AFTER A MONTH, WE MEET FOR DINNER by Francine Witte

First thing I notice, new haircut, the grays dyed clean away.

I’m careful with my words. Nice shirt, I finally say.

I’m aware he never dressed this nice for me.  I found it in my closet, he says.

The waitress brings a basket of bread.

You look good, he says.  I can smell the scratches on his neck.  They smell like blood and sex and another woman.

Would you like some bread? I ask.

Cutting down, he says, pointing to his stomach, flatter than I recall.

The waitress returns, and we order small.  Nothing that will take too long.

The bread is piled high in the basket.  The smell is filling up the air between us.  When I look at him again, he has the eyes of a ghost.

My shoulders sink, and I grab a piece of bread.  I bite into it, final and hard, because, frankly, it lets me.

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THE HANDS REMEMBER by Andrea Rinard

I sit on the bench outside Publix. A little boy ran by me in light-up sneakers when I was almost, almost, almost to the door, and suddenly I could hear Caleb’s feet, encased like two meat loaves in the shoes I got him before he started K-3, drumming against the cart. He was so careful not to kick me after that one time–Don’t hurt Mommy! 

I’d had to let go of the cart and sit down because everything was narrowing down to a tunnel with Caleb at the other end. I tried to count my breaths, and I told Tom to just go, just go, and he didn’t ask what the trigger was. He just went through the sliding doors into the grocery store.

I hold the memory the way Caleb’s chubby fingers would grip the handle of the cart, my fingers closed around themselves like a puzzle. Caleb used to crack himself up, asking for silly things for dinner. I want toilet paper to eat! I’ll eat it all! And he’d cackle and I’d laugh and we’d putter around the store, doing the things that only the two of us in the whole world do, but now I’m doing the breathing stuff Dr. B’s been working on with me. 

In. Out. In. Out. Feel your lungs expand. I can’t go in the store. Can’t. Can’t. Can’t. Tom says won’t, but it’s not that. It’s just a word, but it’s a word that he’s pushing around with the cart right now, filling it with meals that he’ll prepare, and I won’t eat, and I can feel his rage from where I’m sitting. I have no room for anger, though. The despair is too big and too heavy. There’s no space for anything else.

It’s been three months, he’d said. Fifteen weeks and two days, I’d said, and his jaw did that thing that was new like so many other things that were new since Caleb left. Died, Dr. B’s voice shoves me, but I whisper left. I don’t like the vocabulary I’m asked to use—words like trigger, mindfulness, ruminative coping, adaptive grieving, and bereavement pathways--so I don’t. So stubborn. That’s new too.

Something nudges my ankle, and I look down. There’s a collarless little dog sitting by my right foot, a brown terrier mutt. It looks like Toto but brown and not quite like Toto after all.  It’s looking up at me, and I recognize him immediately. If I hadn’t been looking, I wouldn’t have seen him. Caleb, I whisper, and the little dog wags his tail and lets me stretch my hands around his warm belly and lift him to my lap where he perches like a toddler.

There’s a fat tick under his left eye like a gray teardrop, and I pinch it off. All that stuff about matches and tweezers is unnecessary. You just have to know what to do, and my hands remember. Like holding a newborn with its head like a giant flower on a narrow stem or rubbing a sweaty back just right after a nightmare or cutting a sandwich into two perfect, crustless triangles. It’s been fifteen weeks and two days since they’ve had work to do, but my hands remember. As the dog and I gaze into each other’s eyes, I know he remembers too. Caleb.

Tom doesn’t know how to say no to me anymore, so the three of us go home together. Tom calls it a mutt, but Dr. B calls it an affirmation of life, so I win. She suggests so, so, so gently that I find a different name, a name that will represent this new chapter in your story, but it’s Caleb, and I don’t even care how Tom winces every time I call him to me. I don’t care that the house echoes with his anger. It’s just a dog! But I know what’s real.

He makes me choose after twenty-seven weeks and four days, and it’s not a choice. I don’t even need Dr. B anymore. Caleb and I sit on the couch together while Tom packs a bag. I’ll be at my parents’ until I find my own place. I’ll get the rest of my stuff after I figure out what I’m doing. I feel bad for him, but I already know what I’m doing. I gather Caleb up in my arms, and he doesn’t even wiggle much as I hold him tight against my breasts and rock back and forth, enjoying the silence with my little boy.

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MARKS by Monica Dickson

‘The phantom scribbler strikes again’ – Biro on gloss, 1976

The cubicle door is freshly scarred, blue ink on institutional green. This is where John learns to read. John has been constipated since he started school. His mother takes him to the doctor and they send him to hospital where he drinks barium, so they can see what’s wrong with his insides. They let him take the x-ray home. There it is, a white cloud shaped like a question mark.

 

‘Fuck exams’ Compass on wooden desk, 1981

John could do better if only he would apply himself. John is of a higher ability than his results indicate. John is not giving his ‘all’, which is a pity. John should attempt to have a more open and positive attitude instead of fostering a negative and often critical outlook. John’s success in the 11-plus requires sustained effort and full commitment, and success only comes at a price. A rather more respectful attitude to those in authority might benefit John in the future. John has a flair for the written word. 

 

‘When two tribes go to war’ – Black permanent marker on red bus shelter, 1984

John’s mother has left John’s dad and has started going on CND marches. The shelter where John smokes is directly outside the church hall where John once went to playgroup. Play was curling up on a camp bed, under an army blanket, pretending to be asleep. Now John pretends to read the bus timetable as he makes his marks. He notices the sticker on the bin that says Keep Britain Tidy. Somebody has tried to burn a hole in the bin, and the melted plastic has hardened and curled into a black tidal wave. 

‘Neither work nor leisure’ - Matt white masonry paint on viaduct, 1990 (‘heaven’ style)

John has been signing on for two years. He is told that he has to take Action For Employment. He turns up at the dole centre every day and writes stories about job-seeking for job-seekers with a ‘positive outlook’. Sometimes they print them, unabridged, in the A4E newsletter. When they are not arguing, he and his mate, Dave, an unemployed photographer, wander round the city centre talking to other unemployed people and taking pictures of buildings where employed people work. Back at his bedsit, John practises writing upside down and right to left. One night, when the tracks are quiet, John hangs over the side of the bridge. His message drips onto the empty road below. 

‘More than words’ – Cursive on mashed potato (Shepherd’s pie), 1993

John has cooked the tea. Dave has gone off to Uni to study photography and his was-girlfriend, Sal, has moved in with John. Sal is having his baby so John and Sal are trying to get to know each other, sober. Sal is an artist too. She makes work from found objects and creates installations. John studies the signs next to her exhibits and tries to make sense of them. Sal heaves herself and her materials around the studio, repositioning, taking things away, making tiny, important adjustments to what she is trying to say.

 

‘This family is fake’ - High performance acrylic paint in red on exterior wall of 3-bed semi, 1997

Solvent Dave 

MET:

Practical Sal 

AT: 

Dave’s graduation

TO: 

Act like they’re happy 

HE SAID:

I’ve got the time if you’ve got the inclination

SHE SAID:

What could possibly go wrong

SO THEY:

Bought a Barratt Home near a primary school (Good with Outstanding Features)

AND THE WORLD SAID:

Can you blame them?

 

‘The habitable biosphere is illegal’Black spray paint on permissive path, 2001

John cycles along the canal, where the water is fringed with a cappuccino-like froth. He brings his daughter, Jess, to school this way and she stops to look at the heron, the kingfisher, the fly-tipping, with equal awe.  They see another sign, upright on the towpath. Beneath the tags, the local authority typeface warns, ‘Defacing this notice can result in prosecution’. 

‘Dirtier than an MP’s expenses’ - reverse graffiti on white van rear, 2009

John has moved on and John is stuck. He is tired, all the time. John knows that the wrong is outside of him, that x-rays and tests will show nothing. He drives to work. He drives home again. He listens to the news then uses his flair for the written word to sign online petitions and argue with strangers on BBM. Jess kisses his cheek, calls him ‘armchair activist’ and ‘dickhead’. John could do better if only he would apply himself. 

‘Life not death for my grand-kids’red, eco-friendly chalk spray on stone cladding, 2019 (stencil type)

John and Jess make cardboard banners while her baby sleeps. They work quickly, using throw up and blockbuster lettering, simple, like the children’s messages: There is no planet B. Denial is not a policy. John studies their signs, and the words of the children, with equal awe. One, in particular, sticks. I could be learning history but I’d rather be changing it. John is giving it his all.

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THE CLOCKMAKER by Lucy Zhang

Far away—further than the deli store only frequented by the patrolling police officer and a few custodians, further than the farm with three cows and a horse and several chickens guarded from preying hawks by a fishing line ceiling, further than the white oak tree and its branches striking outward, and certainly much further than the borders of the city—is a cottage. Planks of wood bar the windows shut; mold creeps across the brick walls; pipes wind down from the roof to the ground, and the sound of water dripping on metal beats steadily to the murmurs of wind against loose shutters.

Don’t go there, it’s dangerous, parents tell their children. The parents think the basement must be full of human limbs hiding in coffins, cleaned and dusted daily, the work of a madman. They think the cobwebs are part of the madman’s machinations–to prevent anyone from looking further and seeing the incongruous gleam of a lab of bodies, the sanitized Erlenmeyer flasks, the flame of a Bunsen burner, the yellow glow of liquid metal held in a crucible. The parents think their children will vanish should they take one step towards the cottage, bodies never surfaced, and the adults will be forced to live on silently, listening to the rhythm of the morning forecast and traffic jam, holding their breath when the newscaster mentions a child kidnapping off the streets of their city, grinding their teeth at night when they dream of their shame–the shame of losing a child to a reason they can’t put into words. So they live silently. 

Among the children, a few know the truth: the cottage houses a clockmaker.  

The clockmaker cuts and sands the teeth of his own gears from wood that he later stains and seals to shield them from the years to come. He knows the escapement wheel must be cut perfectly, or else the clock might skip teeth, might not run, and time stops for someone. 

One day, a girl ends up at his door. He is assembling his clock with dowels, adjusting the escape wheel until the pallets ticked and tocked against the teeth without seizing up when he hears the knocks. He pulls open the door, a creaking monstrosity he prefers to keep shut. The girl asks for a job. She says she wants to learn to build a clock so she can gift one to her family for the holidays. 

They don’t already have a clock? he asks.

Only one in their bedroom. None in the kitchen, even though there is plenty of space on the wall beside the parrot ceramic tiles and free grocery store calendar. 

You’ll have to walk all the way here every day in the cold, he warns. The tips of the girl’s ears are bright red, and he wonders if she can feel her feet in those perforated fabric sneakers meant to let feet “breathe.” But the girl stands in front of him, head over her shoulders, the top of her shoulders over her hips, unwavering in her posture despite the wind cutting across her back. He admires her resolve and finds himself unable to say no. Not after years of living alone, secluding himself with his craft, immune to the city’s noise.

Making clocks here is dangerous work, he tells her on the first day. Everything needs to be handled with precision, or else your clock won’t function.

The girl nods as she begins to draw two concentric circles on the Alder wood sheet with the stub of a pencil, his only pencil. He no longer needs to sketch, the pattern now ingrained in muscle memory. He watches her lift the tip of graphite again as she marks off lines with a protractor every thirty degrees, connects the intersection points for the teeth, attempts to correct the uneven line of a tooth when her grip falters, sharpens the edge, cleans the line again so there’d be no confusion over which line to follow when slicing through the wood. The teeth need to be the same size, he tells her as she begins to saw through wood. It takes ten tries—ten abandoned wheels—before the girl gets it right.

When they take breaks to wash their hands of wood dust or stretch their backs and necks hunched over more often than not, they sip Lipton Black Tea out of Styrofoam cups while eating graham crackers, the sole snack in his cabinets. The girl speaks little but listens to him with an unfamiliar attentiveness—the kind where people don’t quite make eye contact, but look up at you with wonder, and somehow they forget that their leg is bobbing up and down or that their tea has gotten cold—and he feels flattered. He tells her how he has long forgotten how he came to stay at this cottage, how he sells clocks to ghosts lost in their time, how he saves souls from wandering and waiting when the pendulum halts, how he has not aged in years. In turn, she tells him of how she would cook chicken stew with more potatoes than chicken because russet potatoes are filling and cheap, how at eight pm she’d reheat up the stew for exactly two minutes in the microwave so the food would be warm when her parents came home, how she’d eat the leftovers the next day when she realized her parents did not return home on time and must’ve gotten a takeout meal instead. She tells him of the one time she could not find her stuffed rhinoceros and later discovered it suffocating in a trash bag left outside the door for Goodwill, so she rescued her rhino and rubbed its soft body against her cheek and nuzzled her nose against its stomach, which smelled of cotton and old shoes, before returning it to her bedside so it could sleep.

The girl finishes the clock early spring as a belated Christmas present to her parents. Flowers blossom on the once barren trees, the mold on the walls that once looked black lightens to green, and the cottage no longer appears haunted, but rather like a place where children get spirited away by faeries. She holds the clock under her arm, gripping the bottom edge until the whites of her knuckles contrast her pale skin. Good luck, the man tells the girl, wondering if he’ll see her again. 

To his surprise, the girl returns the next day with the clock. It stopped working, she says. He looks at the clock. The second-hand makes its way around the center in one quiet sweep movement; the minute hand adjusts itself forward. The girl follows his glance. It wasn’t working a few hours ago at home. 

Then we’ll just have to make another one, the man says without noticing pollen drift from the clock’s frame onto his finger. It is always winter to him. 

In the city, where the days are a bit longer now and cherry blossoms bloom along the apartment sidewalks, a family disassembles a bed and places it into a cardboard moving box for Goodwill to pick up. They briefly wonder how the stuffed rhino made its way back to the bedroom before placing it into a Glad trash bag of children’s dresses and sweaters. It has been almost two years since their daughter went missing and the mother and father know better than most how time heals many wounds, but not all. It has been one month since the police reported their discovery of a girl’s body, dead from hypothermia. It has been one day since they could no longer silently listen to the morning forecast, the sizzle of eggs against oil, the carols of robins roaming the streets for food. The family thinks of moving far away—to leave it all behind. 

In the cottage, a man and a girl build clocks. When winter returns, they sip hot Lipton Black tea and tell the same stories to each other, as though the season never dies off only for another to follow in its demise, as though time has never passed. Because it hasn’t. Not for them. 


Lucy Zhang is a writer masquerading around as a software engineer. She watches anime and sleeps in on weekends like a normal human being. Recent publications include: Porridge, Ligeia, Ghost Parachute, Twist in Time, MoonPark Review. She can be found at https://kowaretasekai.wordpress.com/ or on Twitter @Dango_Ramen.

 

Art by Bob Schofield @anothertower

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THE CLOCKMAKER by Lucy Zhang

Far away—further than the deli store only frequented by the patrolling police officer and a few custodians, further than the farm with three cows and a horse and several chickens guarded from preying hawks by a fishing line ceiling, further than the white oak tree and its branches striking outward, and certainly much further than the borders of the city—is a cottage. Planks of wood bar the windows shut; mold creeps across the brick walls; pipes wind down from the roof to the ground, and the sound of water dripping on metal beats steadily to the murmurs of wind against loose shutters.

Don’t go there, it’s dangerous, parents tell their children. The parents think the basement must be full of human limbs hiding in coffins, cleaned and dusted daily, the work of a madman. They think the cobwebs are part of the madman’s machinations–to prevent anyone from looking further and seeing the incongruous gleam of a lab of bodies, the sanitized Erlenmeyer flasks, the flame of a Bunsen burner, the yellow glow of liquid metal held in a crucible. The parents think their children will vanish should they take one step towards the cottage, bodies never surfaced, and the adults will be forced to live on silently, listening to the rhythm of the morning forecast and traffic jam, holding their breath when the newscaster mentions a child kidnapping off the streets of their city, grinding their teeth at night when they dream of their shame–the shame of losing a child to a reason they can’t put into words. So they live silently. 

Among the children, a few know the truth: the cottage houses a clockmaker.  

The clockmaker cuts and sands the teeth of his own gears from wood that he later stains and seals to shield them from the years to come. He knows the escapement wheel must be cut perfectly, or else the clock might skip teeth, might not run, and time stops for someone. 

One day, a girl ends up at his door. He is assembling his clock with dowels, adjusting the escape wheel until the pallets ticked and tocked against the teeth without seizing up when he hears the knocks. He pulls open the door, a creaking monstrosity he prefers to keep shut. The girl asks for a job. She says she wants to learn to build a clock so she can gift one to her family for the holidays. 

They don’t already have a clock? he asks.

Only one in their bedroom. None in the kitchen, even though there is plenty of space on the wall beside the parrot ceramic tiles and free grocery store calendar. 

You’ll have to walk all the way here every day in the cold, he warns. The tips of the girl’s ears are bright red, and he wonders if she can feel her feet in those perforated fabric sneakers meant to let feet “breathe.” But the girl stands in front of him, head over her shoulders, the top of her shoulders over her hips, unwavering in her posture despite the wind cutting across her back. He admires her resolve and finds himself unable to say no. Not after years of living alone, secluding himself with his craft, immune to the city’s noise.

Making clocks here is dangerous work, he tells her on the first day. Everything needs to be handled with precision, or else your clock won’t function.

The girl nods as she begins to draw two concentric circles on the Alder wood sheet with the stub of a pencil, his only pencil. He no longer needs to sketch, the pattern now ingrained in muscle memory. He watches her lift the tip of graphite again as she marks off lines with a protractor every thirty degrees, connects the intersection points for the teeth, attempts to correct the uneven line of a tooth when her grip falters, sharpens the edge, cleans the line again so there’d be no confusion over which line to follow when slicing through the wood. The teeth need to be the same size, he tells her as she begins to saw through wood. It takes ten tries—ten abandoned wheels—before the girl gets it right.

When they take breaks to wash their hands of wood dust or stretch their backs and necks hunched over more often than not, they sip Lipton Black Tea out of Styrofoam cups while eating graham crackers, the sole snack in his cabinets. The girl speaks little but listens to him with an unfamiliar attentiveness—the kind where people don’t quite make eye contact, but look up at you with wonder, and somehow they forget that their leg is bobbing up and down or that their tea has gotten cold—and he feels flattered. He tells her how he has long forgotten how he came to stay at this cottage, how he sells clocks to ghosts lost in their time, how he saves souls from wandering and waiting when the pendulum halts, how he has not aged in years. In turn, she tells him of how she would cook chicken stew with more potatoes than chicken because russet potatoes are filling and cheap, how at eight pm she’d reheat up the stew for exactly two minutes in the microwave so the food would be warm when her parents came home, how she’d eat the leftovers the next day when she realized her parents did not return home on time and must’ve gotten a takeout meal instead. She tells him of the one time she could not find her stuffed rhinoceros and later discovered it suffocating in a trash bag left outside the door for Goodwill, so she rescued her rhino and rubbed its soft body against her cheek and nuzzled her nose against its stomach, which smelled of cotton and old shoes, before returning it to her bedside so it could sleep.

The girl finishes the clock early spring as a belated Christmas present to her parents. Flowers blossom on the once barren trees, the mold on the walls that once looked black lightens to green, and the cottage no longer appears haunted, but rather like a place where children get spirited away by faeries. She holds the clock under her arm, gripping the bottom edge until the whites of her knuckles contrast her pale skin. Good luck, the man tells the girl, wondering if he’ll see her again. 

To his surprise, the girl returns the next day with the clock. It stopped working, she says. He looks at the clock. The second-hand makes its way around the center in one quiet sweep movement; the minute hand adjusts itself forward. The girl follows his glance. It wasn’t working a few hours ago at home. 

Then we’ll just have to make another one, the man says without noticing pollen drift from the clock’s frame onto his finger. It is always winter to him. 

In the city, where the days are a bit longer now and cherry blossoms bloom along the apartment sidewalks, a family disassembles a bed and places it into a cardboard moving box for Goodwill to pick up. They briefly wonder how the stuffed rhino made its way back to the bedroom before placing it into a Glad trash bag of children’s dresses and sweaters. It has been almost two years since their daughter went missing and the mother and father know better than most how time heals many wounds, but not all. It has been one month since the police reported their discovery of a girl’s body, dead from hypothermia. It has been one day since they could no longer silently listen to the morning forecast, the sizzle of eggs against oil, the carols of robins roaming the streets for food. The family thinks of moving far away—to leave it all behind. 

In the cottage, a man and a girl build clocks. When winter returns, they sip hot Lipton Black tea and tell the same stories to each other, as though the season never dies off only for another to follow in its demise, as though time has never passed. Because it hasn’t. Not for them. 

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LITTLE KNIFE by Candace Hartsuyker

Finger 

Deep in the bowels of the circus tent, the air is sage and sweetgrass. A bundle of snapdragon pods lie on the table, faces like skulls. The hermaphrodite gives me tea laced with rum in a teacup that has no handle. His index finger taps the cards, tell me what I already know. I am a girl who will live many lives.

Body

A man with a gap in his teeth, a gold hoop glinting in his ear. A thin, dirty hand. Every day a lemon. A yellow rind sharp as the sun. My lips puckering at the bitterness. In exchange, my handkerchief. My hand. The underside of my arm, skin goose pimpled. The inside of my thigh. My lips. My body.

Ribs

A gray lemon, the last he gives me. Shriveled flesh. A hard seed clicking against my teeth. He has already taken me, claimed me as his own. The whores discover me. They notice my eye first, its purple color one they know well. Then my ribs, bruised and broken. I am taken in to recover and then to work. Not for sex, but to clean and cook. I comb hair, breathe in the sweetness lying under the harsh scent of salt and slickness. I learn to ignore the men who drop their trousers, who shiver with anticipation, hard muscles brushing soft skin.

Legs

One of the whores. She had a name, once. A name I knew well. Her neck strangled by a rope of hair. Sideways in the gutter. The smell of piss and blood. Bodice torn. Her legs caked and raw. 

The lemon man. His voice. If you run away, this is what you will become.

Hair

The circus tent. The hermaphrodite. Green coppers laid over his shut eyes. They are glad he is dead. I do not cry, do not tell them of his long-ago gift. He twisted my hair into a bun. I remember cool air on the nape of my neck. A pin for my hair. I didn’t know what it was then, but I know now. He gave me a knife.

Throat

A stranger. Who are you? You must find yourself a new name.

My name, I say sharply, is mine. The circus had a woman who with a flick of her wrist could drop a sword down the passage of her throat. There was no blood, no puncture wounds. A man who wants to rename me is not even worth one of her blades.

If you will not go with me, then you will burn.

I know what I am. A girl with multiple lives is a witch: this is my last. The circus tent flaps with tattered edges. The crowd presses thick. A knife is tucked between my breasts and pulled out like a rose. I bow.

They want bloodshed. They want something they have never seen before. They will get it. The knife is my lover; I am its vessel. A gentle caress. A sound softer than a feather falling. I will make them watch as I devour myself.

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A NOTE TO YOKO OGAWA by Michael Farfel

a note to Yoko Ogawa,

I think that others might say you make key lime pie like all other confections. You pick the fruit—found in trees and sometimes pockets—and you open it and line it up and chop. It takes patience, of course, to form the pastry dough and fold it out and fill it up. 

I found a recipe, in the back pages of your books, a sort of misdirection in the language and the wording. A few drops of this, a subtle push and an open door. A room revealed. A kitchen and a stove. The fruit is there and a table and a chair. And with caring, and with time, the pie reveals itself.

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BEACH HOUSE by Jenny Stalter

Our house faces neither east nor west and sits in shadow. The tiny green house with the too much wicker. The tinted glass dishes full of seashells and tapestries accented with smooth beach glass. Oil paintings of seagulls. Mom really went for the beach look. Most people acquire a life over a lifetime, but it’s like she stopped in 1986. Stopped making a home, stopped making herself. The house smells like sour sweat and coconut rum. Mom, drunk on the couch as a permanent fixture, her robe hanging off the sofa, mouth open. I place a pillow under her head and some water and aspirin on the coffee table. 

Rum stains map a torment of constellations on the carpet. I used to move furniture to hide them but there are too many now. To navigate the living room I step on the stains one at a time, like stamping out bad memories. When I was younger I delighted in listening to the conch shell that sat on our coffee table. I wanted to hear the ocean. Now every detail of this house feels like being swept out to sea. 

I meet Danielle in English class. We’re the only girls wearing fishnets and Docs. She passes me a note with a colored pencil drawing of a munched-up apple that says HARD CORE.

Danielle is the first girl I ever kiss. When we finally fuck she is like an anchor. Danielle works part time as a lifeguard at the Y, which means she wears a whistle. It gives her a distinct air of authority that really gets me going. She’s the one in charge, like, if I’m running too fast, she can blow her whistle and make me stop. Or if I am drowning right there in my living room, she can jump in and save me. I tell her about my fondness for the whistle, how I feel like my life, my mom, my house are swallowing me like the sea, and she is the lifeguard. After I tell her this, when we fuck, if she is ready for me to come, she blows the whistle hard.

We’re laying on my bed smoking a blunt and drinking wine. Mom is gone or drunk, the TV is going in the living room. Daytime talk shows.

“Do I fuck more like a cowboy or a bronco?” I ask her.

“I think maybe like a bronco” she says.

“On a scale of one to ten, rate me.”

“I thought we were using a mammalian rating system?” She laughs.

“It’s numerical now. Rate me one to ten.” 

She kisses me. After a minute and a pull off the wine bottle she says, “If I could tell you how to fall in love, I would tell you to hold back enough so you don’t let people take pieces of you. You’re too eager to give it all away.”

I hate that she sees me so clearly. She knows what my crass mother and shadow house have made me. I wonder what exactly I’m giving away. Probably my heart. That’s what people say about love. And I do love her.

“What do you think we are, inside our bodies? Souls? Life force? Like what even is any of that?” she asks, blowing smoke rings.

I think of grocery store meat. Blood-red hunks of shrink-wrapped muscle that once moved beasts around. What’s left when life leaves. The thought makes me feel more connected to Danielle, like we are the same. The hunk of muscle that is my heart moves my blood. She has one too, and it pumps her blood and moves her body. We move and talk and fuck and play because our hearts are shrink-wrapped inside us. But my other heart, the other kind people talk about, is not inside me anymore. It exists outside, like grocery store meat, and Danielle takes it with her every time she leaves. 

But I forget about all of it when she slides her hand up my skirt. Sex with Danielle is like listening to the conch shell in my living room. I never heard the ocean. I hear my own space cupped back to me, an echo reinforcing myself. In these tight moments with her, my life is not a fearsome abyss about to swallow me up. It is a woman stripping herself of her jewels—beach glass rubbed smooth, her seashell teeth, making herself naked. And it’s all left for me like gifts on the shore.

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SUBFLOOR by Jason Fox

Your refrigerator is yawning. It spills an egg-yellow rectangle on the floor. A ticking clock somewhere beyond. Then the fridge door closes and seals itself with a magnetic kiss. Plum dawn darkness washes in. You barefoot-shuffle through a current of cold air. Past your trash can and over some spilled coffee grounds that stick to your feet.

It starts in this good morning darkness. First, a warmth coming from below the floorboards. Not possible. This carriage house, which is more a renovated barn, was built in 1880. It has only earth beneath the floors. No basement, no crawl space, just a few inches of air above raw dirt.

Still, you imagine something like ashy coals buried in the dirt. Or a sliver of the sun broken off during an eclipse and warming the wood from below.

A few steps further and you feel the wood has begun to buckle. Uneven planks rising and falling. It’s warm when you press your hand to the undulating planks. You get on your knees, lower your face to a gap between planks, and sniff. Mildew and moth eggs. A dampness that reminds you of sheep.

The nail on Scott’s right index finger is gone. He’d brought over a crowbar and toolbox thirty minutes after you’d called. His wide nail bed indented like a peach’s gently sunken contour.

He taps the floorboards and listens. I’d like to see for myself what’s below.

You rub the floor with your thumb and tell him, There can’t be much more than dirt, and the warmth feels a little good.

Feels good, sure. But the wood’s unwell. Can’t fix what I don’t understand.

He lowers his head, palpates the warm wood planks like the floor’s an injured horse. You think he looks like the type of man who might heal horses. Let them nibble to health on his fingers. Eat away his nails for the keratin. Lick salt from his skin.

His eyes are still closed as a garbage truck rumbles into the alley outside your window, grabbing trash bins with pneumatic arms and shaking them upside down into its thrashing hopper. The noise fades into the distance and you know he’s listening for something below and that you shouldn’t speak, but you say, How would you do it?

 Two hours later, he’s pulled up a six-foot by three-foot rectangle of planks.

Your hands are sore and tingling with small abrasions from helping him claw out dirt. Enough to pile up a chair-sized mound in the corner of your living room. He passes you a hammer, and the cool heft of it soothes your aching hands. Nail them down right where I’ve marked. Hard.

He crawls in with a flashlight against his chest. As you’re placing the boards on top of him, he tells you, And keep an eye on my tool box, I’ll need it when I get out.

How will I know when that’s gonna be?

I’ll knock five times in a row, like this. And he taps his flashlight five times against the warm wood.

You worry that a few of the nails felt like they’d sunk into flesh on the other side, but Scott doesn’t yelp or even remark, so you continue to cover him with the planks.

You sit for a long time looking at the uneven patch of wood. It feels good to know that a man with a missing fingernail is breathing the damp air beneath your floor.

After twenty-four hours, you ask Scott if he needs anything. He taps once, which, you presume, means nothing. You lay your head where you think his chest probably is and feel the warmth of the wood turn your ear cherry red.

Three weeks pass and the wood continues to warp. Eventually there’s a gap big enough to peer into. Scott’s right eye blinks in the dirty dark. You ask how it’s going and he doesn’t respond. Are you learning anything about the wood? A single knock from below.

You remind yourself that he’ll knock five times when he’s ready.

Over the next few months, a cold wind pulls all the leaves to the ground. The trees become a guttural growl, a loud jutting out of earth. They move through the sky, picking up bits of color, remembering cats that clung to their limbs by tiny claws.

You let a strong eggnog drip down to Scott at Christmas. He must get a little drunk because over the next several nights you hear something like a giggle rise from below.

In February your aunt dies. Then you get soft and wet with the flu. Your fever gets so high that you dream you’re an empanada without even closing your eyes. Feverish, naked, and confused by grief, you camp out on top of Scott in a pile of scratchy wool blankets. Although he says nothing, the floor feels good. It’s the warmth of a spring meadow where you’re shielded from the breeze by tall grasses all around you. The sun brushes warm nickels against your eyelids as a fluorescent orange lion licks at the back of your mind.

The ground below you hums with insects and reptiles and a breathing through the grasses. The ground knocks five times and you caress it. It knocks five times again and warm vibrations spill into your chest, stirring a current of cool, damp air that had settled in your legs.

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CHEATER by Norris Eppes

I go there to ask why I go there. I go there to pick up trash from the sand. In the sand, I draw a heart with my toe. My initial. My wife’s initial. The initial of our shared last name. Then, I make two footprints beside it and let the incoming tide bury my feet. 

An elderly couple walks toward me along the hard sand. I do not want to talk. 

They stop and talk.  

“We are from near the Austrian border.” 

The man moves his cigar from right hand to left so we can shake. My hand is wet and sloppy from digging for sand fleas. 

I show them how I find the little things. When the wave draws back toward the ocean, the two antennae of the sand flea holds water and I dig my hand and scoop a cup of sand and feel the crustaceans tickle-critter into my palm. I pinch and fling away the sand like some god shrinking the world. 

I extend my palm for the German couple to examine. The sand flea is the size of a jelly-bean. It tucks into the nook between my ring finger and middle finger. 

“Sand fly?” the man questions my name for them. 

The woman speaks to him in German. 

“Sand flea.” 

“You are not American,” he says. 

“I live here,” I say. 

“No,” he says, “American,” then mimes that he’s casting the line from a fishing rod. 

“It is warm enough to swim here year round?” his wife asks. 

I respond in tour guide fashion—yes, I only wear a wetsuit three months out of the year and I wear shorts the other nine. 

The woman speaks to the man in German, and the English word “shorts” is in there—which I suddenly remember means underwear in Europe. 

They say “goodbye” very formally and walk north, back to the campground and their RV. 

I find, on the beach, an empty bag of bait-shrimp filled with shrimp juice. I find the grey plastic cone of some travel-sized deodorant. I find one black velcro flip-flop. I find thoughts of the beautiful Spanish woman, eight months pregnant, who played footsies with me under the conference room table today. I was scared when her toe touched my toe. How could fear and adrenaline possibly transmit such a jolt through the toe of a leather office shoe? 

I liked it. 

As I turn and slow-step up the beach toward the boardwalk, I find the silhouette of the condos, which I know precisely from hours in the water with their outline as my lineup. 

But the silhouette is wrong. An owl? 

No, an osprey. Or, a pelican. 

The bird’s tufted ears turn, head on a swivel. We observe one another. 

An owl. It hops forward, plummets, and spreads its wings — which are about the size of a pelican’s. It flaps silent to the south, silent because the ends of its primary and secondary feathers have comb-like structures on their ends, and the feathers spread apart in flight, allowing silence.

I trudge after it through the sand, which is silky, cool, slipping through my toes. But I abandon the effort. It’s too dark to see the owl again anyway, and I need to find a trash can for this stuff. 

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