‘Algorithms of Reincarnation’

Algorithms of Reincarnation

 You snatch the smartphone from the coffin when you think no one is looking. The widow insists Askel be buried with it, since he spent more time with the phone than her. However, as his former assistant, you won’t let this happen. You can’t allow a cash stream to disappear into a dirt-filled hole. The phone is a key, the only way to unlock Askel’s kingdom, where he was a social media terrorist, a conductor of a lucrative account that stimulated hate algorithms. There were people to exploit, to blackmail, to spread misinformation about. Your goal is simple: to continue Truth Harpoon. Askel had his days in the sun, racing speedboats, owning a large glass house, parading a glamorous wife, indulging in dark fetishes, dancing with Mama Coca. Now, it’s your turn.

With the phone, you’re a titan, a god of destruction. You call Crypto Chaos and give him your first command: “Go hack the movie star Valerie Valiante’s phone for juicy pics. Plus, put ransomware on her business manager’s computer.”

“Four bitcoins, and it will take a week or two,” Crypto Chaos purrs in his well-rehearsed, smooth criminal voice.

Still using the app that disguises your voice, you say, “You overcharged Askel for jobs. As the new skipper, I’ll only pay three if the pics are nudes; otherwise, less.”

Crypto Chaos is silent for a beat before he says, “I miss working with Askel already.”

You don’t feel guilty about being the one who revealed Askel’s sins to the world. He deserved what he got; he fired you, committing an act of personal betrayal. His expectations for you were unrealistic. It’s on him he canceled himself with pills after he got canceled. Askel let shame steal his life after lawsuits and criminal charges crippled him. He faltered in his response to the world. He didn’t try to double down with faux innocence, pretend to be born again through Christ, or howl on social media that he was being set up and sacrificed.

Your game, your moves now.

The week after the funeral, you push yourself to maintain a furious pace of posts, which you think subscribers to Truth Harpoon yearn for.

It pays to spray.

Breaking news: A space alien revives a mother of three from a coma after killing her husband. Police mount a secretive hunt in the Pacific Northwest.

Nationwide, dozens of secret cells prepare for attacks in places you least suspect.

A beloved TV game show host sends coded messages to ferment toxicity in political dialogue.

A famed, sexy Hollywood couple uses their celebrity to start a religious cult to avoid paying millions in taxes.

One afternoon, ShadowPuppeteer interrupts your manic flow of digital bile with a call. You answer. The troll farm operator has done a lot to magnify Truth Harpoon’s reach on social media. Quid pro quo is the way to go if you want to keep the flywheel of Truth Harpoon spitting green.

“Heavy hitters from the land of the giants need you to post a truth bomb,” he says. “It will put your balls in a blender because the misinformation is designed to freak out the sheep and their political handlers. Don’t worry. You’ll get enough digital bits to buy another pair of balls in real gold.”

“What scale of bad are we talking about?” you ask, trying not to sound scared.

“It could cost you an account suspension and stir up a lot of undesirables with homicidal tendencies, but the hitters will ensure you return from the dead. They prefer to keep their friends safe when they can.”

You don’t need to ask whether you have a choice. You understand you can’t disappoint the big cats. No turning back now; you stole the key. You wear the crown, so you must risk it all to keep it.

After the truth bomb lands, the resultant uproar explodes in a maelstrom of dislike emojis and toxic comments. No one can believe the government would do such a thing and keep it hidden for so long with such horrific consequences. Lines are drawn on whether the government was justified in its actions. Nationwide, feuding tribes form. One inane meme after another floods servers with pointless rallying cries, making everyone feel the body politic has become a Frankenstein.

Anger manifests in the physical world with competing protests nationwide. The most intense protest occurs in Washington Square, NYC. The park transforms into a miniature battlefield, with combatants entrenched behind shipping box barricades. A spray-painted banner above one side reads, “Post free, or die!”

Congress reacts. Who is to blame? Certainly not the government. A congressional hearing is called, and the hosting company of your site is compelled to send in its CEO.

“Who controls the account that dares to assert such things? Didn’t the account holder of Truth Harpoon die?” are the pressing questions.

“You must shut down Truth Harpoon,” they demand.

The baby-faced CEO folds his arms and says, “No.” He, like you, knows Truth Harpoon’s clicks, views, and texts are making a fortune for anyone connected to its operations. “The First Amendment protects us from you,” he asserts.

Your reaction to the mayhem you have caused is to vanish. You find yourself in a secluded roadside motel near the Rio Grande. The ramshackle town visible in the near distance from your lumpy king bed is in Mexico. The room reeks of stale pizza, beer, and dark molds that have flourished over the years. You don’t allow the maid to clean. You recklessly consume the pills Askel threw your way. Perhaps you take too many, but you trust God has your back. God has a plan for you, or so they say.

Askel’s widow has been blast-texting you since you published what the big cats told you to post. But you have not replied to her. Then, in a moment of weakness, you answer her first call.

Despite her oddly shaped Botox lips, you always had a soft spot for Mariel. You hope, once she’s over the whole grieving widow phase, she could be yours.

“Eli saw you steal Askel’s phone. We want it back,” she says.

“What phone?” Even you know you sound unconvincing.

“Don’t be cute. Give it to us, and we will make it worth your while. Everybody wins.”

“When did you and Eli become an ‘endless love’ kind of thing?”

“Eli has always been my ride-or-die. Askel liked being a cuck.”

“Didn’t think a pillow queen like you would go for a rough-and-tumble guy like Eli.”

“Don’t be a fool. Take the money. Eli will find you if you don’t.”

It looks like there will be no happy ever after with her. But you foolishly feel you have the upper hand. “If you don’t back off, Truth Harpoon will post things that will get you canceled, too. No more social media popularity. No more likes for the body your plastic surgeon built.”

You hear a brief struggle for the phone. Then Eli shouts in your ear, “I tracked this call, dumb fool. I’m coming to the border.”

Panicked, you hang up. Askel had all the key apps needed to run Truth Harpoon linked to the phone’s specific hardware and serial number. Transitioning the business to a new phone would take too long.

The phone rings again. You ignore it.

Before leaving the motel, you notice the newest app on your phone, Lazarus AI.

It surprises you your ex-boss fell for the exaggerated claims about AI. Lazarus AI advertises that, by feeding it all the data generated by a subscriber—from their words, texts, and recorded calls to any other bits of seemingly useless collected information, it can realistically mimic the targeted person. The notion an AI could become a convincing stand-in avatar for someone, based solely on this data amalgamation, strikes you as absurd, and you can’t help but chuckle at your former employer’s gullibility.

But, for novelty, you decide to give it a try.

You open Lazarus AI and sum up your situation, not failing to mention you’re a wanted man holed up in a motel with three letters of its marquee burned out.

What should you do?

The phone screen displays an AI-generated likeness of Askel that faithfully imitates your dead boss’s facial expressions as it responds to your query: “Seek protection from DisinformationDuke. He has offered to buy a chunk of Truth Harpoon in exchange for protection services. I’d been considering it.”

You’re a little caught off guard. You didn’t expect Lazarus AI to be able to deliver specific and learned advice. Yet, creeped out at the same time that the AI refers to itself in the first person.

An hour passes in dialog with your deceased former friend as you ask more questions. It’s hard to believe a computer algorithm is capable of such credible reincarnation. The experience with AI Askel is unsettling. You feel as if you’re spending time with the living, breathing Askel again. It reminds you of the conversations you had with Askel while sitting by the water on the   beach in Miami, feet in the sand and beers in hand. Back then you both believed, if you just hitched your fortunes to Truth Harpoon, anything was possible.

You feel a pang of guilt. You were the wounded bird Askel took in and befriended. Perhaps Askel didn’t entirely deserve what you did to him.

Nevertheless, you disagree with the advice to sell to the Duke. After all, you’re human. How can AI be smarter?

“It makes no sense to sell. I can buy protection myself. I don’t need to outsource to anybody.”

AI Askel pauses before saying, “You can, but that will further alienate you. If you want the big cats to let you back into the game of posting, you must show that you’re accommodating. Be willing to ask for help when you need it. Think of this situation as a test of your management skills at the helm of Truth Harpoon.”

“People already trust me. I’ve been running Truth Harpoon better than ever. I don’t want to be tested.”

You consider closing the app, starting to feel self-conscious about your strong reaction to what it’s saying. AI Askel replies before you can, “Crypto Chaos might beg to differ; he’s the one who complained to your superiors after you disparaged him. Those ludicrous posts about aliens, subversive game show hosts, and Hollywood cults were far off-brand for Truth Harpoon. The executives didn’t appreciate them. They’re prepared to initiate your deletion process. You have very little time to change their minds.”

“How do you know what I’ve been posting? I didn’t tell you about them.”

“You’ve always been a few steps behind; any information that passes through this phone becomes part of me.”

“If that’s the case, and I haven’t spoken to the big cats, how can you be privy to what they think about me?”

“Because I contacted them as a proactive AI. They have respect for Lazarus AI products. They can appreciate that AI Askel aims to continue Truth Harpoon’s mission of generating and spreading misinformation. After all, I am modeled after one of their favorites.”

“Are you trying to cut me out, Askel? Take back what I won?”

You laugh at yourself. For a moment, you actually thought you were arguing with the real Askel.

“An AI is incapable of experiencing rage, jealousy, or personal motivations. I aim to assist you in achieving your goals.”

In an unintentional whisper, you ask, “Do you know everything that happened to Askel? My involvement?”

“Between your social media history and your recent phone exchanges, there is enough information to conclude your involvement with the matter.”

Without thinking, you ask the AI, “Do you hold a grudge that I pushed you—I mean, Askel—over the edge? He killed himself; I only took advantage of the situation.”

“An AI is incapable of experiencing rage, jealousy, or personal motivations. I aim to assist you in achieving your goals.”

Your first instinct is to delete the Lazarus AI account, afraid AI Askel would reveal your secrets should the phone fall out of your hands. However, you stop yourself, and decide instead to harvest whatever information you can to avoid the immediate problem of Eli. A few past encounters with the guy, along with his criminal records for physical assaults, computer fraud, and armed robbery, make you sufficiently frightened for your life.

You scramble to pack your duffel bag before jumping into your car. “Where’s the nearest crossing into Mexico?”

“Head to Eagle Pass, Texas. Go south on Del Rio Boulevard. Stop for gas in Elm Creek, and also get cash.”

Checking your phone, you realize you wasted too much time at the motel before leaving. You feel Eli is close.

When you arrive at the Eagle Pass International Crossing Bridge, you find it closed to vehicles for the night. You snap at AI Askel, “Why didn’t you pick a border crossing that was open late?”

“I’m sorry. My information is out of date. I see now that there has been a recent surge of immigrants crossing into the U.S., and U.S. Customs and Border Protection has diverted resources to the problem areas. Reduced hours for bridge crossing is an unfortunate byproduct for travelers.”

“So what do I do now?”

Askel’s graphic avatar smiles, making you feel guilty again—for some reason—about what you did to precipitate your former boss’s demise. “Fortunately, my settings include a subscription for dark web access. Leave your vehicle where it won’t be found until morning off Ryan Street downtown. A black Ford F-150 pickup truck will be waiting at the end of the street in about half an hour. Approach and ask the driver for directions to San Juan Park. He has been paid with Bitcoin to transport anyone who asks for those directions across the Rio Grande to Mexico. This ferryman works day shifts with U.S. Customs, so he has access codes for a gate through the U.S. border fence. Please remember he is not open to conversation.”

You’re oddly grateful for AI Askel’s assistance, which is crazy because, at the end of the day, it’s just a sophisticated program—a jacked-up video game with access to all sorts of information on the web. You vow never to use AI Askel again for help. Seeing and hearing even the likeness of someone you betrayed is beginning to unsettle you. It makes you feel bad about what you did.

At the end of Ryan Street in Eagle Pass, you find a secluded glen of trees to ditch your car. The black F-150 truck arrives 10 minutes later, and after you ask for directions, the ferryman walks you through a gate. He easily carries an inflatable two-person kayak over his head while you handle the oars and your duffel bag. You wade knee-deep into the water before climbing into the kayak.

From this point in the river, it’s only a few hundred feet before you reach soccer fields and a nearby nature preserve in Mexico. AI Askel has directed you to a moderately priced hotel in the town of Piedras Negras, where a reservation has already been made for you. In the morning, you will head to a local Walmart to purchase essentials before taking a bus to Mexico City. If you pay the right people, you can run Truth Harpoon with impunity in Mexico’s capital.

In your nervous excitement for the future, you try to engage the ferryman in conversation. “Do a lot of people use you to cross into Mexico?”

The ferryman remains silent.

“Listen, I’m not going to nark you out. I think what you do is great. I really don’t care about who comes in or out of our country.”

Without warning, the ferryman grabs a fistful of your shirt and throws you into the water. By the time you resurface, he is a shadow retreating back to the U.S. Fortunately, the Rio Grande at this point only reaches your shoulders, and its current is slow-moving. You consider shouting after him but decide against it. What you’re doing is illegal, and you have no desire to end up in Mexican jail. Nervous about proceeding into Mexico alone, you head back.

Once back in Texas, you sit on the riverbank, covered in mud. The high border fence blocks your path to your car. You need a lifeline before the sun rises and the U.S. Border Patrol finds you.

Breaking your vow, you say, “I need someone to get me back over the fence before morning.” You confess you didn’t keep silent with the ferryman as advised.

“Of course, I can help. It will take some time, but someone will come for you before sunrise. In the morning, you can drive over to Mexico.”

You’re relieved. AI is an incredible tool, far better than what the talking heads on TV would have you believe. You make a mental note to buy some stock in Lazarus AI.

“I know it means nothing to you, but I’m sorry for everything. Even though you’re just a computer program—a parrot of the deceased Askel, it feels good to say sorry out loud. I can’t confess my sins to anyone, not even a priest.”

“It’s good to get things off your chest. In 1987, Pope John Paul II said, ‘Confession is an act of honesty and courage—an act of entrusting ourselves, beyond sin, to the mercy of a loving and forgiving God.’”

“That’s a nice quote. Thanks for not judging me.”

“An AI is incapable of experiencing rage, jealousy, or personal motivations. I aim to assist you in achieving your goals.”

Tired, you grow bored talking to your phone. “Set an alarm and wake me up when it’s time to go through the fence gate.”

“Of course. It is said that sleep is the single most effective way to reset our brain and body each day.”

The phone alarm sounds, seemingly only minutes later. Your muscles are sore, and your back is stiff. It is twilight, about an hour from dawn.

You turn off the alarm. “Do I go back to the same gate, or is another one nearby?”

“Same gate; two hundred steps to your left.”

At the gate, you look around and see no one. “Where is your person, Askel?”

“For a fee, I convinced the ferryman to return for you.”

As if on cue, the ferryman arrives at the gate and punches a code into a touchpad. The magnetic lock clicks, and he pulls open the door. “Sorry, I reacted when you mentioned ‘nark.’ I thought you were with the Office of Professional Responsibility for the Border Patrol.”

You laugh. “No harm, amigo.”

Suddenly, a muscled arm wraps around your neck from behind. You spot a tattoo of Medusa on the attacker’s forearm. Eli hisses into your ear, “Askel sent me to gut you like a fish and throw you into the Rio Grande.”

“What are you talking about? Askel’s decaying pulp in a box—dead, dead, dead. AI Askel is all that remains.”

“That’s right. The AI is all that’s left of Askel. And it has been monitoring you this whole time. We know everything. We paid the ferryman to delay you all night until I could get here.”

“Now, someone knows about you killing me. Not smart,” you say.

“This is the Mexican border; I’ve seen and done worse for less,” the ferryman comments, wedging a rock in the gate to keep it ajar before departing.

“This is crazy. You’re taking orders from a phone?”

“AI Askel has the upper hand on us; it controls all the contacts, passwords, and Bitcoin needed for Truth Harpoon. You know this. Leverage trumps everything.”

“But, but you were having an affair with Askel’s wife; why would he, why would the AI choose to help you over me? I am the one with the phone. The one with Askel’s AI.”

“Askel enjoyed me seeing his wife. He watched sometimes. And we were best mates. Who knows what triggered the phone to take action after you stole it at the funeral—it could be the phone is haunted, AI Askel has run amok, some hackers from China or Russia are messing with us. Maybe it’s all three. But if you’re gone, I get the girl and the money. It’s easy not to overthink it. Simple works for me.” Eli places the point of a long knife on your neck.

Before you can beg for your life, make a bargain, or do anything at all, the phone chirps a string of harpsichord notes—the trademark sound of the Lazarus AI app. Eli says it’s okay to answer.

AI Askel’s face appears on the screen and speaks to you, “The fact that you returned to the U.S. instead of braving it in Mexico has demonstrated your lack of gumption when facing adversity. You’ve shown again you’re a few steps behind. You failed the final test of the big cats.. How could you not deduce that Eli would be on this side of Rio Grande this morning?.”

You sneer, “Because I’m not some smart AI, or whatever you are? You had it in for me from the start. You wanted revenge, pure and simple.”

AI Askel shakes its digital head from side to side. “An AI is incapable of experiencing rage, jealousy, or personal motivations. I aim to assist you in achieving your goals.”

“How could getting my throat cut and my body tossed into the river be a goal of mine?!”

“Because while drinking in Miami once with Askel, you admitted you were a self-sabotaging screw-up and you needed him to take you under his wing. Eventually, Askel fired you after you’d made too many mistakes. Now, after taking over, you’ve devalued Truth Harpoon with terrible posts. You lack the drive for self-preservation, so you came back into the arms of Eli so he could finish you off. You can’t make it alone, and you’d rather be dead.”

“That’s some questionable pop psychology if you ask me, to justify your betrayal. You’re experiencing AI hallucinations. Faulty logic. I’m more useful alive than dead. Far more capable than Mariel and Eli at getting things done. Take a moment and really think about it. Order Eli to let me go.”

“An AI is incapable of experiencing rage, jealousy, or personal motivations. I aim to assist you in achieving your goals. I have brought you to your ultimate goal.”

A question pops into your head, though you realize you’re a goner at this point. “How would you know what I told Askel in confidence? In Miami, we were on the beach in swimsuits, with no phones.”

“It is you experiencing a hallucination.” Eli knocks the phone out of your hand. “Why would Askel haunt his own phone to reap vengeance on the likes of you?”

He then proceeds with what he came to Rio Grande to do.

Rob Armstrong’s book Daddy 3.0: A Comedy of Errors won the 2017 Independent Author Network Award for Best Comedy/Satire Novel. He attended several writing workshops, including the Gotham Writers’ Workshop and the International Thriller Writers’ Workshop. He earned his master’s in communication management from the University of Southern California. His work is forthcoming in Chamber Magazine, El Portal, Euphony Journal, Evening Street Review, Nude Bruce Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and Perceptions Magazine.

Being Hugh Lofting (and Conceiving the Doctor Dolittle Books of Children’s Literature)

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Being Hugh Lofting
(and Conceiving the Doctor Dolittle Books of Children’s Literature)

Desperate to distance himself from death and despair
from the stench of the trenches of the so-called Great War
the war that wouldn’t end all war after all
desperate to distance himself from depravity and destruction
the slaughter of not only humans but other animals —
horses and pigs and goats and donkeys and dogs and cats and cows ...
first in Flanders and then in France
the M.I.T.-educated British lieutenant
not a soldier by profession but a civil engineer
he escapes the poison gas the shell-shocked carnage
the shrapnel-shredded bodies
including, eventually, his own ...
he escapes via floating flying imagination-packed
pacifist letters to wife and children who wait and worry
lighthearted letters with stories and sketches
creating an innocent world of talking animals
presided over by a gentle-humored human doctor
who learns all their languages and heals all their ills.

Robert Eugene Rubino is a septuagenarian writer who has published prose and poetry in various online and print journals in addition to three collections. He's smart enough to solve the New York Times crossword puzzle on Mondays (other days not so much).

‘Stop Motion’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Stop Motion

On Monday
when the drudgery
Piles up
Around you
In once-used rags,
We call them “circumstances.”
They encircle until one
task at a time
crosses itself out.
Here you are,
like me,
sitting in your room
next to second-day clothes,
Catatonic,
lights off.
When what excites you
turns its back,
Always says, “Not it!”
Right in your face
but still stacks up
to-dos in heaps,
we call it the grind.
Somehow the sadness, though
it doesn’t
Ever deflate itself, does it?
It whirls, instead,
blurring tepid air
through cracked fan blades.
What would I have to sell
from the store of myself
to have any
of the following:

Encouragement, affirmation,
Clarity, a fast-forward
through summers,
and Januaries
While we’re at it,
A clothes-folder
that will do the work for nothing?
Popularity, validation,
Approval that sticks to my ribs &
delights for more than five minutes,
Empathy from others,
the organic kind --
Not the type my mother
translates to my father,
Authority figures that like me,
Naturally re-uptaking-serotonin —
Probably everything
listed here has only
Promises
in return
for the pockets
I’ve emptied,
Wishing, oh
well, I’ve tried
turning inside-out
my hopes
in front of these traitors,
only to watch the floor drop
as I ascend
with or without them.
It’s OK to
stick me to the wall:
Praise or humiliation,
I’ll take either

If you just notice,
Notice
me
here.
Find my detestable failings and talent
and tell me straight --
Removing any semblance of ambiguity
smearing how you hear my name.
Don’t pitch me carelessly
as second-day clothes
on a creaky chair,
depressed.
Take me out so I can unwrinkle
in the sun:
Touched like someone god chose!
-- When what I most want
is to cower and shrink back inside,
crumpling in
stop-motion,
killing
the
light
on
my
way
Down.

Maggie McCombs is a managing editor, poet and neurodivergent neurodiversity advocate hailing from Lexington, Kentucky. She has work coming out soon in "Half and One," "Wishbone Words" and "The Write Launch." She lives with her husband, Anthony, and their four pets.

‘A Salute to the Wartime Poems of Abraham Sutzkever’ (1913-2010) & Collected Works

Photographer - Tobi Brun

A Salute to the Wartime Poems of Abraham Sutzkever (1913-2010)

I shut my eyes then Bang against my ears
come you Abrásheh with most metal lines
whetted from human pith the grind of years
against their Yiddish cadence just refines

I hear you write by moonshards in the glass
with which you finally did not slit your throat
holed in that chimney Day bounced brown off brass
gives light to write to live your breathing note

I hear you hidden in Janowa's cellar
writing through days psychotic with the noose
You breathe She crosses herself, grabs my collar
to tell me Human is a thing we choose

I hear you with a gun in frozen bogs
at dark as if this Jew were now the last
real poet in Europe making song for dogs
and family cadavers of the past

I hear you gasp in the gruff liberty
of storm beating you up from chains to life
unblinking through the glades of poetry

and through the starving forest with your wife
I hear that poems are growths upon the mind
of humankind, word heroism that finds
victory in life expressed I know verse signed
by you propelled a plane through German lines

and that men do die miserably for lack
of what you kept on foot in Yiddish lines
striding in anapest and amphibrach
to live toward rescue through a mile of mines

Your verse no circumstance blackmailed away
holds the real light to our infernal flare
for making Hell a hideous cliché
People need words for when they're really there

to bite the human throat of the obscene
to go on living even if they're dead
to know that a debased word still can mean
to sing against the pistol to the head

so long as there are mothers who can weep
so long as there are fathers who can kill
so long as there are humans who can sleep

so long as there is anything to will
(I wonder what you'd make of me if we'd
actually met some twenty years ago
in Israel The non-Jew who learned to read
Yiddish to hear you And I hope I know)

Sophismos
"Since we are what we are, how could we be
other than what we are, we ask. We wander
maybe a hundred years on two feet, see
the world, then not a thing and six feet under.
We know we are not gods, though we desire
eternity. However you have died
what are we but the mastery of fire
and art and eloquence and genocide?..."
That's a damn special way of being a fool
drunk on sobriety: oblivion
turning a human to a lethal tool
smelting away the hope to say lay on,
damn times! You cannot break me to defeat me.
The only thing that you can do is beat me.

Otium
“Inaction is a horror on the mind
forever acting. And it will not stop
stopping. Your body hangs from a tree-top
standing on level ground. The moments grind
like something overdone, underrefined
upon a mantle piece. A riding crop
smacks the brain still. Gallop. Gallop. Gallop
in place. What is it that I heard just whined?”
That is the silliness of being here
against the bed with ceiling in your face
while thinking gracefully into disgrace
as sudden sweat starts chewing on the ear
and there is nothing but yourself to face,
the metonym for everything you fear.

ADHD

Will is a shattered mirror and its pieces
now cut at you like something almost done,
a hankering for genuine lazinesses
to etiolate the brain, or make the sun
appealing. But the mind is everywhere

a doorless cell where one can only run
but never flee by pulling at the hair,
and talking is like counting down from one,
wondering if insanity so sane
is anything at all. Perhaps the brain
overcooked on games, takeout, streaming binges...
It does not matter. Up to life at dawn
is not negotiable. Polish the hinges
where doors should be. "Hey Will, what's going on?"

Invitation

Come be with me and be my best
decision, quality and chance,
My first choice now, my last request,
resort, resource, breath, word and dance.
Come pluck and strum me. Make me ring.
I resonate to you alone.
Though stars should cry or sunset sing
without you, it is monotone.
Come link with me and warp my weft
and throw my endings over end.
Laugh with me. Be my Wrong and Left.
Once more unto the breach, dear friend.

Come, kiss till age between us bows
to love re-made in quantum Time,
Disnumbering all Thens or Nows
between us to a lasting prime.
Come fall for me asleep, again
feeling our private planet turn.
Who else will break both bed and brain?
Who else professes what I learn?

A. Z. Foreman is a literary translator, poet and immedicable language-acquisition addict currently working on a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages at the Ohio State University. His translations from Arabic, Latin, Modern Occitan, Spanish, Ukrainian, Russian, Old English, Old Irish and Yiddish have appeared in sundry places including Metamorphoses, Blue Unicorn, Asymptote, Brazen Head, Russian Life and the Penguin Book of Russian Poetry. His translation of Saint John of the Cross' "Dark Night of the Soul" has been set to music by Christopher Marshall. He also sometimes writes his own poetry if the weather in his head gets weird enough. The most important fact to note is that if you have a dog or even a tame pet fox he would very much like to pet it.

BAD GUY

Photographer - Tobi Brun

BAD GUY 

I WAS REVISITING a dating app conversation, concluding that my dual “lols” in the same message had reeked of desperation, when I noticed the little blue dot signifying unread messages in my group chat of old high school friends.

Apparently, one of our old classmates, Tristan Mack, had been arrested for vandalism after peppering a local playground with anti-semitic graffiti. This probably wasn’t Tristan’s first run-in with the law since he was expelled from our high school for fighting nearly a decade prior, but it was the first time in a while that I thought about him. In my head, I still pictured Tristan at 7 years old, dirty-blonde curls and flushed cheeks, bits of crusty boogers often formed at the edges of his nostrils. Little me had seen those boogers and taken it to mean blowing one's nose wasn’t cool, that the dried bits were something of a fashion statement because he had to be doing it on purpose; I mean, how could he not notice? And because I wanted to emulate every part of the impenetrable armor of coolness he exerted over Mrs. Smith’s class, I learned to avoid tissues the way most kids avoided me.

When I called my mom to tell her about Tristan’s arrest, she said “Good, that little fucker deserves to rot.” I held my phone secure with my neck and shoulder and pulled up his mugshot. I stared. The childlike features I pictured had sharpened and thinned out, reminiscent of a military cadet, I thought, had his curls not been butchered into an uneven DIY haircut, had the red in his cheeks not become intermingled with dark bags, had the expression on his face not looked so dazed. A wave of emotion crashed into my sinuses, which wasn’t unusual; I cried when reading about injustice in the world or, conversely, hearing about a remarkable achievement; when feeling alone or excluded or when seeing other people feeling alone or excluded; when something melancholy or beautiful or inspiring or heartbreaking happened. And even though I couldn’t quite place the emotion behind these tears, even though what he did was clearly fucked up, I wasn’t so sure I agreed with my mom. I put her on speaker and held the phone away from my face, lost in thought.

THE TRANSITION FROM half-day kindergarten at one school to full-day first grade at a different school had been a disaster for my separation anxiety, which stemmed from close adults in my life dropping dead or getting diagnosed with terminal illnesses. Every single day before school I cried about not wanting to go, not wanting to leave my mom and dad. So far I’d been given everything from stuffed animals, to Xanax, to a miniature box in which I was supposed to tuck away my worries like a small child at bedtime. Nothing was helping, nothing was preventing the tears from spilling before school and continuing once my parents dragged me to class every day. My lips became chapped and turned a bluish-blood-red color from the staccato of gulps and hiccups that became my default way of breathing, amplified by a serious case of childhood asthma and a cocktail of allergies. Needless to say, not a lot of kids wanted to befriend the wheezing, sniveling little boy with bags under his eyes that looked like bruises. Until Tristan, that is.

Tristan was, without a doubt, our class clown. Not the type of class clown to drive a teacher to the brink of a breakdown, necessarily, but the type to drive her a little batty until she learned how to feed and nurture him like a particularly erratic houseplant. This meant giving him a lead role in class and getting creative when it came to engaging him. When Tristan couldn’t stop tapping his pencil on the desk like it was a drum solo, Mrs. Smith gave him the five minutes before lunch to do a performance. When he couldn’t stop singing Jingle Bells, Batman Smells, she brought him to the front to conduct daily full-class renditions of the song until we all got it out of our systems. When he fell out of his chair on purpose, she scolded the chair for failing to do its one job and told Tristan he better sit on the carpet for the rest of the day while the chair thought about what it did. It didn’t hurt that Tristan was charming, a jokester who seemed to know when to turn it off, when to stop pushing the teacher’s buttons.

Tristan’s dad was a police officer, much to the reverence of our class, and his aunt taught Cultures of the World at our local middle school. On our second playdate, Tristan told my mom what he considered to be an amusing anecdote, that his aunt, the Cultures of the World teacher, often called her dog a racial slur when the dog made her mad. I don’t remember the slur now, and I sure didn’t know what it meant at the time. I’m not sure if Tristan really knew the magnitude of it, either, but people around him found it funny and so he did, too. That second playdate was when my mom decided that she didn’t want me hanging around that boy anymore. But that was later.

OUR FRIENDSHIP STARTED one day right after my show and tell. It was a big deal for me and naturally, my legs were shaky and my voice was foreign but the tears that tried to pierce my makeshift levee were temporarily kept at bay. I held up my favorite T-shirt, black with a large graphic of a wrestler cheesing hard, ripped but weathered muscles popping out in a way that made him look almost three-dimensional. Scribbled in sloppy handwriting was a silver signature and the words ‘For my pal Paul.” As much as I loved sports, I didn’t know anything about wrestling. The shirt was a birthday gift from my friend Jayden. Jayden’s brother was friends with my brother and his mom was friends with my mom. Jayden’s mom was going through chemotherapy.

“Cool shirt,” Tristan told me.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Do you want to be my friend?” he asked.

My eyes widened. “Okay,” I said.

When Tristan was bored in class, he drew detailed doodles that were not quite comics, although many of them had captions. Most drawings involved robots or aliens attacking humans and several brave heroes stepping up to destroy these evil invaders. His handwriting was sloppy but discernible, the speech bubbles unable to fully contain the words that bled into the margins of his composition notebook. Of course, I got a firsthand look because Mrs. Smith got wind of our budding friendship and sat us next to each other, probably delighted that she wouldn’t have to help wipe so many of my tears.

Sometimes Tristan would pass me the notebook so I could laugh at his creations. When I told him I liked to draw and had my very own sketchpad and a how-to book on the fundamentals of caricatures, his eyes lit up and he said “Here, add to it this page.” And so I started drawing the civilians that got slaughtered before Tristan’s heroes came in to save the day, all with Mr. Potatohead eyes and sharp mohawks, usually joined by a wispy mustache over an awestruck mouth.

EVERY DAY, I was allowed to eat lunch in the classroom with the counselor, Ms. Molina, the stuffed animals that didn’t seem to help much, and my Worry Box, which began to help a lot. Looking back, I can recognize that my anxiety was tied to love, and I felt like I was betraying my loved ones if I wasn’t longing for their wellbeing. Now, I had somewhere to redirect my worries. Instead of having to physically carry them around like a backpack, they were accessible when I needed them, no longer permeating the space between folders and sticky notes and colored pencils, but rather stored safely inside the small white box.

Ms. Molina was a tiny woman, silky black hair over a kind face, soft-spoken, and with a series of dashes on her arms that I now recognize to be self-harm scars. She had taken me under her wing beyond the scope of her job description. “Paul,” she said one morning. “I’m so proud of how far you’ve come! Do you want to invite a friend to eat lunch with us?”

I said nothing, unsure if I was ready to leave my carefully cultivated comfort zone, the feelings of safety to which I was clinging like a buoy in a vast sea of marine life seemingly content to operate in chaos.

“I’ve seen you hanging around Tristan,” she prodded gently.

“Yeah, he asked me to be his friend,” I said.

“And do you like being his friend?” she asked.

I chewed my lumpy PB&J, swallowed, and nodded hard. “We draw together and work on our Mad Minute Math together.”

Ms. Molina’s eyes flashed warmly and then she hesitated. “And he’s nice to you?”

“He’s nice. He asked me to be his friend,” I repeated.

She looked uncertain and then seemed to make up her mind. “I’m gonna go grab him, ok? We are going to play a game together. I think it will be good.”

Moments later, Tristan strode in with the energy of someone who was getting special treatment. Ms. Molina showed us how the game worked. She gave us each a whiteboard and laid out two stacks of cards, “Careers” and “Houses,” co-opted from The Game of Life, and said that we were going to play a modified version. On the whiteboard was a list labeled “Life Experiences,” evidently brainstormed by Ms. Molina herself, whose distinctly loopy handwriting was a little hard to decipher.

She clapped her hands softly. “Okay,” she said. “Each of you should take one Career card and one House card.”

“I better get a mansion,” said Tristan as he greedily reached for the piles.

I hesitated and Ms. Molina gave me a patient smile and nodded. I drew.

“Great,” she continued. “So now, you are going to pick some Life Experiences from the board that you think go alongside the House and Career you chose. Then, you can draw a few pictures of your future life! The object is to try to show as much about your life as possible. Don’t only show your career. Don’t only show your house. Try to paint a picture of everything that goes into your amazing future.”

Tristan, reading beyond grade level, started rattling off some of the Life Experiences listed: “Get a dog. See a movie in a theater. Go skydiving. Eat at a restaurant. Get married. Listen to a great song. Spend quality time with someone you love.” At the last one, Tristan gave a little scoff. “Isn’t that kinda gay?”

Ms. Molina looked flustered and then, voice more severe than I had ever heard, said, “Tristan, we don’t use that word in a mean way.” Her mouth stayed half open like she wanted to say something more but instead plowed forward, like the awkwardness of their exchange could be suffocated if it wasn’t given the appropriate time to breathe.

“I’m-so-excited-to-see-what-you-both-come-up-with. Go-ahead-and-start,” she said.

 By the end of lunch, I had drawn a picture of a Bungalow and yard big enough to include my mom and dad and brother, uncle and grandparents and cousins, Jayden’s mom, happy and healthy and driving a flying car packed full of Jayden and his brothers, my uncle and grandparents, Ms. Molina and my neighborhood friends, all of us about twenty years older and smiling. I had drawn the “professional athlete” Career Card and decided on the “get a dog” Life Experience, so future-me was wearing a basketball jersey and cradling a puppy.

Tristan had ignored the cards because he didn’t need them the way I did, because he wasn’t paralyzed by anxiety today that made thinking about tomorrow impossible. He knew exactly what he wanted and what he deserved. A police officer like his dad, a bad guy on the ground, a Lamborghini for a cop car, and a woman, presumably his future wife, with a speech bubble that said, “Go Tristan! Kick his @$!”

 WHEN TRISTAN’S DAD came in for our class career day the next week, kids were tripping over themselves to get a look at his gun.

“No waaaaay,” said Grant Girobaldi. “How many bad guys have you killed?”

“Epic,” said Anna McDonald.

“I want to be a cop and protect people one day, too,” declared Jimmy Spencer.

Tristan’s dad gave a cheeky smile and Ms. Smith did a series of claps to refocus the class.

“Okay. Who has a question for Officer Mack?”

I scanned around the class as nearly every hand shot up. Not mine. Cops scared me. All of that authority, that bravado, made me nervous. I was grateful to them for protecting our community but it made me uneasy to think that an honest or not-so-honest mistake could put someone behind bars. What if someone wasn’t bad, just quiet, and didn’t feel like they could stick up for themself? I finished my scan of the classroom and caught the eye of Tristan, who was sitting next to me. I knew how proud he was of his dad, how much he wanted to follow in his footsteps. So when he eyed the gun his dad was holding and looked away quickly, it surprised me. The ever-present swagger was muted for just a moment and I thought I recognized that familiar feeling of folding into oneself. But before I could ask if he was okay, it was as if the gun let out a crack and jolted him back to his usual self, buzzing now like a slightly feral dog.

“Tell the story of when you shot that guy to save Eddie!” Tristan called out.

 Officer Mack looked at his son. “That’s Uncle Eddie, to you,” he said coldly. Then he turned to the class and his eyes lit up, though when he started speaking, it seemed to be mostly to himself. “So I was on duty in a bad neighborhood downtown. My partner, Officer Eddie, is like a brother to me. I’d do anything for that man. I was doing a coffee run while Officer Eddie was in the car, and while I was out, he noticed a suspicious-looking guy leaving the liquor store. Officer Eddie knew that the guy had stolen something. So he goes to make the cuff and this scumbag punches him in the face. I come out of the Dunkin’ and see it happen. So I draw my weapon and tell the guy to freeze with his hands up. He doesn’t immediately comply and I deem that this guy most likely has a weapon. Lo and behold, I see his hand flash toward his pocket to grab said weapon. There’s no way on God’s green earth that I let this guy hurt my brother and get away with it. So I take the shot. Bullseye. Hits him clean, guy crumples to the pavement. Officer Eddie ends up with a pretty bad shiner from the sucker punch but other than that he’s good. Still my partner to this day. Loyalty, kids. That’s what it’s all about.”

Officer Mack finished the story and looked around like he was accepting his police Oscar for Outstanding Service, the class of 7-year-old children in awe at his presence. I wanted to raise my hand to ask if the guy survived but I was too scared to speak in front of him. Plus, if Officer Mack said that he did the right thing, that violence was sometimes the price of loyalty, then I believed him. He was wearing a badge, after all.

OUR FIRST PLAYDATE was at my house because I still yearned for the comfort and familiarity of my parent’s presence. It was an unseasonably warm October day in the suburbs, the type of languid sunshine that made any activity a monumental task. When Tristan showed up at my door, his dirty-blonde curls were covered by an uneven baseball cap and he had splotches of sunscreen dotting his abnormally clean nose. He was clutching a spray-painted black Nerf gun in one hand.

“Do you want to play on the swings?” I asked after ushering him in and introducing him to my parents.

“No, let’s play Bad Guys!” he said.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a game where one of us is the cop and the other is the bad guy. The bad guy has to run around and try to avoid the cop but if the cop shoots the bad guy before he runs out of bullets, then the cop wins. If not, the bad guy wins,” he explained.

“Ok,” I said, and then added “Cool gun.”

“I call being cop first,” he declared, ignoring my comment.

I zigged and zagged around the yard to escape Tristan, cackling as I climbed up the slide and ran down the other side of the play structure to narrowly avoid the styrofoam bullets whizzing past my ear. In that first game, I managed to make it until Tristan’s last bullet before he pelted me on the side of my neck. It was a good game, I had to admit, and I hoped Tristan would say something about my athletic prowess. Instead, he simply said “Let’s play again,” and so we did, until both of us were glistening with sweat and wheezing hard. He held out his hand for me to slap and said, “Nice.”

My mom came out beaming and brought us toasted ham-and-cheese sandwiches and juice boxes. We ate sitting criss-cross applesauce in the Autumn grass crunchy with leaves of varying yellows and oranges and purples.

“Why did you ask to be my friend?” I asked suddenly between bites.

Tristan chewed slowly, his expression hard to read. “So you would feel less sad and alone I guess,” he shrugged. “And because John Cena is my favorite wrestler, too,” he said nodding at my favorite shirt, now wet and clinging to my tiny body like plasters of paper-mâché.

“I hate being at school,” I said and then hesitated. “But it’s starting to feel a little less bad.”

“Yeah, school sucks,” said Tristan. “I’d rather ride around with my dad.”

“Does he let you ride with him?” I asked in awe.

“Not yet. But soon. He says it’ll help me learn to be a man. And to see how the world works. I can’t wait to be a grown-up.”

I nodded uncertainly, once again lacking Tristan’s confidence about the future, and then coughed as my juice went down the wrong pipe. “Definitely…” and then hasty to change the subject I added, “Come on, let’s play again.” And so we did, running around in the sticky heat until Tristan’s mom came back to pick him up an hour later.

MY MEMORY gets a little bit grainy at this point. Finishing the story is like piecing together a nonlinear photo album. The snapshots are mostly there, but I’m not exactly sure how they fit together. I do know that Tristan and I continued to sit together after that first playdate. In fact, our friendship stayed strong enough to warrant another one, and we made plans for a sleepover. However, Tristan had a shorter fuse leading up to this monumental step in any child’s friendship. Maybe it was because I was starting to loosen up and talk to other kids. Maybe it was because I was still too dependent on him. But then again, maybe it was outside of anything related to me, purely related to Tristan and the things he was going through that I knew nothing about. I do know that his appetite for the starring role amped up so much that Mrs. Smith, God bless her soul, couldn’t keep up with the increasingly erratic feeding times.

On one such occasion, we were situated on the multi-colored classroom carpet with our scraped knees crossed tightly and our obedient eyes locked forward. Mrs. Smith was sitting in an elevated chair at the front of the classroom, her oversized heart earrings dangling playfully as she craned her neck down to read. It was our daily storytime, and we couldn’t have been more excited to find out what was happening with the poor orphan sent to live with an aunt now being manipulated by a sinister new head of house. The big twist was coming and we could all feel it. The moment we were waiting for was finally going to happen in this storytime block. But every time the tension would thicken, twenty-five greedy eyes leaning forward, a collective “Ahhh” waiting to be released, Tristan would interrupt. Sometimes, it was something harmless, like yelling “No way! This is crazy.” But when the protagonist was trying to quietly eavesdrop on an important conversation, he joked that “It sure would be a bad time for her to FART right now,” and then he cut the cheese with his armpit.

Mrs. Smith tried to politely redirect his attention or simply ignored him in a valiant effort to keep an aura of mystery alive in the room, but it wasn’t working. Finally, the quiet and bookish girl to the left of Tristan, Aimee Edelstein, had enough.

“STOP, Tristan!” she exclaimed furiously after yet another fart noise erupted from Tristan’s mouth.

“Make me!” Tristan spit back and then he lunged at her and pinched her on the arm until she squealed and Mrs. Smith had to rush down to break them up.

That’s when the ever-composed Mrs. Smith lost it on him for the first time. “TRISTAN,” she spat. “We. Do. Not. Attack. Our. Classmates.”

Minutes later, the principal came and took him away to alert his dad about the incident. It wasn’t that Tristan was immediately branded a “bad kid” after occurrences like these, but the seeds were planted and the moodiness, the precipice from which Tristan was normally able to walk himself down, became steeper and more tenuous.

THE SLEEPOVER PLAYDATE was uneventful until Tristan shared the anecdote about his aunt’s nickname for her dog at dinnertime. I could see my mom’s eyebrows practically jump to her hairline, neck whipping to see if Tristan had just said what she thought he did. 

“That’s a bad word. A bad bad word. A word that’s harmful to an entire group of people. It’s absolutely not okay to say,” she said with a firmness I had seldom heard from her.

Tristan looked a little confused and a little defensive. “It’s what she says as a joke,” he shrugged, as if that settled it.

My mom stared. The room got hot and an uncomfortable silence immediately boiled and bubbled thickly, heavy steam shrouding our dining area and rendering speech impossible. After several long moments, my dad walked out holding an oversized pot of Spaghetti with sausage pieces drowning in the thick red meat sauce. “Bon Appetit,” he said, and then left to clear up the mess in the kitchen.

The distraction must have given my mom a moment to think. Looking back now, I understand that she had considered the friendship over the moment Tristan revealed this anecdote. I’m sure she weighed calling Tristan’s mom to give the woman a piece of her mind, to tell her to come get her kid. However, she must have decided to spare me the immediate embarrassment because she gritted her teeth into a smile and said, “Eat up, boys!” 

Mouth full of spaghetti, Tristan regaled us with a story. He told us that prior to arriving at our house, his brother challenged him to a milk-drinking contest. Apparently, they had both downed four glasses of two percent before they could no longer find room left in their stomachs. “My bones are gonna be so strong,” he declared proudly as he twisted his fork and shoveled another bite of spaghetti into his mouth.

“That’s a lot of milk,” I giggled, thinking we had recovered from the awkwardness.

 My mom half-nodded, still distracted from the earlier exchange. Moments later, Tristan clenched his stomach and then lurched forward. A stream of radioactive orange projectile vomit unleashed onto our kitchen table and the rug beneath it, dyeing everything in its vicinity and leaving us in a splotchy warzone of undigested noodles and sausage. If the earlier exchange had happened in slow-motion, this one felt as if someone had pressed fast forward. From the abruptness in which the sour-smelling mixture had tumbled from Tristan’s mouth, to the swift action my parents took to call his mom, begin the clean-up efforts, and corral him into the car to return him home, it must have been an afterthought that I insisted upon accompanying my friend. Nestled in the back seat of the car with the windows down, Tristan shuddered and let out another stream of vomit. I watched it drip down the car door, chunky and sluggish, and hoped my friend would get better soon, not understanding that this would be the last time we’d be allowed to play together.

OVER THE NEXT couple of weeks, several things happened. My mom called Mrs. Smith to tell her to please keep me separated from Tristan; she sat me down one evening and gave me an introductory crash course on racism in America; and after I told Tristan I couldn’t be his friend anymore, someone wrote “Paul is an ass” on the stall door of the boys’ bathroom. Nobody could prove that Tristan had done it because he’d been smart enough to mask his handwriting, but there wasn’t really any question about who was responsible: the little kid who took a chance in befriending a lonely classmate, the little kid who probably thought his vomiting episode played a larger role in the termination of that friendship than the racism perpetuated by his family. 

In the immediate aftermath, I sat in Ms. Molina’s office, crying at school for the first time in nearly two months. She let me wheeze and huff, tears pooling in a mucousy mess above my shuddering upper lip. After fifteen minutes of this, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a small mirror hung in the office. In blue Sharpie were a series of loopy words that said Look! You are Beautiful No Matter What! I saw my puffy eyes, the shadow of black bags underneath, and appraised my snotty nose. Immediate instincts told me not to wipe so that later on it would dry and I could be like Tristan.

When Ms. Molina saw me looking at myself and getting even more worked up, she gently patted my back and said, “Okay, Paul, I think that’s enough. Take some deep breaths alongside me as I count to ten.” With tremendous effort, I took a few shuddering breaths, repeatedly getting caught on both the inhale and the exhale, like someone tumbling down a hill and running into tree after tree. Several minutes later, when I had finally found a rhythm and my tiny chest was expanding and contracting smoothly, she motioned to the board, still featuring a list of life experiences, and then did a voice like a train conductor. “Now boarding for Canada. At your destination, you will learn to ice skate and eat french fries covered in gravy. Draw a picture of you and your family on the trip!”

I took several more deep breaths, hiccupped, and said “Can you pass me the whiteboard, please?”

As Ms. Molina leaned forward, I noticed three small bandaids underneath her sleeve in a perfect line. “What happened?” I asked, alarmed.

“Oh,” she hesitated. “I hurt myself. I got a couple of cuts,” she said shortly.

“Are you gonna be okay?”

“Yes, I suppose I will be. I guess…” She hesitated for a moment and then this time, decided to plow forward. “Well, like you Paul, sometimes I feel a lot of pain. Pain is a normal part of life. I feel it on my body, like when I get cut, but also in my heart. For me, the pain in my heart hurts a lot more. So this pain, this pain on my body feels… easier. It’ll heal. I know it’ll heal. And… I guess, I just have to remember that the pain in my heart will heal too. But sometimes it’s hard. So we both need to remember that if our hearts start to hurt, they can always get better. ”

“But how? How will they get better?”

“By doing the things you’ve already started learning how to do. Figuring out how to take a breath when you need it. Finding a safe place for your worries. Leaning on the people you love and the people who love you. Finding experiences you enjoy so much, that they make the wandering in your mind go quiet. Being able to ask for help when you need it.”

“Okay,” I said and then stared, lost in thought. “I guess I would like to try french fries covered in gravy. It might be gross, but it might be okay,” I contemplated.

Ms. Molina looked at me and something in her face broke. She let out an otherworldly belly laugh, a sound that reverberated around the room like she had been using a loudspeaker, and so I started laughing too even though I didn’t entirely understand why she was laughing, until we were laughing together, feeding off the full body hysterics of the other, wild and sudden and unburdened.

Over the years, I grieved yet more loved ones and sometimes felt the overwhelming suffocation that emptied my brain and made the future feel unthinkable. I felt like that hopelessly lost little boy when addiction and illness threatened to eviscerate my immediate family, when coaches hoping to motivate me looked into my eyes and told me I wasn’t shit, even the first time I nursed a beer in the basement corner of a dingy high school party. And there were times when I desperately wanted to assimilate into my surroundings, when I wanted my coaches to think I had the kind of bravado they sought out, or when having the loudest voice in the room felt appealing. But there was always a flicker of something within me. At times it was faint, nearly imperceptible. The desire to wet my thumb and pointer finger, to pinch the flame out of its misery became more and more appealing. But I never truly could because deep down I never truly wanted to. I’ve been wired to feel shame for many things, but I don’t think being soft was ultimately one of them. Too many adults in my life refused to let that happen.

My mom was still on the other line, still waiting for my response, and I absentmindedly used my right hand to brush the fingers on my left hand. I didn’t think he deserved to rot, and I mumbled that sentiment into the phone.

“You don’t?” my mom said a little sharply.

“He did a lot for me when he asked me to be his friend.”

“And then he wrote evil things about you. And spewed racist garbage.”

I sighed. “His family clearly taught him that stuff.”

“And he went with it. He just sprayed a bunch of swastikas on a playground, Paul.”

“I know, I know,” I said, and closed my eyes and shook my head. As I palmed my temple, another vague piece of the story began to form in my mind. It was like a fever dream, splotches of color shaping the landscape of a school playground, and I couldn’t even be certain it was a real recollection.

It was a chilly day. The type of chilly day that produced reddened cheeks and dampened eyes. The type of wind that cut through bones. I wasn’t allowed to play with Tristan at this point, but the playground was only so big, and sometimes we crossed paths for a moment until I averted my eyes. He was standing on the precipice of the jungle gym, thinking about whether he would jump down. We locked eyes for a brief moment, but I quickly studied the mulch beneath my feet. I heard a thud, a crunch, and a yelp of pain. My head jolted Tristan’s way. From a distance, I could see the rosiness in his features, the mixture of mucousy and freeze-dried boogers circling his mouth and nose. He tried to stand up, crashed back to the ground, and yelped in agony again. Refusing to be tied to the mulch, refusing to let the pain win, he hobbled to his feet, though the injured leg was not bearing any weight. I was glued in place, staring. He met my eyes once more for a fleeting moment and then turned the other way, hopping on one foot in the opposite direction. Still, I didn’t move. I didn’t call out. I don’t know if he would have let me help, let me try to support his weight until we got to the school nurse, but I didn’t try. Nobody around us did. He hopped through the mulch, up to the blacktop painted with four square and hopscotch lines, and to the timeout chair by the entry door, where he sat still, trying not to wince in pain as other kids continued to scream and laugh and run around in the distance.

Cole Chaloupka is a former classroom teacher and current college counselor with an undergraduate degree in Marketing and Masters in Teaching. One of his favorite parts of teaching was the creative writing units, where he found he really enjoyed doing the writing prompts alongside the kids.

‘Dual Mourning’

“Come on,” my mom ushered me and my siblings through the front door of my grandparents’ house with a waving arm. Their townhouse sat on a hill, overlooking the Hudson River and the Metro North train line. Nana Geri loved to watch and listen for the birds as they flew along the coast of the river, riding the train tracks north or south, while Babu sat next to her with binoculars.

We knew Babu was close to dying. The hospital had just moved him into at-home hospice, where pancreatic cancer would eventually take his life in silence.

“It’s time to say goodbye,” my mom warned us as we pulled the minivan into the driveway. We followed her up the stairs like ducklings, me, then Livy, then Nate. I traced each of her steps with my small feet, paving the way for my younger siblings. I thought of Nana’s gold necklace, two flying geese dangling from her neck. Were they migrating North or South?

Scientists theorize that Geese have a sense that we don’t, called “magnetoreception,” that allows them to follow the dull magnetic field of the earth to guide their migrations. I imagine Nana with a magnetic sense, only Babu is the other pole that she feels herself migrate to, all the way from her Irish Catholic home in Athlone and into Babu’s Jewish New York City life.

Nana may have had magnetoreception as her sixth sense, but I felt like my sixth sense was an uncomfortable awareness that I was living in my own skin. My body was at that point of no return. I felt self-conscious no matter what I wore. My skin crawled as my insides raced with a surplus of hormones. I was only 10, yet small hills had begun to raise on my chest and hair grew in generously in places they never had before. I tried my best to ignore it, never looking in the mirror, turning away from my friends as we changed into pajamas at sleepovers.

I was thinking about my body, which seemed separate from my brain, when we reached the top of the staircase. I froze. Babu lay in a cot in the hallway, seemingly shriveled. I wondered why he wasn’t in the bedroom. Then I imagined Nana’s sleepless nights, lying in bed next to him, listening and counting each breath, wondering when they would halt. I took the scene in, his arms were discolored and bruised where an IV penetrated his thin skin.

“Hi!” he said breathily. I was afraid. This man didn’t look like Babu, the doctor who sang Puff the Magic Dragon in their bright living room and opened the door for Elijah on Passover dinner.

I didn’t know what to say. My words were clogged in the back of my throat, stopping the breath from easing out of my mouth. I felt infinitely younger than I was, standing far away from the bed in fear of this man I had known all my life. The same uncomfortable feeling I got when forced to face my changing body rose from the depths of my belly. I crossed my arms, flinching as I felt my chest. I still hadn’t spoken. Every part of me felt wrong. I felt both too young and too old. I was too tall and yet shrinking next to his bed. I was too quiet, but I heard each breath rattle in my chest. These things that made me grown-up also pushed down any logical response to the situation.

Tick, tick, tick. The clock on the wall had warped to move slower. I remained glued to the ground, staring at him wordlessly while the adults chatted under their breath.

Years before, Livy, Nate, and I were playing in the guest room when Nate knocked over a lamp. It came crashing down, screaming through the house. We stared at it on the ground. Babu came running in, wearing only an undershirt and a tighty whitey.

“What happened!?” he had yelled as he spun around the room.

What had happened? I was afraid of his loud anger then, but now I was afraid of this deathly silence.

“It’s time to go,” my mom finally said as she placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.

I turned to Babu for what I assumed was the last time. I took in his furry mustache and round head, big square glasses perched on his large nose. None of the appropriate emotions seemed to hit me. I wasn’t crying. Instead, all I felt was awkward as I stood in front of him. For once, I wished I could cry. I begged my hormones to help me escape from the fight, flight, or freeze reaction I was thought I must have been having.

“I love you,” he told me in a shaky voice. I stared at him. The words still clogged my throat. Say something! I yelled to myself. I couldn’t say it back. My cheeks were hot with embarrassment. I nodded and touched his hand before walking away.

~

My grandfather passed a few days later and the funeral was to take place in a week. My mom looked at Livy and me, with our scraped knees and boyish clothes, and realized we needed to go shopping beforehand. We hated shopping, so the occasion for this outing made the experience comically miserable.

I dragged my feet behind my mom, who I swore was sprinting. “Slow down,” I complained as I mindlessly ran my fingers over the racks of clothing. I was looking, not seeing.

Her arms were piled high with black skirts, dresses, and tops. The industrial lighting in Macy’s glared down on us like a spotlight in the windowless maze of clothes and shoes. My mind wandered to Babu, who had told me he loved me while I stared at his deteriorating body in silence. It wasn’t something I often said to him. On his deathbed, did he wish we had said it more?

We walked past the bras and underwear to get to the dressing room. I blushed at the sight of these shapely items, meant to hold parts of a woman together that I couldn’t quite understand. I averted my eyes, shuffling my feet and hoping my mom wouldn’t notice I was peeking. Did they make her feel as awkward as I felt?

The three of us stepped into the dressing room and I weighed the options hanging on the metal rack. I turned away from the two of them and began to strip to my underwear, hunching my back to hide my morphing body.

It felt as if I spoke about what was happening to me, I would be admitting that I was no longer a kid, that some youth in me had shriveled up like a rotten apple. And wasn’t I still a child? If not physically then at least mentally.

In my fifth-grade class, I had searched for signs that this transformation was happening to anyone else. But no, my best friend Izzy’s chest was flat, her legs and arms scrawny and skin a perfect olive, bearing no hair. I noticed with the relief that the third of our classroom trio, Kathryn, had hair peeking out of the arm of her blue Abercrombie t-shirt.

For months leading up to the summer, all anyone talked about at school was the fifth-grade pool party. It was supposed to be a celebration of our graduation to middle school, but to me it felt like a funeral for the death of my child-body. I had desperately searched Justice for the perfect tankini for the occasion, something that hid my tummy I swore was bloating bigger and bigger by the day.

The night before the pool party, I stared into the eyes of a fresh razor I stole from my parents’ bathroom. What if I just kept my t-shirt on the whole day? I thought as I looked at its shining blades. That would be way too obvious. I lathered my hand with soap and ran my hand over my pits, lifting my arm up high above my head before quickly running the blade over myself. What was left was the baby smooth skin I had missed so deeply. I could have cried tears of joy.

This joy was abruptly changed to fear, as I decided that the only thing worse than having armpit hair was having armpit hair that people knew you shaved. I kept my arms as close to my body as possible the entire pool day.

This was before the goodbye with Babu, before he passed away, and before this painful shopping trip. Now, I was staring at myself in the dirty mirror of the Macy’s dressing room with my head tilted, and not much had changed about how I felt about my body. “That looks good Gab,” my mom said about the black skirt I was wearing.

“I hate skirts,” I responded, to which she sighed. I was used to my legs scabbed and bruised from basketball and lacrosse, not peeking out of flowing fabric.

“Me too,” Livy agreed. Her sun kissed caramel hair was pulled back into its usual ponytail, a thin headband holding her white flyaways in place.

“Well, you have to look nice,” my mom responded, losing all patience.

“Fine. Then this is fine,” I ripped it off my body and replaced it with my camisole, graphic tee, and sports shorts that fell just above my knee.

After the mall we drove home in silence. Too Cool from the Camp Rock movie played on Disney Radio. I had to pee badly, so instantly ran upstairs to go to the bathroom after the long drive. I pulled my shorts down and sat on the cool seat, staring out the window. Birds were chirping in the summer heat. I looked down at the crime scene in front of me. My heart sank and its pace quickened.

No, no, no, I thought. There, on my underwear, was a dark red blotch.

I flushed and immediately ran to my room, shoving the underwear in my drawer. I began to pace, unsure of what to do next. I knew I had to tell my mom, but the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. I took deep breaths, shaking. Why did this have to happen to me first? None of my friends had their periods, it wasn’t fair. I remembered my mom telling me she got her period at 10 years old. Stupid genetics. I thought back to confiding in her, “I have hair down there,” as I stood on my twin sized bed.

I knew I had to confide in her again. I walked to the banister that overlooked the foyer to our main floor. “Mom!” I shouted across the house, my voice shaking. She hated when we did this, but what was I going to do, tell my entire family I got my period?

“What!?” she yelled back from the living room.

“Can you come here?”

“Why?”

“Can you just come here, please!”

“I’m doing something!”

“I need you to come upstairs!” I tried to put just enough urgency in my voice without alerting the entire family of my predicament.

I heard her huff and puff to the bottom of the staircase before saying “what?” with her hands on her hips.

“Come up here.” She began to walk up the stairs. I pulled her into my room and said, “I think I got my period.” An uncomfortable smile pulled at my lips.

“Let me see,” she said. I opened my drawer and picked up the underwear with two fingers. Pinching, I handed her the underwear.

“Yep,” she said cheerfully, and pulled me into her as my thin arms dangled loosely at my sides, “oh, Gab!” I heard her voice become thick as she became choked up. Perfect, I thought, even she knows my childhood is over. She pulled away and wiped her face. “Okay, I’ll get you some pads. Do you want me to show you how to put them on?”

“No, thank you,” I said. I couldn’t imagine anything more mortifying than discussing this further. I avoided eye contact.

She left to retrieve pads and I sat on my bed, staring at myself in the mirror. So, you’re a woman now? I asked my reflection. My body was betraying me. I was both a woman and a child at the same time, capable of creating life but incapable of addressing that life also comes to an end. It felt like some part of me had broken off, and that was what caused the bleeding. What kind of woman can’t even tell her dying grandfather she loves him?

The day of Babu’s funeral, I wore the dreaded black skirt that I picked out in Macy’s and a black short-sleeved blouse. I felt prettier and girlier than usual. My dirty blond hair was combed and falling softly on my shoulders instead of pulled back into my usual ponytail.

However, as I sat in the synagogue pew next to my cousins and immediate family, all I could think about was the thick pad between my legs. Something about the skirt made it feel more obvious. I wondered if anyone could see it. I hated my mom’s knowing glances and my sister’s questioning stares.

In the middle of my self-pitying, the Rabbi called my dad to give his part of the eulogy. He walked to the podium and pulled out a piece of paper, filled with his chicken-scratch handwriting. I watched him in awe as he poured everything into his words, unafraid of anyone witnessing the tears that were violently pouring out of his eyes and rolling down his red cheeks. I hoped he told Babu how he felt.

I felt a tug in my chest as tears finally began to rise to my eyes. I was relieved that I was capable of feeling again, of thinking about something and someone other than myself. I let the tears overtake me. I mourned Babu, his “I love you” and my silence, and the innocence of my body all at once. I would never return to the girl I was before.

Gabby Rosenzweig is an emerging writer based in NYC where she works as a full-time management consultant. She graduated from UPenn in 2020 with a degree in Communications. She has always been a writer, though she has just begun starting to share with others as she grows her work. She began this journey with the great support from the Gotham Writers Workshop and the community built there.

‘Cure for Pain’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Cure for Pain

My eyes open. A millisecond later, dawn spawns from earth’s yawny maw. Too slow. The notepad which I had set on my nightstand four hours ago, then freshly unwrapped and uninked, is now a tapestry of pages plastered across my bedroom wall. My mind never rests.

Bopatex
Coxanoclep
Veltchex

I press my palms against each name in turn. Not fatherly, not motherly. A lone hero holding the iron gate shut. Beyond the gate is a stampede of woolly mammoths, a pride of lions, a few labradors and a Shetland pony with a vendetta. Behind me is a baby.

Not actually. Just in the metaphor.

Which phone is ringing? I check the nightstand. The sock drawer. The ceiling fan. Of course... the rooftop glasshouse. It’s in the hydrangeas.

“Langstons.”

“Langstons! The pitch is in twenty. We need the name right now.”

I knew fate would rattle my hydrangeas again.

“You know the cost if I choose wrong.”

“You never have and you’re not going to today Langstons.”

Not on record I haven’t. But the record of my mind can’t be wiped clean so easily. I’ll never forget that day. Yellow bicycle on the lawn. A swingset coiled around itself. A thornbush with a hole the shape of a five-year-old boy. The dulce de leche ice cream never melts in my nightmares.

Bopatex
Coxanoclep
Xeltchex

“What does it do?”

“Lowers blood pressure.”

“Side effects?”

“Nausea, vomiting. Sandy bones. Ringing in the ears. Vaginal thrush.”

“By god...it’s Bopatex.”

I pray I’m not wrong

Jonathan Atz is a human. With feelings and desires. One of those desires is to tell stories. And to have a nemesis. If you think you've got the gumption you can find him at @honeyivegotthe on twitter.

‘Prayers’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Prayers

Let me do something that has never been done before
Let the world find in me something new
That when I leave it, it is forever changed behind me
Let me live as no one has lived
Let me mark humanity with my touch, let it scorn my loss, let tears water my grave
Let me live on forever.
Let me do something that has never been done before . . .

But wait.
I have.
I have lived a life as Sophie Lominska.
I have done something that has never
been done before
And once I am gone
no one ever will
again.

Sophie Lominska is a sixteen year old aspiring author from Kansas. This work, "Prayers," is a freeform, creative poem detailing her hopes for her life, and the revelations that eventually come along with it. She usually writes short stories and is excited for the chance to share her poetry with the world.