 

“I’ve been thinking about it… I just don’t feel the same way.” 

Three years of talking every day, two trips across the country, and it was all we 

could say to each other. 

We went to an empty house, watched Firefly, and ate Chicago deep dish. We 

sat inches apart and never touched. 

I should have taken the lady’s seat on the train. 

# 

On the fourth day I drove NB to O’Hare. It was late spring, the tail end of May, 

but gray outside. It was always gray outside in Chicago. 

“I know I can’t make you like me,” I said. 

“Love me,” I should have said, but I couldn’t bring the words to bear. 

I know I can’t make you love me the way I love you. The way I love you with 

your sideways glances when things get too serious. With your laugh lines that the 

magazines would airbrush away—but I love that you have laugh lines. 

“It’s just...hard,” she said, frowning, watching her sneakers with her hazel eyes. 

A silence tense with unsaid truths settled over us while road-raging 

Chicagoans flew past. 

My car idled in the drop-off lane while a traffic lady in a yellow vest eyed our 

goodbye. 

I embraced NB, my throat tight. Her brown hair was pulled back and she wore 

no makeup. She smelled like the best dream I ever had. 

“Come back any time,” I said, squeezing her shoulders. 

Sadness dwelt in her eyes and at the corners of her mouth as she forced a 

smile. “I had a great time.” 

Engine exhaust overtook her scent as vans and buses rumbled past, honking 

indiscriminately at one another. 

NB waved over her shoulder at me as she disappeared into terminal two. The 

traffic lady rolled her hand at me, saying with the gesture: “Hurry up. Move along.” 

155 



I drove home alone. It was gray outside. It was always gray outside in Chicago. 

# 

A year passed as I ran in concentric circles to nowhere. I lived Parsonage 

House, worked the same part-time job, slogged away at a second master’s degree. I 

went on a few dates that never flew. Still called NB on holidays. Still laughed at her 

newsfeed. Still saw that “single” listing on her profile. 

It was dark at Parsonage House as I swiped around on my tablet because we’re 

all social media addicts. My housemate, Tom, sat on the couch eating leftovers while he 

watched talking heads argue about football. They sounded, to me, like how the teacher 

talks in Charlie Brown. 

A message appeared in my chat window. I laughed and smiled. 

“Wow,” Tom said, looking up from his dinner and the TV. 

“Huh?” I asked, typing a reply. 

“I’ve never seen you smile like that.” 

“Huh?” I realized that my face hurt from smiling so wide. 

“What are you smiling at?” 

I looked at my tablet. I was chatting with NB. 

# 

It’s past one in the morning when my friend Heather randomly PMs me. She’s 

in a long-distance relationship and we haven’t talked in a while, so we hop onto a video 

chat to catch up. 

Eventually, the conversation meanders to the only thing post collegiate 

twentysomethings want to discuss: 

“How’s your dating life?” Heather asks. She has big, brown eyes like a chibi 

character. 

“I met my buddy’s sister at his wedding, but it ended quickly.” 

I think back to myself smiling so wide that it hurt. 

“I may still be dealing with someone from my past.” 

“Yeah?” 

“I wonder if you thought that when we went out?” I ask. 

Heather was from one of the first dates this past year that never flew. We met 

online. 

She seems to peer back in time. “You really want to go down this road?” 

I’m not sure I do, but I nod. 

“Okay. I felt that something had hurt you. I wanted to help, but I realized I have 

this self-destructive habit of seeking people who are hurting. You helped me realize that 

I needed someone who could be present with me; someone who knew himself. That guy 

is Paul.” 

“I’m glad you found him.” I am. He’s a nerd and thinks I’m hilarious. “So, what 

gave you that sense about me?” 

“Well. When we met, I did a lot of listening and observing. There were things 

that made me feel like an intruder, like you were protecting something from me.” 

My fingers drum across my desktop. 

“What?” Heather asks. 

I think of Tom calling me out earlier this evening. I think of Penny looking at 

me as if at the locus of her pity. I think of NB’s evasive gazes, of all my first dates that 

went nowhere, of Heather’s assessment: “I needed someone who could be present with 

me; someone who knew himself.” 

It seems everyone knows something I don’t. 

“I fell in love with my old roommate’s cousin after I met her on Facebook,” I say. 


156

“She’s from Atlanta. I met her in person in 2012 and she came here last May. She’s the 

only person I ever would have married.” 

The gears turn behind Heather’s eyes. “That’s the girl you took a selfie with at 

the Bean. Natalie, right?” 

I squint. “You’re stalking me.” 

“Stalked,” she says, pointing at her webcam. “I was thinking of dating you. 

Research is a given. I accepted you were weird, but I needed to know you weren’t 

dangerous.” 

Others have described me as “Weird, but not dangerous.” 

“Anyway, that explains a lot,” she says. 

“Natalie Belle—I call her ‘NB’—didn’t feel the same way when we she came 

last May, though she never explained why. But I didn’t put it as clearly as I just did 

with you; the ‘M Word.’ I always feared being too forward with her and wrecking our 

relationship. On the other hand, I want to respect what she said. I don’t have much 

reason to believe she saw in me what I saw in her.” 

“Other than seeing it in her, hoping she felt the same.” 

Which is often all we have: blind hope, dreams we hold close for years. When 

it comes to love, so many of us are children thrashing in the deep end, and nobody ever 

taught us how to swim. 

I peer into my webcam, suddenly aware of the strangeness of some plastic 

and metal firing a digital image to my friend’s laptop. We are so easily bent by the 

movement of energy, the stroke of a pen, a glance too long or short. We are profoundly 

affected beings. So much of my love for NB was forged through electrical signals and 

ones and zeroes. I feared for so long telling NB that what I really wanted was to hold 

her face in my hands while she smiled, to see the diamonds in her eyes without a screen 

dividing us, to hear her voice without earbuds and a volume knob. 

“I would have moved to Atlanta for her,” I say. “I never told her how I really 

felt.” 

“Wow,” Heather says. 

“Her trip last year was vindication. My friends thought I was crazy for loving 

someone I’d only met once before in person. By the time she left, they understood. If 

they could see it, why couldn’t NB?” 

Heather thinks it over. “Even with all the uncertainties, do you feel certain 

enough about her to move to Atlanta?” 

“Only money would stop me, and I’d figure it out.” I stop myself. “I didn’t even 

have to think about that, did I?” 

Heather nods. “Exactly. Let me be honest: I think you should tell her 

everything. It isn’t just a crush. Tell her all the reasons you see you two working. And 

then tell her you can’t just give up on it with no real explanation from her.” 

“I don’t want to wreck my friendship with her.” 

“She has to feel something for you, otherwise she wouldn’t have come to 

Chicago.” 

“That is what people said at the time.” I show a true smile. “Thanks for staying 

friends with me. I’m sorry I dragged you into my mess.” 

“I wouldn’t have found Paul otherwise. I’m rooting for you. I’m a hopeless 

romantic at heart.” 

“Penny, I’ve got a problem,” I say, pacing behind Parsonage House, my phone 

pressed to my ear. 

“Okay,” her voice crackles through the phone. 

“Where are you, anyway?” I ask. 

“Danny, we’ve been over this. I moved to New Jersey in January for work.” 

“Oh, right. It sucks not having you around!” 


#

“What’s your problem?” she asks. 

I throw my back against the red brick behind the house. “The problem is NB. I 

think I’m still in love with her and it’s paralyzing my life.” 

Silence. 

“Did you hear me?” 

Five seconds of cackling. 

“Are you cackling at me?” 

Penny’s cackling tapers off. “You aren’t telling me anything I didn’t already 

know.” 

“What?!” 

“Your friends love you. And we knew there was nothing any of us could say 

to help you get over Natalie. However long it would take, it was something you had to 

realize yourself.” 

I grumble because everyone who apparently loves me also thinks I’m too hardheaded 

to listen to their advice. 

They may be right. 

“So out of curiosity, what made you finally realize this?” Penny asks. 

“Tom and a girl named Heather who I briefly dated.” 

“Um...okay?” 

“I was downstairs messing around on my tablet, and Tom looked up at me 

because I was smiling, and he told me he’s never seen me smile so much. I was smiling 

because I was chatting with NB online. I hadn’t realized it. 

“I couldn’t get what Tom said out of my head. Heather randomly messaged me 

later, and we started talking about it. I told her about how I almost moved to Atlanta to 

be with NB, and she asked me straight out if I would still go if NB gave me some hint 

that she wanted it. I said ‘yes’ without even thinking.” 

“That’s a big deal,” Penny says. 

“And she said I can’t keep living in the limbo of it. I have to tell NB the whole 

truth and hopefully get something of it from her.” 

“Heather’s right. When will you talk to Natalie?” 

“Pretty soon. I wanted to consult with the people who think I don’t listen to 

them to make sure I’m not doing something stupid.” 

“You’re not,” Penny says. “And no matter what happens, I want you to know 

how proud I am that you’ve realized this about yourself. I know you don’t always feel it, 

but you’ve grown up so much these past few years.” 

“Thanks, Penny. So wait, when did you move to New Jersey?” 

“Goodbye, Danny.” 

# 

“Tom, I love NB. I want to marry her.” 

Lunchtime the next day. Tom’s eating a sandwich at his desk. He looks up. 

“You mean Natalie?” 

“Yup.” 

“Really? When did you decide this?” 

“After midnight with the help of someone I once dated.” 

Tom nods. “Okay… Full disclosure, I can’t say I’m surprised. You guys had 

some real chemistry. Natural interactions, a lot of laughter. It’s rare to find that kind of 

connection with someone.” 

“Yes. People said that after she left. I felt vindicated as hell.” I punch the 

doorframe. “Ow,” I mutter, rubbing my knuckles. 

Tom eats more sandwich. “What are you gonna do?” 

“I’m gonna tell her in the clearest way I can that I’ve loved her for years and I’d 

marry her tomorrow if she wanted to.” 


158

“Whoa.” He nods enthusiastically. “You’re gonna call her, then?” 

I narrow my eyes. “Call on her, perhaps.” I slowly back away. 

“Are you… You’re just gonna creepily back away without saying anything else? 

Do you really not have a game plan for this?” 


# 

Traffic in Chicago sucks unless your game plan is to hit the road an hour 

before midnight. 

I take I-90 southeast toward Indiana. My windshield wipers push aside midspring 

rain as I pass beneath glowing, red text reading, “CHICAGO SKYWAY TOLL 

BRIDGE.” The Windy City is behind me in an hour. 

Construction in Indiana slows me to a crawl not long after I hit I-65. I last 

drove this road on my way back home from Florida, just before my Papa died from lung 

cancer a few months after NB visited Chicago. Ever since I moved to Chicago, I haven’t 

felt “home.” Is it Chicago? Is it me? The constant these past few years has been NB. If I 

had my laptop with me, I could talk to her. Everywhere was home if I could talk to her. 

At half-past two Indianapolis disappears in my rearview. The corn fields 

tumble into hills and forests as I descend into the Ohio River Valley. It’s close to four 

when I cross into Kentucky. Bars of neon waver in the Ohio River, reflecting downtown 

Louisville’s light. 

The sun peeks up over the Appalachian foothills somewhere between Bowling 

Green and Nashville. I pull over. Commuters fly past as I lean against my Chevy, sipping 

lukewarm coffee from a paper cup with red hearts on it, watching the sunrise. 

I-24, Murfreesboro, Chattanooga, I-75. The Tennessee Valley comes and 

goes. This part of the country is one of my favorites. I feel strangely rooted, strangely 

careless, in the South. 

Chicago has thickened my blood so I lower the windows and let my hair blow 

back in the morning chill. Nothing changes when you’re a grain of sand in an hourglass, 

and time won’t move on until I let myself fall. 

# 

Atlanta. 

The receptionist doesn’t acknowledge me for a while. She finally looks up. 

“Before you can see any of our counselors, I’ll need you to fill out a few forms.” 

“Oh, I’m not a patient. I’m looking for NB.” 

She stares, suspicious. In fairness to her, I’m disheveled and am currently 

fueled by nothing but caffeine and an existential crisis. 

I shake my head. “Sorry—Natalie? She plays the djembe but hates it?” 

“You look familiar. Have I seen you before?” 

“I’m her friend.” 

“Danny,” she says, realizing who I am. “Half of Natalie’s posts are somehow 

connected to you.” 

I take a bow. 

“Aren’t you from Chicago?” She squints at my untidy clothes, hair, face... 

personality. “Should I be worried you’re here?” 

“I know I look messy. I’ve just been driving all night.” I lift my shirt to prove I’m 

unarmed. “No weapons. I’m just eccentric!” My shirt is still up. 

“God, there are two of you,” she says, shielding her eyes. 

I lower my shirt. “That’s really sweet of you to say.” 

“Around the corner, second door on your left.” The receptionist hands me a 

stick-on guest pass. “Natalie’s on her lunch—and keep your clothes on.” 

“Thanks,” I say. I turn the corner, sticking the label to my shirt. I go up to the

second door and peek through the glass window in it. 

NB’s office is colorful and cozy. There’s an easy chair and a patterned throw 

rug. Pictures of family and friends cover the walls. A cot is unfolded in the corner 

because she is a serious napper. 

Isn’t it strange how some people take your breath away even when they’re 

tired at work, and their makeup doesn’t look all that great today and they’re…eating 

cake for lunch? Come on, NB. 

Anyway, she’s at her computer watching a cat video. I stare for an 

uncomfortable amount of time. I can’t help it. She’s always been beautiful to me, plus I 

like messing with people. 

As with most of my victims, NB finally gets the uneasy feeling she’s being 

watched. She turns to her door and sees me through the glass. 

NB yelps then falls onto her desk laughing. Her face turns completely red. 

I slowly push the door open. I want to smile, but I can’t break character. 

“Danny?!” she shouts, laughing. “What are you doing here?” 

“Revenge,” I say seriously. 

She throws her head back and rolls her eyes. “Shut up.” 

With NB properly exasperated, I drop my façade and laugh and smile. 

She comes out from behind her desk. Her blue jeans are tucked into cowboy 

boots, and she is not being ironic about it. 

We hug. I hold her a little more tightly than I should. She takes it in stride. 

“You look like crap,” she says in her Atlantan twang. 

“Do I smell like it?” I edge closer to give her a big whiff. 

“I’m not smelling you.” Laughter dances in her eyes, but she keeps a straight 

face. Even now, it’s still our game. 

“Did you for real drive here?” she says. “You look like you drove.” 

“Yes. I haven’t slept,” I say, staring into the middle distance. 

NB grabs her purse. “I know what you need.” 

# 

We pull up to the Chipped Mug. I absolutely hate this coffee shop and NB 

knows it. 

“I absolutely hate this coffee shop and you know it,” I say. 

“You’re gonna drink the coffee whether you like it or not.” 

“Does the service still suck?” I say, shutting the passenger-side door. “Is the 

coffee still burnt and served in doctor’s office pee cups with dollar refills?” 

She slugs me in the shoulder. “They’re not ‘pee’ cups.” Silence. “And yes.” 

“You know why this coffee shop survives? Because it’s right off the campus of 

Southern University with Nationally Ranked Football Team.” 

“Quiet, Yankee!” she says. 

NB leads me through the front door. A bunch of undergrads are hanging out 

and being way too loud. Old bike parts are nailed to the walls as if they’re art. Crappy 

papier-mâché masks, crumbling from age, are scattered about. The floor needs to be 

mopped, the lights are too yellow, the music sucks, and the barista looks like a meanie. 

“Are you complaining through internal monologue?” NB asks, eyebrow 

knowingly arched. 

I scoff. “What? Ha! …How could you tell?” 

“You mumbled something about it being too yellow in here and it sounded 

more theatrical than your norm.” She looks at me over her shoulder and my heart 

races. “You’re thinking of all the reasons your fav shop is better.” 

“My barista’s not a meanie,” I grumble. 

We reach the counter. “Get whatever you want, it’s on me,” she says. 

“Small dark roast,” I say to the barista. He stares. He looks like a stick bug. His 

beard is probably the heaviest part of him. 


160

“Same,” she says. 

The other barista—a mousy-looking young woman who I’d bet weighs less 

than Stick Bug’s beard—reads off the damage. “Four-fifty.” 

“Four-fifty?!” I hiss through my teeth at NB. “They’re like six ounces here! 

They’re served in thimbles.” 

Stick Bug stares at me with soulless, hipster eyes. 

“I like this coffee shop so deal with it,” NB says, paying cash then slipping her 

sunglasses on and off right quick because she is a meme. 

Stick Bug sets down two small, foam cups of coffee. I decide not to lay it on 

too thick and stop complaining. 

We grab a booth by a big window. The trees have barely sprouted spring buds 

and the sky is gray. 

“So,” NB begins. 

I sip my coffee. Blech! 

“What have you been up to?” she continues, choosing not to debate me about 

the coffee. 

“Writing. Working part-time. Finishing my second master’s.” I sip. “How have 

you been?” 

She sighs, sits back, stares out the window. “Busy.” 

“Yeah?” I ask, hoping she’ll say more. 

“Yeah.” 

“Do you like your job?” I don’t know why I always need to ask people this 

question. I want people to have some source of meaning in their lives, and since work 

takes up a lot of time and focus, it’s often a good touch point. 

“I do,” she answers. “I got into it to help people, but it’s a lot of paperwork. 

Thinking of moving on to something else.” 

I knot my fingers. “Like what?” 

“Don’t know. Something in my field, just different.” She shrugs one shoulder. 

NB can be so coy sometimes. She presses her lips together and looks me in 

the eyes. I look back. 

“Are you visiting your aunt and uncle in Marietta?” she asks. 

I shake my head. 

“Your friends in Decatur?” 

“No.” 

“Passing through to see the fam in Tampa?” 

“Nope.” 

Silence fills the space between us. It feels like we’re on the way to O’Hare 

again, like despite it all, there’s always been more unsaid than said between us. 

“Well, Danny. What brings you to my neck of the woods?” Something deep in 

the pools of her eyes tells me she already knows. 

“The coffee.” 

She snorts, fighting a smile. “You’re the worst.” 

“You love it.” Even now I hope she’ll tell me she does, and that she loves me, 

too. But she is silent. She is always silent. 

I find myself tapping the tabletop and force myself to stop. Despite the 

easygoingness of our relationship, this is only the third time we’ve met in person. “I um.” 

I bite my lip. “Sorry. I came here because I need to say something to you.” 

NB’s gaze stays on mine. 

“When you came. To Chicago. We talked about…us. I don’t want to act like I 

wasn’t listening because I was. It’s just…I didn’t truly tell you how I felt. I thought I did, 

but I didn’t.” 

Her brow knits. 

“I had to ask myself why I’ve been running circles for four years, why I’ve felt so 

lonely, and why I’ve had a dozen first dates that have gone nowhere. The reason is you.” 

Her lips twist into a frown. 

161 



“I’m frustrated at myself,” I say, looking at the table. “I haven’t been able to be 

with anybody. Every date I go on is a waste when you’re in my life. I asked you if you 

wanted to give us a chance when you came, but it wasn’t enough. Twice we crossed the 

country to see each other and I never told you the truth.” 

She looks down at the table and we each hold our coffee cups with both 

hands. A few customers pass us on their way out. The cash register rings. 

Our eyes meet. 

“What is the truth?” she asks. 

“Natalie Belle, I’ve loved you for years. I wanted to marry you before we ever 

met in person. Tell me there’s a chance for us,” I say, believing she won’t, “and I’ll leave 

my life behind to be with you. I will smile with you. I will laugh at stupid cat videos with 

you. And I will love you until I die.” 

For one brief moment she looks at me with deep, deep compassion, and I 

trick myself into thinking that she might tell me she’s always loved me, too. It had been 

the timing. It had been the distance. It had been anything other than the fact that she 

didn’t love me like I loved her. 

Of course that’s not what happens. Of course the moment is fleeting. Of 

course she looks back to the table. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t have the guts tell you this when I came here or when you 

came to Chicago. I was afraid I’d lose you.” I swallow. I’ve always known, deep down, 

how this has to end, and I’ve avoided it too long. We’ve never been driving toward a 

wedding, only ever toward a funeral. 

NB smiles but cannot hide her sadness. 

“I know this won’t change anything,” I say. “I just knew I couldn’t move on with 

my life until I said that to you as truly as I can, and I care enough about you that I knew 

I needed to say it if there will ever be a chance of us coming out of this as friends. This 

probably wasn’t what you expected your Tuesday to be like, so I’m sorry. For making 

you deal with this again. For everything.” 

“Don’t.” She shakes her head, wiping away a tear. “Don’t apologize for that.” 

She looks at me squarely, and her eyes are red around their rims. 

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” I ask after a while. 

She nods, frowning. “What do you need me to say?” she asks, her voice 

shuddering. 

I take a long breath. “I need you to tell me that you and I will never happen. 

And it’s not because of timing, or distance, or anything else. We’ll never happen 

because you’re not in love with me and you’re never going to be in love with me. I need 

you to say it in those words. I need you to mean it.” 

The house music changes, more coffee is served, customers come and go. 

But at this booth in the Chipped Mug where NB and I sit, time stands still, there is no 

falling sand. 

“Okay,” NB says, pushing away another tear. 

I listen. I am strong. 

NB blinks her beautiful, red-rimmed, hazel eyes at me. 

“I’m not in love with you, Danny. It’s not because we live far from each other, 

or because the timing hasn’t been right. I will never be with you. I will never marry you. 

I don’t love you the way you love me. Please stop waiting for that to change. It won’t. 

Please move on with your life.” 

Her voice quakes and her words are swallowed up in a gasp. 

“I’m sorry.” 

I was calm explaining what she needed to say to me. I’ve been calm this whole 

time. But the moment she speaks those words, I am no longer in control. I am a child 

thrashing in the deep end, and no one ever taught me how to swim. 

And in that moment when it seems I will crumble in front of NB and all these 

strangers, a text message chimes from my phone. 

NB looks at my phone, then at me. I can’t answer it. 


162

It’s facing her and she reads it. “…It’s from Tom. He says he’s about to call and 

you need to answer.” 

The phone buzzes. 

“Sounds important.” 

“I don’t wanna talk to him. I’ll bet he lost his car keys again and hopes I’ll know 

where to look. Why is our generation in arrested development?” 

She answers the phone, wiping her eye. “Danny’s phone.” 

“NB!” I hiss. 

Tom’s voice pours through the earpiece. “Is that Natalie?” 

“Howdy, Tom,” she says. 

“Well hey there, darlin’. I won’t ask what you’re doing with Danny’s phone, 

though it’s a pleasant surprise to hear from you. Is he around?” 

“Darlin’? Stop makin’ fun o’ mah accent, TOM,” she says, really leaning into the 

twang. “Kidding! Here he is.” She presses the phone to my ear. 

I sigh. “Yes?” 

“Danny?” Tom says. 

NB is still holding the phone to my ear. She gives me a look and I take it from 

her. 

“Yeah. Who’d you think she gave the phone to?” 

“You drove all the way to Atlanta to talk to Nat in person? Bold.” 

“What do you want?” I say, looking at NB, who chuckles a little as she sips 

coffee. 

“Right, right. Doug wanted me to call you. It’s an important message.” 

NB and I hear Doug barking in the background. 

“What’s that? O—okay. Yeah, Doug wants me to tell you that you are a…I’m 

quoting here: ‘Italian rat bastard but he looks like the tailor from Fiddler on the Roof.’ ” 

We share a glance. I mean, I am Italian and “rat bastard” isn’t close to the worst 

thing I’ve been called, but… “What?” I reply, eyes locked to NB’s. 

“Yeah,” Tom says. “I don’t know why it’s so important to tell you that. Doug had 

this feeling we needed to call you and give you a hard time, like you needed a good laugh 

right now. And he couldn’t find his phone, so I called. Weird, huh?” 

“Love you, Danny!” Doug shouts. Ginger—now Doug’s fiancé—chimes in. 

“Bring me peaches!” she proclaims. “I must bake a pie! Hi Natalie!” Ginger’s contact 

photo on my phone is her giving me the finger with NB in the background laughing from 

when they baked pies at our barbeque. 

“Why is my life a sitcom?!” I say, hanging up on the three stooges. I look at the 

phone, then at NB. 

“How do things like this always happen to you?” NB asks, baffled. “God won’t 

let old Danny have a serious moment!” 

We burst into laughter. We laugh until we cry. 

“This is the worst thing that’s happened to me this week,” NB says. “Happy, 

Danny?” 

“I am so happy,” I say. “And to you? Shut up.” 

NB sighs and comes around to my side of the booth. I remember the 

tenderness in her gaze from that moment in my car, her hand slipped behind my head. 

She looks the same now as she did then, and for the first time, she doesn’t look away 

when she speaks. 

“My friends asked why my cousin’s old roommate came down from Chicago in 

2012, and I wasn’t sure what to say. People wonder why I laugh at my phone so much, 

and it’s usually you. I’ve been lost in my own way and I’m not sure I’m out of the woods 

yet, you know? I’m sorry you got lost with me.” She shows a true smile, hazel eyes 

gleaming. “Thanks for all the space you gave, for all the laughs, your heart, and for loving 

me enough not to wreck what we have.” 

NB leans into an embrace, pressing her cheek to mine. 


“If it would have been anyone,” she whispers, “it would have been you. I love 

you.” 

I finally understand what she means, and there is nothing wrong between us. 

“Love you too,” I whisper back. 

Then I purposely breathe heavy to make it weird. 

“You creep!” She pushes me away, brushing invisible bugs off of herself. “Can 

we be BFFs now or what?” 

“Yes, we can be BFFs now,” I say, feigning exasperation. 

“Good. I’m starving!” 

“That’s because you had cake for lunch.” 

“Quiet, you!” She thinks it over. “And touché.” 

“How about some Hotlanta barbeque?” 

She slugs me in the shoulder. “Nobody calls it Hotlanta, Danny.” 

We throw out our gross coffee. NB takes the rest of the day off and we have 

a late lunch. I stay the night at my aunt’s place in Marietta. I leave before dawn to start 

back toward Chicago. 

# 

I drive alone. Every once in a while, I look over at my passenger’s seat. I 

remember NB sitting there, cross-legged, while we toured Chicago. In my mind she sits 

there as if, in some other life, it’s where she belongs. And if the multiverse exists, in 

some distant world it is where she sits. It is where she belongs. But it is not this world. 

I remember that along this road, I parted with the future I long envisioned. 

I remember that nothing changes when you’re a grain of sand in an hourglass. 

And like the streaming sand encased in glass, we always get to where we’re going. 

It is heart-wrenching to love someone when they’re still learning who they are, 

when you’re still learning who you are, and until you do, you’re hopeless and selfish and 

foolish. You’ll do anything to find your place in the world until you realize you’ve always 

had one. 

When I get back to Parsonage House, it’s a clear, warm evening in Chicago. My 

friends have a barbeque waiting, and the sky, for once, is blue. 


164


Some Poem 

Some words mean everything. 

Some words mean not a thing. 

Words in a poem have a light 

like people and poets do. 

Ms. Plath and Mr. Dickenson would tell you this. 

and even Mr. Poe and Mr. Carver would agree. 

They all talk about that suffering deep in the heart. 

The suffering event breaks human limits. 

We have suffering men and then women. 

Suffering is universal as in a creature’s 

code and design. 

Even the gun suffers without its bullets 

The shark suffers with no ocean to think about. 

The lord of the poem is the pen. 

The pen creates and sustains hope. 

Those words put the person in a different town 

away from trouble. 

Just sit down and have a grand old time. 

Read a poem and maybe you’ll get your love back. 

Dinosaurs 

(A Fragment) 

First came dinosaurs in the lost land. 

Then came human beings. 

And trust me, both designs were complicated. 



Egypt 

The earliest accounting of Holy Scriptures 

in the universe was found in Egypt. 

At the bottom of Mount Sanai, order was materialized by God. 

It was simple to measure order with the 10 Commandments. 

Now day by day, atom by atom things slide. 

The codex for human thought and moral order, 

the order in every living creature was found 

there in Egypt. 

Now the ancient Christ and the spiritual structure 

and the vocabulary has been spun out like 

crucifixes spinning in the air. 

In Rome you had the light of the Church Fathers 

and Christ the Brother of Mary who was 

blasted onto a cross by the Roman police. 

The Scriptures explain all of man’s infinite desires, 

desires for pioneer wars, desires for destruction and thirst, 

desires for order in the earth. 

Let’s go to Egypt and see what we can find. 

Maybe we’ll fix all this mess now that the 

popular burning of Western Civilization is here. 


166

Laura Treacy Bently 

Cellar Door 

The crime was playing poker 

with my older brother and his friends. 

The stakes were high that summer, 

but to a child being left out 

seemed worse than the punishment: 

The loser would be locked 

in a windowless cellar 

with the lights turned off. 

In winter, I had watched my mother 

hang clothes to dry in this cellar. 

I once asked if Jesus could find us 

down here, right now? 

as she draped wet socks 

and shirts over a wooden rack, 

along with the free towels 

that came inside Breeze detergent. 

Startled, she answered 

in her best Sunday School voice, 

“He can go anywhere 

he wants.” 

Hundreds of mildewed magazines 

nested in the crawl space 

next to me that day. 

At the top of ladder-like stairs 

a latched door stood guard, 

piped round with a thread of sunlight 

on the other side. 

I didn’t make a sound 

and waited in the damp and airless dark, 

looking up in silent terror 

at the haloed door, 

hoping a Jesus would find me, 

down here, right now, 

and roll away the stone. 


Laura Treacy Bentley 

Still Life 

Dogwood petals cup soft upon the table, 

a Japanese watercolor washed pink, 

veined white. 

Cloven flowers poised on slender branches 

resting in a jade vase 

and you 

in the background, 

beyond the perfect picture 

etching my pulse into ivory: 

a scrimshaw illumination 

of line and gesture. 

You only see 

in black and white. 

My shadow is quicksilver. 

I can see 

in the dark. 

This sitting is over. 

You unveil my portrait 

with the tender ivory border. 

The face 

is not mine. 



168

Sai Varshini Chinnasani 

Twas the Journey 

The bright lights are moving towards space, 

Twas was the journey of a little spec surrounded by stars. 

It is thinking of the possible journeys, waiting to reach 

And comparing itself to every other creature in the universe. 

Bright as a campfire, 

Powerful as the greatest love, 

Young as the smell of dew, 

Reaching as soon as the sundial reaches the meridian. 

The warmth of the peaceful sky, 

Hugging till it reaches the green stacks, oh 

This is the end of my journey, 

I will forever be a sign of hope. 

I am a Photon. 

Robb Jackson Highschool Poetry 3rd place (2022) 


Jo Bowman 

When a poem first finds you 

Bloody, jagged fingers 

Gripping the ledge. 

It’s a long way down from here. 

I’m here, you whisper, 

A breeze against my neck. 

Let go, come with me. 

A breath… 

Another… 

Release. 

A sword lands in untrained hands, 

Artistry wraps itself around my arms, 

An armament of paper and 

Thought and my own creation 

Shields me from the fallout. 

Despair and Torment could never cry 

as loudly as you did, 

my love, the first day we met. 

A smile, through blood-stained teeth, 

The unsheathing of a sword, 

The clashing of thought against paper, 

A battle never won, 

But hard-fought, 

And better for it. 

Take up your weapon, 

Fight on, 

Fight for me. 

Fight for you. 


170

Contributors’ Notes 

Bitia Alanis is a poet and fiction writer 

from Houston, Tx. She has a Bachelor’s 

of Arts in English from Trinity University. 

In her spare time, she enjoys reading YA 

novels and writing poetry and short stories. 

Gibel Amador is a Latina filmmaker 

and poet from the borderland. Raised in 

both El Paso and Juarez, her experiences 

as a Latina in this region have informed 

her understanding of storytelling and 

narrative. A first-generation immigrant, 

her father fled the civil war in Nicaragua 

and met her mother in the borderland. He 

worked for the airlines his whole life, and 

this international background inspired a 

passion for travel in Gibel that in large 

part fuels her creative output. Working 

from an early age as a model and actress, 

Gibel decided to put herself in control 

of her own narrative, placing her eye 

behind the camera and behind the script. 

Filmmaking and photography came 

naturally to her from so much experience 

in the industry, but the writing was the 

missing piece. She majored in Creative 

Writing at The University of Texas at 

El Paso, a distinguished borderland 

program, to hone her craft and write her 

own story. Straight from the beginning, 

storytelling has been an integral part of 

Gibel’s life: from childhood narratives, she 

would craft from the toys around her. Now 

within the complexities of relationships 

in a modern lifestyle, the urge to connect 

dots around her is strong. 

Ace Boggess is author of six books of 

poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick 

Road Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the 

Art of Dreaming It So, and The Prisoners. 

His writing has appeared in Michigan 

Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, 

Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, 

and other journals. An ex-con, he lives 

in Charleston, West Virginia, where he 

writes and tries to stay out of trouble. 

Dee Allen is an African-Italian 

performance poet based in Oakland, 

California. Active in creative writing & 

Spoken Word since the early 1990s. 

Author of 7 books—Boneyard, Unwritten 

Law, Stormwater, Skeletal Black [ all from 

POOR Press ]; Elohi Unitsi [ Conviction 2 

Change Publishing ]; and his 2 newest, 

Rusty Gallows [ Vagabond Books ] and 

Plans [ Nomadic Press ]—and with 

50 anthology appearances under his 

figurative belt so far. 

Raye Bailey is a Corpus Christi native. 

She is currently pursuing her major in 

Elementary Education with minors in 

Dance and Creative Writing. She has 

been writing poetry since high school, 

and dreams of publishing her own 

collection someday. Her love of poetry 

has been inspired by her grandmother 

who introduced her to both poetry 

and literature as a child. The poem 

“She Remembers” is dedicated to her 

grandmother, Rosa Reyes. 

Jacob R. Benavides graduated in 2023 

from Texas A&M University-Corpus 

Christi, studying English Literary Studies 

with minors in Women, Gender and 

Sexuality Studies and Studio Art. His 

writing focuses on exploring the material 

and immaterial nature of an early 20 

something year old, all the certain 

uncertainty included. He is particularly 

attentive to themes of Queer identity, 

love, mental health, familial identity, 

and the relation of bodies both physical 

and imaginary within the ever-shifting 

landscape of existence in South Texas. 

Jacob has previously been published 

in the Windward Review, with Texas 

Poetry Assignment and in the Notes app 

on his phone. He presenting his work 

as a panelist at the 2022 and 2023’s 

Peoples’ Poetry Festival and the 2022 

TAMUCC CLA Graduate Symposium. 

Jacob received a HAAS writing award for 

creative writing in 2020 and is currently 

working on a collection of poetry entitled 

The Melting of Mars (and other bodies). 


Laura Treacy Bentley is a poet and novelist who 

divides her time between Huntington, West Virginia, 

and a mountain cabin in Garrett County Maryland. 

Her work has been widely published in the United 

States and Ireland in The New York Quarterly, Art 

Times, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Poetry Ireland, 

The Stinging Fly, and Crannóg, among others and 

was featured on A Prairie Home Companion, Poetry 

Daily, O Magazine, and Publishers Weekly. She is the 

author of a poetry art book, Looking for Ireland: An 

Irish Appalachian Pilgrimage (Mountain State Press, 

2017), a literary thriller set in Ireland, The Silver 

Tattoo (2013), a short story prequel, Night Terrors 

(2015), a poetry collection, Lake Effect (Bottom Dog 

Press, 2006), and her debut picture book, Sir Grace 

and the Big Blizzard (2020). Connect with them: 

lauratreacybentley.com 

Steve Brisendine is a writer, poet, occasional artist 

and recovering journalist living and working in Mission, 

KS. He is the author of two collections from Spartan 

Press, The Words We Do Not Have (2021, nominated for 

the 2022 Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award) 

and Salt Holds No Secret But This (2022). 

Eva Buergler is a senior pursuing an English major 

with a biology minor at Trinity University. She is a 

research fellow studying Shakespearean adaptations 

in Chicanx theatre as well as a contributor and staff 

member of The Trinity Review. She is thrilled to be 

published by The Windward Review. 

Poet-translator Lorraine Caputo’s works appear in 

over 300 journals on six continents; and 20 collections 

of poetry – including On Galápagos Shores (dancing girl 

press, 2019). Her writing has been nominated for the 

Best of the Net. She journeys through Latin America, 

listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. 

Jo Bowman is an online student 

in the Creative Writing MFA 

program at the University of 

Texas at El Paso. She currently 

resides in Louisiana with her 

husband and cats, while working 

on her thesis. She has been 

crafting poems and stories her 

entire life and is pleased to 

finally begin sharing her work 

with everyone. “When a poem 

first finds you” is her first 

published work. 

Suzette Bishop teaches at Texas 

A&M International University. 

Her books include Horse-Minded, 

She Took Off Her Wings and Shoes, 

Hive-Mind, Cold Knife Surgery, and 

most recently, a chapbook, Jaguar’s 

Book of the Dead. Her poems 

have appeared in many literary 

magazines and anthologies and 

received an Honorable Mention in 

the Pen 2 Paper Contest and first 

place in the Spoon River Poetry 

Review Contest. 

Aliah Candia is a writer and 

spoken word artist who invites 

people to observe her lion-like 

courage and child-like curiosity 

through worlds of love, anguish, 

longing, hope, and death. Her 

spoken word performances have 

been published online through 

the Barbed Wire Open Mic Series 

on YouTube and she is currently 

working on her Bachelor’s in 

Creative Writing at the University 

of Texas at El Paso. 

Ava Lenora Coronado is a student at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi studying 

English with a concentration in Writing Studies and a minor in Creative Writing. As a 

writer she has always been fond of showing emotion and creating work that involves 

specific moments in life. Growing up, she loved to sing and listen to music and she 

developed a special love and bond between the two. One of the first things she began 

to explore as a writer was poetry at a young age. She began to write her own songs and 

poetry having to do with her personal experiences. As she grew older, her poetry became 

more in depth with emotional moments—having to do with love. Later in college, she 

began to write creative nonfiction stories and academic essays on topics involving 

other literature works, love, relationships, family, and personal self discoveries. Besides 

working hard in school and writing essays, she spends her free time listening to music, 

reading, with her family, traveling, going to the beach, tumbling, diving into the intense 

stories of television shows, and going to the movies. After graduation, Ava plans to 

pursue her career: writing books, while also striving to obtain a master’s degree, all while 

she continues to develop her creativity. 


172

Sophia Chapa has been creative since the 

day that they can remember. They have 

a passion for writing poetry, which they 

didn’t learn about until 2020. They never 

knew how much poetry would have such a 

positive effect on their life. They have two 

poetry pieces published in Corpus Christi 

Writers 2022, Mays publishing literary 

magazine, they were a winner in this year’s 

Robb Jackson People’s Poetry Festival, 

and they won an essay contest here at 

the Garcia Center. Not only have they 

accomplished this with their poetry, but 

they were also able to read “History will not 

be Erased,” a poem they wrote for a protest 

here in Corpus. Sophia can’t wait for what 

the future has in store for them, and they 

can’t wait to write more amazing pieces. 

Thảo Ðinhis an international student 

from Hà Nội, Việt Nam. She is a rising senior 

in the Class of 2023 majoring in International 

Studies with a concentration 

in International Development and a minor 

in Creative Writing at Trinity University, 

located in sunny San Antonio, Texas. The 

Windward Review is her first publication 

outside of the university, and she is excited 

and grateful to be chosen. 

Mose Graves is a writer 

based on the West Coast. 

Over the years, he has been 

employed as a gopher, a 

gardener, a goldsmith, a 

flagman, an engineer, a 

sewer operator, a scientist, 

a journalist, and a college 

teacher. He currently divides 

his time between Seattle 

and San Francisco, with side 

trips to New Orleans for the 

people and the pralines. 

Jessica N. Grissom resides in 

a small Texas town with her 

husband and son. She loves 

traveling, reading, chocolate 

and tea. In her spare time, she 

writes and records a podcast 

titled “The More You Know”. 

Leonard Duncan holds a BA in English and 

minor in Logic and Philosophy of Cognition 

from Trinity University. He works as a nonprofit 

development coordinator in San 

Antonio, Texas. 

Born and raised in Northern Michigan, Zev 

Lawson Edwards has lived and taught in 

Australia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and 

Qatar. His short story “The Mummer’s 

Parade” is published on Substack. He has 

previously self-published one novel, THE 

NEW PUNK (under a million copies sold 

worldwide), a whimsical and humorous YA 

adventure about an orphanage in Detroit 

where the orphans sabotage adoption. 

You can follow/stalk him on Facebook, 

Instagram, Twitter, or wherever you get 

your social media fix. 

Corita Fernando is a content creator from 

Sri Lanka pursuing her graduate studies in 

English at WSU. Her work (both writing 

and photography) embodies a sense of 

abstractness and vagueness. For relaxation 

she prefers to immerse herself in the calm 

and serenity of nature. 

Elizabeth N. Flores taught government/political 

science for 43 years at Del Mar College and was the 

college’s first Mexican American Studies Program 

Coordinator. Flores earned an MA in Political Science at 

the University of Michigan and a BA in Political Science 

at St. Mary’s University. She was awarded the LULAC 

Council 1 Educator of the Year Award (2014) and the 

Del Mar College Dr. Aileen Creighton Award for Teaching 

Excellence (2013). Flores retired from teaching in 2022. 

James Grissom lives south of Dallas with his wife and son. 

He has a passion for understanding and helping others 

grow. Writing has been his emotional release and the 

primary way in which he engages in creativity since he was 

ten years old. He has been a frequent short-term resident 

of the Costal Bend and is often inspired by the idyllic 

scenery of Mustang Island and the Corpus Christi Bay. 

Jean Hackett lives and writes in San Antonio and the 

Texas Hill Country. Her most recent work has appeared 

in the journals Plants and Poetry and Voices de la Luna, 

anthologies Purifying Wind, No Season for Silence, Easing the 

Edges, and Yellow Flag, as well as Arts Alive San Antonio. Her 

chapbook Masked/Unmuted was publish in March, 2022. 


Emily Hargitai is an English and History teacher with an MFA in Creative Writing. She enjoys 

writing stories about writing stories and currently has about twelve gray hairs. She spends 

her free time wondering who put them there and strongly suspects it was you. Yes, you. 

Natasha Haas is a student at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. She is an English 

major with an emphasis in Literary Studies. She fell in love with poetry while studying for 

her Network Administration and Information Security degree at Del Mar College. Natasha 

is a Student Worker at the Mary and Jeff Bell Library where she assists her patrons 

with the library’s resources and general research guidance. In September 2020 she was 

selected by the CAHSI Women in Computing Sciences to attend the Great Minds in STEM 

Conference where she participated in workshop events held by tech industry leaders. 

Natasha is currently a member of TAMU-CC’s Honors Program and is collaborating with 

her peers to improve her communities’ water pollution problem. In her free time, Natasha 

cares for her vegetable garden and enjoys watching Pop Culture films with her wife, Bianca. 

She also enjoys baking peanut butter treats for her two rescue dogs, Molly and Daisy. She 

will deny that she loves spoiling her cat, Asuka, rotten. After graduation, she plans to 

pursue a master’s degree in English. Natasha hopes to have a career where she can use her 

writing to help those who grew up like she did. 

Robin Latimer has been writing poetry and 

essays since she was able to use a pencil. She 

has degrees in English and in Education from 

Duke University and Lamar University and 

graduated in Spring 2022 from UT-El Paso’s 

online Creative Writing MFA. Her thesis was 

directed by Andrea Cote-Botero and Daniel 

Chacon, as well as Roger D. Jones from 

Texas State University. A recent publication 

appeared in Cape Rock ( “Effigy” 2019). 

El Paso native Amairani Llerena is a mother, 

self-proclaimed poet, artist, published model 

and all around creator. She is currently working 

on her BA in creative writing at the University 

of Texas in El Paso, though motherhood has 

slowed the progression. “We are on no one’s 

timeline but our own. Embrace your present 

moment and lavish in the goodness of it, even 

when there’s not much there—for it is in 

goodness and gratitude that we learn to grow.” 

Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Charity 

McCoy (22) is a student-creative who enjoys 

journaling and writing poetry about social 

issues and love. Also enrolled at Texas A&M 

University-Corpus Christi (TAMU-CC), 

Charity is pursuing a Bachelor’s in Healthcare 

Administration with a minor in sociology. 

Though the two disciplines differ in many 

respects, Charity values how both areas enable 

her to depict the complexities of the human 

experience and advocate for those who cannot 

speak for themselves. 

Tiffany Lindfield is a social worker by 

day, trade, and heart who advocates 

for climate justice, gender equality, and 

animal welfare. By night she is a prolific 

writer and reader of anything decent. 

John C. Mannone has poems in 

Windhover, North Dakota Quarterly, 

Poetry South, Baltimore Review, and 

others. He won the Impressions of 

Appalachia Creative Arts Contest in 

poetry (2020), the Carol Oen Memorial 

Fiction Prize (2020), and the Joy 

Margrave Award (2015, 2017) for 

creative nonfiction. He was awarded 

a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in 

Appalachian literature and served as 

the celebrity judge for the National 

Federation of State Poetry Societies 

(2018). His full-length collections are 

Disabled Monsters (Linnet’s Wings 

Press, 2015); Flux Lines: The Intersection 

of Science, Love, and Poetry (Linnet’s 

Wings Press, 2021); Sacred Flute (Iris 

Press, 2022); and Song of the Mountains 

(Middle Creek Publications, 2023). He 

edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other 

journals. A retired physics professor, 

John lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. 

Arik Mitra lives in Kolkata, India. An 

IT professional, he has been writing 

for three years now. He writes mainly 

short stories and poetry in English and 

Bengali (mother tongue). His work has 

been published by Clarendon House 

Publications, Red Penguin Books, Rosey 

Ravelston Books-Dyst Journal, Writers and 

Reader’s Magazine and more. 


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Azrael Montoya: “I was born in 

Corpus Christi, Texas on February 

6, 1990. I love city life and 

everything it brings. My poetry 

collection, The Trial (A Collection 

of Poems On Existence and God), 

was published in the 2020 

anthology of Corpus Christi Writers. 

I would like to pose a thank you 

to my inspirations Bob Dylan and 

Townes Van Zandt. With time and 

space I will get a little better.” 


is a bilingual poet and fiction 

writer from the borderland area 

of Juarez and El Paso, Texas, 

and a cum laude graduate with 

a Bachelor’s degree in Creative 

Writing from the University of 

Texas at El Paso. As an introvert 

and an admirer of the spices 

of human emotion, he writes 

to be remembered. Besides his 

interest in the literary arts, he 

also enjoys listening to the music 

of X Japan and Sonata Arctica. 

Daniel Rodrigues-Martin is an author and 

editor. His non-professional works have been 

published by The St. Petersburg Times, Scribophile. 

com, Area of Effect Magazine, GeeksUnderGrace. 

com, and others. He has earned accolades from 

The League of Utah Writers and The Writers 

of the Future Contest. His serialized short, The 

Quantum Fall of Thaddeus Archibald DuBois, is 

available on Amazon and he is currently seeking 

representation for his fourth completed novel. 

Before the pandemic, he frequently presented at 

writers’ conferences and workshops in northern 

Utah. He and NB are still friends. 

Liz Torres Shannon is a memoirist and graduate 

student at the University of Texas at El Paso. She 

is the author of The Bear and the Penis: in ordinary 

lives, live extraordinary stories. In addition, Liz has 

had a six-word memoir published in Six Words 

Fresh Off the Boat Stories of Immigration, Identity, 

and Coming to America, from the New York Times 

bestselling six-word memoir series in 2017. 

Liz enjoys reading, writing, Mexican food, and 

spending time with her three grandsons, Roon, 

Bubby, and Leo. 

Elizabeth Motes studies English and Creative 

Writing at Trinity University. Her story “When a Door 

Closes” is featured in the Venus Rising anthology, 

which is now available to purchase on Amazon. 

Additionally, her story “Perfect Memory” was 

published in the Outrageous Fortune Magazine, and 

the Trinity Review has published her pieces “Haunted,” 

“Home for Christmas,” and “Ghost Girl.” In her free 

time, she writes fantasy novels. Follow her Instagram 

@emotes.writes for writing tips and updates. 

Ron Pullins is a fiction writer, playwright, and poet 

working in Tucson AZ. His works in fiction, poetry 

and drama have been published in numerous journals 

including Typishly, Southwest Review, Shenandoah, etc. A 

list can be found at www.pullins.com. 

Rod Carlos Rodriguez has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing 

from the University of Texas at El Paso. He is also an 

award-winning poet who has been writing for over 

40 years. He has 3 books of poetry published and is 

founder/chair of the Sun Poet’s Society, South Texas’s 

longest running weekly open-mic poetry reading 

(1995-2022). He was nominated for the San Antonio 

Poet Laureate in April 2012, April 2014, April 2016, 

and April 2018. He was the poetry editor for Ocotillo 

Review, a literary journal/periodical and he is the editor 

of the Texas Poetry Calendar 2023 (Kallisto Gaia Press). 

Swapna Sanchita is a poet, a 

writer, and an educator who studied 

engineering in college and went on 

to obtain a degree in management. 

Her collection of poems, Des Vu, was 

published in June 21 (2021) and was 

a bestseller on Amazon India. She has 

contributed to a number of anthologies 

and journals. She lives in Ranchi, India 

with her husband and two sons and 

loves chocolate, coffee, and books, not 

necessarily in that order. 

M. Alis Spencer is an avid trierof-new-things 

and nomad who has 

visited all 50 states and lived in 

seven. Currently she can be found 

most days in New Jersey where 

she spends time pursuing an MFA 

in creative writing, painting, hiking, 

and catering to the every whim of 

two sweet, old Great Danes. 


Nancy Spiller is a fourth generation Californian, author, educator and artist living in Los 

Angeles, where she is earning an advanced degree in Mini Aussies. Her books include 

Entertaining Disasters (a novel), and Compromise Cake: Lessons Learned from My Mother’s 

Recipe Box (both from Counterpoint Press). For the last 14 years, she has taught creative 

writing at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. 

Anna Strickland graduated from Regents 

School of Austin and is Currently attending 

Trinity University for a major in communications. 

Kelly Talbot has edited books and other content 

for 20 years for Wiley, Macmillan, Oxford, 

Pearson Education, and other publishers. His 

writing has appeared in dozens of magazines 

and anthologies. He divides his time between 

Indianapolis, Indiana, and Timisoara, Romania. 

If all the world’s a stage, then Edward Zirui 

Wang has been ever supportive of creative 

endeavours of others from behind the curtain. 

He hails from the improvisational background 

of roleplaying, is tempered by the collaborative 

nature of tabletop gaming, and hones his writing 

through the endless pile of nameless drafts as 

well as the annual expedition of National Novel 

Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). In realizing the 

craft, consistency, coherency, and evocation are 

the guiding stars. He gleans knowledge and 

wisdom from the writing found in all mediums 

and individuals, but holds a particular fondness 

for folk and fable, myth and legend. It is without 

saying that Edward is also beset on all sides by 

the breadth and depth of books in his residence. 

He sincerely hopes that all continue striving 

forward and making good art. Whether pen 

and paper, typewriter, tablet, computer, and all 

the hybrids between, Edward seems to scatter 

writing everywhere but his tiny nook on the 

Internet: www.akashiccurios.com. 

Coryna Trevino, or “Cory” as she 

prefers to go by most days, is a 

long-time creative writer who has 

only recently developed the most 

earth-shattering love of poetry. 

A recent graduate of the Texas 

A&M University-Corpus Christi’s 

Graduate English Program, Cory has 

been able to cultivate her newfound 

love of poetry while also exploring 

the process of critiquing her first 

love: Queer Gothic novels. Cory 

is a Rio Grande Valley native, and 

time and time again finds herself 

inspired by the works of Gloria 

Anzaldua, especially Borderlands/La 

Frontera: The New Mestiza. 

Joseph Tyler Wilson taught Senior 

English Advanced Placement, Film 

Studies, and Creative Writing at 

Richard King High-school for 42 

years. He created and edited the art 

and poetry magazine, Open All Night, 

for 42 years. His work can also be 

found in Corpus Christi Writers 2018- 

2023 (all 6 yearly editions, Mays 

Publishing). They also have work 

in Windward Review Volume’s 18-20. 

Now retired, they are an advocate 

for the arts and assist in planning 

3rd Thursday performance events 

at the Art Museum of South Tx. He 

writes poetry. 

Kaitlyn Winston was born and raised in Rockport, Texas with a drive to write emotionally 

striking stories of every genre since a young age. After graduating from Rockport-Fulton 

High School, she moved on to study for her long-awaited bachelor’s degree in English 

at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi, where she is now in her last semesters. 

Never straying too far from her roots, Kaitlyn uses personalized narratives to ensure 

her writings are tangible experiences for readers of any background to enjoy with her. 


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Windward Review Vol. 20 (2022): Beginnings and Endings

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