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RESTORATION by Myna Chang

Nobody tells her how to remove her father’s blood, how to cleanse the pools and spatters of a life stolen.

The county sheriff doesn’t warn her about the stickiness, or how very much of it there is, puddled on the floor between the cash register and the chicken feed. He doesn’t tell her about the crust that will form if she puts off cleaning until the day after the funeral.

No one helps her call the professional crime scene cleaners in the city. Their phonebook advertisement mentions special equipment and emotional distance. They promise ‘restoration’ — but she is outside their service area.

Her friends can’t anticipate that the smell will be the thing that finally pushes her over. They don’t reassure her it’s okay to retch; her father surely understands, he never would have wanted this grisly, intimate task to fall to her.

She doesn’t yet realize that, for the rest of her life, she will choke at the drip of spilled coffee, or spasm breathless when she glimpses a puddle of rain.

Right now, she only wants someone to tell her how much bleach she will need.

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MY MOM TOLD ME TO EAT TINY SANDWICHES by Dough Mahoney

my mom took a picture of me walking to the car. she took a picture of me in the car. we drove towards eatonton, georgia.

i wanted to vape but couldn’t. or i could, but it would ruin the trip. i didn’t vape.

i read a few pages from black jacobins.

i asked how long the drive was going to take. five hours, my dad said. i thought he was joking. i asked if he was joking. he said he wasn’t joking. five hours isn’t too long, i said.

i drank coffee from a thermos. i finished the coffee. i ate a couple jolly ranchers. my dad asked for a jolly rancher. i haven’t had a jolly rancher in fifteen years, he said. fuck, he said. this is good.

my mom put the address into her phone, but my dad said he wanted to look at the directions on the car dash gps. but my mom wanted to take the scenic route. but the car dash gps would only take us the fastest route. but my dad really wanted to use the car dash gps, even though the phone gps hooks up to the car’s bluetooth, and can announce the directions over the speakers. i said we can take the scenic route and listen to mom’s phone, or take the short route and dad could use the car dash gps. he asked why the car dash gps couldn’t take us the scenic route and i said i didn’t know. we listened to my mom's phone. my mom’s phone told my dad to get off the highway and onto a two lane road. my dad asked why we were getting off the highway and i said because we just agreed to take the scenic route. he got off the highway.

i decided to relax and look out the window at the united states of america. the united states of america looked shitty. we passed a lot of crumbling houses and dollar generals and advanced auto parts. the small businesses looked decrepit and old and were mostly no longer in business. we passed a pyramid shaped building that was all roof. it was a roofed pyramid. upon further inspection, it was a roofing business. they had multiple flags supporting the reelection of the sitting president.

eventually my mom had to pee. we tried to pee inside a dairy queen but the dairy queen was drive thru only. we can just go through the drive-thru, my mom said. but we came here to pee, my dad said. did you want ice cream though? my mom said. my dad said he didn’t want ice cream. i saw a popeyes chicken across the street. i said we could go there maybe. my dad said people have been shooting each other to get their chicken sandwich. i said i had the sandwich a couple months ago and that it was really good. my dad asked me if i had to shoot anyone to get the sandwich and i said no. i just drove through the drive through and bought it, i said. i ate it in my car. he asked if i fixed my car’s air conditioning and i said i hadn’t. you ate a chicken sandwich alone in your hot car? he said. yeah, i said. why? he said. i said i was doing laundry and popeyes was close to the laundromat. cool.

we drove to a gas station/tiny sandwich restaurant. i put on my mask and went inside. i vaped in the bathroom. i hit the vape four times. didn’t want to leave the bathroom. did a big one and left the bathroom, feeling light headed. to my mom i said, does dad want popeyes or should i get some tiny sandwiches from the tiny sandwich place? my mom told me to eat tiny sandwiches. i walked from the gas station part of the store to the tiny sandwich part of the store. i ordered three tiny chicken sandwiches. my dad left the gas station part of the store and entered the tiny sandwich part of the store. what are you getting? i said. he said he didn’t know. the lady said she was ready to take his order. he looked at the menu. i envied how quickly he was able to decide. tiny hotdog, he said. and a tiny chicken sandwich. i ate the tiny sandwiches in the car. my dad ate his tiny sandwich. my mom asked for a bite. she took a bite and moved her head away from the tiny sandwich and she had a whole pickle slice in her mouth. you took my whole pickle, my dad said. it slipped out, my mom said. there was a lot of mayonnaise on the tiny chicken sandwiches, but i enjoyed them regardless.

i fell asleep for a couple hours. when i woke up my dad kept saying piggly wiggly or publix, piggly wiggly or publix. publix, my mom said. we drove past the cottage/country club neighborhood where we were staying and drove eight more miles and then we were at publix. inside publix my mom said get whatever you want. i walked to where the soda waters were and got two twelve packs of soda water. what is that? my dad said. life source, i thought. soda waters, i said. soda waters, my dad said. we bought more stuff. there were a lot of people inside the publix. felt like too many people. we’re going to get the corona virus, my dad said. i was at costco the other day and this guy got mad at an employee. he said, ‘how can you tell me to wear a mask when you can’t even wear yours right? your nose is hanging out of your mask.’ they had to kick him out. i said i didn’t understand why people couldn’t just wear their masks without getting upset. i said i saw a video the other day where a dad and his teenage son were in a grocery store and the dad was yelling about not wanting to wear a mask and trying to fight the employees and his son had to literally pick him up and carry him out of the store. i said, he yelled ‘i’ll fight you pussies’ and then yelled ‘i’ll fuck a retard’ while being carried out of the store by his teenage son. my dad thought that was funny. we shared a laugh. i shared a laugh with dad. my mom took a picture of me sharing a laugh with my dad. she showed me the laugh sharing picture. you couldn’t tell we were sharing a laugh because we had our masks on.

we all walked toward the restroom. my dad walked in the restroom after me. i was in a stall and he was at the urinal. i wanted to vape but didn’t want dad to see the vapor. i peed and looked at my phone, hoping my dad would finish pissing and leave the bathroom so i could vape in the stall. he finished peeing and walked toward the sink. i thought that he might think it was weird if i stayed in the bathroom stall after i had already obviously finished peeing, so i walked out of the stall. my dad dried his hands and left the bathroom. i washed my hands and then dried them and went back into the stall and vaped three times. left the bathroom. didn’t feel like i had vaped enough. felt ready to be at the house so i could vape more leisurely and frequently.

my mom said she was getting really hot. my sister was also with us but didn’t do or say anything interesting so i haven’t mentioned her yet, but she was there the whole time. so my mom was talking about getting a hot flash. she said she needed to sit down. i told her to go sit in the car and give me the list and we could get everything else. she was sweating heavily and said she was feeling dizzy but didn’t want to go sit in the air conditioned car and drink a gatorade for some reason so she just kept saying she was hot and dizzy until we left. she ate a burrito thing in the car and drank a gatorade and said she felt better.

we stopped by a water sports place because my dad wanted to look at the boat we were renting. him and my sister went inside and i stayed in the car with my mom. my dad texted my mom and said we had to come inside and sign waivers. my dad and sister were watching a video on a computer screen and my dad said we had to watch. so we were just standing there because there weren’t chairs. a cop repeated a slogan about the importance of life jackets. something like keep it on georgia. not sure if that’s what it was. should remember because he said it many times but i don’t. pass boats on the left. if a boat is heading straight at you swerve to the right. the water cop said something about what green, red, and whites buoys meant but i stopped paying attention. my dad asked a teenage employee questions and he answered exclusively by saying i think so, until my dad asked if big people like him can wakeboard and he said, i think so… yes. drove and arrived at the cottage airbnb neighborhood where we would be staying for the next three days. it was in a gated community. a lady at the gate asked for the address we are heading to and my dad said 128 [something] and the lady walked into a shed-looking building to type something into a computer, presumably. my mom said it’s actually 129 [something]. my dad hurried out of the car and walked into the shed, which i wasn’t sure if he was allowed to do, but he came back outside and everything was fine, it’s fine to go in the shed i guess.

we drove to the house. unpacked stuff. i vaped in the bathroom. felt good. my dad opened a beer. or a twisted tea. not sure. my mom made a joke about how much wine she brought. we talked about the cottage. we all agreed the cottage was good. walked upstairs to where i was staying. there were two queen beds in the room, facing each other. i sent a picture of the queens beds to my friend and he replied obscenely haunted energy, then said i feel like this is the last text i’m ever going to get from you. i didn’t text back. my mom said we should fill our thermos with sangria and walk to the lake. so we did that. my parents sat on adirondack chairs on a small man-made beach. there was pool behind us. why are we doing this? we should be at the pool, my mom said. we walked back to the house to put on suits. i lead the way, cutting through people’s yards and a golf course. my parents doubted that i knew where i was going but i assured them that i have an incredible sense of direction. i navigated us flawlessly back to the cottage, unsurprisingly. i looked at my phone and it was 7:30. it’s 7:30, i said. should we go to the pool? my mom said. it’s gonna be dark, i think, but i’m down for whatever, i said. everyone said they were down for whatever. my mom said maybe we should just relax at the house. we all said that sounded good because we were all down for whatever.

my mom poured wine. i poured wine. my dad drank a twisted tea or a beer. my sister put on her roller skates and skated around. we sat on the porch. my mom told me to tell my sister that she’s good at roller blading. you’re really at roller blading, i said. my mom took a picture of me telling my sister that she’s really good at roller blading. i went on youtube and typed ‘how to..’ ‘how to uncork a wine bottle without an opener’ popped up and ‘how to get your dog to pee in a toilet’ popped up because i had searched those things on youtube recently. i finished typing ‘how to wakeboard beginner’ and watched videos. the idea to standing up is to let the boat do the work. let the boat do the work, i need to remember this, i thought. i searched wakeboard crashes and beginner wakeboarding tricks. my dad told me i should focus on just getting up. i said i wanted to watch trick tutorials just in case i was a natural. we went inside and my dad gave me a self help book. 12 rules for life by jordan peterson. i asked him if he’s read it and he said no but he listened to most of the audiobook. he said he’s trying to read things above his thinking level. said he didn’t understand the book but thought i would like it. um, my mom drank more wine and a line of conversation happened between her and my dad and they ended up having a push-up contest and tying with five push ups each. we sat on the couches. i noticed my mom and dad stopped drinking alcohol so i also stopped drinking alcohol. i looked at my phone for a minute and then i looked up and my family seemed to have disappeared. my dad yelled dough mahoney, which is my name, and i walked up stairs and they were sitting in the upstairs living room. dad wanted us all to sit in here, my mom said. we sat in the upstairs living room for probably 30 seconds and then my mom said she was going to bed. i said it’s like an hour past y’all’s usual bedtime, and my dad said he’s been staying up until midnight recently searching craigslist for a pressure washer and then said he was going to bed. i borrowed some floss and said goodnight. i locked the door and vaped heavily and opened twitter. theo posted a video of jordan peterson on joe rogan’s podcast talking about how he went on an all meat diet and then drank apple cider vinegar and couldn’t sleep for 25 days. i searched jordan peterson on youtube and watched two minutes of a compilation video of jordan peterson explaining why he refuses to call people by their proper pronouns. no further investigation of jordan peterson was required. i read a book about the stock market. i stared at the empty bed directly across from me and decided not to think about it.

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MAMÁ’S MORNING by Moisés R. Delgado

Mamá kept her morning in the bathtub. But why a morning, I once asked, why not instead call her moons a night? Or a waxing? Or why not simply call them moons? Without a moon, mamá said, the night would be dark—my moons are anything but dark. But to be a morning, mamá said, wouldn’t you give anything to be a morning—to even be one panel of light? I wish I could have been more like mamá. I know she prayed the same. When she called me her cielo we both knew which sky she meant. On what would be her last time replacing the night’s moon with one from her morning, mamá said light still travels even after the star has passed. I wanted to say we only see light because we are distant. I wanted to say what of those who are close. Do they see light—does light ever linger? But I kept silent this once and, as if it had never been removed, I helped mamá lift one of her mornings into the night.   

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LOW VISIBILITY by Jillian Luft

We’re in a blizzard, the sheer white of it haloing our Nissan Maxima as we careen across the northeast interstate, miles and miles away from the tropical green swelter of our backyard, the cicada buzz of Florida. Starting somewhere in New Jersey, the weather blots out the roads, swallows exit signs, engulfs my parents, younger brother and me in its silent magic. Our burgundy sedan skidding slightly as our mouths open in unison to the light falling soundlessly outside. For the first time in our lives, we feel like the lucky ones. Sole witnesses to a quiet miracle, a record-breaking weather event. This is a real indoor thrill ride, an attraction the likes of Mickey Mouse and company have never seen. Stay off the roads, the voice within the radio warns. Black ice and low visibility. And that poetic caution just encourages us further. As we pass rest areas and off-ramps, a collective thrill electrifies our innards. We’re probably the only car on the road, my mother brags. Mom’s body, nearly healthy, can now journey distances. Untethered from her bed and hospital rooms, she craves the foreign frozen white she’d once seen as a child. And now it falls endlessly. A gift.

The warm air streaming through the vents smells like burnt Doritos. I layer the tiny worlds of pop songs playing on the radio over the large natural one zooming by outside and everything seems to matter more. I press my face against the window, the cool against my cheek as close as I’ve come to touching snow. I don’t even need to, I think. This is enough. My family and I cozy in our puffy jackets, the nylon squealing with our every breath, the vast and beautiful emptiness of the landscape moving past us, the vastness of this moment. 

This memory I trust because of the comfort it offers--the illusion of a comfortable family, bonded through adventure, united through endearing naivete. It’s everything after the snow melts and the trees disrupt the sky and the mountains choke the horizon and the Man and the Woman and their Boy and their Girl greet us from the front of their smalltown New York home that eludes me, that blurs at the edges like a lucid dream. We meet this family through a sick neighbor of ours, an older woman dying of breast cancer. It is the Man’s mother. Every month or so, the Man and his family fly down to Florida to visit the ailing woman and her husband. When she eventually dies, we get closer to the Man and his family. Well, it’s mostly the Man and Mom that become close, soft murmurs in living rooms, secret jokes exchanged, exaggerated laughter over telephone lines. Illness connects people, I guess. The whiff of death like pheromones. The last name of the Man literally means “fair one.” Synonymous with snow.

It is the Man’s idea that we make the trek up north and explore his roots. Most memories from this vacation are faint but pleasant: day trips to a dairy farm and abattoir, hikes across rocky streams, rollicking down unpaved roads in the center seat of the Man’s big truck, safely wedged between him and Mom while the trees grow taller and thicker, snagging us in their spidery canopy. My dad follows close behind in the Maxima. I catch his face in the rear view but can’t tell what his mouth is doing.

Other memories are visceral reels of film unspooling in my brain. So vivid and surreal that I wonder what’s been erased, replaced and edited and for what narrative purpose. For instance, the boys at the bottom of the hill. We view them from across the road, standing in their makeshift tool shed, the gaping maw of the open garage. The Boy, the eldest of us four, asks them to play. They answer back with spit and cussing and dark curls threatening and rosy mouths sneering. The slightly bigger one wields a hatchet, says he can cut us up. Says his parents aren’t home. Says we better start running. And then, inexplicably, these dark and curly child demons are chasing us through the graveyard that snakes along the Boy and Girl’s property. With hatchet in hand, the bigger one sprints, intent on violence. The smaller one appears to be walking on all fours. My feet scramble over the homes of the buried, the Girl with the name of a poisonous tree pulling at my hand, her golden ponytail fleeing from her neck in panic. We run and run, zigzagging through the names of the dead. I think of the monstrous men from horror movies who chase children with weapons that maim, that slaughter. There’s a fence, wooden rungs just tall enough for us to clamber over. And we do with gelatinous knees and oily palms. The Girl presses on my shoulders, pulls me down onto the icy earth behind a large tree. The Boy and my brother are there too, crouching and speaking loudly with frightened eyes despite the controlled clench of their rounded jaws. The Boy puts his index finger to his lips to calm and soothe us. His hair is spiky blades of grass that do not waver. I think I’m in love. The boys from the garage do not jump over the fence. Their profanity fades, the thud of their sneakers on hallowed earth vanish. Breathless, we head back to the house. Our parents have been there the entire time. Drinking wine and talking about that TV show where everybody knows your name. No one mentions the bone-aching terror we just experienced. We were just playing, we say as we enter the indoor warmth, removing our shoes and gloves, our outerwear. The adults nod dumbly, their glasses empty.

But it is the last night of our trip that plays in eerie soft focus and slow motion, unvarnished by time. The events recounted are impossible to confirm. The Boy has since died and he was the source. The Girl and I nestle in sleeping bags on the Boy’s bedroom floor. My brother rests on the bottom bunk and the Boy perches at the top. The wood creaks beneath our tiny bodies with the ginger movements of the adults downstairs. The smell of pine and flannel mix with the herbal and gamey scents leftover from dinner. Like a miniature sun, the boy’s night light burns, casting us all in slabs of shadow, as he tells us what he saw. His eyes raised to the ceiling, his voice  small and hesitant as if it’s his own weighty confession. I can feel him growing older and wearier as his words grow brighter in the fiery orange light. Each utterance sparks and singes, then quickly turns to ash. Sometimes, I get confused and think I saw what he did, too. My mother and the Man sharing a furtive kiss, mouths briefly touching as the kitchen faucet runs, an undried dish in my mother’s manicured hand. The Man holding my mother’s face like a jewel to the light of the moon through the bay window. Deer meat from the Man’s early morning hunt thawing on the counter. 

No one says anything except the Girl who asks what it means. No one answers her because we already know. Like the graveyard chase, we never speak of this again. I don’t recall sleeping.

On the ride back to Florida, I spy on my mother in the side view mirror. She’s upset because the cassette she bought at the mall is warped and my dad is driving too fast. Her mouth is a firm terracotta. She wears sunglasses and stares straight ahead because there’s nothing left for her to see. Decades later, I find a poem she wrote during this time in her journal. It’s on a random page near the back in careful blue lettering. The first line: “He’s moved your heart again and/the moon casts a shadow/over a grave.” I flashback to that house on the hill bordering the resting place of the dead. I never consider that this poem could be about my father.

The last stanza reads unfinished: “Does he dream your dream?/Are you just a memory?/Only you aren’t what he remembers.” I try to parse each line and insert myself into the shared dream of my mother and the Man. The dream of not being forgotten or misremembered, of time staying sweet and static, the present incapable of defiling the past. I cling to the Boy’s remembrance, his glimpse into this shared dream. I imbue it with vibrant color and detail as if it belonged to me.

My mother ejects her tape, meets my eyes, and limply waves. I raise my hand before skating my fingers along the passenger window, thick clear lines cutting through the mist. The shapes recede as the pane fogs over. Messages unseen.

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INTERVIEW WITH SIMON HAN with Taylor Hickney

Simon Han, an Asian-American writer whose critically acclaimed debut novel, Nights When Nothing Happened, comes out on November 17th, took the time to speak to me about growing up as an immigrant in Plano—a suburb of Dallas, Texas—the racism of the American Dream, his craft decisions, and more. 

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Taylor Hickney: To me this novel is about loneliness, families, the immigrant experience in America and the racism that goes along with it, the facades of the suburbs, and more. Where did the kernel of this story come from? How long did it take you to nurture it until it became what it is today?

Simon Han: Loneliness definitely sparked the novel. I had an image in my head of this child in a crowded room, somehow still alone. From that idea came the characters, the setting, etc. I started it in 2014, so, from beginning to end, it took about six years. I grew a lot during that time and am a different person than I was. I used to think about the characters in a more simplistic or nostalgic way; feeling constrained by the limited fiction that was out there, I didn't think about all the possibilities available to fiction about a Chinese immigrant family. 

 

Taylor Hickney: Do you think you learned through writing it, as well? 

Simon Han: Absolutely. When I write, I poke at the situation and ask, "Why are they doing this?" Why are Liang and Jack not talking to each other as much as, say, Jack and Annabel? Where are the cracks and fissures in the family? Through this process, I was able to deepen the characters, find more of their history as well as create more contradictions among them. It's actually through the drafting that I found the story getting messier, which, I think, was a good sign.

Taylor Hickney: What balance were you trying to strike between mystery and literary fiction?

Simon Han:  I’m interested in building tension and in creating this unsettling atmosphere, but not so much in, say, delivering answers to a mystery. If anything, I want to create more mystery, more questions; and I think that may be a little uncomfortable for some readers, which I understand. If I finish reading a book and feel like it's just solved everything for me, then I stop thinking about it; but I wanted this book to linger. At first, I withheld too much information for the sake of building suspense to drop bombs on the reader, but there was something very artificial about that. In later drafts, I learned to trust the story could stand on its own.

 

Taylor Hickney: What did you do to make sure all of your POVs felt inhabited, especially with the children?

Simon Han: To me, it’s important to be specific about them, to not make the child a stand in for any child, but to give them their unique fears and longings. 

 

Taylor Hickney: How much of Nights was based in your real feelings about Plano, and why do you think it has a particular reputation of insincerity and materialism?

Simon Han: For me, it was about leaning into those contradictions. For example, the suburbs in general exist in the popular imagination as these white picket fence places, but like any one who has spent time in Plano, I know that’s not what it looks like. There's a huge immigrant population, and I didn’t realize as a kid how unique that is, how many stories are there. It's got its unique darknesses, too. There's a collective amnesia that happens. My theory: this is a city that's exploding in population every year, so all these newcomers are changing the narrative and history of the city in good ways, but also in ways can overlook what came before. I'm really interested in what makes Plano a specific place. That's why it was important to me to ultimately set it there, rather than make up any suburb that could be a stand-in for all suburbs. The reality is that like no suburb is truly alike. 

 

Taylor Hickney: In my experience, the West Plano community was the most materialistic, most racist, and the wealthiest; but that is not what Plano represents. Through a job, I met a very diverse group of kids, who went to different district high schools, and learned how limited that one view of Plano is. 

Simon Han: That diversity is complicated to me, too, because of the limitations. Yes, there are, for example, a lot of Asian-Americans in Plano, but many Asian-Americans of a certain socio-economic status. I'm always interested in who's being left behind in these kinds of narratives that hold the most weight in the popular imagination.

Taylor Hickney: Part of what makes this novel special is that it is about the immigrant story. Did you long for Tianjin when you were Jack’s age? 

Simon Han: I think that’s something a lot of immigrants go through, especially children, because it’s when they’re figuring out who they are. I forget my parents had lives before me, you know? They were probably very different people when they were in their 20s, and I think that the family in the novel are sort of coming to terms with the fact that at the end of the day they can't completely know one another, that that's a condition of life.

Taylor Hickney: In what ways do you think the American Dream is harmful and/or racist? Was this in your mind while writing?

Simon Han: It's like a trap. Many people have to have, whether they believe in it or not, some kind of relationship to the American Dream, because that’s the national consciousness. Someone like Liang, the father in the novel, can't locate himself in that idealist story. What happens then? He’s caught in a trap of feeling inferior, comparing himself to others who seem to have figured it out. It’s all tied to racist and toxic capitalist thinking.

 

Taylor Hickney: How do you view writing as a form of protest?

Simon Han: There's a lot of power in a lot of different kinds of writing. With fiction, I'm trying to protest and be political in a way that's not direct but comes through immersion, through sitting with complicated feelings. 

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C by Lisa Lerma Weber

It was another sweltering summer night in our godforsaken little town, the odor of cow dung and hay heavy in the air. My maroon Ford Escort was sitting in a dimly lit corner of the McDonald's parking lot, a bunch of misfits standing around it, trying to figure out what trouble to get into. You and I were lying in the trunk next to a pile of scratched and scuffed skateboards. I turned towards you and smiled. You smiled back. You were always smiling, something I liked about you. We leaned into each other, our lips meeting for a brief moment. There was no tongue involved and you didn't grope me, just gently placed your hand on my hip. We didn't feel any way about each other, didn't need to. We were just high on youth and rebellion. You were probably high on something else, too.         

There was no exchange of awkward words after the kiss. You just gave me that sweet, childish smile of yours before everyone yanked us out of the trunk so we could move on to a party spot hidden in the dark outskirts of town, where only the stars could watch us consume all the beer we could get our misbehaving hands on.

That same summer, you walked to my house in the middle of the night. B and I were sitting on his skateboard, our sweaty backs against the stucco exterior wall of my garage. We quietly talked about everything and nothing, the crickets chirping along with us. Then you appeared out of the darkness, rounding the corner of the deserted street, your eyelids drooping, a crooked smile on your face.

"Dude, where'd you come from? How did you even get here?" B asked.

"I don't know," you said.

The three of us laughed our asses off, high on something or another, the moment perfect in its imperfect splendor. We talked for a while, the words spilling out of our young, urgent mouths. It was about 1:00 in the morning when we all walked down the quiet street and I watched you both continue across the empty dirt lot towards town; B, tall and thin, his shoulders slightly hunched, and you short, your head lowered. I stood there for a while as you became shadows in the distance, then I walked back to my house, picturing you wandering around town, concentrating on the ground in front of you because you were so faded.

Three summers after that night outside my garage, my sister called me at work to tell me the news. I walked out the sliding doors and sat down on a cold concrete bench in front of the store. The sun was too bright, the sound of passing conversations and laughter too loud. I thought about the shy kiss we shared in the trunk of my car. I thought about you wandering the streets in the middle of  the night, not knowing how you ended up at my house. I thought about that mischievous, little boy smile that never seemed to leave your face. Then I cried, people staring at me as the tears and snot fell faster than I could mop them with the sleeve of my dress shirt.

I went back home for the funeral. Afterwards, a bunch of us got together for a house party. We drank and smoked as we shared the details of our post-high school lives. Later in the evening, a few of us gathered and shared memories of you, desperately trying to navigate our collective grief. At one point, B became overwhelmed.

"Fuck, I can't do this," he said as he stormed out of the room.

I was sitting on a medical bed that had been stuffed into the room, probably after it's occupant had passed. S was sitting next to me, our hands touching. When everyone else walked out, he and I turned towards each other and kissed. We made out for a while, our hands all over each other in the darkness, both of us wanting to feel the heat of life, to escape the icy grip of sorrow. 

As night turned into early morning, we all kind of fell apart, drinking until we could no longer stand. I stumbled around a few bodies on the floor towards an open spot on one of the sofas. I fell onto the soft cushions and closed my swollen, red eyes. I thought of your smiling face before slipping into the oblivion of sleep.

I think back to that hot summer night in the McDonald's parking lot; you and I lying in my skateboard filled trunk. If only I'd taken your face in my hands, looked you in the eyes, and told you it would all be ok. But at the time, I was still trying to convince myself of that. I didn't know about the fear and pain that was slowly poisoning you. You hid it so well, your smile like a star in our lonely desert sky.

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RETURN TO PLANET CLOWN by Nathan Hoil

Clowns vomit clown food. Clowns vomit anything dead that they find in the neighbor’s pool. I am looking so sharp I am made out of scissors. I do not remember a happier day. 

The lungs in my stomach are hungry for air but I go back in the house and try not to think about all the dead clowns in my yard. Not even my loved ones love me. 

“You’re too cute,” I say to a clown moments before they light me on fire. 

I always thought I would live to see my own ghost. The horizon is a drug test and the clown gods are dripping their noses all over life’s malfunctioning carnival ride. Two clowns are making out and I don’t like the noises I’m hearing. 

No clowns are clowns on purpose and the yard is lighting squirrels on fire. Crowds of burning squirrels are diving into the neighbor’s pool. I’m sure the world feels foolish for being so dumb.

 
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NOSTALGIA by Timi Sanni

I fumble with my keys and find the odd, crooked one that opens my apartment. Relief instantly douses the fire of anxiety burning through me. At first turn, the door unlocks and opens and I almost fall flat on my face. For a split second, fuzziness fills my mind like a giant wad of cotton. The thought of burglars crosses my mind but is quickly replaced by the overriding smell of onions wafting from the kitchen.

Two people had been robbed in this same building last month and I never fail to lock the door behind me when I come back home from work. But in my euphoria as I hurry into the kitchen, I have left the door ajar.

Aremu is cutting a fish on the chopping board when I enter, wearing the same grey sweater and blue jeans he'd worn the last time he left. He hears my footstep and turns, with that signature smile on his face. I make to throw my hands around him and pull him in for a hug, but he shows me his hands covered in fish blood and kisses me on the cheek instead. Sleeping butterflies rise in my belly and begin to flutter their wings. He pulls away from the kiss and continues chopping.

I expect him to be his usual talkative self, droning on about things he’d seen or done all the time he was away Or even something completely random like the last time he’d come and was droning about fish heads. “Do you know that in the abroad, they do not eat fish heads? They throw them away. I once read it in a book a long time ago, a science-fiction book, what’s its name? err…Arena, but then again, this white man I had lunch with in restaurant in V.I last week brought it all back with his peculiar disgust for fish heads. What a waste! I mean, give it to a Yoruba man and watch him suck the bones clean. And by the way, you really should read…”

But he is quiet tonight. He reaches for a plate in the rack unsuccessfully, the strain visible on his face like a grotesque mask, so I help him. I hand him a plate that had broken over a year ago, exactly one month before mother’s death. An event my superstitious colleague, Biola would later claim to be an omen. The plate is covered in an intricate flower and thorn design. Red and purple and gold and green. My mother was an artist and had designed the plate herself. The last artwork she made before she went to bed one night and her soul deserted her body in the dark, still quiet under the watch of a waning crescent moon. I'd stolen it.

Aremu stirs the soup in the pot so perfectly as though he was a chef, as though the ladle belonged solely within his palm. The bottom of the pot is black from constant use and very much less scrubbing. I do not think much of it now, but later in the night I would reminisce about how two months ago I had thrown this same pot away when it started leaking.

Aremu’s silence is beginning to worry me so I announce that I’m going into the bedroom to change my clothes. I walk out of the kitchen with a jumble of thoughts on my mind. Shouldn’t he be happy to be back? Was he still mad at me over the little issue we had before he left? Or was it something from where he had gone to? Did one of his friends say something bad about me again? I make a mental note to ask him what’s wrong as soon as I finish changing into a casual dress. Better to address the elephant at the table than wait—a mistake I won't make a second time.

I have a quick shower and put on a pair of blue leggings and a black, low-cut top that had "Phenomenal Woman" written on its front. I wear the blouse because it’s Aremu’s favorite. I had worn it the day we first met.

The memories vanish like colors thrown into darkness, I walk back into the kitchen and find it empty. The smell of onions and aroma of boiling soup gone. The plates neatly stacked in the rack and the cooker devoid of a boiling pot of soup.

I run into the living room to see the door ajar, the space in the doorway bearing the scent of loss. My necklace dangles on my neck. I walk towards the door half-praying that the night breathes robbers into the apartment, hoping they walk in, demand my jewelries, hoping they get impatient and let loose a bullet into my body, because to live in a world where Aremu is a wind is to live within the image of death.

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THAT’S MY BOY by Jo Gatford

The cartoon cat hits the cartoon dog over the head with a wooden plank and an angry lump rises from the top of its head. The dog’s face turns red and steam escapes its ears like a whistling kettle. The cartoon cat is frightened. He presses the lump back down with his finger but it returns the moment he lets go. The dog is furious. The kettle blows. The dog chases the cat around and around and around. Frantic music plays. 

We teach our son the word ‘gentle’ by stroking the back of his hand over and over but he still bites our thighs with what we hope is affection. We joke about gauging his height by the teeth marks. We scour baby books for advice but the only two options are: ‘bite him back’ or ‘remove the child, sit him on the floor and ignore him’. It doesn’t say how long for. Biting him back seems the more logical choice but we try the floor trick and he is immediately enraged and tries to bite me again. You watch him do it and read out loud: repeat until the child associates biting with the withdrawal of attention. I have to leave the room before I lose something fundamentally tied to my sanity and our son falls asleep in his own snot, stuck to your chest. We google abandonment issues and separation anxiety and anger management in toddlers and the next day I clamp my teeth around his soft doughnut forearm just tight enough to imagine what it would feel like to press down until my incisors hit bone. His arm is so small my jaws could meet in the middle. His skin tastes like yogurt and sun cream. I blow a raspberry on it and he looks at me like I am the whole entire world. 

The cartoon coyote wants to eat the cartoon bird. The cartoon bird makes a funny noise and runs away. The cartoon coyote chases the cartoon bird. The cartoon bird is either fast and cunning or lucky and dumb. It doesn’t seem to matter. The cartoon coyote falls off a cliff runs into a rock wall painted like a tunnel is blown up by TNT is crushed by an anvil is run over by a train. The cartoon bird makes a funny noise. The coyote is so tired and so hungry and so desperate and there is no other food for miles and miles. He tries to kill himself but always comes back. Look at the silly birdie run.

He grows out of the biting but will always be angry as a person, I think. You roll your eyes and say I wonder where he gets that from, as if the way I slam doors has nothing to do with you. I am pregnant again and wake every morning before four because hormones I guess but also it’s the only time in three years I’ve had time to myself with no one touching me. I watch the cooking channel for two hours even though actual food makes me sick, even though, impossibly, I am always, always starving. My favorites are the things I will never make, like spatchcock chicken and homemade jerk sauce and fish tacos and triple baked cheesecake. Our son comes waddling through around six, all thick and fluffy with sleep. He leans on me, breathing against my belly, and his soaked nappy leaves twin Rorschach patches on our pajamas. He says toons and smacks me with an open fist until I change the channel and I never do learn how to make fennel gratin. 

The cartoon skunk is in love with the cartoon cat to the point of attempted rape. The skunk’s heart is a battering ram beating out of its chest. The cartoon cat is beautiful in her terror. She slithers out of his grip like an eel. The cartoon skunk is a hopeless romantic. Mon cheri. She cannot love him back because she is a cat. But he will not take no for an answer. That’s the joke, folks.

You say not everything has to be about feminism and do I realize how frustrating it is to be told that everything is your fault because of the simple fact you’re a man and how confusing it’s going to be for our son to grow up in a world where the patriarchy is the enemy and I don’t even know how to respond to that without laughing in your face so that’s what I do and it’s one of those arguments that we don’t talk about later but bank for hypothetical divorce purposes. I tell my sister I hope the new baby isn’t a girl because surely it’s easier to change things by raising good boys than having to explain to your daughters how things are and she says did our mother ever tell us how things were or did we just find out, and is that worse or better.

The cartoon cat steps on a rake. The cartoon cat is cut into pieces by a lawnmower. The cartoon cat is scalded with boiling water. The cartoon cat is rolled up inside a hammock like a scroll. The cartoon cat is beaten with a broom. The cartoon cat is pushed through the propeller of a plane. There is no blood. The premise resets. The toddler watches without glee or shock or fear. The baby just likes the colors. The frantic music. The screaming. They both cry when I turn off the television. I cry when it’s on, without sound, behind their soft heads. I remember every episode from when I was just as small but I never remember laughing and when I ask if you ever found any of this funny or terrifying you just say Jesus do you think maybe you’re reading too much into this I mean it never did us any harm did it

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